Beyond Smells and Bells: History of Early Modern Catholicism, 1517-1724

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course explores the history of early modern Catholicism. One might be familiar with two distinct yet related caricatures of so-called “Tridentine” Catholicism. The first is fairly negative, depicting a repressive medieval institution that quashed all voices of opposition and vainly resisted the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. The second is more positive and imagines a unified Baroque Church dedicated to a sumptuous Latin liturgy, a bulwark against the heresies of Martin Luther and his successors. Despite their differences in subjective judgment, these caricatures both share a conception of early modern Catholicism as a uniform institution. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, not only was the diversity of medieval Christian custom preserved, but the founding of new religious orders, the proselytization of new continents, and the development of theological speculation made Catholicism more spiritually, culturally, and intellectually dynamic than ever before. Beginning in the very late Middle Ages, this course will trace the origins and character of this dynamism from the Tiber to Tibet, identifying ways in which the Church both resembled the medieval world from which it sprang and reflected the variety of the Age of Exploration and Enlightenment. This survey will enable students to move past the caricatures and appreciate the complexities of early modern Catholicism.