Critical Monks

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learning on the brink of Enlightenment: first in France, then in Germany and other parts of Europe.0Based on unpublished sources, this book is the first to contextualize this narrative in its highly complex pre-modern setting, and thus at some distance from modernist ascriptions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".