Counter-Reformation

The Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation was a movement within the Catholic Church to reform itself in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Reformation was comprehensive. It involved clarification and reform in the areas of doctrine, ecclesiastical structure, religious orders, spirituality and politics

Such reforms included the foundation of seminaries for the proper training of priests in the spiritual life and the theological traditions of the Church, the reform of religious life to returning orders to their spiritual foundations, and new spiritual movements focus on the devotional life and a personal relationship with Christ, including the Spanish mystics such as Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross and the French school of spirituality which is especially associated with Louis Marie de Montfort. The Spanish mystics stressed the personal nature of faith and saw love as the basis of Christian faith, not obligation or duty. The French school stressed the Church's role in continuing Jesus' mission, as well as the need for Bible study and personal faith. The Protestant emphasis on the Bible, on the necessity of an inner experience of renewal and on the role of lay-people within the Church led to renewed Catholic interest in the Bible, in spirituality as well as in lay-formation.

It is now generally acknowledged by both Protestants and Catholics that today's Catholic Church and the Church against which Martin Luther rebelled are no longer the same due to the Counter-Reformation (in sipte of its initial intention to eliminate the Protestant Reformation) and other Catholic reforms that took place later such as the Second Council of Vatican in the early 1960s. In the 1999 Joint Declaration on Justification by the Lutherans and the Vatican (which Methodists have also affirmed), the partners state that in the light of the "consensus on basic truths" that now exists, "the corresponding doctrinal condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to today's partner."

Historical Background

Although the Counter-Reformation is usually understood to have officially started with Pope Paul III (1534-1549) in the middle of the sixteenth century as a response to the Protestant Reformation, a need for Catholic renewal in the areas of the clergy, Christian life, and Church administration had been increasingly felt since the fourteenth century. But, the Great Schism (1378-1417), which made the whole Church preoccupied with politics, prevented any renewal from happenning. Also, in the fifteenth century, the papacy was spiritually not healthy enough to lead any reform. The Renaissance papal court was largely immoral, and many prelates were very secular. The efforts of reformers such as Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) did not bear fruit. Savonarola, a fervant Dominican preacher, attempted to establish a kind of theocratic democracy in Florence, but faced strong opposition from the papacy and was executed. Of course, some reform activities such as the founding in 1497 of the Oratory of Divine Love, a society of laymen and priests devoted to spiritual sanctification and charity, could be seen. But, the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517), convened by Pope Julius II (1503-1513), prevented any reform movement. The worldly excesses of the secular Renaissance Church, epitomized by the era of Alexander VI (1492-1503), became a serious issue under Pope Leo X (1513-1522), who campaigned to raise funds in the German states through high-pressure sale of indulgences to rebuild St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Hadrian VI (1522-1523), who succeeded Leo X and became reform-minded, died too soon to accomplish anything. During the next papacy of Clement VII (1523-1534), the reform party quietly worked, founding the Theatines (1524) and the Capuchins (1525), religious orders to evangelize the common people as a counter proposal to the Lutheran threat. Finally, the sack of Rome in 1525 by the troops of Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire damaged the prestige of the papact, apparently helping to lead the Catholic Church toward a reform.

Three Main Instruments of the Counter-Reformation

When it happened as one of the most important Catholic events in history, the Counter-Reformation had three main instruments: the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, and the the Society of Jesus.

The Council of Trent

Pope Paul III (1534-1549) initiated the Council of Trent (1545-1563), a commission of cardinals tasked with institutional reform, to address contentious issues such as corrupt bishops and priests, indulgences, and other financial abuses. The Council clearly repudiated specific Protestant positions and upheld the basic structure of the Medieval Church, its sacramental system, religious orders, and doctrine. It rejected all compromise with the Protestants, restating basic tenets of Medieval Catholicism. The Council clearly upheld the dogma of salvation appropriated by faith and works. Transubstantiation, which holds that during communion or the mass the consecrated bread and wine substantially becomes the body and blood of Christ, was upheld, along with the Seven Sacraments. Other Catholic practices that drew the ire of liberal reformers within the Church such as indulgences, pilgrimages, the veneration of saints and relics, and the veneration of the Virgin Mary, were also strongly reaffirmed as spiritually vital.

However, while the basic structure of the Church was reaffirmed, there were noticeable changes to answer complaints that the Counter-Reformers tacitly were willing to admit were legitimate. This was especially true with respect to the accusation that the Church was too wealthy and too materialistic as the cost of spirituality. This is why the term "counter-reformation" was coined, since many of the reforms were in response to the criticisms of Luther and other leading Protestant reformists. Among what were addressed by Catholic reformers was the growing divide between the priests and the flock; many members of the clergy in the rural parishes, after all, had been poorly educated. Often, these rural priests did not know Latin and lacked opportunities for proper theological training. Clergy education had long been a subject of discussion. But now, parish priests became better educated, while papal authorities sought to eliminate the distractions of the monastic churches. Notebooks and handbooks thus became common, describing how to be good priests and confessors.

