The French Jesuit Isaac-Joseph Berruyer's Histoire du peuple de Dieu was
an ambitious attempt to connect the ideas of the Enlightenment with the
theology of the Catholic Church. A paraphrase of the Bible written in
vernacular French, the Histoire promoted progress, the pursuit of
happiness, the fundamental goodness of humanity, and the capacity of
nature to shape moral human beings. Berruyer aimed to update the Bible
for a new age, but his work unleashed a furor that ended with the
expulsion of the Jesuits from France.Berruyer's Bible offers a fresh
perspective on the history of the Catholic Enlightenment. By exploring
the rise and fall of Berruyer's Histoire, Daniel Watkins reveals how
Catholic attempts to assimilate Enlightenment ideas caused conflicts
within the church and between the church and the French state.
Berruyer's Bible flips the traditional narrative of the Enlightenment on
its head by showing that the secularization of French society and the
political decline of the Catholic Church were due not solely to the
external assaults of anti-clerical philosophes but also to the internal
discord caused by Catholic theologians themselves.Built upon extensive
research in archives across Western Europe and the United States,
Berruyer's Bible paints a vivid picture of the tumultuous intellectual
world of the Catholic Church and the power of radical ideas that shaped
the church throughout the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and
beyond.
