The Thomistic Revival and the Relationship between the Jesuits and the Papacy,1878–1914

The revival of Scholasticism by Pope Leo XIII with his encyclical Aeterni Patris (1879) had been in preparation for at least half a century. He hoped that Thomism would not only give the Church a complete program for revival of the sacred sciences but also enable the Church to effectively confront modernity. Leo’s chosen instrument to forward this scenario was the Society of Jesus. This hope continued under his successor, Pope Pius X, but the Vatican’s struggles against Modernism surfaced growing tensions both among Jesuits themselves and in their relationship with the papacy.