The Council, by virtue of its actions, repudiated the pluralism of the secular Renaissance Church: the organization of religious institutions was tightened, discipline was improved, and the parish was emphasized. The appointment of bishops for political reasons was no longer tolerated. In the past, the large landholdings and institutional rigidity of the Church - a rigidity to which the excessively large ranks of the clergy contributed - forced many bishops to study law not theology, relegating many "absent bishops" to the role of property managers trained in administration. Thus, the Council of Trent combated "absenteeism," which was the practice of bishops living in Roman or on landed estates rather than in their dioceses. Secular practices were combated while the papacy clearly moved away from its Renaissance posture as a political Church tantamount to one of the Italian city-states. The Council of Trent also gave bishops greater power to supervise all aspects of religious life. Zealous prelates such as Milan's Archbishop Carlo Borromeo (1538-1584), later canonized as a saint, set an example by visiting the remotest parishes and instilling high standards. At the parish level, the seminary-trained clergy who took over in most places during the course of the seventeenth century were generally faithful to the Church's rule of celibacy.

The Inquisition

The Roman Inquisition was originally established in 1542 by Paul III to suppress Lutheran heretics in Italy. Its Inquisitor General, Cardinal Caraffa, who later became Pope Paul IV (1555-1559), decided to punish heretics in high ranks most severely, so that all others beneath them might be saved based on their severe punishment. The Inquisition reached its peak during the papacy of Pius V (1566-1572), extirpating Italian Protestants. The Inquisition also icluded the censorship of prohibited books. Perhaps because of his deep involvement with the Inquisition to eliminate Protestantism, Paul IV is sometimes deemed the first of the Counter-Reformation popes. This approach reflected the rapid pace toward absolutism that characterized the sixteenth century.

While the aggressive authoritarian approach was arguably destructive of personal religious experience, a new wave of reforms and orders conveyed a strong devotional side. Devotionalism, not subversive mysticism, would provide a strong individual outlet for religious experience, especially through meditation such as the reciting of the Rosary. The devotional side of the Counter-Reformation combined two strategies of Catholic renewal. For one, the emphasis of God as an unknowable absolute ruler - a God to be feared -coincided well with the aggressive absolutism of the Church of Paul IV.

But it also opened up new paths toward popular piety and individual religious experience to its strong emotional and psychological side. The Papacy of Pius V (1566-1572), in this sense, represented a strong effort not only to crack down against heretics and worldly abuses within the Church, but also improve popular piety in effort to firmly stem the appeal of Protestantism. A man of impoverished upbringing taken in by the Dominican Order, he was trained in a solid and austere piety. It is thus no surprise that he began his pontificate by giving large alms to the poor, charity, and hospitals rather than focusing on patronage. As pontiff he practiced the virtues of a monk, known for daily meditations on bent knees in presence of the Blessed Sacrament. Known for consoling the poor and sick, St. Pius V sought to improve the public morality of the Church, promote the Jesuits, and support the Inquisition. He enforced the observance of the discipline of the Council of Trent, and supported the missions of the New World. The Spanish Inquisition, brought under the direction of the absolutist Spanish state since Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella, stemmed the growth of heresy before it could spread.

The pontificate of Sixtus V (1585-1590) opened up the final stage of the Catholic Reformation characteristic of the Baroque age of the early seventeenth century, shifting away from compelling to attracting. His reign focused on rebuilding Rome as a great European capital and Baroque city, a visual symbol for the Catholic Church.

The Society of Jesus

New religious orders were a fundamental part of this trend. Orders such as the Order of Friars Minor (Capuchins), Ursulines, Theatines, the Barnabites, and especially the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) strengthened rural parishes, improved popular piety, helped to curb corruption within the church, and set examples that would be a strong impetus for Catholic renewal. The Theatines were an order of devoted priests who undertook to check the spread of heresy and contribute to a regeneration of the clergy. The Capuchins, an offshoot of the Franciscan order notable for their preaching and for their care for the poor and the sick, grew rapidly in both size and popularity. The Capuchin fathers were an order based on the imitation of Jesus' life as described by the Gospels. Capuchin-founded confraternities thus took special interest in the poor and lived austere lifestyles. These differing approaches were often complementary, as with the missions to rural areas poorly served by the existing parish structure. Members of orders active in overseas missionary expansionism expressed the view that the rural parishes, whose poor state of affairs contributed to the growth of Protestantism, often needed Christianizing as much as heathens of Asia and the Americas. The Ursulines focused on the special task of educating girls. Their devotion to the traditional works of mercy exemplifies the Catholic Reformations reaffirmation of salvation through faith and works, and firmly repudiated the sola scriptura of the Protestants emphasized by Lutherans and other Protestant sects. Not only did they make the Church more effective, they reaffirmed fundamental premises of the Medieval Church.

