In recent years, much has been written about the “long nineteenth century” as a critical backdrop for understanding the world today. The emergence of a new, uncertain world born out of the French Revolution and its aftermath gave shape to the century for many in Europe. In these disorienting times, men and women often felt unsure of their place in the new world order; some looked excitedly to a future beyond the ancien régime, while others longed for a restoration of the Church as a means of providing order and stability. Howard's book “plunges the reader headlong” into the long nineteenth century so that she/he can understand not only its questions and conflicts but recognize its echoes in our own day (8). The lens through which Howard enters this period is a clash between two of its most influential figures, Pope Pius IX and Ignaz von Döllinger. Their exchange is formidable and noteworthy in itself, but beyond that, as Howard masterfully demonstrates, it provides tools for understanding the passage of history into the modern age.

The “Döllinger affair,” as it became known, cannot be understood apart from the backdrop of Vatican I, so Howard begins there. In the Catholic world, the First Vatican Council marks the climax of the long nineteenth century and a collision between the old and new worlds. Howard paints the drama of the council in vivid detail. He renders a fascinating account of the way that the Catholic Church found itself in an incredibly weakened and perilous state in the decades following the French Revolution. The Church's lands and sources of income were seized so that it lost many of its traditional powers to conduct its own affairs. Particularly traumatizing were the threats against the Papal States in the face of Italian national reunification. Various popes found themselves locked in battle with secular rulers—battles which climaxed twice with the bishop of Rome being exiled from the Vatican. The chaos of the day coupled with a growing sympathy for the pope as a victim of seemingly endless attacks fueled the rise of ultramontane sentiment or the sense that the world needed to look “over the Alps” to Rome to reestablish order. Pius IX's efforts and Vatican I's teachings on papal infallibility and primacy unfold against this backdrop; they were a way for the Church to retain its authority—especially its spiritual authority—in the face of significant erosion of its temporal powers.

While Ignaz von Döllinger is not a household name today, he was regarded in his day as “the most learned man in Europe” and “the most significant German-speaking Roman Catholic theologian of his time” (7). Döllinger, a priest of the diocese of Bamberg and a professor of Church History at the University of Munich, was convinced that the teachings being developed at the First Vatican Council would have disastrous effects. He held two distinct but related concerns; first, he feared that these teaching presented an insurmountable obstacle for Christian unity, and second, he understood the teachings to contradict the Church's own tradition. Regarding the second concern, Dollinger wrote: “Before I could ever inscribe this modern invention [infallibility] on my mind, I would first have to plunge my fifty years of theology, history and patristic studies into the [river] Lethe and then draw them out like a blank sheet of paper” (133). While Döllinger did not attend the council, he was one of its closest observers and most vocal critics. He created a sensation throughout Europe with his critiques of the council's proceedings—writing articles in his own name and under the pseudonym Quirinus. Once the council did, in fact, define papal infallibility, Döllinger was asked to recant with the hope that, given his status and outspoken opposition, his acceptance of the conciliar decrees would stem the tide toward a potential schism. Döllinger noted that after the one sleepless night of his life he came to the conclusion that “As a Christian, as a theologian, as a historian, as a citizen, I cannot accept this doctrine” (161). As a result he was excommunicated in 1871.

Pius IX died in 1878 at the age of eighty-five, still a “Prisoner of the Vatican” (214). Döllinger died at the age of ninety in 1890. Their lives spanned the majority of the nineteenth century and their exchange manifested many of its most central conflicts. Döllinger and Pius IX both belonged to a generation who pioneered the way into the modern age with its questions of authority, truth, conscience, the role of religion in society, and the ability of the Church to change. Howard's book provides an invaluable resource for thinking about the “long nineteenth century” and its echoes today in debates over the relationship between synodality and primacy and the existence of continuity or discontinuity in church teachings. His volume is meticulously researched, balanced, and insightful. Readers will be drawn in by his masterful narration of complex historical and theological developments. They will be held by the way that his account keeps an eye toward fundamental questions that remain with us today. As we near the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of Vatican I and continue on the road of ecclesial reform, scholars and students alike will turn to the events of long nineteenth century, and the council in particular, to think about new ways forward. Howard's exceptional book will undoubtedly become a standard work in the study of these questions.