This collection of articles focuses on the cultural exchanges and transfers of ideas between (primarily) France and Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The focus is on Jansenist ideas, which were influential and controversial in Catholic France and spread from there to both Protestant and Catholic parts of Germany, as well as to Italy and elsewhere. The articles in this collection touch on a number of aspects of this Kulturtransfer which is based on papers given at a conference held in Munich in 2018.

The collection begins with an introduction by Christoph Schmitt-Maaß, which lays out the basic ideas of Jansenism and its impact in Germany. Schmitt- Maaß puts this collection in the tradition of network and communications methodology, with an emphasis on the reception and appropriation of Jansenist ideas. In particular, German scholars are interested in the connections between Jansenism and (Protestant) Pietism and, of course, the connections between Jansenism, anti-Jesuitism and the Enlightenment, all aspects of this history that have had a major impact among German historians and historical theologians. Harm Klueting provides a historiographical article that traces the study of Jansenism among German scholars, mostly out of the Catholic tradition.

One cluster of articles in this collection focuses on the reception of Jansenist ideas in Pietist circles in Germany. Not surprisingly, Protestant Pietists were interested in the kind of spiritualist and individualist piety that came out of the Convent of Port-Royal and the circle around it in France. German scholars have identified this connection since the nineteenth century. Volker Kapp explains how authors of eighteenth-century German language encyclopedias presented Jansenist ideas with considerable sympathy. Christoph Schmitt-Maaß examines the reception of Jansenist ideas by the leading Pietists, Spener, Arnold, Francke and Zinzendorf. Schmitt-Maaß's article is a good example of reception history and he argues for ‘kulturtransferelle Aneignungsleistung’ (perhaps this means ‘the achievement of appropriation through cultural transfer’?) by these Pietists (p. 62). All of them read Jansenist writings, some, like Francke, more enthusiastically than others, but they also lamented that the Jansenists still accepted’ papist’ theological positions and Catholic rituals. The reception of Jansenist writings peaked, Schmitt-Maaß asserts, around 1700.

Corinne Bayerl's article about Jansenist and Pietist critics of theatre emphasises their common disgust for Jesuit religious theatre. Pietist critics drew on translated Jansenist texts to attack not just Jesuits, but also Gnesio-Lutherans, who argued that theatre was adiaphora, inconsequential for a true religious life. Bayerl reminds us that theatre was a bigger deal in France than in Germany in the period around 1700, where it had the support of the monarchy, and thus French critics of religious theatre provided a lot of material for the Germans. Bayerl also shows that that there was a genre of French satires that attacked the (overly earnest, overly religious) critics of the theatre. German satirists copied and translated these works in order to mock the Pietists. Two conclusions that are clear from the articles about the cultural transfer between Jansenists and Pietist is that French influence was deep in Germany in this period and that cultural transfer went almost exclusively in one direction.

Mattis Leibetseder presents a very interesting article about the experience of two German counts in Paris in the early 1730s. They were both from Pietist families and reflected that sensibility in their experience in Paris, which was part of their Grand Tour of Europe. While in Paris they witnessed ‘Jansenist miracles’ that took place at the grave of the deacon François de Pâris. The goal of the article is to examine the ‘international perception of Jansenism’ through the experience of these German nobles (p. 129). The circles these men travelled in were also in a sense ‘enlightened’ in that they were interested in both ‘trans-confessional communalities’ and ‘plurality within confessions’. A strength of Leibetseder's article is that he conceptualises ‘reception’ from multiple perspectives. He examines ‘seeing and participating’, ‘telling and hearing’ and ‘reading and writing’. These topics mean that he is able to examine how these young counts responded to their time in Paris and the ways their experience was reported, received and evaluated back in Germany. This is one of the few articles that moves beyond traditional reception history to show the complexities of cultural transfer and how it worked.

There are other interesting articles here, on the ways Protestant Nuremberg printing firms maintained their connections in Bohemia, even after its recatholicisation, and how Jansenist works were important to those ties. Sylvia Schmitt-Maaß examines the spread of the ‘Jansenist crucifix’, a particular kind of small ivory crucifix used in prayers. Juliette Guilbaud writes about the Wiener Kirchenzeitung, which published from 1784 to 1789. This weekly journal published reformist ideas, often influenced by Jansenist writing, drawing on important French examples. Shaun Blanchard also emphasises the long and late influence of Jansenism in the decrees of the reformist Synod of Pistoia in 1786. The decrees of this synod reflected Muratorian ideas, erastian reform and late Jansenism. Coming out of Tuscany, ruled at that time by the Habsburgs, the synod was influential in Germany, Italy and the Habsburg lands and its decrees widely published.

Taken together, these articles show that Jansenism was more than a French phenomenon and more than a Catholic reform movement. The articles also suggest that French cultural and intellectual influence was deep and ongoing, from the post-Thirty Years’ War era right up to the French Revolution. One can also see in this collection how traditional intellectual history has been broadened by an interest in the transfer and reception of ideas and, in turn, how that kind of history has continued to evolve.