Benito Arias Montano

Author(s):  
Hilaire Kallendorf

Benito Arias Montano (b. c. 1525/27–d. 1598) was a Spanish humanist, censor, polymath, and chaplain to King Philip II, as well as librarian for the royal library at El Escorial. He is best known for having produced the Polyglot Bible—also known as the Biblia Regia (Royal Bible)—printed by Christopher Plantin in Antwerp, a monumental undertaking for which it was necessary to move physically to the Netherlands for an extended period of seven years. There he became an agent of international book culture by virtue of his work on the Inquisitorial Index of prohibited and expurgated books, as well as an acquisitions broker for the Spanish royal library and a circle of prominent Spanish intellectuals including Fernando de Herrera and Francisco Pacheco. In addition to printing the Royal Bible, Plantin also received a contract from the Spanish Crown to print other devotional literature (prayer books, breviaries, missals, books of hours, etc.). Arias Montano supervised this publishing program too. The “Rey Prudente” trusted his judgement enough to request his input on important political decisions after he distinguished himself as part of the Spanish delegation to the Council of Trent, the multi-year gathering which launched the Counter-Reformation. Educated in theology at the Universities of Seville and Alcalá, he also became a Knight of the Order of Santiago. He wrote poetry and prose in both Latin and Spanish on a wide range of topics including medicine, geology, physics, architecture, botany, and even painting. His epistolary correspondence with a transnational network of merchants, diplomats and intellectuals is voluminous. In addition to the above-mentioned languages, he was also fluent in Greek, Hebrew, Italian, and French. His probable converso origins might explain some of his activities as a Hebraist, mostly focused around providing a more literal translation of the Bible than the outdated, but still standard, Vulgate.

Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin

This chapter analyzes “Counter Reformation,” a terminology that implies the developments within the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and beyond of reactions to the Protestant challenge. It explains how historians generally prefer the term “Catholic Reformation” over Counter Reformation as it is more neutral and better able to accommodate the range of initiatives witnessed in the period. It also points out reform efforts that predate the Protestant challenge, in which a new ethos developed within the Catholic Church in the middle of the sixteenth century. The chapter talks about the fathers of the Council of Trent, who sought to address a wide range of issues relating to belief and practice. It looks at the “Tridentine” decrees that were implemented alongside various papal initiatives and efforts at the local level.


2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 199-228
Author(s):  
Наталия Бондар

The article analyzes the publishing program and methods of the two greatest figures in early East Slavic printing during the Renaissance period, the printers and publishers Ivan Fedorov and Petr Mstislavets. Behind their publishing work was their goal to print books for individual use outside the church both as resources for basic literacy instruction and for more advanced education. This goal was pursued by publishing books that aided in the development of reading skills (primers, Books of Hours, Psalters) and texts for gaining a deeper insight into the church’s teachings (the Acts and Epistles, Gospels, Didactic Gospels, the New Testament, and the Bible). The article focuses on Ivan Fedorov’s and Petr Mstislavets’ goal of printing and distributing books among non-clerical segments of the population, particularly among the middle-class townsmen and, possibly, in the emerging urban fraternities. Ivan Fedorov and Petr Mstislavets prepared printed books for use as textbooks in schools and for independent individual reading. The article advances the argument that there were “book fraternities” or reading circles, which have their roots back in the much older European traditions and that often included printers. The article attempts to explain why the publications of Ivan Fedorov and Petr Mstislavets became a model for numerous later editions. The article concludes with several suggestions on how this research might be followed up in the future.


1965 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 557-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kessel Schwartz

Almost from the inception of the Spanish Inquisition which sought to stifle scientific investigation and philosophical speculation while rejecting foreign ideologies, contrary currents existed in Spain. The liberal humanistic movement headed by Erasmus preached intellectual freedom and a defense of interior religión. This ideology never disappeared in Spain in spite of the formation of the Company of Jesus by Ignacio de Loyola and the efforts of Spanish theologians who promoted the Counter Reformation at the Council of Trent. Under Felipe II foreign ideas were forbidden as heretical and interpretations independent of the Church were stifled. Nevertheless, criticism of the status quo continued. Reginaldo González Montano wrote the first attack on the Inquisition, Sanctae Inquisitioms Hispanicae in 1567.


