that is, a theology based on biblical and patristic sources and the councils.

That he

knows the history of the Church to return to the sources of primitive Christianity and

locate the adhesions acquired over time. And that literary studies return to the

humanistic models proposed by Greek and Roman culture, as well as that the elements

for the elaboration of more demure, rational and useful speeches and writings be

provided for the faithful people.

From another aspect, since the end of the 18th century, a current that we could call with

its asegunes “ultramontane”, heir in part to the Jesuit tradition, also arose. A fairly

active network of priests and laity linked to the world of the Jesuits in exile, acting in

anticipation of better times. Those who recognize themselves in these positions abhor

the Council of Pistoia of 1786, in which Italian Jansenism managed to make many of its

wishes come true under the protection of Bishop Scipione de Ricci and the inspiration

of the theologian Pietro Tamburini, and they see with pessimistic eyes the outbreak

French revolutionary, whom they interpret as the result of the influence of the

philosophes in society, in alliance with the Jansenistagalican side, a characterization, it

is worth saying, that many examples deny: Tamburini himself, like many other

Jansenists, he lived with horror the political process in France, Pablo Vázquez who

decidedly opposed it, even publishing diatribes, had his library well stocked with

Jansenist authors. This "ultramontana" aspect will have to see in the conjuncture of the

consummation of Independence, the occasion to separate the Mexican Church from the

reformist experiments of the Bourbons, ultimately responsible for the expulsion of the

Jesuits, and establish direct relations with the Holy See. And such a search for support

in Rome and the

criticism of Bourbon regalism also contains, although in an ambiguous way, a certain

questioning of the basic parameters of the Christian regime. However, it should not be
thought that the current characterized as "reformist" and the one we have just presented

constitute necessarily different universes: although they will be if we consider them

globally, and increasingly to the extent that the political and religious spheres become

autonomous. ; sometimes, elements of one and the other are detectable even in the same

individual, as is the case with our character.

IV. About the terms “Enlightenment”, “illustrated”, “Catholic Enlightenment” and

“New Spanish Illustration”

A polysemic category is what is usually called "Catholic Enlightenment", a misleading

term and sufficiently ambiguous to fit into it ideas that are sometimes very different and

even contradictory to each other, and that we will try to avoid in this work. François-

Xavier Guerra himself affirms that what is designated as “Enlightenment” is a parallel

process to the advance of absolutism and, in fact, is “a