Topic 1 Christianity and modernity

Topic goal:

The first topic aims to give the students an overview of major historical moments and the key issues of Christianity and modernity in the 19^th century. It introduces papacy as an institution in conflict with the modern state and forms of governance and one that employs different forms of managing the Church in this time. It reflects theology as a form of revolt against the thinking of the Enlightenment which emphasized rationality. For most of the 19^th century, this institution has viewed Christian life as a journey that is only possible in a world of order, a society of stable structure, independent of the individual. The lessons will explain the emergence of new religious groups and sects and confessional revivalism (the Great Awakening movements) in the life of churches. Christian culture is explored as a possible answer to the specificity of modern times. The 19^th century also saw an increase in social sentiments, which in turn brought upon new Christian social organizations. The topic will also introduce and evaluate Biblical hermeneutics and the main models of Bible interpretation. We will flesh out the limits of the period interpretation of the Bible, as well as the ways people in this period could and strived to understand the Bible. In this topic, we will also focus on aspects of religious transformation in urban and rural areas at the end of the 19^th century.

Students will gain the ability to reflect the diversity and mutual dependency of the different forms and dynamics of the changes in the historical development of the Church. The course will provide them with a basic overview of the topic and a common point of reference for future study. Students should understand the role of different Christian denominations in the context of social, economic, and cultural changes in society. They will learn about how the thinking around these issues developed, about the main approaches, schools of thought, and figures in the field, and about some organised structures (associations, interest groups), which provided space for the work of Christian denominations in the 19^th century. Students should also be aware of the societal influence of each denomination model and the main differences between models.

Subtopics:

1. 1. Basic terms and concepts for the description of society and the role of Christian religiosity and culture

   2. Catholicism (papacy, Catholic revivalism)

   3. Theology – a revolt against the Enlightenment; Biblical hermeneutics

   4. Christian social sentiments

   5. Structure and organisation of the Christian denominational life

   6. Religious transformation in the city and in the country

      Topic chapters

      Chapter 1: What is Christianity?

      Chapter 2: Modernity in the history of Christianity

      Chapter 3: Papacy in the 19^th century

      Chapter 4: The development of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in 19^th century Europe

      Chapter 5: The development of papal care for the church in the 19^th century

      Chapter 6: The shifts in papal care for the church in the 19^th century

      Chapter 7: New directions of Bible study in the 19^th century

      Chapter 8: The search for new direction in Protestant churches in the 19^th century; new movements; revivalism

      Chapter 9: Roman Catholic revivalist efforts in the 19^th century

       

      Chapter 1: What is Christianity?

      Christianity (Christian - christianos (lat.), χριστιανός (gre.); a monotheistic, dynamically missionary and universalist religion. It is based around the personality, life, and work of Jesus (Christ) from Nazareth in Galilee, seen by Christians as the Son of God, Saviour, and Teacher. Jesus' title, Christ, is derived from the Hebrew term Messiah-Anointed, Christos in Greek.  A more accurate translation would therefore be Jesus who is the Christ. Historically, Christianity originated in ancient Palestine, the geographical and historical site of Jesus' life and work. It started as a reform school of Judaism. The beginnings of Christianity are described in the New Testament, which together with the Judaic Old Testament comprises the Holy Scripture – the Bible, Christianity's sacred text. After Christ died on the cross, his followers formed the first Christian circles (communities), led by his closest apprentices – the apostles. Some of these original communities carried out missionary work in Europe, Africa, and Asia. The expanding, diversifying Christianity gradually began to divide into several streams. At the end of the 1^st century A.D., Christians still saw themselves as originating from Judaism. However, their life was for the most part no longer centred around the Jewish historical memory and ritual life. Christianity had embarked on its centuries-long journey through history.

      One becomes Christian by undergoing christening, by confession of faith, and by following a certain way of life. Today, Christianity is the most widespread religion in the world.

      Chapter 2: Modernity in the history of Christianity

      The journey of Christianity through the millennia and countless cultures and civilization models includes the development, maintenance, and loss of its historical memory. Christianity, like any religion, also includes a stable element of movement towards modernization. At its beginning, Christianity was formed and functioned as a diverse movement, with no framework of authority and legal support and no confessions of faith refined by catechism, cultivated by centuries of struggle. It was not unified or organised in a sophisticated way. However, it was formed by dynamic theological discussions between the first generations of Christ’s followers and apprentices – both men and women. Throughout several generations, it gradually became a religion whose evangelists and missionaries set off across all the ethnic and social boundaries of the Roman Empire, and even beyond its borders. The modernization element of movement through history saw individual Christian communities and their religious authorities come to terms with the religious, social, cultural, and political signs of the times. This process was recorded by dialogue between Christian communities and by creating written recordings of fixed historical memory.

      In the history of 19^th century European, Christianity had to come to terms with many historical, political, cultural, and social limits – like in the previous centuries. It was accessible to the people of a certain time, with certain social traditions. It did not exist in a context where social groups where equal, but in a complex, diverse society, fuelled by a number of social, national, and religious conflicts. Individuals who accepted Christianity only internalised those parts of the Christian message that they could understand and accept in their lives. Based on this, they built their religious structures, as well as states and regions. Even the clergy and church hierarchy were influenced by the spirit and rhythm of their time. The influence Christianity exercised over the ethics, thoughts, and lives of 19^th century Europeans was very changeable.

      European Christians experienced their specific religiosity while interacting with their cultures’ traditions and historical memories, which meant they did not – and could not – live Christianity based on abstract religious forms. They always lived wholly in a specific historically dependent realization of their religion. For that reason, they also did not form abstract institutions around their churches, but instead always built their specific forms, anchored in their environments, cultures, and historical memories. Only then could they create living Christianity and influence their time and space.

      European Christianity in the 19^th century therefore also included a complex coexistence of different cultures, denominations, and languages on one continent. This is not to be taken for granted: it was a great act of civilization by our ancestors.

