Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality

Preface by Rebecca Messbarger

Introduction by Christopher M. S. Johns

Part I: Benedict XIV, Women and Progressive Catholicism

1. Marta Cavazza: Benedict’s Patronage of Learned Women

2. Paula Findlen: The Pope and the Englishwoman: Benedict XIV, Jane Squire, the Bologna Academy, and the Problem of Longitude

3. Stephanie Kirk: Benedict XIV and New World Convent Reform

Part II: Faith and Medicine in Catholic Enlightenment

4. Rebecca Messbarger: The Art and Science of Human Anatomy in Benedict’s Vision of the Enlightenment Church

5. Gianna Pomata: The Devil’s Advocate Among the Physicians: What Prospero Lambertini Learned from Medical Sources

6. Fernando Vidal: Modernizing the Miraculous Body in Prospero Lambertini’s De Servorum Dei

Part III: Benedict’s Response to Challenges to Church Authority

7. John L. Heilbron: Benedict XIV and the Natural Sciences

8. Maurice Finocchiaro: Benedict XIV and the Galileo Affair: Liberalization or Carelessness?

9. Maria Pia Donato: Reorder and Restore: Benedict XIV, the Index and the Holy Office

Part IV: Theology, Tradition and Institutions in the Era of Enlightened Catholicism

10. Maria Teresa Fattori: Lambertini’s Treatises and the Cultural Project of Benedict XIV: Two Sides of the Same Policy

11. Roberto Rusconi: Benedict XIV and the Holiness of Popes in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century

12. Peter Björn Kerber: Vicar of Christ and Alter Christus: Benedict XIV’s Della S. Messa

Part V: Benedict XIV’s Transformation of the Public Sphere

13. Paola Giuli: Prospero Lambertini and the Accademia degli Arcadi (1694–1708)

14. Carole Paul: Benedict XIV’s Enlightened Patronage of the Capitoline Museum

15. Christopher M. S. Johns: Papal Diplomacy and the Catholic Enlightenment: Benedict XIV’s Caffeaus in the Quirinal Gardens

Part VI: Art and Architecture Across Italy and the World

16. Jeffrey Collins: Pedagogy in Plaster: Ercole Lelli and Benedict XIV’s Gipsoteca at Bologna’s Instituto delle Scienze e delle Arti

17. Kristina Kleutghen: The Art Ethnicity and Empire: Jesuit Art in China during the Papacy of Benedict XIV

18. Tommaso Manfredi: Academic Practice and Roman Architecture during the Reign of Benedict XIV