Rethinking “Catholic Reform” and “Counter-Reformation”: What Happened in Early Modern Catholicism—a View from Italy

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Massimo Firpo
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Roman Catholicism ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Early Modern Catholicism ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Catholic Reform

There are now a number of ways to describe the phenomena which come under the umbrella of innovations in Roman Catholicism in the early modern period including “Counter Reformation”; “Catholic Reformation” and “Early Modern Catholicism.” After a brief survey of the various labels used by scholars over the last half century or more, this article seeks to rehabilitate the use of the label “Counter Reformation” in the light, particularly, of the determining role played by the Holy Office (aka Roman Inquisition) in shaping the Catholic Church down to Vatican ii (1962-65). A key role in this was played by Gian Pietro Carafa, who was made head of the congregation of the Holy Office at its foundation in 1542 and who became pope as Paul iv in 1555. During the key decades from the 1540s to 1570s the Inquisition in Rome set the agenda and by means, not only, of a series of trials of prominent members of the clerical establishment whom they regarded as their enemies, succeeded in intimidating their opponents. In doing so they also subverted episcopal authority, whose strengthening had been a watchword at the Council of Trent.

Mariology in the Counter Reformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 453-467
Author(s):  
Robert Fastiggi
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
French School

This chapter discusses the Marian doctrine and devotion of the Counter-Reformation (c. 1550–1700), which is also called the Post-Tridentine era, the Baroque age, or the early modern period. It begins with a brief summary of Catholic Marian teaching of the 1500s and 1600s and then provides an overview of the Marian teachings of the Council of Trent (1545–63). It covers the development of systematic Mariology by Suárez and others as well as the Mariology of the French School of Bérulle, Olier, St John Eudes, and St Louis de Montfort. Subsequently, attention is given to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Marian mystics; Jansenism; and the critics of excessive Marian piety.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miles Pattenden
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The One

A pope’s legitimacy—and the authority of papal officials—derived from his election. But the election process itself generated practical, logistical, legal, and political problems which all parties with a stake in the election’s outcome had to negotiate. The chapter lays out the book’s overall contention, namely that the papal office’s elective nature was as important in shaping papal history in the early modern period as the pope’s twin identities of temporal prince and universal pastor. It seeks to introduce the unique issues and complications of papal elections and the inherent difficulties that new popes faced in establishing themselves after an election. It also starts a discussion of decision-making within a political elite, in this case the one which occupied the highest levels of the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church.

A Tridentine Response

2020 ◽  
pp. 104-131
Author(s):  
Kenneth Austin
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Catholic Church

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.

Patrick Boyle, The Irish Colleges and the Historiography of Irish Catholicism

2013 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 317-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liam Chambers
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Significant Feature ◽  
Main Role ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Irish College ◽  
History Of

More than forty Irish colleges were established in France, Spain, Portugal, the Italian States and the Austrian Empire between the 1580s and 1690s to cater for a diverse range of Irish Catholic students and priests who had travelled to the continent to pursue higher education. The colleges were a significant feature of Irish Catholicism, most obviously in the early modern period, and they have therefore attracted substantial attention from historians. The first modern attempts to write their histories appeared in the later nineteenth century and were heavily influenced by a Rankean emphasis on primary sources, as well as contemporary Irish Catholic nationalism. If the dominant historiography of the period emphasized the persecution of the ‘penal era’, then the existence of a network of Irish colleges producing redoubtable clergy for the Irish mission helped to explain how the Catholic Church survived in Ireland. In this paradigm, the production of priests was the main role bestowed on the colleges. This essay examines the foremost early historian of the colleges, and of the viewpoint just oudined, the Vincentian priest and superior of the Irish College in Paris, Patrick Boyle. In 1901 he produced the first book-length history of an Irish college: The Irish College in Paris from 1578 to 1901.

scholarly journals The Ambiguities of the Holy: Authenticating Relics in Seventeenth-Century Spain*

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Olds
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Spanish Town

Recent scholarship has shown that, even at the heart of the Catholic world, defining holiness in the Counter-Reformation was remarkably difficult, in spite of ongoing Roman reforms meant to centralize and standardize the authentication of saints and relics. If the standards for evaluating sanctity were complex and contested in Rome, they were even less clear to regional actors, such as the Bishop of Jaén, who supervised the discovery of relics in Arjona, a southern Spanish town, beginning in 1628. The new relics presented the bishop, Cardinal Baltasar de Moscoso y Sandoval, with knotty historical, theological, and procedural dilemmas. As such, the Arjona case offers a particularly vivid example of the ambiguities that continued to complicate the assessment of holiness in the early modern period. As the Bishop of Jaén found, the authentication of relics came to involve deeper questions about the nature of theological and historical truth that were unresolved in Counter-Reformation theory and practice.

