Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Enlightenment in England
- 2 The Scottish Enlightenment
- 3 The Enlightenment in France
- 4 The Enlightenment in the Netherlands
- 5 The Enlightenment in Switzerland
- 6 The Italian Enlightenment
- 7 The Protestant Enlightenment in Germany
- 8 The Enlightenment in Catholic Germany
- 9 Reform Catholicism and Political Radicalism in the Austrian Enlightenment
- 10 Bohemia: From Darkness into Light
- 11 The Enlightenment in Sweden
- 12 The Russian Enlightenment
- 13 Enlightenment and the Politics of American Nature
- Afterword
- Notes to the text
- Further reading
- Index
8 - The Enlightenment in Catholic Germany
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 The Enlightenment in England
- 2 The Scottish Enlightenment
- 3 The Enlightenment in France
- 4 The Enlightenment in the Netherlands
- 5 The Enlightenment in Switzerland
- 6 The Italian Enlightenment
- 7 The Protestant Enlightenment in Germany
- 8 The Enlightenment in Catholic Germany
- 9 Reform Catholicism and Political Radicalism in the Austrian Enlightenment
- 10 Bohemia: From Darkness into Light
- 11 The Enlightenment in Sweden
- 12 The Russian Enlightenment
- 13 Enlightenment and the Politics of American Nature
- Afterword
- Notes to the text
- Further reading
- Index
Summary
To the philosophes who marched under the banner of ‘écrasez l'infâme’, the notion of an Enlightenment in Catholic Germany was a contradiction in terms, a monstrous hybrid analogous to grafting a philosopher's head and torso on to the hind quarters of an old, fat and malodorous sow. Nor was this kind of opinion confined to the French, who have never shown much appreciation of the intellectual life of Baron Thunder-ten-Tronckh's fellowcountrymen. The Italian Carlantonio Pilati, who at least had first-hand experience of the German educational system, recorded in 1777 that ‘the German Protestants are infinitely more enlightened than the Catholics. [The latter teach] their children ideas which ruin their judgment and their reason: their minds are crushed and are steered towards error, futility and stupidity.’ Although local historians of Catholic Germany have always sought to do justice to the cultural achievements of their region, it was not until this century that revision on a national scale began.
Even so, the image persists of the Catholic principalities as highly ornamental baroque troughs, in which epicurean prelates happily if sleepily wallowed. In a recent monograph on the German Enlightenment, for example, it is stated confidently that
the major thrust of the Aufklärung can be deemed Protestant in nature…. German Catholicism did not experience a parallel intellectual development…. Catholicism was channeled in different directions. Instead of finding an outlet in critical reflection, the Catholic movement produced an amazing renaissance in the plastic arts, seen in the construction of the numerous pilgrimage churches that dot the Austrian, Bavarian and Swabian countryside.
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- The Enlightenment in National Context , pp. 118 - 126Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981
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