      Chapter 3: Papacy in the 19^th century

      The papacy entered the 19^th century in a position much different from the one it had in Europe several decades before that. In an era of technological, industrial, and political revolution, its role was exercised through the activities of personalities creatively connected to it and to the gradually changing European social reality. A premonition of this situation was the death of Pius VI in 1799. The Pope died after being forcibly moved into exile in France. The period of wars around the French Revolution, which climaxed with Napoleon Bonaparte, ended in 1814–1815 at the Congress of Vienna. The Congress influenced the development of European Christianity for several decades to follow, alongside the political, cultural, and spiritual position the papacy assumed in it. 

      At first, the French Revolution mainly influenced the Roman Catholics in France. Later, it affected its development in multiple European countries, as well as the lives of millions of European Catholics in France, Spain, Germany, the Danubian Monarchy, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere. It also played its part in the emergence of other denominations outside of France.

      A catalyst for the revolution was France’s disastrous economic situation. In 1789, King Louis XVI called the Estates-General, for the first time since 1614 (representatives of the clergy, the nobility, and the Third Estate – the commoners). They were supposed to set up the country’s taxation system to allow for a more effective solution of the kingdom’s economic crisis. The Third Estate rejected the King’s taxation reform model and declared its revolutionary demands for significant political, economic, and religious reform in the kingdom. It claimed to speak for the French nation and gained the support of parts of the clergy and nobility. The Estates-General formed into a National Assembly. At this stage, the politicians of the revolution strived for a major reform of the country's political system and the formation of a constitutional monarchy. The symbol of the first stage of the revolution was the fall of the Bastille on 14 July 1789. The Parisian fortress served as the royal political prison. Politically, the revolution was sealed by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen on 27 August 1789.

      In religion, the revolution’s starting premise was that the Roman Catholic Church would give up its privileged position over the French people and become a part of it. Revolutionary politicians criticised the Church's riches and privileges. It abolished them and ended the supremacy of the clergy and land-owners privileged by birth. This created the necessary conditions for the redistribution of the Church's wealth in society, in favour of the revolutionary state and the Third Estate. On 2 November 1789, two thirds of the deputies of the National Assembly voted in favour of seizing the Church's assets. The revolutionary state ensured pay for the clergy, as well as financing for the Church's activities. In February 1790, revolutionary legislation abolished monasteries. On 12 July 1790, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy was adopted, lowering the number of dioceses in France from 135 to 83, changing the number of parishes and the pay of clergy, abolishing the stole system of payments for sacraments and church services, and democratizing the Church’s institutional life. Bishops and parish priests were to be elected at citizens’ assemblies and held accountable by faithful citizens.

      However, the secularization of church assets and the revolutionary political changes to religious life caused discontent for many believers. Therefore, at the end of 1790, the National Assembly issued decrees, requiring bishops and clergymen, like other civil servants, to swear an oath on the constitution. Only some of the clergy decided to take this step and Pope Pius VI reacted by denouncing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and forbidding bishops and priests from taking the oath. For many years, this separated a large proportion of the Church from the revolutionary state. After the Pope's statement, the National Convention, the body appointed as government by the National Assembly in the fall of 1792, declared that the state is above the Church and guarantees that religion will abide by the law.

      In the following, radical stage of the revolution, the Convention abandoned traditional Christianity, and in the spring of 1794, it established an obligation for citizens of the state to worship the Supreme Being in its cult. A new revolutionary calendar was created for this, with many holidays. After the revolutionary period, the Roman Catholic Church entered the period of Napoleon Bonaparte's reign, supported by the Concordat system of Church institutions in France. On 15 July 1801, the First Consul of France Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII established a Concordat. While this did not mean that Roman Catholic Christianity would become a state religion, it was recognized as the religion of the majority of French citizens. The Pope accepted the secularisation of Church assets in the previous years, during the revolution, while Napoleon guaranteed pay for the French clergy and financial support for the Church. The Concordat ensured the support of the Church for Napoleon. Fifty-nine bishops connected with the revolution had to give up their positions and 92 bishops recognised by Rome also resigned at Pius VII’s orders. New bishops were appointed to 60 French dioceses; almost half of them being the original bishops. Some of the remaining original bishops retained some share in the church governance of the country for the following years.

      In the beginning of the 19^th century, the secularisation process connected to the French Revolution later also affected the lands and assets of the Roman Catholic Church in the Empire. Napoleon Bonaparte seized Imperial territories on the left bank of the Rhine for France. In 1803, he compensated the secular Imperial princes for their losses with the lands of the ecclesiastical Imperial principalities. This affected the ecclesiastical electorates of Cologne, Trier, and Mainz, the lands of the rich Archdiocese of Salzburg, and many abbeys and Imperial monasteries. Over three million believers in the Empire were subordinate to the secular nobility. This significantly limited the Church's social, pastoral, and educational activities, and contributed to a deepening of the crisis of the Empire and its speedy end. Even though, after the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, the 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna reinstated the Papal States in Central Italy, the Church never regained the secularised assets in Germany. For the next half century, the Papal States kept developing. Pope Leo XII’s (1823–1829) authoritarian centralist government limited the political power of Roman Catholic laymen and political discourse in general. This course continued under the reign of Pius VIII (1829–1830) and Gregory XVI (1831–1846), causing an increase in the brutality of  interventions of the papal police against the Italian national revolutionary movement led by Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872), and an uprising in several regions of the state (1831). The Curia only managed to defeat the uprising with military assistance from abroad (Austria). All this showed that the political system of the Papal States was dysfunctional and unsustainable and could only prolong its existence with foreign aid. In 1832, Gregory XVI published the Mirari vos encyclical, condemning liberalism, as represented by the French Catholic priest and theologian Félicite de Lamennais (1782–1854).

      From a European, not only Italian, political perspective, the revolutionary year of 1848 was fuelled by the growing political unrest of the 1840s and the long-lasting economic crisis in several European states. The 1848 developments caused a domino effect: the collapse of the Holy Alliance political system, set up at the 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna. After the revolution at the Apennine Peninsula, the question of Italy’s national unification became relevant. There were several political scenarios for that – some more conservative and some more radical. The role they ascribed to the Pope in this unification process differed – sometimes it was greater, sometimes smaller and sometimes none at all. In the State of the Church, 1848 gave rise to thinking about civil liberties, rooted in nationalism, liberal constitutionalism, and democratism, as well as a political search for solutions to social issues.

