The eighteenth century witnessed the final flowering of the reforming efforts of the Counter-Reformation, but it also saw deep cracks appear in the facade of the traditional alliance of throne, altar and orthodox belief. These rifts have often been explained by the development of an intellectual movement, the Enlightenment, which displayed hostility both to the institutional church and even to the practices of traditional Christianity. The struggle between reforming states and the church over the use of ecclesiastical wealth, the extreme differences between the high and low clergy, the growing tension between the extravagances of baroque popular piety and simpler forms of religious expression, the inequalities of an archaic organization, the uneven distribution of resources between the urban and rural church, all pointed to the beginnings of a crisis within the church and between it and the larger society.

The historiography of the church is, of course, extensive. The shelves of libraries are heavy with studies of bishops, seminaries, religious orders, relations between church and state and the analysis of theological disputes. Members of the church have studied its history with careful detail and much of their work is of considerable merit. In France, A. Schaer's work on the Alsatian clergy, in Spain, Lôpez Ferreiro's well-documented history of the archdiocese of Santiago, are examples of the solidity of clerical scholarship. But many of these works, though valuable for the information they provide on the operation of ecclesiastical institutions, neglect the problem of the relationship of the church to the wider society.