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

ErasmusDe 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 mid-eighteenth 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 declaredDecree on Justification, Council of Trent 6th Session, 1547

The Long View: Conciliarism

• 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)

• Ignatius Loyola• Francis Xavier• Philip Neri• Teresa of Ávila• Isidor the Laborer

A New form of Catholicism?

• 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

• 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=vt0Y39eMvpI

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZegQYgygdw

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