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This chapter examines the distinctiveness of Munich's Catholic tradition by focusing on important Catholic trends, including the Christian Social movement and Reform Catholic movement, before World War I. It considers such trends in relation to the twin “evils” of ultramontanism and political Catholicism, along with the ideal of Positive Christianity. The chapter first looks at the tradition of Catholic opposition to ultramontanism and political Catholicism in Munich before assessing the influence of Munich's relative distinctiveness in the prewar era on the local environment within which Nazism was born after World War I. It also discusses the attempt to overcome internal divisions within the German Volk under the aegis of Positive Christianity and concludes with an analysis of the cultivation of an irenic yet distinctly Catholic-oriented form of völkisch nationalism.

This chapter traces the evolution of an unofficial, yet palpable relationship between Nazism and Catholicism within the Nazi movement between 1920 and 1923. More specifically, it examines the early implementation of Positive Christianity by focusing on the propagation of the concept of religious Catholicism by a variety of Catholic students, publicists, and other opinion leaders, many of whom were influential early Nazis and had important connections with the prewar Reform Catholic movement in Munich. It also considers the Bayerische Volkspartei's launch of a campaign in late 1922 to enlighten the Catholics of Bavaria about the religious dangers of the radical anti-Semitism and anti-ultramontanism espoused by Catholic Nazis.

This chapter explores the Catholic Reform, in which the Catholic Church, through the Council of Trent, speaks of justification as both an event and a process through which all believers must go. The Council of Trent argues that one can never be certain of one’s salvation and that believers grow in holiness through the performance of good works, perfected by grace.

The poem, catechisms and other official texts studied in this chapter show that liturgical interpretation had a significant place in both rival versions of reformatio ecclesiae, Catholic and Protestant. It is argued that this was partly due to Wishart and Knox pushing worship to the centre of controversy from the late 1540s and partly to its centrality to the Catholic Reform movements which formed most of the leaders on both sides. A new spirit associated with the Council of Trent led to a decline in interest in Catholic liturgical interpretation at the end of the century. The Reformed version of liturgical interpretation was distinguished not by method but by the worship it explained, a Reformed liturgy determined by the exclusive scriptural principle of worship. The chapter also confirms the importance of the diocese of Aberdeen in the history of liturgical interpretation in Scotland.

This chapter begins with a detailed examination of all extant liturgical commentaries that were in Scotland in the decades before 1560 together with 166 copies of the Rationale from all over Europe. Marginalia and inscriptions uncover patterns of use and the Scottish books reveal networks of clergy distinguished by an interest in liturgical interpretation and a commitment to Catholic Reform. A prosopographically based study of these networks in the dioceses of Aberdeen, Moray, and St Andrews suggests that, although it ultimately failed, the Catholic Reform movement in Scotland was stronger than is generally allowed, had a distinctive intellectual base and was in close contact with similar circles on the continent. It is argued that the group of ‘Aberdeen Liturgists’ around Bishop Elphinstone who produced the Aberdeen breviary (1509–10) continued up to 1560 and beyond and laid the foundations for the enduring and distinctive religious culture of North-East Scotland.

This introductory chapter argues that eighteenth-century Catholicism had a more dynamic role within the realm of progress and modernity for human civilization than is typically realized. The previous centuries saw a Catholic Church that was in dialogue with modern scientific and philosophical thought, and that constantly pursued reforms in concert with the innovations introduced during the Enlightenment. The history of the Catholic Reform has often been forgotten as the conservative reaction to the Enlightenment in the aftermath of the French Revolution and its resulting political turmoil dominate the historical accounts, which focus on a strengthened papal role and the marginalization of independent Catholic thinkers.

Images of birth, death, and mourning are considered in terms of their theological and pictorial implications. Naturalistic depictions of birth and infancy lend themselves to a theological meditation on the Incarnation, as well as reflections on painting as a medium of incarnation. Taking into account the destruction of sacred images in the wake of Post-Reformation iconoclasm, the second part focuses on paintings of St. Sebastian depicting his supposed “death,” mourning, and miraculous recovery. It shows how the martyrdom of painting, figured through the lens of St. Sebastian’s “death,” and the Catholic Reform’s subsequent response in attempting to redefine the sacred image, lead to a new understanding of painting. La Tour’s works address this seminal problem, by showing how painting may redeem its spiritual authority by sacrificing its visual manifestations as an image when redefined as a portal to the sacred.

The Introduction contextualizes the individual chapters within the collection. It describes modernity's obsession with sacrifice in terms of three separate but overlapping strands. Firstly, there is the inheritance of Christianity's ever-ambiguous attitude to sacrifice. Inherited from late antiquity, this theological debate gained unprecedented prominence with the Reformation and the Catholic response to it. A second strand is the early modern rediscovery of ancient tragedy which gives especially human sacrifice a central place. This literary representation of sacrifice has worked strongly on the modern European mind. A third strand is the encounter with non-European cultures which practice ritual sacrifice. This encounter beginning in the age of discovery confronts Europeans with the cultural reality of ritual sacrifice and prompts intellectual, artistic, and political responses. All three strands never existed in isolation from each other, but seeing them in this interlocking way helps understand the complex presence of sacrifice in modern European thought.