      At the beginning of his pontificate, the following Pope Pius IX (1846–1878) seemed to be a moderate liberal, initially reacting positively to urgent contemporary social issues. In the spring of 1848, after revolutions started in France and Germany, he, aware that his three predecessors were not popular, promised to issue a constitution defining the State of the Church and approved the freedom of the press and of assembly, and the right of suffrage for laymen. This at first ingratiated him with the more conservative stream of the Italian national unification movement, which saw the liberal-acting Pope as a figure who could spearhead the Italian unification process. The main representative of this stream was the politician Vincenzo Gioberti (1801–1852). Mazzini's more radical (and influential) stream did not trust the Pope’s liberal attitudes and expected his politics to follow in the footsteps of his authoritarian predecessors who employed a plethora of methods to stop the unification of Italy. At first, Pius IX supported the Piedmont military operation against Austria and gained the sympathy of some Italian political liberals for a short time. As revolution quickly spread across the Apennine Peninsula and as Piedmont continued its fight with Austria to liberate the occupied territories in northern Italy, the Pope assumed a more neutral position towards this struggle and quickly lost his reputation as a liberal.

      The dynamic course of the revolution in Italy also resulted in more radical demands for democratization by many citizens of the State of the Church. Pius IX was unwilling to accept the extent of these demands. In November1848, the prime minister of the State of the Church, Count Pellegrino Rossi was assassinated. The Pope's palace was occupied by revolutionaries and Pius IX escaped into exile to the Kingdom of Naples. The Legislative Assembly in Rome deposed the Pope and established a republic in January 1849. Pius IX was only reinstated to the throne in the summer of 1849 by external powers: the French, Spanish, Austrian, and Neapolitan armies. These increasingly radical revolutionary attitudes and his negative personal experience made Pius IX afraid of a revolution and its impact on the form and position of the Roman Catholic Church within the State of the Church and all of Europe. The Pope returned to the authoritarian, absolutist tradition of government promoted by his predecessors, but he was unable to stop or delay the onset of political liberalism and the Italian national unification movement. Many provinces of the State of the Church decided to join other Italian states. The papal army was defeated by Commander Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), whose political and military efforts helped prepare the ground for the final unification of Italy. In the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, most of Italy stood on the side of Prussia. Austria's defeat in this war drastically limited its influence in the north of the Apennine Peninsula and positively impacted the unification process in Italy. The remainder of the State of the Church including Rome was defended by French troops, which fended off an attack by Garibaldi’s armies on the city in 1867. After the start of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, these troops had to give up the defence of Rome and the city was occupied by Piedmont troops in the September of the same year. In 1861, politicians of the Italian unification process had appointed Rome as the future capital of Italy and its occupation gave them the opportunity to carry out this plan. Pius IX did not leave the city and refused a political agreement with the Italian state, which would have allowed him to freely act as a spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church. He declared himself a prisoner in the Vatican and lived there for the rest of his life. The decline of the State of the Church significantly limited the Pope’s ability to enact his influence as a statesman in Europe and in the world.

      The revolutions in Europe were gradually defeated in 1849, but the question of how states would be organized afterwards remained. A new Holy Alliance was unfeasible. After 1849, some European governments gave in to the demands of 1848, mainly to those that were liberal-economic. Many European governments realised that purely repressive measures fan the flames of opposition against rulers and governments attempting to develop the state in a stable way. Both liberal and conservative powers in European politics in the 2^nd half of the 19^th century had to cope with the legacy of 1848; they were its heirs and interpreters in their historical memories. In the papacy, this is also true for the last year of Pius IX’s pontificate, but it mainly holds for the pontificate of Leo XIII (1878–1903).

      Chapter 4: The development of the role of the Roman Catholic Church in 19^th century Europe

      The Roman Catholic Church was never a calm confessional space, subject to an ideal development, governed by the authority of Pope, superior to obedient bishops and secular rulers. Its position in 19^th century Europe underwent a number of shifts and was subject to complex political constructs. In the last two decades of the 18^th century, the French revolution started this process and heavily impacted the life of this church for the century to come.

      French Roman Catholic priests who remained loyal to the Pope rejected the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) in 1792, seeing it as a product of social anarchy threatening to destroy the traditional, God-ordained pre-revolutionary structure of the state. The principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity of all citizens disturbed the monarchist model of society and the church structure connected to it. In their view, this caused a crisis in the church. Even priests on the side of the revolution generally only accepted the demand for balancing the social differences in the believers’ liturgic and sacral lives and the church’s pastoral practices, without going much further in their ideas about the position of the church in the country. They saw liberating the entire confessional space in the state as akin to the destruction of the social and religious order (which they saw as dangerous), since it exceeded the limits of their imagination. The pro-revolutionary part of the Roman Catholic clergy supported liberty, equality, and fraternity by willingly accepting poverty in the style of early Christianity. However, they still maintained the Church hierarchy of the past. The secularisation motives of revolutionary legislators took both groups of clergy into account – both the pro- and the anti-revolutionary one – and built specific models of the church and its relationship to the state based on that. The anti-revolutionary part of the clergy completely rejected the revolutionary legislation as it would result in the destruction of the Church and society, while the pro-revolutionary priests tried to limit the secularisation impact of many laws. The general concept of revolutionary citizenship with its virtues and obligations could not always satisfy the Christian conscience of the pro-revolutionary priests and laymen – even though laymen were later given a real share in decision-making in their parishes and dioceses. 

      This conflict between specific tradition and Catholic conscience formed by the revolution was connected to French historical and national memory – and it was never entirely relatable for the Roman Catholic clergy and laymen in other European states affected by the revolution. The anti-revolutionary part of the Roman Catholic Church had almost no ability to achieve confessional renewal and modernization. Even the pro-revolutionary part of the church, swept up by the tumultuous development of the revolutionary state, proved incapable of any thoughtful, deep renovation of the contemporary church. 

