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13Introduction the Catholic Enlightenment as altogether different species; and second, the inevitable failure of the latter.30 Yet, as hinted above, the broader, comparative, and transnational studies of the Catholic Enlightenment have been pointing toward a more synthetic pic- ture. A central motif of this picture is the continuity established between the reform movement within the Catholic Church initiated by the Council of Trent (1545–63) and the Catholic Enlightenment, on the grounds that the Tridentine spirit—in full force at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thanks to the efforts of Popes Innocent xi (1611–89, r.1676–89) and Innocent xii (1615–1700, r.1691–1700) to revive it—contained elements that were conge- nial to the Enlightenment and received a new impetus from it.31 One of these elements was a more rational, utilitarian, and practical understanding of the essence and the role of the Christian religion, with a view to enabling it to pen- etrate the capillaries of society, to attain a more intense and intimate presence in believers’ everyday lives and to genuinely improve their spiritual well-being. To be sure, one of the means was the awe-inspiring aesthetic offensive of ba- roque. But from the outset, these goals were also pursued by an appeal to the understanding: greater concern with education for the clergy and the laity, and some liberality in religious practices, such as the use of the vernacular in the 30 Peter Hersche, Der Spätjansenismus in Österreich (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977), 390–405; Karl Otmar von Aretin, “Katholische Aufklärung im Heiligen Römischen Reich,” in von Aretin, Das Reich: Friedensgarantie und europäisches Gleichgewicht 1648–1806 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986), 403–33. Cf. Harm Klue ting, “‘Der Genius der Zeit hat sie unbrauchbar gemacht’: Zum Thema Katholische Aufklärung; Oder; Aufklärung und Katholizismus im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts; Eine Einleitung,” in Katholische Aufklärung: Aufklärung im katholischen Deutschland, ed. Harm Klueting, with Norbert Hinske and Karl Hengst (Hamburg: Meiner, 1993), 1–35, where the “irreconcilability” claim is combined with a forceful statement of the continu- ity between the Trent reform and the Catholic Enlightenment. 31 On the stretch of Tridentine reform into the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Owen Chadwick, The Popes and the European Revolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), esp. 94–95; Mario Rosa, Cattolicesimo e lumi nel settecento italiano (Rome: Herder, 1981), esp. 1–48; Bernard Dompnier, “Die Fortdauer der katholischen Reform,” in Die Ge- schichte des Christentums, vol. 9, Das Zeitalter des Vernunfts (1620/30–1750), ed. Bernard Plongeron (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1998), 211–300; Derek Beales, “Religion and Cul- ture,” in The Eighteenth Century: Europe 1688–1815, ed. Tim C.W. Blanning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 131–77; Plongeron, “Wahre Gottesverehrung,” 268; Peter Hersche, Muße und Verschwendung: Europäische Kultur und Gesellschaft im Barockzeitalter (Freiburg: Herder, 2006), 1:152–211; Ulrich L. Lehner, “Introduction: The Many Faces of the Catholic Enlightenment,” in A Companion to the Catholic Enlightenment in Europe, ed. Ul- rich L. Lehner and Michael Printy (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 1–62, here 18–21; Burson, “Introduc- tion,” 6–9. Most contributions to these two latter volumes also underline the continuity between Trent and Enlightenment Catholicism.