Gathering in one place a cohesive selection of articles that deepen our sense of the vitality and controversy within the Catholic renewal of the mid-twentieth century, God’s Mirror offers historical analysis of French Catholic intellectuals. This volume highlights the work of writers, thinkers and creative artists who have not always drawn the attention given to such luminaries as Maritain, Mounier, and Marcel.

Organized around the typologies of renewal and engagement, editors Katherine Davies and Toby Garfitt provide a revisionist and interdisciplinary reading of the narrative of twentieth-century French Catholicism. Renewal and engagement are both manifestations of how the Catholic intellectual reflects and takes position on the relationship between the Church, personal faith and the world, and on the increasingly problematic relationship between intellectuals and the Magisterium. A majority of the writings are based on extensive research into published texts, with some occasional archival references, and they give critical insights into the tensions that characterized the theological and political concerns of their subjects.

Katherine Davies held lectureships in modern European history at Magdalen College Oxford and at Manchester, following which she became an independent researcher including consultancy work at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute and the Overseas Development Institute. Her publications include “A Third-Way Catholic Intellectual: Charles Du Bos, Tragedy and Ethics in Interwar Paris,” Journal of the History of Ideas (2010), and “Continuity, Change and Contest: Meanings of ‘Humanitarian’ from the ‘Religion of Humanity’ to the Kosovo Wars” (2012).Garfitt Toby :

Toby Garfittis tutorial fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. He works on French literature of the last hundred years, with a particular interest in Catholic writers such as Mauriac, Bernanos, Patrice de La Tour du Pin, and Sylvie Germain. His latest books include Jean Grenier. Un écrivain et un maître: contribution à l’histoire intellectuelle du vingtième siècle (2010) and Jean Grenier Jean Guéhenno, Correspondance 1927–1969 (2011). Among recent articles, “Newman at the Sorbonne, or, the Vicissitudes of an Important Philosophical Heritage in Inter-war France” was published in History of European Ideas (2014), and “The Embodied Philosophy of Jean Grenier” in Embodiment: Phenomenological, Religious and Deconstructive Views on Living and Dying (2014).