Overview

In The Inner Life of Catholic Reform, Ulrich Lehner offers a longue durée overview of the sentiments and spiritual ideas of the 250-year long time span following the Council of Trent, known as Catholic Reform. While there have been many studies of the so-called Counter-Reformation, the political side of Catholic Reform, and of its institutional and social history, the sentiments, motivations and religious practices of Catholic Reform--what Lehner calls the ""inner life""--have been mostly neglected. Reform, Lehner argues, was not something that occurred merely through institutional changes, new laws, and social control. For early modern Catholics, church reform began with personal reform and attempts to live in a state of grace. Lehner seeks to take these religious commitments seriously and understand them on their own terms. The central question he asks is ""What did Catholics do to obtain salvation, to make themselves pleasing to God?"" Lehner examines how the spiritual ideas that emerged from attempts to wrestle with the question of the salvation of souls changed the Catholic view of the world. Drawing on a plethora of published and unpublished sources and a wide array of secondary literature--with an emphasis on Europe, but integrating material from Africa, America, and Asia--Lehner documents this transformative period in history, when Catholicism became a ""world religion.""

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Lehner's book successfully addresses the historiographical gaps of the Catholic Enlightenment from the lenses of theology and history. Due to its brevity, topics such as controversies that shook Catholicism as well as early modern authors and works, information about popes, and religious orders are left out. This gives readers space to simultaneously study Lehner's book with other scholarship on these topics. This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students of history, philosophy, and theology as well as those who are interested in learning more about the history of the Catholic Church during the early modern period. * Kyra Sanchez Clapper, World History Encyclopedia * This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students of history, philosophy, and theology as well as those who are interested in learning more about the history of the Catholic Church during the early modern period. * World History Encyclopedia * Ulrich Lehner unfolds a rich new vision of early modern Catholicism. Doctrine could not change, but practices could, and the Catholic Church devised effective ways, many of them new, to instruct and engage, frighten and console parishioners across the world. Most of the faithful were poor, many were illiterate, but through preaching and confession, prayer and catechism, the Church tried to reach them all. * Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University * The Inner Life of Catholic Reform charts a history that is significant for ecumenical discussions of early modern period and insists, for then and now, that the reform of the church is about the care of souls. * Christine Helmer, Peter B. Ritzma Chair of Humanities, Professor of German and Religious Studies, Northwestern University * A distinguished authority on Catholic enlightenment and outer reform, Ulrich Lehner focuses here on the much-neglected issue of inner reform, namely those central practices that aimed not at correct belief but at the sanctification of the individual and community. The result is a brief, readable, and exceptionally rich account that uncovers an array of pious practices central to the self-understanding of Catholics in the early modern period-and that touch upon something abiding and central to Catholic identity to this day. * Kevin Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard University * Although Roman Catholicism is known for its profuse material culture and visible institutional presence, Lehner demonstrates his nuanced mastery of its richly multifaceted interior life from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The pervasive emphasis on Catholics' inner reform animated the Church's exuberant external expressions and established its global footprint between the Middle Ages and the modern era. * Brad S. Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society *

This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students of history, philosophy, and theology as well as those who are interested in learning more about the history of the Catholic Church during the early modern period. * World History Encyclopedia * Ulrich Lehner unfolds a rich new vision of early modern Catholicism. Doctrine could not change, but practices could, and the Catholic Church devised effective ways, many of them new, to instruct and engage, frighten and console parishioners across the world. Most of the faithful were poor, many were illiterate, but through preaching and confession, prayer and catechism, the Church tried to reach them all. * Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University * The Inner Life of Catholic Reform charts a history that is significant for ecumenical discussions of early modern period and insists, for then and now, that the reform of the church is about the care of souls. * Christine Helmer, Peter B. Ritzma Chair of Humanities, Professor of German and Religious Studies, Northwestern University * A distinguished authority on Catholic enlightenment and outer reform, Ulrich Lehner focuses here on the much-neglected issue of inner reform, namely those central practices that aimed not at correct belief but at the sanctification of the individual and community. The result is a brief, readable, and exceptionally rich account that uncovers an array of pious practices central to the self-understanding of Catholics in the early modern period-and that touch upon something abiding and central to Catholic identity to this day. * Kevin Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard University * Although Roman Catholicism is known for its profuse material culture and visible institutional presence, Lehner demonstrates his nuanced mastery of its richly multifaceted interior life from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The pervasive emphasis on Catholics' inner reform animated the Church's exuberant external expressions and established its global footprint between the Middle Ages and the modern era. * Brad S. Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society *

Ulrich Lehner unfolds a rich new vision of early modern Catholicism. Doctrine could not change, but practices could, and the Catholic Church devised effective ways, many of them new, to instruct and engage, frighten and console parishioners across the world. Most of the faithful were poor, many were illiterate, but through preaching and confession, prayer and catechism, the Church tried to reach them all. -- Anthony Grafton, Henry Putnam University Professor of History, Princeton University The Inner Life of Catholic Reform charts a history that is significant for ecumenical discussions of early modern period and insists, for then and now, that the reform of the church is about the care of souls. -- Christine Helmer, Peter B. Ritzma Chair of Humanities, Professor of German and Religious Studies, Northwestern University A distinguished authority on Catholic enlightenment and outer reform, Ulrich Lehner focuses here on the much-neglected issue of inner reform, namely those central practices that aimed not at correct belief but at the sanctification of the individual and community. The result is a brief, readable, and exceptionally rich account that uncovers an array of pious practices central to the self-understanding of Catholics in the early modern period--and that touch upon something abiding and central to Catholic identity to this day. -- Kevin Madigan, Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Harvard University Although Roman Catholicism is known for its profuse material culture and visible institutional presence, Lehner demonstrates his nuanced mastery of its richly multifaceted interior life from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The pervasive emphasis on Catholics' inner reform animated the Church's exuberant external expressions and established its global footprint between the Middle Ages and the modern era. -- Brad S. Gregory, author of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society

Author Information

Ulrich L. Lehner is William K. Warren Professor of Theology at University of Notre Dame, Indiana. A member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, he has received awards and fellowships from the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, the Notre Dame Institute of Advanced Study, the Earhart Foundation, the German Humboldt Foundation and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation. He is the award-winning author and editor of thirty books and scholarly works on early modern and modern history of religion.

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