Abstract

After the research of the 1960s and the cultural impact of the Second Vatican Council on the First Vatican Council studiesthe 1990s witnessed a historiographical trend which led to transcending traditional patterns. Ecclesiastical history got linked to cultural and political history, in broad chronological scenarios. The spiritual characteristics of the Council emerged as an attempt by the Holy See to privilege the social roots of the Church in the face of the revolutions of modernity. The First Vatican Council sheds light on the papacy’s “detemporalizationµ process and Catholic mobilization in the religious and social fields, moving beyond the practices of the Ancien Régime.