Preface by Rebecca Messbarger Introduction by Christopher M. S. Johns Part I: Benedict XIV, Women and Progressive Catholicism 1. Marta Cavazza: Benedict’s Patronage of Learned Women 2. Paula Findlen: The Pope and the Englishwoman: Benedict XIV, Jane Squire, the Bologna Academy, and the Problem of Longitude 3. Stephanie Kirk: Benedict XIV and New World Convent Reform   Part II: Faith and Medicine in Catholic Enlightenment 4. Rebecca Messbarger: The Art and Science of Human Anatomy in Benedict’s Vision of the Enlightenment Church 5. Gianna Pomata: The Devil’s Advocate Among the Physicians: What Prospero Lambertini Learned from Medical Sources 6. Fernando Vidal: Modernizing the Miraculous Body in Prospero Lambertini’s De Servorum Dei   Part III: Benedict’s Response to Challenges to Church Authority 7. John L. Heilbron: Benedict XIV and the Natural Sciences 8. Maurice Finocchiaro: Benedict XIV and the Galileo Affair: Liberalization or Carelessness? 9. Maria Pia Donato: Reorder and Restore: Benedict XIV, the Index and the Holy Office   Part IV: Theology, Tradition and Institutions in the Era of Enlightened Catholicism 10. Maria Teresa Fattori: Lambertini’s Treatises and the Cultural Project of Benedict XIV: Two Sides of the Same Policy 11. Roberto Rusconi: Benedict XIV and the Holiness of Popes in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century 12. Peter Björn Kerber: Vicar of Christ and Alter Christus: Benedict XIV’s Della S. Messa   Part V: Benedict XIV’s Transformation of the Public Sphere 13. Paola Giuli: Prospero Lambertini and the Accademia degli Arcadi (1694–1708) 14. Carole Paul: Benedict XIV’s Enlightened Patronage of the Capitoline Museum 15. Christopher M. S. Johns: Papal Diplomacy and the Catholic Enlightenment: Benedict XIV’s Caffeaus in the Quirinal Gardens   Part VI: Art and Architecture Across Italy and the World 16. Jeffrey Collins: Pedagogy in Plaster: Ercole Lelli and Benedict XIV’s Gipsoteca at Bologna’s Instituto delle Scienze e delle Arti 17. Kristina Kleutghen: The Art Ethnicity and Empire: Jesuit Art in China during the Papacy of Benedict XIV 18. Tommaso Manfredi: Academic Practice and Roman Architecture during the Reign of Benedict XIV

“Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment is a superb collection of essays. The Benedict XIV that emerges from its pages is a nuanced and fascinating figure of the Catholic enlightenment, a man who was both idealistic and pragmatic, rigorously logical yet at times contradictory in his views on the world around him and the Church’s role in it.”

"Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment is a superb collection of essays. The Benedict XIV that emerges from its pages is a nuanced and fascinating figure of the Catholic enlightenment, a man who was both idealistic and pragmatic, rigorously logical yet at times contradictory in his views on the world around him and the Church's role in it." -- Catherine Sama, Professor of Italian, University of Rhode Island "Collectively, these wonderful essays frame the outline of a new, more humanized portrait of an early modern pope whose career, actions, personality, and values deserve still more study." -- William V. Hudon, Professor of History, Bloomsburg University