Books
Berruyer’s Bible: Public Opinion and the Politics of Enlightenment Catholicism in France. McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion 89. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021.
Winner of the 2022 Guittard Book Award for Historical Scholarship from the Baylor University Department of History
Finalist for the Ecclesiastical History Society’s 2022 Book Prize
Berruyer’s Bible is the first major history of the influential Jesuit Isaac-Joseph Berruyer and the political “affair” that his infamous paraphrase of the Bible unleashed in eighteenth-century Europe. It argues through the history of the publication, condemnation, and eventual resurrection of Berruyer’s Bible that Enlightenment Catholicism divided the French Catholic Church and drove many Catholics toward conservativism and ultramontanism in the early nineteenth century. The book shows that members of the Society of Jesus were active proponents of Enlightenment ideals, despite the fact that many enlightened philosophes saw them as their chief enemies. It also illustrates how Jesuit engagement with the Enlightenment affected the French Catholic Church and weakened its social and political position heading into the era of the French Revolution. In this way, the book explains how the actions of those within the Catholic Church contributed to the secularization of French society.
Belief and Politics in Enlightenment France: Essays in Honor of Dale K. Van Kley. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2019:02. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019.
Winner of the 2020 Guittard Book Award for Historical Scholarship from the Baylor University History Department
Belief and Politics in Enlightenment France is a collection of essays from some of the leading scholars of eighteenth-century French history. Co-edited with Mita Choudhury, the Evalyn Clark Chair at Vassar College, the book includes original essays on the topic of religion and politics in eighteenth-century France from a distinguished and international collection of scholars including David Bell (Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University), Monique Cottret (Professor Emerita at the Université de Paris – Nanterre), and David Garrioch (Professor Emeritus at Monash University in Australia). Together, the essays demonstrate how religious belief was a central component within the political debates of the Enlightenment and the revolutionary eras. Belief and Politics in Enlightenment France was included in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (OUSE) book series, the foremost and longest running book series on the history of the Enlightenment.
