In The Inner Life of Catholic Reform, Ulrich Lehner offers a longue duree 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Drawing on a plethora of published and unpublished sources and a wide array of secondary literature--with an emphasis on Europe, but integrating material from Africa, America, and Asia--Lehner documents this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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Ulrich Lehner's book is a masterpiece of sympathetic understanding of the religious aspirations of the Catholic Reform...His scholarship and sympathetic openness to the aspirations of the Reform, while recognising its limitations, equips him to give the reader a particularly helpful portrait of this period of Catholic history. * Robert Gascoigne, Journal of Religious History * 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 * Presenting a picture of reformed orthodoxy that reads remarkably like a manual, almost a catechism, for present-day Catholics, he (Lehner) has succeeded in recovering a way of living the faith that has been largely obscured by the conflicts of the Reformation era. * Victor Houliston, Heythrop Journal * The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment is a welcome and enlightening book...Lehner's work is a welcome addition to the field and should be required reading in courses on early modern Catholicism. * Christian D. Washburn, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, USA * This text would be useful for studying spirituality as well as the history of this largely unknown time period...Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers. * Choice * Lehner's very readable book is a hybrid between a monograph and a textbook. * Moshe Sluhovsky, Church History * Ulrich Lehner's book presents a detailed description of early modern Catholic devotional theology and the various methods 'charismatic church reformers' advocated to support the spiritual renewal of individual believers...The book is thorough and deeply erudite while remaining clear and accessible. * Marc R.Forster, Journal of Ecclesiastical History * The Inner Life of Catholic Reform: From the Council of Trent to the Enlightenment is a welcome and enlightening book. * Christian D. Washburn, Scottish Journal of Theology * The Inner Life of Catholic Reform is an excellent book and a major contribution to our understanding of the ambitions, dynamics, and consequences of early modern Catholic reform. A short review cannot do justice to a work of manifold strengths and significance, so I will conclude by encouraging scholars and students working on early modern Catholicism to engage with it as essential reading. * Joshua Rushton, Renaissance Studies * Lehner's book provides us with an accessible, exhaustively researched account that is sympathetic, even tender, with its subjects while also suggesting that if much of the good wheat of early modern reform is still with us, some of the chaff has also endured to the present day. * Shaun Blanchard, The Way * This book,...can and should be read, not just consulted. Lehner is thorough but never pedantic; his style is clear and easy to read. The Inner Life will thus serve the layperson and historian alike,...This book is likewise for all who long for more than the institutional and political descriptions of Catholic Reform. With The Inner Life, Lehner successfully fills a "lacuna" in Catholic Reform's historical corpus. * Noah R. Karger, Nova et Vetera * This marvelous book encapsulates the seismic shift in perspective that has taken place in the study of early modern Catholicism in the past four decades, and, at the same time, it sharpens the historiographical cutting edge of this new approach... For all the right reasons, it is bound to become a classic, and to influence future research on the Catholic Reformation for years to come. * Carlos M. N. Eire, The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review * This marvelous book encapsulates the seismic shift in perspective that has taken place in the study of early modern Catholicism in the past four decades, and, at the same time, it sharpens the historiographical cutting edge of this new approach...For all the right reasons, it is bound to become a classic, and to influence future research on the Catholic Reformation for years to come. * Carlos M.N. Eire, The Thomist * A provocative read for scholars of the topic, while a great introduction for those starting out on the study of early modern Catholicism. * James E. Kelly, Sixteenth Century Journal *
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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William K. Warren Professor of TheologyWilliam K. Warren Professor of Theology, University of Notre Dame
