Catholic Reformation
• Counter Reformation?
• Catholic Reformation?
• Anti-Reformation?
• Change or Continuity?
Meta-narratives of the Reformation
• The Weberian Legacy
• The end of the Middle
Ages
• The end of scholasticism
and the start of
humanism
• Contemporary polemics:
Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623)
Contested Humanisms
Erasmus
De libero arbitrio
diatribe sive collatio
1524
Juan Luis Vives (1493-1540)
De subventione pauperum
sive de humanis
necessitatibus
(on assistance to the
poor)
Augustinianism
• Intellectual context: Humanist
• Theological context: Salvation and Justification
• Confessional context: Catholic or Protestant?
‘The preoccupation of Western Christendom with the
views of Augustine was not a product of the Protestant
Reformation, nor a concern confined to the confrontation
between Catholics and Protestants. The ‘Augustinian
moment’ lasted rather from the mid-fifteenth to the mideighteenth century, symbolizing an obsession with the
most central problems of the Christian faith, salvation
and grace, Justification and predestination…’
A.D. Wright, The Counter Reformation, p. 6.
Pre-‘Reformation’ Heretics
The Ambiguous case of the
Waldensians (1170s)
• Poverty (like the Franciscans?)
• Against clerically administered sacraments
(like the Protestants?)
• Survived underground and joined the
Protestant movement in the sixteenth century
Pre – ‘Reformation’ reform
The case of the Franciscans (c. 1223)
• Poverty (like the Waldensians)
• Against corruption of the Church (like the
Franciscans)
• Inspired by religious fervour (mysticism)
• Had a radical branch (the Spiritualists) who
compared the Pope to the anti-Christ (like
Luther?)
Council of Trent 1545-1563
Political Context
A New Sense of Crisis?
Whereas there is, at this time, not without the shipwreck of many souls, and
grievous detriment to the unity of the Church, a certain erroneous doctrine
disseminated touching Justification; the sacred and holy, oecumenical and
general Synod of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost,--the most
reverend lords, Giammaria del Monte, bishop of Palaestrina, and Marcellus of
the title of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, priest, cardinals of the holy Roman
Church, and legates apostolic a latere, presiding therein, in the name of our
most holy father and lord in Christ, Paul III., by the providence of God, Pope,purposes, unto the praise and glory of Almighty God, the tranquillising of the
Church, and the salvation of souls, to expound to all the faithful of Christ the
true and sound doctrine touching the said Justification; which (doctrine) the
sun of justice, Christ Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, taught, which
the apostles transmitted, and which the Catholic Church, the Holy Ghost
reminding her thereof, has always retained; most strictly forbidding that any
henceforth presume to believe, preach, or teach, otherwise than as by this
present decree is defined and declared
Decree on Justification, Council of Trent 6th Session, 1547
The Long View: Conciliarism
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Papal Schism (1378 – 1417)
Council of Pisa (1409)
Council of Constance (1414 - 1418)
Council of Florence / Basel (1431 - 1439)
Fifth Lateran Council 1512-17 (condemnation
of conciliarism)
Papal Monarchy
Art & Power
Tridentine Reforms
• Education: establishment of diocesan
seminaries
• Society: Increase in church weddings
• Accountability: annual episcopal visitations
• Preaching: increase in standards
• Reform: regular and monastic clergy
• Faith: affirmation of veneration of saints and
images
Hybrid Results
• Reaffirmation of the Nicene Creed
• Literary reforms
Tridentine Catechism 1566
(Catechism = summary of the doctrines of the church, used for
teaching purposes)
• Aimed to improve the
education of the clergy
• Emphasis that priests have
care of souls (ad parochos)
• Official manual of popular
instruction
Index of Prohibited Books
Expansion of Saints (1622)
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Ignatius Loyola
Francis Xavier
Philip Neri
Teresa of Ávila
Isidor the Laborer
A New form of Catholicism?
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Holy poverty
Mysticism
Saints
Religious Orders
Communication
Gabriele Paleotti
(1522–1597),
Archbishop of Bologna,
De sacris et profanes
imaginibus (1582)
Realism
Pompeo Batoni, Sacro cuore di Gesù, 1760s
Impact on social and sacred
landscapes
• Churches (emphasis on importance of the
host, and images)
• Social practices (baptism)
• Relationships (marriage)
The Counter Reformation and Gender
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Importance of women to Catholic revival
Female piety (Teresa de Avila)
Intellectual interest in women: Juan Vives
Enclosure of nuns
Emphasis on marriage
Infant baptism – investigation of midwives
Suspicion of superstition – Witch hunt
Witch Hunts
• Malleus Maleficarum (1486)
• Catholic witch-hunters accused witches of
heretical diabolism
• Protestant witch-hunters thought they were
stamping out the superstitions of old pagan
religions
Who was the face of the Catholic
Reformation?
Jesuits (Society of Jesus)
• Founded by Ignatius of Loyola and Francisco
Xavier
• Gained papal approval in 1540
• Mendicant?
• Favoured by the papacy as global missionaries in
the early modern period
• Shock troops of the Catholic Reformation?
• Too powerful?
• Suppression 1767
• Restoration 1814
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt0Y39e
MvpI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZegQYg
ygdw
The Inquisition: did nobody expect it?
• 1231 Pope Gregory IX established the first
formal ecclesiastical Inquisition tribunal to
combat heresy
• 1478 Establishment of the Spanish Inquisition
• 1510 Inquisition tribunals spread to the
Canary Islands
• 1542 Roman Inquisition
• 1571 Philip II authorised a Mexican Holy Office
The Franciscan experience of
Inquisition (14 c.)
Driven out of his mind by anger, the inquisitor ordered that,
dressed in a short tunic, the prisoner be put first in a bath of
hot water, then of cold. Then, with a stone tied to his feet, he
was raised up again, kept there for a while, and dropped
again, and his shins were poked with reeds as sharp as
swords. Again and again he was hauled up until, on the
thirteenth elevation, the rope broke and he fell from a great
height with the stone still tied to his feet. As that destroyer of
the faithful stood looking at him, he lay there only half alive,
whith his body shattered. The treacherous man’s servants
took the body and disposed of it in a cesspool
Angelo of Clareno, p. 172.
Inquisition, Auto de Fe
Auto de Fe, Mani, 1562
Changing the face of Europe?
• Visual landscape: Architecture / Art
• Social landscape: Communities
• Spiritual landscape: Ideologies
Spread of Protestantism?
Spread of Catholicism?
Peace of Augsburg 1555
The Spanish Empire
Papal Monarchy or Imperial
Theocracy?
• Spanish empire
• Use of religion in empire
• Crown inquisition
The Global Catholic Reformation
Conclusion
• Not inevitable - many continuities with older
challenges and solutions and many similarities
between Catholics and Protestants
• Significant Changes: Tridentine Catholicism,
Papal monarchy, new saints, new religious
orders, Inquisition
• Effecting the shape of global Catholicism