2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig A. Monson

Abstract Reexamination of a wide range of documents surrounding the twenty-second, twenty-fourth, and twenty-fifth sessions of the Council of Trent reveals that delegates strived officially to say as little as possible about music: only that secular or impure elements should be eliminated and that specific issues should be settled locally, by individual bishops and provincial synods. But, beginning with Gustave Reese, several scholars have misleadingly strung together a preliminary canon, stressing textual intelligibility, which was never approved in the general congregations, and the few lines that actually supplanted it, concerned only with the elimination of lasciviousness. On the other hand, a largely unrecognized or misunderstood attack on church polyphony did occur at the less familiar twenty-fifth session, when Gabriele Paleotti may have attempted to suppress elaborate music in female monasteries. Although this attempt was rejected in the general congregations, its restrictions were subsequently revived by local authorities such as Paleotti and Carlo Borromeo in their own dioceses. In the Council's immediate aftermath, reformers such as Paleotti and Borromeo once again focused on the issue of intelligibility, affording it a quasi-official status that seems to have quickly become widely accepted as “iuxta formam concilii.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-319
Author(s):  
Jutta Sperling

This essay investigates Benedetto Caliari's Nativity of the Virgin (1576) with its provocative and unorthodox depiction of a bare-breasted wet-nurse in the context of both Protestant and Catholic criticism of “indecent” religious imagery. Reformers on both sides drew a connection between the Virgin Mary's ostentatious display of her lactating breasts and her presumed, derided, or hoped-for miracle-working capacities or intercessory powers. In post-Tridentine Venice, several artists, including Tintoretto and Veronese, all of whom were connected to the Scuola de’ Mercanti that commissioned Caliari's painting, employed religious breastfeeding imagery in a wide array of iconographies in order to express dissent with the Counter-Reformation church's emphasis on orthodoxy. In contrast to writers, artists were able to claim a certain degree of nonconformity and freedom from prosecution. In light of Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia, it is argued that religious lactation imagery after Trent produced irony, parody, doubt, and dissent.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
José Seguí Cantos

Resumen: Este trabajo trata de mos­trar un retrato de los profesores más impor­tantes de la Universidad de Valencia en los años de Felipe II y primeros años del reinado de Felipe III. Se describen las distintas trayec­torias vitales de profesores de los estudios de latinidad y de las distintas facultades. La sucesión de maestros y discípulos es la cons­tatación de que en los años finales del siglo XVI y primeros del siglo XVII asistimos en Valencia al paso de la Universidad del huma­nismo a la universidad de la contrarreforma provocado por el relevo en los profesores, la aplicación de los decretos de Trento al ámbito de la cultura, la aparición de las cátedras pa­vordías y la crisis económica que afecta a la ya maltrecha economía de la Universidad.Palabras clave: Universidad Valencia, profesores, humanismo, reforma católica.Abstract: This research intends to show a biographical portrait of the most im­portant professors of the university of Valen­cia during the reign of Philip II and the first years of the reign of Philip III. It focuses on the different vital trajectories of the profes­sors of the studies of Latinity and the various faculties. The succession of professors and disciples is the confirmation that, in the final years of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, Valencia is witnessing the turn of the Humanism university into the Counter-Reformation university. This was mainly caused by the replacement of profes­sors, the application of the decrees of Trent to the field of culture, the emergence of the pavordía chairs and the economic crisis that affected the already battered economy of the university.Keywords: University of Valencia, tea­chers, humanism, catholic reform.


1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-72
Author(s):  
Joseph F. Tempesta

Anthony Munday was a protege of John Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Leicester himself was a member of the progressive Protestant nobility in Elizabethan England, which sought to turn completely away from Rome and toward Geneva. These progressives wanted vernacular translations of great works such as the Bible and the classics. They aimed at founding an English and Protestant tradition of literature.In 1579 Philip II of Spain continued to press for an alliance with Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth seriously considered marrying the Due d'Alencon. Such a marriage would cement ties between England and France. The leading progressives, Leicester, Walshingham and Cecil could tolerate neither one of these Roman Catholic alliances. Thus, Leicester intensified his patronage of Puritan propagandists.When the Campion controversy arose in 1581, it proved a boon to Leicester and the progressives. Here was an opportunity to garner Elizabeth's support, if they could prove that Jesuits and Roman Catholics were plotting regicide and the return of England to Roman Catholicism.Between 1581 and 1584 Munday produced a series of pamphlets designed to arouse English opinion against “popish recusants.” This essay deals with one of these pamphlets: A discoverie of Edmund Campion and his confederates, their most horrible and traiterous practices against her majestye's most royal person and realm. … In this essentially propagandistic tract, Munday equates priestly activity of the Jesuits with subversion. This equation was based upon a Parliamentary statute of 1581, which declared that priests sent from abroad to convert Englishmen were guilty of treason.


