During the first decade of the twentieth century the Roman Catholic Church was shaken to its core by an intellectual reform movement, 'modernism', seeking radical changes in the traditional approaches to biblical studies, philosophy and theology. The repercussions of the church authorities' condemnations and repression of the so-callled modernist heresy persisted for more than half a century. Then, liberated by Pope John XXIII, himself suspected of being a modernist, the Second Vatican Council created the possibility for many modernist ideas to resurface and initiate a renewal of the church in the modern world. The present work contains the integral correspondence of the leader of this modernist movement, Baron Friedrich von Hugel to Maude D. Petre along with her two extant letters to him. The correspondence offers a unique glimpse into the history of the movement and an example of how its leading protagonist promoted the novel ideas of many of the seminal thinkers of the time among his friends and colleagues.
Sadly, the letters also depict the often unchristian nature of the authorities' response and the subsequent suffering inflicted on some of the church's most critical but faithful and enlightened members.