Critical Monks : The German Benedictines, 1680-1740 / By Thomas Wallnig.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wallnig, Thomas, author.

Series:

History of science and medicine library. Scientific and learned cultures and their institutions ; v. 25.

Scientific and learned cultures and their institutions, 2352-1325 ; volume 25

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Benedictines--Germany--History.

Benedictines.

History.

Germany.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 364 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2019]

Summary:

Benedictine scholars around 1700, most prominently proponents of historical criticism, have long been regarded as the spearhead of ecclesiastical learning on the brink of Enlightenment: first in France, then in Germany and other parts of Europe.0Based on unpublished sources, this book is the first to contextualize this narrative in its highly complex pre-modern setting, and thus at some distance from modernist ascriptions ex posteriori. Challenged by Protestant and Catholic anti-monasticism, Benedictine scholars strove to maintain control of their intellectual tradition. They failed thoroughly, however: in the Holy Roman Empire, their success depended on an anti-Roman and nationalized reading of their research. For them, becoming part of an Enlightenment narrative meant becoming part of a cultural project of "Germany".

Contents:

Layers of time

between trent and the enlightenment

Layers of space: "Benedictine Europe"

Layers of knowledge: religious communities in early modern Central Europe

Layers of demography: being a Benedictine monk

On sources, bibliography, and terminology

Multiple Perspectives

On the Same Object?

"Die forschungszentren der deutschen Benediktiner" and the "Katholische Fruhaufklarung"

"Enlightened monks"

and "monastic humanism"

Making monks enlightened: the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Benedictine tradition(s)

Looking ahead from 1700: the making of "enlightened monasticism" in the 18th century

Looking back from 1700: 1200 years of prehistories for Benedictine?

Scholarly practice

The inner circulation of knowledge: congregation, university, or academy?

German and French Benedictines

The protestants: res publica literaria and Germania

Knowledge, required: the state, the church

and the aristocracy

Diverse publics, diverse censorships

Conflict and dissent in the Benedictine context.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9789004355460

9004355464

OCLC:

1066189363