Author(s):  
Richard Viladesau

The reformers of the 16th century brought to the fore questions regarding sacred images that had arisen in the context of changes in society, religion, and art in the late Middle Ages. Late medieval Catholicism already produced warnings against idolatry in the cult of images, superstition, and the misuse of popular devotional practices for monetary gain. Reformation-era re-evaluations of sacred images arose primarily from three overlapping impulses: (1) the humanistic enlightenment and critique of external religion; (2) concern for the Scriptures, including the Old Testament prohibition against idolatrous images; and (3) the ethical complaint against ecclesiastical luxury and neglect of the poor. Some of the Reformers fostered a more or less complete iconoclasm (e.g., Karlstadt, Bucer, and Hätzer). Others had positive attitudes toward art in general, but had reservations about religious representations (Calvin). Yet others had more ambiguous attitudes. Zwingli thought that images are inherently dangerous because of the temptation to idolatry, but his position softened toward the end of his life. Luther’s ideas on sacred representations changed through his career from a somewhat negative to a fairly positive evaluation. He held that the Old Testament prohibition pertained only to idols, not to images themselves. His primary concern was that images and devotion to them could foster a spirituality of external works as the means to salvation. This problem could be met by uniting images with texts and stressing their didactic function. The Council of Trent dealt with sacred art in 1568. The Council agreed with the reformers that abuses were possible in the cult of the saints and in the use of art, and also that much of the art itself was “inappropriate” for sacred use because of its worldliness. However, its decree insisted on the validity and usefulness of images and their veneration. The decree of Trent did not give specific guidelines for sacred art, but only general principles, leaving implementation in the hands of bishops. The vagueness of Trent’s decree made room for a wide range of practical judgments about what was “appropriate” or “fitting” in sacred art. But in the second half of the 16th century, several bishops and theologians wrote treatises on painting to guide artists. The Tridentine reforms, although put into practice in varied ways, included several general characteristics: (1) elimination of “sensual” and secular elements from sacred art; (2) faithfulness to Scripture and tradition; (3) concern for doctrine and devotion above artistry; (4) use of art as a means of education, indoctrination, and propaganda; (5) the valuing of visual naturalism; (6) polemical concentration on contested dogmatic themes in content; and (7) the sensual as a means of entry into the spiritual. With the advent of the Baroque in the later stages of the Counter-Reformation, a spirit of triumph prevailed. Art that was pleasing to the senses brought an atmosphere of spiritual exaltation. Baroque art was purposefully theatrical, artful, and dramatic. An unintended result of the image controversies was the separation of sacred and secular art and the formulation of separate criteria for each.


Author(s):  
Guillermo Wilde

The Jesuits have impacted the history of colonial Latin America as have few other religious orders. Founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola and a group of companions, the Society of Jesus defined its profile from the beginning as an order devoted to apostolic activity, especially through missions, and education, which led it to promote new forms of preaching and teaching. Its expansion in the world coincides with the Catholic Counter-Reformation fostered by the Council of Trent (1545–1563), in which the Jesuits had a decisive participation. The growth and expansion of the order in Latin America was rapid and continuous. The first Jesuits arrived in Brazil in 1549, in Peru in 1568, and in Mexico in 1572, and they soon became involved in the main religious, social, economic, and political activities of each region. They founded numerous colleges and residences in the most important cities and dozens of missions, or reducciones, villages among the indigenous populations living on the so-called borderlands of the colonial domains of Spain and Portugal. The several Jesuit establishments in Latin America were territorially organized into provinces, which maintained constant and fluid communication with the headquarters of the order in Rome, where its highest authority, the superior general, resided. Demands by local governments, an increase in the number of operarios, and an expansion of the political and ecclesiastical jurisdictions led to the establishment of new Jesuit provinces in the 17th century, most especially that of Paraguay, which became one of the most famous in Latin America. Each province was staffed by both priests and coadjutor brothers (lay Jesuits who had not completed their training) from different European countries, mainly Spain, as well as Creoles and mestizos born in America. Both internally and externally, the writing of documents of different types served as a central instrument of communication and government of the various Jesuit establishments. This abundance of documents produced is why the corpus of research of the Jesuit order in Latin America is profuse.


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