Page - 14 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Introduction14 liturgy. These were regarded just as instrumental in enhancing the accessibility of theological truths as the renewed emphasis on the priestly duty of pastoral care. Such objectives could well be understood as consonant with the Enlight- enment’s pursuit of happiness; in turn, eighteenth-century Catholics engaged in that pursuit could well understand the preservation of the moral vitality of their church as fundamental to it.32 Catholic clergymen of sound learning and virtue, like their Protestant counterparts, would then also emerge as, more than spiritual leaders, also providers of authentic guidance to their flock on other aspects of conducting their lives, from hygiene through child-raising to farming. It has also been argued that it is reductive to conceive of the pursuit of hap- piness via the accumulation and critical examination of knowledge as a purely secular one, and that it was far from alien to the religious, including Catholics. This claim has been combined with the reminder that the theology of the Catholic Reform was permeated by Molinist notions asserting free will, and its accompanying anthropology was optimistic about the capacity of humankind to attain moral as well as intellectual improvement.33 The Protestant Reforma- tion and Catholic Reform of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are now seen as having together inaugurated a new era in the full Christianization of Europe, implying a war on superstitious beliefs and practices of a popular cul- ture in which the remnants of heathen tradition allegedly still survived. Ro- man Catholicism itself was perceived as in need of purging itself of supersti- tious elements, even by subjecting accounts of miracles and other interventions of the supernatural to the test of modern advances in natural knowledge, based on empiricism, experiment, and observation.34 Though canonization was perhaps the area of the greatest intransigence, human virtue, besides mar- tyrdom and the performance of miracles, assumed greater importance among its criteria.35 Physico-theology in the style of Isaac Newton (1643–1727)—with the new science highlighting the status of God as the creator of the most har- monious system imaginable—had many Catholic followers, especially in Ita- ly.36 The tradition of the church itself came under scrutiny with the stringent 32 Cf. Burson, “Introduction,” 14. 33 Lehner, “Introduction,” 17–18. 34 Francis Young, English Catholics and the Supernatural, 1553–1829 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 74; Ulrich L. Lehner, The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 16, 126–53. 35 Lehner, Catholic Enlightenment, 155–79. 36 Vincenzo Ferrone, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment: Newtonian Science, Religion, Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1995); Lehner, Catholic Enlightenment, 42–43.