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Full-Text Articles in Intellectual History

Companion To The Catholic Enlightenment In Europe, Ulrich Lehner, Michael Printy Mar 2010

Companion To The Catholic Enlightenment In Europe, Ulrich Lehner, Michael Printy

Michael Printy

This book offers the first comprehensive overview of the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe. It surveys the diversity of views about the structure and nature of the movement, pointing toward the possibilities for further research. The volume presents a series of comprehensive treatments on the process and interpretation of Catholic Enlightenment in France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, the Holy Roman Empire, Malta, Italy and the Habsburg territories. An introductory overview explores the varied meanings of Catholic Enlightenment and situates them in a series of intellectual and social contexts. The topics covered in this book are crucial for a proper understanding of the …


Enlightenment And The Creation Of German Catholicism, Michael Printy Dec 2008

Enlightenment And The Creation Of German Catholicism, Michael Printy

Michael Printy

This book tells the story of how eighteenth-century German Catholics rethought the Church. Educated German Catholics envisioned a Church that would solidify the link between religion, civilization, and morality. The first account of the German Catholic Enlightenment, this book explores the ways in which eighteenth-century Germans reconceived the relationship between religion, society, and the state. Seeking a balance between Germany and Rome, Catholic reformers desired a national Church that would enjoy a large measure of autonomy but would still be in communion with the universal Church. In trying to reform the Church, educated Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire questioned …


Skinner And Pocock In Context: Early Modern Political Thought Today, Michael Printy Dec 2008

Skinner And Pocock In Context: Early Modern Political Thought Today, Michael Printy

Michael Printy

Review essay about two books concerning J. G. A. Pocock, and Quentin Skinner's Foundations of Modern Political Thought


The Intellectual Origins Of Popular Catholicism: Catholic Moral Theology In The Age Of Enlightenment, Michael Printy Dec 2004

The Intellectual Origins Of Popular Catholicism: Catholic Moral Theology In The Age Of Enlightenment, Michael Printy

Michael Printy

The popular Catholic revival of the nineteenth century was preceded by an intellectual revolution that enabled the Catholic Church to overcome its traditional suspicion of popular religious practices. Central to this transformation was the elaboration of the moral-theological doctrine of equiprobabilism in response to rigorist Augustinian moral pessimism, most fruitfully by Alphonsus of Liguori (1696-1787). His moral theology would set the Church in confrontation with the Catholic Enlightenment. On account of this shift in moral theology, Catholicism was best able of the major Christian churches to preserve within its institutional fold the broad religious revival of the nineteenth century.


From Barbarism To Religion: Church History And The Enlightened Narrative In Germany, Michael Printy Dec 2004

From Barbarism To Religion: Church History And The Enlightened Narrative In Germany, Michael Printy

Michael Printy

The subject of this essay is the historical vision of the German Catholic Enlightenment as seen in the work of Michael Ignaz Schmidt, a Catholic priest and author of the eleven-volume History of the Germans (1778–1793). A proper acknowledgement of Schmidt's career helps us revise the standard account of German historicism and historical practice in the eighteenth century, and also sheds light on the place of religion in the German Enlightenment. Schmidt wrote a thoroughly modern ‘history of manners’ that was indebted both to Voltaire and to Robertson. Yet his work passed into obscurity largely because he focused on the …