The nineteenth century opened upon a world that seemed determined to forget its own soul. The French Revolution had shattered the political and cultural architecture of Christendom; the Enlightenment had enthroned a rationalism suspicious of revelation; liberalism had recast society around the autonomous individual; and industrialization had transformed the rhythms of life with unprecedented speed. By the time Vincenzo Gioacchino Pecci ascended the papal throne in 1878 as Leo XIII, Europe was living amid the ruins of an older order and the uncertainties of a new one. The Church, stripped of the Papal States and hemmed in by hostile governments, appeared to many observers as a relic of a bygone age. Yet Providence often works most powerfully when human prospects seem most diminished. The pontificate of Leo XIII would become a decisive moment in the renewal of Catholic thought, a moment in which the Church, without surrendering a single article of faith, rediscovered the intellectual vigor, spiritual depth, and cultural confidence that had once shaped the civilization of the West.
