As part of the AHI Visiting Fellows Seminar series Prof. Shaun Blanchard (Franciscan University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana) will be giving a seminar on ‘The North Atlantic Catholic Enlightenment: America, Britain and Ireland’.
Recent
As part of the AHI Visiting Fellows Seminar series Prof. Shaun Blanchard (Franciscan University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana) will be giving a seminar on ‘The North Atlantic Catholic Enlightenment: America, Britain and Ireland’.
Recent interest in a ‘Catholic Enlightenment’ – once considered oxymoronic both by secular and denominational historians – has produced an enormous amount of exciting new scholarship. This Catholic Enlightenment has found widespread acceptance as part of the so-called ‘moderate’ or ‘mainstream’ Enlightenment, and as one of the ‘religious enlightenments’ that co-existed alongside what Jonathan Israel terms the ‘radical Enlightenment.’
While Italian, French, and German-speaking lands have garnered the most attention, that there was a significant Catholic Enlightenment in Britain and in the nascent American Church is no longer be doubted. In this seminar, we will explore three questions: first, whether there was an Irish Catholic Enlightenment, and if so, how did it compare to the British and American variants? Second, what w