Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment

Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment offers a comprehensive assessment of Benedict’s engagement with Enlightenment art, science, spirituality, and culture.

Rebecca Messbarger is a professor in the Department of Romance Languages at Washington University in St. Louis.
Johns Christopher :

Christopher M.S. Johns is a professor in the Department of History of Art at Vanderbilt University.
Gavitt Philip :

Philip Gavitt is a professor in the Department of History at Saint Louis University.

"This collection of eighteen articles offers undoubtedly the most comprehensive reappraisal of the pontificate of Prospero Lambertini, who became Benedict XIV (ruling from 1740 to 1758), that is currently available in English."

Paolo Savoia:

‘Accompanied by a wonderful set of colour plates, this book remarkably succeeds in its attempt to read the ambiguities and nuances of the "Catholic Enlightenment" through the figure of Benedict XIV. Historians of science will find an abundance of materials to work on the relationships between Catholicism and the science on a global scale in the early modern period.’

William V. Hudon, Professor of History, Bloomsburg University:

“Collectively, these wonderful essays frame the outline of a new, more humanized portrait of an early modern pope whose career, actions, personality, and values deserve still more study.”

Catherine Sama, Professor of Italian, University of Rhode Island:

“Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment is a superb collection of essays. The Benedict XIV that emerges from its pages is a nuanced and fascinating figure of the Catholic enlightenment, a man who was both idealistic and pragmatic, rigorously logical yet at times contradictory in his views on the world around him and the Church’s role in it.”