Review from previous edition The book demonstrates in surprising new ways how eighteenth-century Benedictines of the Catholic Enlightenment engaged with all branches of contemporary academic study while simultaneously accommodating the monastic life to modernizing trends in European society. Engagingly written, deeply researched, and seriously engaged with current research, Lehner's work demonstrates that the Enlightenment was far more than a secular movement pitted against an obscurantist religious outlook. It was, rather, a multi-faceted trend to reconcile science and reason with matters of faith. Enlightened Monks illustrates how, paradoxically, an institution known most as a relic of the medieval past actually stood on the front lines of this endeavor.