      The Holy Alliance, formed by the statesmen of the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's fall, did not restore the pre-1789 ‘Christian civilisation’. Following the wishes of conservative liberals, it gave rise to a Europe with a stabilized social order, supported by confessions and fear of the disturbance caused by modern revolutions. It allowed the Roman Catholic Church to re-establish most of the traditional forms of its influence over society. It also prepared the way for concordats between states where the majority of citizens were Catholic, and Rome, allowing for a diplomatic and political harmony between secular and Church power (Bavaria 1817, Kingdom of Naples 1818, the Netherlands 1827). In multi-denominational countries, it created conditions protecting the rights of the Roman Catholic Church. While the Church got social guarantees for its influence and its institutions seemingly functioned smoothly, this process was accompanied by discussions between conservative and reformist theologians. Especially the latter were aware of the growing gap between secularised society and living Christian faith. At this time, many clergymen and laymen set off on the thorny path of confronting the Church with the ideals of liberalism, different forms of socialism, and democratism – often with grave consequences. These efforts resonated with the political expectations of many Europeans in the 1830 and 1848 revolutions, which rekindled the memories of the religious struggle in 1789 and the following years. 

      The 1848 revolutions brought marked change to the political life of a major part of Europe. Citizens who used to be barred by their governments from taking part in the political decision-making process finally had the opportunity. Politics gained new tools, such as elections, civil liberties, and the activities of liberal, conservative, and radical political organizations exercising their freedom of assembly. Women had not yet been granted the right to vote, but they were able to partake of many civil liberties. In 1848, liberal and republican politicians in many multinational European states prioritised the goals of their individual nations in their political efforts. The revolutionary year therefore also caused an increase in nationalist political conflicts. Revolutionary and counter-revolutionary politicians had the ability to harness ethnic, denominational, and religious hatred between nations.   

      When the revolutions were defeated, politicians who wanted to move the Roman Catholic Church into a better position in society had to face difficult challenges. This can be illustrated by the political development in France where an authoritarian government came into power in 1849–1850. 1848 brought universal suffrage for all men in the country, which was limited in 1850–1851, but later renewed. After Louis Napoleon was elected president (1849), right wing politicians pushed the (Falloux) education law through the National Assembly. The law established Roman Catholic schools in the country and gave the clergy a share of power and oversight over education in the country.  Louis Napoleon’s political regime strived to enlist the Church’s support and provided its own support in turn – in the following years it aided the Church in many of its interests in society.

      The ideals of liberalism, different forms of socialism, and democratism did not disappear from the Roman Catholic Church in the 2^nd half of the 19^th century. They did, however, mirror the realities of Europe's dynamic industrial and technological development from before 1848. The 1815–1848 model of a unified, though denominationally varied, Christian European civilisation was questioned more and more, under the pressure of different secularisation trends. The Europe of many centuries when God and man, Heaven and Hell, the living and the dead coexisted was fading away for good. Some theologians and Church authorities slowly realised that the secularisation process was driven not only by powerful political movements, but also social ones and that the Church needed to react to their development and rise. They also came to the realisation that secularisation was affecting all levels of the Church to a different extent – most notably its life in big city parishes, and some rural ones. The Church saw liberalism’s ethical individualism and the progressing gap between the natural sciences and the humanities as the evils of secularisation.

      As many racial theories and theories of evolution gained more influence in society, the idea of the Church, the traditional rhythm of the church year dictating life in Europe, and its almost unchangeable structures came under scrutiny. Concepts such as evolution, historicity, the unpredictability of history or modernization posed a challenge not only to traditional theological terminology, but to the Church as a whole. Thinking about them put new demands on clergymen and laymen, and on theologians and church leaders. It brought new obstacles to their efforts to specify the extent and meaning of the freedom of the church in the ideological conflicts of the 2^nd half of the 19^th century. This development in the Church uncovered many old paths of its historical memory as its tradition was being reinterpreted. This was fuelled by the works of many authors: Social scientists (Herbert Spencer) writing about how natural sciences and the humanities can be used to study the processes of social development; natural scientists (Charles Darwin) describing the connection between the evolution of different species and humankind; and philosophers (Henri Bergson) elaborating on the creative unpredictability of evolution and existence. The concepts of doctrine and liberty became the cornerstones of the reinterpretation of Church traditions. The fathers of the First Vatican Council clearly established that Church doctrine stands above the revelation and freedom of individual Christians. Many people in the swiftly secularising Europe did not accept nor understand the rigid, binding Council solutions as historically convincing.  The Council Fathers' work could not retain the Christian civilisation of the past, but it aimed to guarantee an institutional framework for the Roman Catholic Church’s influence in Europe. However, the premature and hurried suspension of the Council clearly showed this work had limits. Pius IX became a prisoner in the Vatican, but much more importantly, he was held hostage by ideals of the world and the Church which functioned in the Europe of the past, not of the future. During his pontificate, he mostly reacted to social issues with criticism (Sylabus, 1864), without giving any deeper thought to possible solutions. This clearly showed that as the numbers of believers in the Roman Catholic Church dwindled, so did its influence over important topics in societal life.

      The last decades of the 19^th century brought many changes to the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. Leo XIII (1878–1903), the new Pope, had the ability to react to many political, social, and cultural changes on the continent.  He no longer felt like a prisoner in the Vatican and, alongside the Curia, he set off on the difficult path of finding a new place for the Church in a world significantly shaped by secularisation and laicization.  He suppressed the battle waged by the Roman Catholic Church Curia against European secularisation and led the Church on a path of tolerance and openness towards modernity. He was a Pope whose tolerance towards society of the end of the 19^th century also included human and civil liberties. He was therefore able to interpret the documents of the First Vatican Council with much more flexibility and historical imagination than his predecessor and his encyclicals addressed some of the great issues of his time. He made important statements on socialism and communism (Quod apostolici muneris, 1878), the modern state (Diuturnum illud, 1881, Immortale Dei, 1885), and the social issues of the period (Rerum novarum, 1891).

