The study's title combines two terms that in the eighteenth-century context will still be widely regarded as antithetical: “monks” and “enlightened.” Only a decade has now passed since the British historian Derek Beales published a seminal work that vividly recounted the continuing vigor of European monasticism during a time of its oft-alleged decay—between the Peace of Westphalia and the French Revolution, a period that encompassed the very age of Enlightenment believed to have perilously accelerated the decline of religious houses. Where Beales chose the panoramic view, Lehner's more narrowly adjusted lens offers one of great depth and occasionally entertaining detail as he zooms in on the activities and predicaments of individual monks. The focus is on the relationship between the Enlightenment and members of one of the Roman Church's most ancient orders, the Benedictine, specifically its foundations in the Holy Roman Empire, whereby the establishments in Swabia and Franconia emerge more clearly than those in the Rhineland or the Habsburg hereditary lands. The author shows that here again there can be no question of decline.

Drawing on the large published literature on German monasticism, much of it buried in regional journals, as well as an impressive array of archival material held in some twenty institutions, the author demonstrates the remarkable porosity of cloistered walls that enabled monks to take part in wider social and intellectual life. In recent decades, scholars have shown how early modern armies reflected the surrounding world. A similar insight would seem to obtain for the regular clergy, who confronted the many new “challenges”—to use a leitmotif of this study—that directly or indirectly shaped all parts of eighteenth-century society. These ranged from modish patterns of consumption to new methods of communication to novel ideas of individualism to the latest erudition. How did German Benedictines meet the challenges? Though the answer is obviously hard to quantify, the author concludes that “not many” (p. 6) monks resisted change by actually taking up the cudgels of anti-Enlightenment. An initial “transformation of the Benedictine mind” (p. 26) occurred around 1700 as reforming impulses from the Maurists (a Benedictine community in France) were transformed into a revival and modernization of historical scholarship in central European abbeys such as Melk and St. Blasien.

Many of the resulting projects carried on with great distinction into the later eighteenth century, by which time Benedictine life had responded in a wide variety of ways to the changing world. Coffee “as the drink of the Enlightenment” (p. 35) had become common in monkish cells and refectories, even as the clergy historically had hardly been averse to worldly pleasures. At a profounder level, the Benedictines of the abbey of Banz near Bamberg created what would be a long-running journal that by the later 1770s had become a respected and prominent supporter of “a moderate Catholic Enlightenment as propagated by Muratori” (p. 92). Such achievements have frequently been overlooked by scholarship preoccupied by secular or Protestant Enlightenment. With the obvious exception of Muratori and despite the earlier influence of the Maurists, enlightened thinkers outside the German-speaking world, especially French ones, seem to have played a marginal role among the Benedictines. Initially, Christian Wolff appears as the most important figure on the intellectual horizon; later, Immanuel Kant loomed large. For those who remained committed to their heritage, such as Anselm Desing of Ensdorf abbey, the intellectual ferment paradoxically also opened up ways of defending monasticism and renewing the faith. Other monks became advocates of ecumenism or religious toleration. The Benedictine university at Salzburg became the scene of an ongoing struggle between traditionalists and those who wanted to sweep away what they regarded as superstition and sterile scholasticism, whereby the enlighteners usually had the upper hand thanks to the archbishop's support.

In some cases, the encounter with enlightened thought induced a crisis of conscience as reason and (Catholic) revelation seemed no longer reconcilable. Perhaps the most celebrated controversy involved Gregorius Rothfischer of St. Emmeram in Regensburg, a noted theologian who in 1751 staged an elaborate getaway from his monastery and converted to Lutheranism. He was unsurprisingly accused of causing “a serious setback for enlightened Benedictines and other Catholics and with endangering the whole enterprise of reforming Catholicism” (p. 135). Later in the century, a monk at Nerresheim under Kant's influence fashioned a theology in which “Jesus' mission consisted solely in bringing about a clearer knowledge of God, while his death on the cross was contingent and unnecessary” (p. 214). The theology faculty at Dillingen appropriately declared this thesis orthodox around the same time as the establishment of the “cult of reason” in neighboring France. No Benedictine appears to have become atheist under enlightened influence, though the author mentions many monks known to have supported the French Revolution. To what extent was the Benedictine experience typical for Catholic orders and the Catholic clergy generally in eighteenth-century Germany? This problem is not addressed, but good scholarship provokes as well as answers questions.