Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bárbara Mujica
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Women Religious ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
San Jose ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Maria De San Jose ◽  
Epistolary Exchange ◽  
The Catholic Church

The sixteenth century was a period of crisis in the Catholic Church. Monastic reorganization was a major issue, and women were at the forefront of charting new directions in convent policy. The story of the Carmelite Reform has been told before, but never from the perspective of the women on the front lines. Nearly all accounts of the movement focus on Teresa de Avila, (1515-1582), and end with her death in 1582. Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform: The Disciples of Teresa de Avila carries the story beyond Teresa’s death, showing how the next generation of Carmelite nuns struggled into the seventeenth century to continue her mission. It is unique in that it draws primarily from female-authored sources, in particular, the letters of three of Teresa’s most dynamic disciples: María de San José, Ana de Jesús and Ana de San Bartolomé.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bárbara Mujica
Keyword(s):  
Women Religious ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Letter Writing ◽  
San Jose ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Maria De San Jose ◽  
Teresa De Jesus ◽  
Epistolary Exchange ◽  
The Middle Ages

Women Religious and Epistolary Exchange in the Carmelite Reform tells the story of the Carmelite expansion beyond the death of Teresa de Jesús, showing how three of her most dynamic disciples, María de San José, Ana de Jesús, and Ana de San Bartolomé, struggled to continue her mission in Portugal, France, and the Low Countries. Like Teresa, these women were prolific letter writers. Catalina de Cristo, a Carmelite nun who never left Spain, also produced a corpus of letters that reveals the distress of those who anxiously waited for news of their sisters abroad. In devoting themselves so assiduously to letter-writing, these women, as Joan Ferrante has shown, were continuing a long monastic tradition that had begun in the Middle Ages.

Images of the Priesthood: An Analysis of Catholic Sermons from the Late Seventeenth Century

2000 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renate Dürr
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Pastoral Care ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Catholic Church

“All, therefore, who consider themselves Christians may be absolutely certain that we are all equally priests.”1 With this declaration Martin Luther categorically repudiated the Catholic understanding of priesthood as a holy estate with indelible marks bestowed at consecration. According to the reformers all Christians, in principle, have the same authority in word and sacrament, but only those authorized by the respective community of believers may wield it. This assessment not only reflected certain irregularities within the clergy but also signified a completely new definition of the priesthood. It cannot be understood outside the context of existing contemporary criticism—not only from reformatory circles—of the state of numerous parishes who suffered under poorly educated, morally unacceptable (from a contemporary point of view) or indeed absent clergymen. The Catholic Church's answer to this challenge, therefore, had two aims: plans for far-reaching reforms were intended to renew the image of priests and, primarily, to provide effective pastoral care. Polemical theological debates against Protestants and discussions within the Catholic Church were intended not only to strengthen the certainty of the fundamental essence of priestly identity but also to facilitate a differentiation of Catholic from Protestant understanding. The decisions of the Council of Trent also touched both areas. At the 23rd session both the theological basis of the sacrament of consecration and the plans to reform the rules concerning the bishops' obligatory residence in their parishes were debated.2

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.

scholarly journals Bishop Nicholas French and the second Ormond peace, 1648-9

1948 ◽  
Vol 6 (22) ◽  
pp. 83-100
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Corish
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
The State ◽  
Roman Catholic Church ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
The Church ◽  
The Catholic Church

Europe in the seventeenth century was a land of mar and confusion because the great political problems raised by the religious disruption of the preceding century had not yet been solved. Chief among these was the problem of the relations between the Roman catholic church and a protestant state. The teaching of the pope's indirect power in temporal matters in any problem involving a breach of the moral order (ratione peccati) had been strongly re-stated by Bellarmine, and was the official attitude of the church. A protestant prince had committed a grave sin, that of heresy, and so it was the pope's right and duty to depose him and absolve his Catholic subjects from their allegiance. But this political theory was becoming impractical as the seventeenth century progressively demonstrated that Europe was permanently divided. As might be expected, juridical forms lagged behind the development of events; but by the middle of the century the Roman curia, while not prepared to give antecedent approval to a peace with protestants, might be said to be ready to acquiesce once it had been concluded, if the position and rights of the Catholic church could be assured. Yet this assurance was, in the circumstances, almost impossible. The Catholic church could not rest satisfied with toleration as a sect, but demanded recognition as an organised society with a source of jurisdiction illdependent of the state.

