7. Modern Mary—Reformation to the present

‘Modern Mary—Reformation to the present’ looks at the Virgin Mary from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century to the present. During this period Mary was often at the centre of conflicts over religious ideals that contributed to the Enlightenment. The Catholic Council of Trent reaffirmed Mary’s perpetual virginity, intercession, pilgrimage, and relics. Catholic Marian beliefs were shaped by some of the misgivings that Protestants had voiced about Catholic views of Mary. The rosary and apparitions of Mary illustrate Catholic views of Mary after the Council of Trent. The so-called ‘Marian Century’ began in 1854 with Pope Pius IX’s declaration of Mary’s Immaculate Conception effectively ended in 1965 with the church reforms of Vatican II. Marian spirituality in the 21st century have taken often surprising directions.

Stimmversagen, Sprachinfarkt und Zungenbremse? Posttridentinische Betrachtungsliteratur Italiens zwischen orazione mentale und orazione vocale

In the following, the literary potential of a counterreformation-minded uncertainty will be in focus which in turn resulted from the distinction in orazione orale and orazione mentale made in the context of the Council of Trent. The differentiation of inner-mental and external-vocal voice as well as one’s own word and the prescribed or appropriated word was accelerated by the Council and lead to a self-reflection of prayer literature and meditations concerning their voice and voicing. Whose voice speaks in prayers and contemplation and by which aesthetic qualities are they characterized? The literary crystallisation of standardization, domestication but also the emancipating obstinacy of the meditation-voice ought to be made visible hereafter in an exemplary way. Promoted by the Council of Trent, the revaluation of the spiritual ‘inner’ prayer, in comparison to the textual prayer spoken with an external voice, has become effective in the Catholic counterreformation literature as creative-conceptual freedom, but also as a practical-aesthetic challenge. Literary and lyrical meditations – as will be shown here using the example of Antonio Grillo, Gabriele Fiamma and Loreto Mattei – not only implement the spiritual voice of contemplation discursively and thematically, but also textually and performatively. The specific relationship between production aesthetics (meditating lyrical self) and reception aesthetics (meditating contemplative poetry appropriating self) has a supporting function. Conflicting voice-discourses do not become effective in the sense of reciprocal prevention, but in the sense of symbiotic coexistence. The lyrical considerations analysed here do not solve the interferences of vocal regimes conceptually-fundamentally, but performatively-concretely.

Teaching Romans 7 after Trent: Michael Baius and his Lecture Hall on Concupiscence and Original Sin in Early Modern Louvain (1552–1589)

This article introduces a new corpus of sources relevant to the sixteenth-century Baianist controversy at the University of Louvain: student notes made during Michael Baius’ lectures on the Bible during the 1560s. The commentary on Romans 7 taught by the Royal Professor of Sacred Scripture contains a discussion on the sinfulness of concupiscence, the effect of the Fall driving humankind to sin. A contested concept between Catholics and Protestants, the nature of concupiscentia also lies at the core of debates on the orthodoxy of Baius’ justification theology, both early modern and more recent. The professor’s lecture on Romans 7 is analysed against his published treatises, the censures (1565–1567) and papal bull (1567) condemning certain propositions as heretical, and the Tridentine Decree on Original Sin (1546). While Baius’ Augustinian revaluation of humanity’s wounded nature (natura viciata) moved away from the Thomistic conception of concupiscence as innate, but disordered, he did respect the boundaries set by the Council of Trent. Indeed, Baius taught his positive theology in the interstices between the educational application of the Tridentine Decrees and the gradual assertion of dominance by a renewed Thomism in Catholic orthodoxy. I argue that such a historical reading of Baius’ ideas is the key to avoid the earlier dogmatic assessments of his theology.

Ptica u hrvatskome prezimenskome mozaiku

Findings of the previous research suggest that, although the first records of surnames on the territory of the contemporary Republic of Croatia date back to the 12th century, it is with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) that they became increasingly and extensively used (Frančić, 2015, 229). As far as contemporary surnames are concerned, their structure is regarded to be well established and easily detectable. Their frequency and distribution have also been the topics of much of previous research. Namely, the 2011 census showed that over thirty-three thousand surnames were registered in the Republic of Croatia. For the purposes of this paper, a group of surnames with a bird-related component – ornithonyms – has been singled out from the abovementioned list. The analysed corpus, consisting of approximately three hundred surnames with a component related to bird species, subspecies of groups, is of particular importance since, due to a number of linguistic and non-linguistic obstacles to the creation of a unique “bird” corpus, this interesting group of Croatian surnames has not been sufficiently described by Croatian linguists so far.

Portraying the Ideal Spanish Tridentine Prelate

The role played by cardinal portraits in Spain in the sixteenth century has not been much discussed, in part because there are few surviving examples, and many of these are still hard of access. Furthermore, Spanish cardinals formed a minority in the Roman Curia, even in the years of Spanish predominance in Europe after the Council of Trent. Extant portraits of Spanish cardinals are most common in Spain, where, as with images of ecclesiastics of lesser rank, they tended to form an integral part of a funerary complex or other commemorative setting. Alongside their tomb, the ecclesiastic left his portrait as an eternal memory of himself in the pious foundation he had established, where he is often represented in the very act of devotion.

“HISTORIE DIPINTE” E “IMMAGINI PARLATE” SAN CARLO BORROMEO NEGLI AFFRESCHI DI BIASCA

The ancient church of Saint Peter in Biasca, in Canton of Ticino, preserves a pictorial cycle on the Life of St. Charles Borromeo, commissioned in 1620 by the parish priest Giovanni Basso to the painter Alessandro Gorla from Bellinzona. The twelve panels, complete with captions, which depict in an ideal order and with a lively language some episodes in the life of the Saint, can be considered an unicum, a direct reference to the presence of St. Charles in the Three Ambrosian Valleys, and a testimony of his reforming pastoral action, implemented according to the resolutions of the Council of Trent also thanks to the charismatic figure of Basso.