The Garden of Anguish: Gethsemane in Early Modern England

2014 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH COVINGTON
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Theological Interpretation ◽  
Divided Self ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
Spiritual Self ◽  
Self Examination

Few biblical episodes have generated more theological interpretation across the centuries than that of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he appears fearfully to resist the divine will in the moments before the passion sequence is initiated. Scholars of the early modern period, however, have tended not to notice how central the scene became in the wake of Protestant and Catholic reformation developments, renewed calls for spiritual self-examination and the resurgent phenomenon of martyrdom. This article addresses this lacuna by arguing that, in the case of England, Jesus in Gethsemane not only held acute resonances across different confessions, but resulted in interpretations that perpetuated a new kind of subjectivity, and one that influenced modernity and its notions of the divided self in a state of faith and doubt.

scholarly journals The Contributions of the Council of Trent to the Catholic Reformation

Perichoresis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 3-20
Author(s):  
Robert Fastiggi
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Final Section ◽  
The Other ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Ecumenical Council ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractThis article begins by examining what is meant by the Catholic Reformation and how it relates to the other frequently used term, Counter–Reformation. It then discusses the different ways Catholics and Protestants in the early 16th century understood ecclesial reform. Next there is a consideration of the call for a general or ecumenical council to resolve the differences between the Catholics and Protestant reformers; the reasons for the delay of the council; and the reasons why the Protestants did not participate. The article then provides a summary of the three main periods of the Council of Trent: 1545–1547; 1551–1552; and 1562–1563 along with the 1547–1549 Bologna period. This is followed by a detailed overview of the reforms of the council, which were both doctrinal and disciplinary. The article shows that, while abuses related to various Catholic practices and the sacraments were addressed, the main concerns in the various disciplinary decrees related to clerical corruption and immorality. The article addresses the need for bishops to reside in their dioceses; stop clerical corruption, greed, and nepotism; and establish seminaries for the proper formation of priests. After the review of the disciplinary reform decrees, attention is given to the Catechism of the Council of Trent that served as a resource for parish priests in their instruction of the faithful. The final section considers viewpoints of different historians regarding the effect of the Council of Trent on reform within the Catholic Church.

scholarly journals Lay Female Devotional Lives in the Counter Reformation

2017 ◽  
Vol 97 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 369-380
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hillman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Early Modern Women ◽  
Lay Women ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
New Directions ◽  
The World

In 1563, the Catholic Church responded to the Protestant challenge to the religious life as the most holy feminine state with the maxim aut maritus aut murus (wife or wall). The navigation of that dictum by early modern women across Catholic Europe has arguably been one of the dominant themes in the scholarship over the last thirty years. Certainly, there had always been the opportunity for women to lead a religious life outside of marriage and the cloister as beatas, tertiaries and beguines. Yet it was after the Council of Trent (1545–1563) that women had to renegotiate a space in the world in which they could lead spiritually-fulfilling devotional lives. If this was one unintended legacy of 1517, then the quincentenary of the Reformation seems a timely moment to reflect on new directions in the now burgeoning historiography on lay women in Counter-Reformation Europe.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Stefan Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Catholic Reformation ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Source Criticism ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Catholic Reform ◽  
The Catholic Church

This Introduction presents Onofrio Panvinio (1530–68), an Augustinian friar who gained prominence as a historian of both the Catholic Church and Roman antiquity. Historiography in sixteenth-century Rome and the interrelationship between history and theology have been awaiting a profound re-examination. Panvinio’s case enables us to trace changes in the approach to history-writing across the epochs of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation. This Introduction discusses Panvinio’s methods, which were modelled on humanist source criticism. It highlights differences between Panvinio and the more strongly confessionalized and dogmatized historiography (such as that of Cesare Baronio) which came after him. Lastly, there is a brief discussion of the terms Catholic Reform and Counter Reformation.

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