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  • 14 - The Popes and the Enlightenment

  • from Part III - Reformations and Revolutions
  • Edited by Joëlle Rollo-Koster, University of Rhode Island, Robert A. Ventresca, King’s University College at Western University, Melodie H. Eichbauer, Florida Gulf Coast University, Miles Pattenden, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the Papacy
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 March 2025, pp 366-401

  • Summary

    Two recent trends in scholarship necessitate a reevaluation of the persistent myth of a unitary, teleologically secular Enlightenment. The first is the recognition that a unitary Enlightenment with a preordained set of goals is a later ideological construction. A second trend problematizes the relationship between religion and Enlightenment by pluralizing the Enlightenment, thus making more space for the “religious” motivations and inspirations of so many of the men and women typically denominated as “enlightened.” This chapter explores the ambivalent relationship between the popes and a “Catholic Enlightenment” that was engaged in theology, secular scholarship, and political and societal reform. On one hand, the papacy is often cast as the primary enemy of enlightened Catholicism. And yet Italy, and indeed Rome itself, boasted very significant enlightened Catholic intellectuals, rulers, and networks throughout the eighteenth century, including, arguably, certain popes. This chapter seeks to make sense of this seemingly paradoxical situation.