Ulrich Lehner here presents two excellent exemplars of the Catholic Enlightenment in Germany, a movement that has obtained serious scholarly attention only in fairly recent times. Indeed, for many scholars, the very idea of a Catholic Enlightenment has seemed like a contradiction in terms. For others, the Catholic Enlightenment reached its high point in the dissolution of the Jesuit Order (1773) or in the statist reforms of Joseph II in Austria. It is, therefore, useful to consider the writings of Benedikt Poiger (1755–1832), an Augustinian canon at Reichenhall. In 1780 he published a short treatise of 38 pages declaring the foolishness of believing that witchcraft could ever be real. His argument rested on a definition of witchcraft as essentially based on a pact with the devil, a pact for which the biblical evidence was notably poor. The early Church, too, while often consumed with resisting the devil, knew nothing of pacts with the devil. For Poiger, scholastic theologians starting in the thirteenth century made a fundamental error by elaborating a notion of witchcraft that broke with the healthy traditions of the early Church. In his view, it was only his own enlightened century that was finally escaping the superstitions that had too long corrupted Christianity. Drawing on the Catholic biblical criticism of Aloys Wiener von Sonnenfels as well as on Catholic teachers and intellectual models such as Friedrich Spee, S.J., Eusebius Amort, Thomas Lechleitner, Sebastian Seemiller, and Peter Gazzaniga, Poiger ridiculed the superstition of those who feared magic in any of its forms. For him, magic was either natural knowledge or empty deceit. He also relied on enlightened Protestant criticism such as that of Balthasar Bekker, Christian Thomasius, Peter Eberhard, and Johann David Michaelis. For Poiger a full appreciation of the work of Jesus Christ would include the recognition that “through him the Kingdom of Darkness was destroyed.” He gloried in hopes for a new or renewed Catholic theology.

Four years after publishing his Latin treatise, Poiger published a German version (69 pages), which is similar in broad outlines to his Latin original. It is not quite correct, however, to say (as Lehrer does, ix) that it is “nearly identical” because in his German book Poiger dropped most of his learned quotations and introduced in their place a series of anecdotes and personal letters. A close comparison of the two texts reveals a host of interesting differences that illuminate the problem of moving from a learned to a popular readership.

One of Poiger's most important models was Ferdinand Sterzinger, the learned Theatine member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, whose “Academic Address” of 1766 had launched the Bavarian “War over Witchcraft.” This pamphlet battle consumed the energy of many for some five years and marks one of the last learned controversies over the foundations of witchcraft in Western Europe. Lehner usefully includes the “Address” as an appendix (99–117), and from it one can also see just how limited and cautious Poiger's assault actually was. Sterzinger had gone far toward denying the devil any efficacy in this world, a claim that Poiger refused to consider.

By giving us these texts along with a substantial introduction, Lehner has helped the modern reader encounter an enlightened Catholic biblical criticism and church history that were struggling to escape scholastic tradition and to create a “theology without magic and witchcraft.” Lehner's edition reminds us that the Catholic Enlightenment was concerned with more than finance and matters of church and state.