      Chapter 5: The development of papal care for the Church in the 19^th century

      The Popes of the 19^th century engaged not only with European and global politics, but also with leading the Church. The complex organism of the Papal Curia, strongly connected to the past, underwent many changes in this century, in order to truly encompass the mission of the Church in society. Leading figures of the Church were slow and reluctant to abandon the certainty of the Christian civilisation model and strived to keep many of its features even at a time that was growing ever more distant from it. Despite that, they also managed to lend an ear to the voice of their time and react to it in setting up their pastoral and social influence.

      To react to what believers truly needed when it came to the Pope’s care for the Church, the papacy had to start to develop theology and canon law with the new knowledge that had built up over the centuries. Although in the 18^th century, theology lost its status as queen of all sciences (confirmed most of all by the French Encyclopédie 1758–1777), it kept utilising the new findings of modern sciences about humankind in this and the following centuries. The Church, whose elites saw it mainly as the guardian of tradition, entered a stage of its development when it needed to see its tradition in an increasingly complex historical context. Theologians and Church historians took part in composing a number of editions of lesser-known or entirely forgotten ancient, medieval, and early modern sources, forging an understanding of them in the Church and in society. Many scholars returned in their studies to the apostolic period of the Church (living in poverty and truthful confession; its emerging episcopate rooted in collegiality). A number of the scholars whose works the papacy drew from gradually re-evaluated and expanded their understanding of the meaning of the early Church in Christianity's complicated history. This process of scholarly study slowly created the right conditions in the leading institutions of the Church, in order to re-evaluate some of the cornerstones of Christian tradition. 

      At this time, Roman Catholic scholars frequently had to react to unsettling hypotheses and revolutionary evaluations of different stages of the Church tradition, expressed by their colleagues of different denominations – or by those pushing the limits of contemporary denominations. Different fields of theology were under pressure from scholars who were no longer limited by the ideological boundaries of science set up by the Church Magisterium. Even Roman Catholic scholars whose innovative views meant they were rejected by the Church could keep disseminating their works and opinions beyond the borders of the Church and thus contribute to the ongoing Church debate on the topics they were studying. During the 19^th century, the Roman Catholic Church underwent a complicated and diverse process of reinterpretation of Church tradition. This wasn’t always symbolized by harmony and solidarity, but Church scholars and leaders took part in it, even despite great conflicts. This process gave rise to the theological and legal basis of the forms of papal care for the Church in the 19^th century. Despite the Church Magisterium’s limiting interventions, this lay down the conditions for debates about these forms of care in the 20^th century. If it hadn't been for these battles about the interpretation of revelation and tradition in the 19^th century Roman Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council would never have happened.

      Leo XIII’s pontificate completed the Magisterium’s journey to an understanding of the Roman Catholic revelation, tradition, theory, and practice shaped by Neo-Scholasticism. The Pope was aware that the 19^th century’s optimistic faith in progress had its limits. He understood that, under certain conditions, this ‘faith’ could replace living Christianity for the people of his time. The Enlightenment drastically limited the study of scholasticism, which was only gradually revived after the mid-19^th century. Even before that, the Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment created a desire to return to the spiritual elements of the Middle Ages in the Church. The Pope did not see this openness to Neo-Scholasticism, mainly based on Thomas Aquinas’ system (the Aeterni Patris encyclical – 1879), as idealisation or inefficient rigidity, doomed to conserve a specific period in Europe’s history. It was a much more complex manifestation of the Roman Catholic Church’s development in the 19^th century and its purpose was to support its dynamic intellectual, liturgic, and sacral life. We must keep in mind that this openness to Neo-Scholasticism based on Leo XIII’s system actually meant a gradual acceptance of the European medieval period, in a situation where the early apostolic Church dominated the debate of Roman Catholic scholars. The Pope strived for real, deep, and multifaceted knowledge of medieval politics, culture, and thinking in the Roman Catholic Church. This openness was partly also motivated by the growing understanding of the Byzantine ideological and political space. 

      The interest in the Scripture, the Biblical world, and early Christianity in the Roman Catholic Church was also connected to the development of Biblical and Oriental archaeology and geography, textual criticism of Biblical writing, and the knowledge of Hellenist philosophical and religious thinking and culture. Other quickly developing fields included Egyptology, ethnology, general and cultural anthropology, Religious Studies, ancient history, and the study of Oriental languages and cultures. This development was spurred on by Napoleon Bonaparte's expedition into Egypt, as well as the colonial expansion of powerful European states. It was then consolidated by the results of archaeological study in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Syria – findings of literary sources older than the Scripture, containing thematically connected stories (the great flood, the meaning of human life). The story of Jesus was given interpretations unrelated to the traditional Roman Catholic exegesis of the Scripture. The most influential ones in Europe were created most importantly by the German Protestant theologian David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874, Das Leben Jesus) and the French liberal theologian and Religious Studies scholar Ernest Renan (1823–1892, Vie de Jesus). They, alongside many other scholars and authors, started asking which elements of the Scripture corresponded to contemporary scientific knowledge – and which did not. This caused a relativization of the revelation, which gradually influenced the lives of believers in all European denominations, including Roman Catholics. Church leaders and scholars reacted to this, one by one. In 1893, Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissimus Deus supported Biblical studies and set up a framework for them. In 1902, they were fully institutionalised when the Pope founded the Commissio Pontificia de Re Biblica. In 1890, the École biblique et archéologique française was founded in Jerusalem, at the impulse of Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938), a leading scholar. Leo XIII tried to create a time and space for the scientific community of his Church and to let them deal with important issues of Bible study on their own. At the onset of the 20^th century, his successor Pius X decided to intervene from a position of power, perhaps too harshly, which suspended this discussion for some time, but failed to stop it fully.

      Chapter 6: The shifts in papal care for the church in the 19^th century

      As the global transport network developed during the 19^th century (with the steam engine, railways, and ships), Rome was connected with continents and lands beyond the sea. This allowed Popes and the Curia to strengthen their influence in distant territories of the Roman Catholic Church. During his pontificate, Pius IX renewed the episcopal hierarchy in England in 1850, and in Holland in 1853 (29 archdioceses and 132 dioceses). Pope Leo XIII established 248 dioceses during his pontificate.

