2008/08/01 by Dale K. Van Kley · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Historical and Literary Studies #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #European Political History Analysis
paper · doi:10.1093/pastj/gtm055
openalex publication_date 2008/08/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
In the autumn of 1763 Enlightenment Europe witnessed one of the century's more paradoxical events: a Catholic provincial council meeting in the Protestant Dutch Republic proclaiming a conception of the Catholic Church most closely associated with France. The scene was the church of St Gertrude in the city of Utrecht, the time was 13–21 September, and the participants were the archbishop of Utrecht Petrus Meindaerts surrounded by his two suffragan bishops of Haarlem and Deventer plus ten parish priests and several theological consultants. The spectacle moved Catholic Europe, or a certain part of it. Parisians responded with hundreds of signatures to letters of felicitation and ‘communion’ addressed to the archbishop — letters that bore little apparent relation to the better-known publication of Diderot's Encyclopedia under way in the same city. By the end of the century, the Church of Utrecht's sympathetic correspondents would write from just about all parts of Catholic Europe.