In an 'Autobiographical Introduction' Dr Vidler explains how, since his undergraduate days, he has been interested in those who sought to reconcile Roman Catholicism with modernity between the years 1890 and 1910 when their movement was stamped out by Pius X. In this expanded and annotated version of his Lectures Dr Vidler shows that the modernists, while they shared a common aim, differed much from one another both in temperament and in ideas. In addition to his familiarity with the literature of the movement, he has had access to many unpublished letters as well as to personal sources of information and so has been able to illustrate the characteristics of the modernists with many lively touches. Among the English modernists those treated most fully are Baron von Hugel, A. L. Lilley and Edmund Bishop. A full bibliography gives details of older bibliographical studies of the modernists and of their own writing and the book is illustrated by eight portraits.