Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment:
Art, Science, and Spirituality

Pope Benedict XIV Lambertini (r. 1740-58) was one of the driving forces behind the Italian Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. His campaign to reconcile faith and empirical science, re-launch a dialogue between the Church and the European intellectual community, and expand papal patronage of the arts and sciences helped restore Italy's position as a center of intellectual and artistic innovation.

​

Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment offers a broad and nuanced assessment of Benedict's engagement with Enlightenment art, science, spirituality, and culture. The collection's essays, written by international experts in the field, cover topics ranging from Benedict's revisions to the Church's procedures for beatification and sanctification to his patronage of women scientists and mathematicians at the university in Bologna, his birthplace.

"This is a well-researched and tightly focused volume that makes a significant contribution to the historiography."
                            Daniel J. Watkins, Journal of Jesuit Studies

            -Read Full Review

 

"The book, accompanied by a set of wonderful colorplates, has remarkably succeeded in its attempt to read the ambiguities and nuances of the 'Catholic Enlightenment' through the figure of Benedict XIV."
                            Paolo Savoia, Metascience

            -Read Full Review

​

"Collectively, these wonderful essays frame the outline of a new, more humanized portrait of an early modern pope whose career, actions, personality, and values deserve still more study."
                            William V. Hudon, Professor of History, Bloomsburg University

 

"Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment is a superb collection of essays. The Benedict XIV that emerges from its pages is a nuanced and fascinating figure of the Catholic enlightenment, a man who was both idealistic and pragmatic, rigorously logical yet at times contradictory in his views on the world around him and the Church’s role in it."
                            Catherine Sama, Professor of Italian, University of Rhode Island