scholarly journals They Tore God Limb From Limb

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katlyn Kichko
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Singular Case ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Catholic Church

This paper interacts specifically with two separate texts, that is Michel de Certeau’s The Possession at Loudun and Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller. Both of these texts present a narrative of religious turmoil, demonic possessions and a heretical Inquisition, respectively, and the events which surround a single religious dissenter. Examining the two heretical men presented within these texts in comparison allows for an understanding of Catholic Church dogma during the age of the Counter Reformation, and how such an institution managed threats, both external and internal. Moreover, this paper also examines the methodologies behind the historical discourse, in order to understand the validity of the narratives presented, and the scope of historical depth sought. Addressing methodology is crucial when one narrows focus to two singular case studies by two separate historians. Thus, this paper intends to illustrate the threats to normative religious discourse which Urbain Grandier and Menocchio possessed in the face of the Catholic Church, while also demonstrating the methodologies by which the two men are presented within their respective histories.

Papal Efforts Toward Protestant Representation at Trent

1948 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Kuttner
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sacramental Theology ◽  
Political Realism ◽  
Council Of Trent ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The One ◽  
The Catholic Church

It is not within the purpose of this paper to appraise the historical significance which the Council of Trent held for the consolidation of Catholic doctrine on all the points of dogmatic and sacramental theology that had been put into question by the religious innovators. Nor shall we examine the role which its measures of canonical legislation played in the great process of spiritual and disciplinary renewal which eventually determined the position of the Catholic Church in the modern world. We propose rather to turn our attention to the great goal which the Council did not reach: the restoration of the one Respublica Christiana, of the Catholic unity which prior to the sixteenth century had been the only conceivable form of Christian religious existence. To the eye of the historian, it is true, the rift in Western Christendom appears quite obviously prepared by the developments of two centuries preceding Luther's challenge. The exile of Avignon; the great schism; the constitutional unrest of the conciliar epoch of Constance and Basel; the political realism by which Renaissance popes had sought above all to consolidate their position as Italian territorial rulers; the growth of the national states and national sovereignties; the ferment of humanistic ideologies—they all were alarming and distressing symptoms of the radical disintegration of mediaeval unity.

scholarly journals A Catholic Theologian Responds to Copernicanism: The Theological Judicium of Paolo Foscarini’s Lettera

1997 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irving A. Kelter
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Celestial Bodies ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Catholic Church

This paper is an in-depth analysis of the Carmelite Paolo Foscarini's role in the debate on Copernican cosmology in the early seventeenth century. Using as a point of departure the 1616 Judicium issued by the Catholic Church against Foscarini's pro-Copernican treatise, this analysis will lead to a clearer understanding of the discussions on the fluidity or hardness of celestial bodies, and more generally on the conflicting Biblical and Copernican models.

scholarly journals A ‘Chief Error’ of Protestant Soteriology: Sin in the Justified and Early Modern Catholic Theology

Perichoresis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 41-72
Author(s):  
Matthew T. Gaetano
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Catholic Theology ◽  
Good Works ◽  
The World ◽  
The Catholic Church

AbstractCatholic theologians after Trent saw the Protestant teaching about the remnants of original sin in the justified as one of the ‘chief ’ errors of Protestant soteriology. Martin Luther, John Calvin, Martin Chemnitz, and many Protestant theologians believed that a view of concupiscence as sinful, strictly speaking, did away with any reliance on good works. This conviction also clarified the Christian’s dependence on the imputed righteousness of Christ. Catholic theologians condemned this position as detracting from the work of Christ who takes away the sins of the world. The rejection of this teaching—and the affirmation of Trent’s statement that original sin is taken away and that the justified at baptism is without stain or ‘immaculate’ before God—is essential for understanding Catholic opposition to Protestant soteriology. Two Spanish Dominican Thomists, Domingo de Soto and Bartolomé de Medina, rejected the Protestant teaching on imputation in part because of its connection with the view on the remnants of original sin in the justified. Adrian and Peter van Walenburch, brothers who served as auxiliary bishops of Cologne in the second half of the seventeenth century, argued that the Protestants of their time now agreed with the Catholic Church on a number of soteriological points. They also drew upon some of their post–Tridentine predecessors to offer a Catholic account of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Nonetheless, the issue of sin in the justified remained a point of serious controversy.

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