RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
England and Wales Enlightenment
Though nominally suppressed, Mary Ward's communities lived on, perhaps not altogether without the tacit consent of high ecclesiastical authority. The company with her at Heworth kept together and about 1650 removed to Paris. In 1669 Frances Bedingfield established a settlement at Hammersmith, and shortly after one at York. The house in Rome was not given up. The Munich house had royal favor and from the end of the sixteenth century was able to plant filiations in South Germany, in Austria, and in the electorate of Mainz. Its eightyone rules were approved by Pope Clement XI. in 1703; they were essentially those originally drawn up by Mary Ward, although all mention of her, as well as any acknowledgment of a connection with the " Jesuitesses " was carefully avoided both by the pope and the members of the order, who were now called Instituta Marios or the " Institute of the English Ladies." A tendency to honor the foundress manifested itself within the order a hundred years later, and Benedict XIV by bull of Apr. 9, 1749, forbade to call her " blessed," and emphasized the non-identity of the Institute with all " Jesuitesses." At the same time he settled a controversy between the order and certain South German bishops by placing each house under the jurisdiction of the bishop of the diocese in which it was located, but making the head of the Munich house supreme over the schools and all matters of visitation. In 1840 the supremacy of the Munich house (in 1835 removed three miles from the city to Nymphenburg) was limited to Bavaria. The Congregation received full papal approval from Pius IX. in 1877.
The congregation includes teachers, called " ladies " (Fraulein) and lay sisters (" sisters "). Both classes take simple vows for life, from which they may be released by the pope for canonical reasons. The houses are mother-houses and filiations. The members wear a black dress with broad white collar and white bonnet and black veil. Their principal work is education, and the girls educated by them number several millions. They are also occupied with labors for the poor and sick. They are most numerous in Bavaria, but are also strong in Austria, and have a house in Mainz and in York. There are filiations and mission stations in Lombardy, Bucharest, London, the East Indies, and elsewhere. Two Irish societies, the Loreto Sisters (founded at Rathfarnham, near Dublin, in 1822 by Frances Ball) and the Irish Sisters of Charity (founded in Dublin by Mary Frances Aikenhead in 1815, confirmed 1834), differ from the Institute of Mary only in name. The former have houses all over Ireland and in England, America, Australia, and South Africa.
(O. ZoCKLERf.)
Bibliography: Heimbucher, Orden und Kongregationen, iii. 364 sqq. (where the literature is given, p. 364); lives of Miss Ward, Miss Ball, and Miss Aikenhead in the Quarterly Series, vols. xxxv. and lii., xxxiii., and xcvi. respectively—of Miss Ward by Mary E. C. Chambers, ed. H. J. Coleridge, S. J., 2 vols., London, 1882-85, and in DNB, Supplement, iii. 506-508; of Miss Ball by H. J. Coleridge, ib. 1881; of Miss Aikenhead by Maria Nethercott, ib. 1897 — and of Miss Aikenhead by S. A., with an account of the foundation of the Irish Sisters of Charity, Dublin, 1879, 1882.
ENLIGHTENMENT, THE.
The Movement Characterized (§ 1).
Political Phase (§ 2).
Economic Phase (§3).
Religious and Ethical Aspects (§ 4).
The New Knowledge (§5).
The New Historical Method (§ 6).
Philosophy of the Period (§ 7).
Literature of the Enlightenment (§ 8).
The German Enlightenment (§ 9).
Practical Results (§ 10).
Its Relation to Theology (§ 11).
Close of the Period (§ 12).
[The Enlightenment is a translation of the German expression die Aufklarung (literally " the Clearing Up "). The rendering " the Illumination " is also sometimes used, while not infrequently the German is transferred without translation.] It signifies a phase of historical evolution in Europe which may be characterized as marking the beginning of the modern period of secular culture, in contrast to the theological spirit that constituted the regulating principle of society in the preceding epoch. The Enlightenment must be regarded not as a definite movement aiming at a pari. The ticular end, but rather as a general trans- Movement formation of the genius of the times, Character- accompanied by important changes ized. in national and social organization, and the removal of the center of political gravity from the south to the north of Europe. The principles of the Enlightenment are to be met with in the seventeenth century and may be traced further back to the Renaissance; they attained their fullest development in the eighteenth century; they entered on their decay in the nineteenth. Its animating spirit is essentially that of opposition to the supremacy of churchly ideals based on the irreconcilable contradiction between reason and faith, and to the consequent injection of the element of supernaturalism into the practical affairs of life. Its tendency is toward an explanation of the world on the basis of universally valid factors of knowledge and an ordering of life toward universally valid ends, and its most striking characteristics are an unsparing use of critical analysis and a spirit of reforming utilitarianism. To the general and immutable truth of theology it opposes a truth of its own whose sanction it finds in the mind of the individual, and in this role of champion against tradition it is subjective, independent, self-confident and optimistic. But though the Enlightenment was thus the first great movement of opposition to theological dualism, it was not the unconditioned product of the spontaneous action of the human reason, but a historic result of definite facts and circumstances. Its method was determined by ancient tradition and the newly arisen sciences; its content, by that part of historic tradition which it chose to regard as the inalienable possession of the individual mind but which in reality represented only truth attained through development; its essential service consisted in the banishment of supernaturalism from history.
The Thirty Years' War (q.v.), ending with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, was followed by a decline of the religious influence and a corresponding rise of secular interests, which now began to
Enlightenment