Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science and Spirituality ed. by Rebecca Messbarger, Christopher M.S. Johns, and Philip Gavitt (review)

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. In his introduction, the art historian Christopher M.S. Jones makes a spirited case for the need not only to appreciate Benedict's papacy as "the high-water mark of Enlightened Catholicism" but also to "interrogate received scholarly wisdom that the Enlightenment was wholly secular and that Roman Catholicism and religion generally had no role to play, unless it was to condemn it." The volume is divided into six parts, the first two of which contain useful accounts of the pope's patronage of women scientists in his native Bologna by Marta Cavazza and Paula Findlen, together with an analysis of his specific interest in faith and medicine. However, the particularly thoughtful contributions of Gianna Pomata and Fernando Vidal in Part Two should be singled out. Both focus on what is, without doubt, Lambertini's most enduring intellectual legacy, his comprehensive treatment of canonization procedure, On the Beatification of the Sevants of God, and the Canonization of the Blessed, which was first published in 1734–38 and which constituted a veritable "summa" analysing, with extensive reference to archival documents, the application of legislation that had been systematized by Urban VIII (who ruled from 1623 to 1644) and that remained substantially in force until 1983. This arose out of the author's twenty-year experience as the 'Devil's advocate' (Promotor Fidei), whose job it was to pick holes in evidence presented to the relevant papal standing committee (the Congregation of Rites) for the miraculous status of cures attributed to the candidates who were being considered. As Pomata elegantly puts it, "[h]is primary goal [in his work was] to understand and evaluate medical expertise as an essential component in the legal process of proving miracles. Medical doctors were included as partners in what he sees as a team effort – of theologians, jurists, historians, natural philosophers – to demonstrate the reality of miracle as fact." Pomata's chapter concludes with a valuable list of the medical books to be found in the pope's personal library. Vidal considers the same work but from the perspective of its reputation as "the first survey of Catholic paranormology." In the process, Vidal reminds us that "[a]lthough in the context of saint-making miracles have low probatory value, they contribute decisively to reducing uncertainty and are sociologically essential." By so doing, Lambertini blended an essentially Galenic and humoralist view of the body with a more recent mechanical-hydraulic perspective that "modernized" the miraculous body by (re)defining the limits between the natural and supernatural. The next, equally strong and satisfying part of the book devotes three articles to the pope's responses to challenges in Church authority. In a witty as well as learned contribution, John Heilbron performs the valuable service of reminding us that, from Lambertini's perspective, the methodology of the historical sciences was directly relevant to their natural counterpart. Celestino Galiani, for example, promoted Newtonian physics and cosmology in Rome while holding the chair in ecclesiastical history at the university, which he had obtained in 1718 with Lambertini's enthusiastic support. Maurice Finocchiaro's contribution offers an intellectually nimble account of the way in which the equally nimble Benedict XIV negotiated the high wire of how to come to terms with the trial and condemnation of Galileo. He concludes that they reflect Lambertini's "enlightened conservatism and prudent liberalization." Maria Pia Donato's subtle and measured consideration of Benedict's relationship with the Holy Office and Index, as reflected particularly in the new edition of the index of prohibited books of 1758, supports Finocchiaro's assessment since it "featured a delicate mixture of rigidity and mitigation." Part Four focuses on theology and includes a magisterial discussion...