      Global and European demographic development in the 19^th century mainly consisted of population explosion, urbanisation, and migration waves. This influenced the development of the Roman Catholic Church in its global territories and the 19^th century papacy had to react by creating new archdioceses and dioceses as spiritual administration centres for the Church, as well as confirming its lower level centres in big cities and densely populated areas. The papacy had to deal with these great organizational challenges at a time when the economic power of the Church had been limited in many places by the confiscation of land in the 18^th century and the first half of the 19^th century. While the secularising states took over some of the responsibilities for the economic care of the Church, these largely consisted of providing pay for the clergy and financing the maintenance of some Church buildings. Any Church activities outside of these limits had to find new sources of income. 

      In the 19^th century, Popes were facing the difficult task of supporting Catholic university education in Rome. In some European countries, the secularisation process also meant removing the Church influence from state education (France, Prussia). In these countries, the Curia strived to create Catholic university education capable of competing with state universities and providing higher education to local clergy. In 1875, Catholic Institutes were founded in France. They ensured a good quality education and some scholars who taught at them (led by their desire to harmonise theology and modern science) did not always promote ideas acceptable to the Curia.

      The Church therefore embarked on a path of creating parallel social structures. At the same time, the papacy supported social work in many congregations (including those newly founded), widespread missionary activity on distant continents, and intense catechism and pastoral activities within the Church. This was a reaction to many possibilities of how society would develop in Europe and on other continents in the 19^th century. The papacy adapted its systems and the focus of many monastic Church institutions. In the social space unshaped by the state, cities, and municipalities, the Church founded a number of schools and institutions for handicapped children and adults and for people on the fringes of society. Even many political and cultural figures generally unsupportive of the Church appreciated the social effects of these activities (aimed to mitigate the impact of the industrial revolution) as positive. 

      In the 19^th century, the papacy also had to revive many monastic orders affected by secularisation in the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th century. The most visible example of this process was when Pius VII restored the Society of Jesus in 1814. The papacy also supported congregations founded in the 19^th century. Examples include the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate supported by Leo XII in 1826; the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – Dehonians in 1888; and the Society of the Divine Savior – Salvatorians in 1885. The papacy also supported the volunteer Society of St. Vincent de Paul, founded in 1833, on the impulse of Antoine-Fréderic Ozanam, and active in social work. Papacy-supported women's congregations also played an important role in the Roman Catholic Church's educational and social work in the 19^th century. With the Pope’s support, the members of these congregations founded schools and social institutions on several continents, as well as asylums, nurseries, houses for mentally and physically ill people, hospitals, societies for educating workers, sanatoriums, and kitchens for the poor and homeless. Thanks to papal care, the century of technological development and great increase in both wealth and poverty, also became a century of social work, provided by the Church to many of those in need.

      Chapter 7: New directions of Bible study in the 19^th century

      In the 18^th century, European Protestant churches started focusing on relativizing the revelations, Scripture, and tradition, while trying to form a new understanding of the paths to revelation offered by reason and experience (Johann G. Herder, Imanuel Kant) and to internalize the Christian experience of revelation (pietism). The measure of revelation was now the individual. Many Enlightenment scholars criticised the Scripture and dogmas, following the demands of reason and knowledge, and fighting against the traditional, confessional and limited understanding of Christianity. The moralism and individualism of the 18^th century brought a different way of thinking about the principles of Christian liberties and doctrine, and the relations between the Church and the state. Church and social life was to be revived based on ethical theological parameters of revitalisation. This was the legacy that the 18^th century bequeathed to the 19^th century.

      The scholarly foundations of modern thought about the Bible were laid by the French Catholic Biblical studies scholar Richard Simon (1638–1712), who focused on how the books of the Bible were created – especially the Pentateuch, and on the literary genres of the Bible. Jean Astruc (1684–1766) was another prominent scholar focused on the historicity of the Pentateuch. Voltaire (1694–1778), who was very influential in Europe, brought radical contemporary interpretations of the Scripture. As an author and journalist, he found a number of errors and contradictions in the world of the Bible, but he did not seek them using serious, scientific exegesis methods.  

      The German Protestant Enlightenment also gave great scholarly figures to the field of Bible interpretation; especially Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791) who was active at the Georg-August University in Göttingen. Michalis used the methods of philology, archaeology, and history in Biblical studies and he laid the foundations of scientific exegesis of the Old Testament for the German Enlightenment. Although his methods were innovative, he was connected with traditional, orthodox Lutheran theology all of his life. Another German Biblical studies scholar, Johann Salomo Semler (1725–1791), was less limited by this theology. He clearly realized that the Old and New Testament canon had undergone a complex development and he promoted using the methods of Biblical criticism to understand and interpret it.

      Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), a scholar at the universities of Göttingen and Jena, also became an important figure of critical Old Testament interpretation in German Protestant science. He was a student of Johann David Michaelis (1717–1791). He introduced the myth into the scholarly interpretation of the Scripture, as an interpretation of events connected with the time when specific God-inspired texts were written. He attempted to describe the connection between Old Testament writings and the social and religious space they had originated in. His goal was not to strip Biblical texts of their meaning as revelation, but to point out the contextual and historical phenomena that influenced their writing and interpretation. 

      The Tübingen School originated with the Protestant theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792–1860), influenced by contemporary German philosophy, most importantly Hegel. He became a significant interpreter of the New Testament and he saw two important lines of development in 2^nd century Christianity: the Petrine Jewish Christianity and the Pauline Pagan Christianity. The first branch led Christians on a path to redemption through faith and deed (Judaism and its Testament), while the second guided them towards justification through faith (limiting or even renouncing the influence of the Jewish Testament). He saw Jewish and Pagan Christianity as increasingly mutually inimical early Christian branches. He presented his views in his work Paul, the Apostle of Jesus Christ (1845, 1866/7). In it, he evaluated how close or far different New Testament texts were to each of these two lines. He attempted to establish a chronology of when each text became part of the New Testament, assessing the Acts of the Apostles as a late New Testament text, together with the Gospel of John. He saw the Gospel of Lucas as closer to the Pauline Pagan Christianity. Although Baur’s hypotheses were refuted by further Scriptural research, his work introduced a number of scholarly topics for future generations. Further study proved that the conflict between the two branches of early Christianity was less severe than Baur thought.

