Shadows of Doubt

Abstract

Scholars usually see post-Reformation Catholic culture as characterized by dogmatic, hermeneutical, and epistemological certainties. This book challenges this view by presenting early modern Catholicism as a world in which the stable Truth of theology existed alongside with, indeed contributed to originate, a number of far less stable truths concerning the world of men. This book therefore brings to light a fascinating and hitherto largely unexamined side of post-Tridentine Catholicism. It blends archival research with critical theory, hermeneutics, and postmodern philosophy, and it is structured as a collection of case studies centered on the relationship between language, the truth of men, and the Truth of theology. Most of these case studies concern little-known figures in the history of early modern Catholicism; this book puts them alongside the more distinguished Catholic intellectuals, so as to show the multidimensional nature of post-Reformation Catholic culture. Moreover, these case studies pertain to different areas of early modern culture, such as moral theology, rhetoric, and historiography. While each of these areas has its own specialized literature and has often been examined by current scholarship in isolation from the others, this book brings them together and thus provides a broader view of the early modern cultural system, in which all these areas were not separated by the current disciplinary boundaries but were part of the same intellectual universe.

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