A moral apologetic and modern history: the catholic writing from the mid 18th Century to the early 19th Century

Abstract

In middle of the 18th century, the providencialist conception of history, which was formulated bytheology and propagated by catholic preaching, was gradually declining. Thus the epistemicchallenge faced by the scholars from the Church, religious people and laymen: to support thisconception as significant in the scope of a culture that provided autonomy to the historicalprocess of the divine action and the natural laws. In the attempt to keep the message of faithperformative, some catholic speeches had revealed partially receptive to the historical experienceand to the historical changes from the second half of the 17th century, since they were relatedto the moral reflection and to apologetics both especially developed in that conjuncture, andwhich had in Alfonso de Ligório and Chateaubriand two of its greatest exponents.