      Baur's student, David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874) also left an important mark on Biblical study. As a young man, he wrote The Life of Jesus (1835), a work influenced by the German scholars Hegel and Schleiermacher. It made him quite famous, while at the same time barring the doors to academia for him, and it influenced the interpretation of Biblical writing in Europe for decades to come. In The Life of Jesus, the author asked whether the New Testament books described real historical events surrounding Christ. Strauss' conclusion was that these events were mythical; using the language of myth to describe Christian truths and he divided the mythical from the historical Jesus. His work was renounced by many Protestant and Catholic Biblical studies scholars. Further study of the New Testament disproved Strauss' theory of myth and established the gospels as important sources of information on the life of Jesus. Strauss himself wrote another controversial book – the two-volume Christian Doctrine in Its Historical Development and Its Struggle against Modern Science, published in 1840–41. They, as well as his later books on the life of Christ, also provoked more excitement and debate.

      The French scholar and oriental languages expert Ernest Renan (1823–1892) also included a number of elements of the Tübingen School and German classical philosophy into his works, created in an environment related to the Roman Catholic Church. After his studies in the seminary, he decided to abandon the path to priesthood and focused on studying oriental languages instead. He took part in an archaeological expedition to the Middle East and in 1862 he started teaching at the Collège de France. A year later, he published his Life of Jesus; the first book of the eight-volume series Origins of Christianity, finished in 1883. In it, Jesus is depicted as an exceptional and charismatic man, radicalized by John the Baptist and divinized by his apprentices and followers. Despite being a popularized reconstruction of the Biblical and Roman world, rather than a work of science, the series had a significant effect on the contemporary understanding of the Biblical world.

       In the 2^nd half of the 19^th century, the German Protestant theologian Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) started studying the history of Israel. In 1878, he published his History of Israel, introducing new ways of dating the Pentateuch based on source hypotheses and questioning whether Moses was really the author (using the method of literary analysis of Biblical writing). Based on these views, he also re-evaluated many other periods in Jewish history. He did so at a time when the number of researchers focused on the ancient society and religion of the Middle East was growing only slowly. However, subsequent findings of these researchers drastically limited the validity of Wellhausen's hypotheses. 

      In Protestant circles at the end of the 19^th century, new approaches of Biblical study gave rise to Hermann Gunkel’s (1862–1932) influential critical method of history, form, and work, which also focused on the influence of myth in the Scripture.

      Significant Catholic works of Biblical study at the end of the 19^th century included publications by Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) and Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938). Loisy was influenced by E. Renan and Protestant Biblical study of the 19^th century. He drew inspiration from the French founder of Catholic Biblical criticism, Richard Simon (1638–1712). Loisy graduated from the Institut Catholique and later became a professor there. At the turn of the century, he focused on the canonical history of the Old and New Testament and on the history of Old Testament texts and translations. In 1890, Lagrange founded a Biblical school in Jerusalem, a significant centre for archaeological research in Palestine. Both scholars brought the topic of revelation development in the Old and New Testaments into Biblical study and they both focused on the Biblical image of the world and the context in which it was formed, addressing the conflicts between the Bible and science in the late 19^th century.  

        

      Chapter 8: The search for new direction in Protestant churches in the 19^th century; new movements; revivalism

      During the 19^th century, European Protestants set off on the difficult and thorny path of connecting traditional Christianity and modern education. Protestant Churches were in danger of losing contact with contemporary science and culture. People on the highest levels of their hierarchy harboured grave concerns about modernity and tended to persecute church scholars trying to develop a deep and understanding relationship to the modernization ideologies of the 19^th century. The modern understanding of history and nature in the church reflected a number of contradictions between science and traditional faith. Modernized theology and history aimed to make reformed churches accountable to science, which confronted Christianity with the issue of truthfulness. Scholars in these churches were able to consider these contradictions, overcome them, and incorporate their results in their religious lives and knowledge, often at great personal cost. They accepted the great conceptual impulses of the century as a challenge, spurring them onwards to a truthful scholarly and personal life in their church. These new horizons also made many 19^th century Protestant theologians and historians realize that the ecclesiastical space can accept and regulate new scientific knowledge – but it needs time and educated people to do that. They also realized that Christians are always born into a specific period, with all its strengths and weaknesses, and that they take part in revelation to fill and transform the time that has been given to them.

      In Protestant theology, the 19^th century pushed the limits of historical memory. Most Protestant theologians tried not to renounce historicity, as they saw this would lead their church into passivity and a ghetto. They strived to truly understand the church's mission to bring Christ’s gospel to the world. However, theological fields were in danger of becoming mostly historically oriented. In many cases, the ongoing secularisation process led them to produce denominationally limited apologia of Christianity. The historization of theology, and its deeper focus on apologia, were a reaction to a period that was growing distant to its Christian roots and made it necessary to struggle to coin a new understanding and a new mission of Christianity in the world. The courage to live in an untried, uncertain, and unstable world became an inherent part of many Protestant Christians’ lifestyles in the 19^th century. But despite that, Protestant churches lost some of the social elites, because they were reluctant to embrace new paths of thought and behaviour. 

      Anti-clericalism, an animosity towards churches, became increasingly more influential in the secularising 19^th century society. It didn’t always mean a rejection of all that is Christian, but mostly focused on some elements of church life. Throughout the centuries, anti-clericalism became more organized and political parties included it in their agendas.

      Industrial progress gave churches many new opportunities. The industrial revolution gave work to millions of European men, women, and children, leading them out of the country into manufacturing and factory hubs. It turned the rural family into a worker family, with only very limited social security. The first social security system came only at the very end of the 19^th century, and even then, it applied only to a very small number of workers. While in the country, the sick, widows, and orphans from poor families would be taken care of by their relatives, the industrial environment left them unsupported and in poverty. The poor masses kept growing in the cities and the church and church-related organizations started caring for them. Despite ongoing secularisation, education of the poor and social and charity work done by these organisations became a significant 19^th century phenomena. Churches, despite being gradually restricted in the public space, worked in a field neglected by the state.

