Catholicism did not simply survive the Age of Revolutions: it was remade by it. Between the late eighteenth century and the revolutions of 1848, Catholics reinvented their religion as a political and social ideology. As enlightened reformers and revolutionaries increasingly sought to redefine major spheres of life as secular, Catholics did not merely defend inherited beliefs or dream of restoring a vanished confessional order. They recast religion into a modern ideological language capable of organizing collective life, mobilizing support, and competing with liberalism, nationalism, socialism, and conservatism on the same terrain. Drawing on sources from across a wide Catholic world, the book begins with the crises that destabilized the old alliance of throne and altar and traces the efforts of Catholics to turn counterrevolution into a creative political project. Along the way, readers encounter a large cast of characters whose exchanges unfolded across Europe and the Atlantic world. By placing Catholicism at the center rather than on the margins of modern history, this book challenges familiar narratives of secularization. Modern Catholicism emerged as one of the ideological forces that contested the meaning of modern politics itself. The result is both a reinterpretation of Catholic history and a broader reconsideration of how the modern world was made.
