Competing Enlightenments and the Quest for a State Church in 18th-Century Spain

By the second half of the eighteenth century, various brands or “lights” of Catholic Enlightenment existed in Spain.  Yet, the dominant brand was that sponsored by the Bourbon government which sought to achieve “progress” in all areas of Spanish society, including its religion.  While on one hand the dominance of the state-sponsored brand led to the extinction of various lights of Catholic Enlightenment—such as that of the Jesuits which maintained a belief in the rehabilitation of human nature and that of Spanish Jansenists or philo-Jansenists such as Josep Climent who advocated the frequent celebration of independent church councils and defended the autonomy of bishops from Rome in matters of the administration of the sacraments and of clerical discipline within the diocese—on the other hand, the state-sponsored brand itself was extinguished with the onset of the French Revolution.   My paper highlights the narrative of the various extinguished lights and the contingency of events in the second half of the long eighteenth century.