      The educational and social work of Protestant churches in the 19^th century was quite universal. Their social work in the cities and in the country included caring for children and minors, for young working-class girls, for the sick and alcoholics, for pilgrims and the homeless, for migrants, students, sailors, and believers in the missions. Women played a significant part in it, as churches allowed them to surpass their mainly working class or farming roots, get an education, and work as teachers, caretakers, missionaries, nurses, and later also as doctors. At first, women generally worked assisting men, but later they entered a number of previously male professions. They founded schools and social institutions and managed them with skill, providing education to tens of thousands of young women and making medical care accessible for men, women, and children on most continents. They also did a great deal of work in educating new generations to continue these activities, founding church schools focused on social work and publishing church magazines to popularize it and make it more scholarly.

      The search for new directions in the Protestant environment is connected to the revivalist Evangelical movement. In the 19^th century, its important representative was Charles G. Finney (1792–1875). He was connected to the Presbyterian (Calvinist) and Congregationalist environment in America. In 1835 he became a professor at Oberlin College in Ohio and in 1851–1866 he served as its rector. Under his leadership, the school played an important role in protecting slaves before and during the US Civil War. While traditional Calvinism accentuates that man is entirely subordinate to God’s actions and law, he preferred to emphasize human collaboration with God in the process of awakening to redemption. He focused on the concept of free will in this process. God opens an individual’s ability to see what is right and wrong in their life, but the individual freely decides to walk the path of good or evil. In his theology, Finney drastically limited the classical teachings of original sin. He saw sin as a purely psychological and biological phenomenon, removable through evangelisation, pastoral activity, and education. He saw these as means to repress the human tendency to sin and indulgence and to support responsible, moral decision-making.

      The American Evangelical movement was also strongly influenced by the Princeton theological school. Almost since its establishment in 1811, the theological seminary at Princeton was represented by the figure of Professor Charles Hodge (1797–1878), a traditional Calvinist. In the 19^th century, theologians of this school tended to abandon traditional Calvinism and focus on Evangelical theology. These included Breckenrindge Warfield (1851–1921), an alumnus of Princeton and the University of Leipzig. He drew on the Calvinist orthodoxy concept of the Bible as the infallible, God-inspired Word, in which the words of the Scripture are the words of God. He tried to defend the infallibility of the Bible from the criticism of contemporary secular science. He was influenced by scholarly interpretations of the Scripture and the development of Biblical studies and started seeing the Scripture as the work of God and humankind, forged out of revelation and the ability of contemporary human writers to comprehend it. He retained an orthodox, reformed understanding of the Scripture as an authority and standard for church life revealed by God, while understanding much of the history and ideological context in which it was written. He managed to fully avoid the primitive fundamentalism typical of folk Evangelism. 

      The Evangelical movement in Europe was also shaped by Peter Taylor Forsyth (1848–1921). He studied theology at the universities in Aberdeen and Göttingen, and at Hackney College in London and then worked as a Congregationalist priest. Hackney College also retained him as a teacher. His studies and theology focused on divine revelation in the Scripture, using the methods and findings of Biblical studies and archaeology. He thought that the Biblical revelation culminated in Christ and the Cross and contributed to theologians’ debate about the balance between divinity and humanity in Christ. In this debate, he held the view that Christ incarnate first partly deactivated his divinity in the process of kenosis (self-emptying). Jesus’ moral struggle throughout his life gradually reactivated his divinity in a process called plerosis (self-fulfilling). His Christological views first drew a great deal of theological criticism, which argued that Christ could not mechanically limit his divinity to enhance his humanity. Some critics also accused Forsyth of psychologizing Christ’s humanity and divinity. Forsyth’s Christology was influenced by contemporary conflicts between Evangelical theology, reformation orthodoxy, and liberalism.

      Chapter 9: Roman Catholic revivalist efforts in the 19^th century

      The Roman Catholic Church in the 19^th century was also deeply influenced by its broad revivalist movement. This in turn enhanced the Christian life of its believers and the Church’s social work. Catholic revivalist efforts were tied to the development of spirituality in the Church that followed in the centuries after the Council of Trent. However, they were also not separate from the influences of Protestant Europe. Their goals included transforming and restoring Christianity in personal, family, as well as institutionalized life in the Church.

      In the first two decades of the 19^th century, the Napoleonic Wars had a marked influence on the experiences and values of European Roman Catholic believers.  The lives of many were affected by hardship, the lack of social security, and a drastic shift in the values of humanity. Believers in this period set out on new journeys with the Church, helped by the diocese clergy, as well as a number of new monastic congregations. The Protestant revivalist movement was influenced by contemporary conflicts between Evangelical theology, reformation orthodoxy, and liberalism. The Roman Catholic revivalist movement was born in the decades of Romanticism, but it reached beyond its temporal and ideological borders. However, it also had its defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, as well as its theological liberals. Figures with diverse theological views and life stories influenced the revivalist and restorative efforts in the Church. At first, these no doubt included Austrian and Bavarian Roman Catholics focused on revivalist action, who emphasized piety, human solidarity, and fraternity: for example the theologian, teacher, and Bishop of Regensburg, Johann Michael Sailer (1751–1832); or Schelling's friend, doctor, philosopher, and theologian Franz von Baader (1765–1841). In the following decades, other important figures were the Salesian teacher John Bosco (1815–1888), as well as a convert from the Anglican Church and theologian, John H. Newman (1801–1890), Saint Theresia of Lisieux (1873–1897), as well as the socially aware scholar, first persecuted and later revered by the Church, Antonio Rosimini (1797–1855). In a broader perspective, the only thing this revivalism has in common is the desire of these prominent figures to elevate their Christian life beyond the bounds of social secularisation and the defence of the Church’s position connected to it, and the limits of contemporary politics.