However, the Jesuits, founded by the Spanish nobleman and ex-soldier Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), were the most effective of the new Catholic orders. His Societas de Jesus was founded in 1534 and received papal authorization in 1534 under Paul III. An heir to the devotional, observantine, and legalist traditions, the Jesuits organized their order along military lines, they strongly reflected the autocratic zeal of the period. Characterized by careful selection, rigorous training, and iron discipline, the worldliness of the Renaissance Church had no part in the new order. Loyola's masterwork Spiritual Exercises reflected the emphasis of handbooks characteristic of the earlier generation of Catholic reformers before the Reformation. The great psychological penetration that it conveyed was strongly reminiscent of devotionalism. However, the Jesuits are really the heirs to the observantine reform tradition, taking strong monastic vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty and setting an example that improved the effectiveness of the entire Church. They became preachers, confessors to monarchs and princes, and educators reminiscent of the humanist reformers, and their efforts are largely credited with stemming Protestantism in Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, southern Germany, France, and the Spanish Netherlands. They also strongly participated in the expansion of the Church in the Americas and Asia, conducting efforts in missionary activity that far outpaced even the aggressive Protestantism of the Calvinists. Even Loyola's biography contributed to the new emphasis on popular piety that had been waning under the eras of politically oriented popes such as Alexander VI and Leo X. After recovering from a severe battle wound, he took a vow to "serve only God and the Roman pontiff, His vicar on earth." Once again, the emphasis on the Pope is a key reaffirmation of the Medieval Church as the Council of Trent firmly defeated all attempts of Conciliarism, the belief that general councils of the church collectively were God's representative on earth, rather than the Pope. Firmly legitimizing the new role of the Pope as an absolute ruler strongly characteristic of the new age of absolutism ushered in by the sixteenth century, the Jesuits strongly contributed to the reinvigoration of the Counter-Reformation Church.

Spiritual Movements

In addition, between 1512 and the 1560s a movement of evangelical Catholics of high-ranking member of the curia, called Spirituali, actively tried to reform the Church through reform of the individual. This movement was strong and significant era in the Church.

Church music

The demand, by the Council of Trent for simplicity in music in order that the words might be heard clearly, placed a serious stumbling block in the path of the development of polyphony in the mid 16th Century.

The Council, in their Canon on Music to be used for the Mass, stated:

All things should indeed be so ordered that the masses, whether they be celebrated with or without singing, may reach tranquilly into the ears and hearts of those who hear them, when everything is executed clearly and at the correct speed. In the case of those masses which are celebrated with singing and with organ, let nothing profane be intermingled, but only hymns and divine praises. The whole plan of singing should be constituted not to give empty pleasure to the ear, but in such a way that the words be clearly understood by all. And thus the hearts of listeners be drawn to desire of heavenly harmonies in the contemplation of the joys of the Blessed. They shall also banish from church all music that contains whether in the singing or in the organ playing things that are lascivious or impure.

While this was worded fairly vaguely, the intent was clear. Complex Polyphony was no longer deemed acceptable by the Council.

Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's musical mastery and his skill at word setting greatly affected the outcome of this difficult situation, by composing a six part polyphonic mass, called the Pope Marcellus Mass, of 1555, to prove that Counterpoint, that polyphony is indeed compatible with the doctrines of the Counter-Reformation. The Counter-Reformation, in looking at Palestrina's mass, says: 'Yes, all the words are clear, Polyphony is Okay after all' and Palestrina is hailed as the savior of Church Music. While this may or may not be entirely accurate, Palestrina's music will become the model for the next generations of Catholic composers, and is still held as an ideal for polyphonic clarity.

The inadvertent start of the scientific revolution

Some historians such as James Burke have noted some of the directives initiated in the Counter-Reformation had consequences that would ironically create even more formidable challenges to the Catholic Church's authority and very world view.

This came about with the initiative to make the Catholic Church more attractive to the common person. In addition to better training for the clergy, there was also the idea of making the Church's facilities and activities more attractive to the laypeople. Part of this including extensive decorations that would eventually encourage the baroque art style and more celebrations of holidays and similar events.

The need to have these events followed closely throughout the dioceses raised the problem with the accuracy of the calendar. By the sixteenth century the Julian calendar was almost ten days out of step with the seasons and the heavenly bodies. Among the astronomers who was asked to work on the problem of how the calendar could be reformed was Nicolaus Copernicus, a canon at Frombork (Frauenburg). In the dedication to De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), Copernicus mentioned the reform of the calendar proposed by the Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512-1517). As he explains, a proper measurement of the length of the year was a necessary foundation to calendar reform. By implication, his work replacing the Ptolemaic system with a heliocentric model was prompted in part by the need for calendar reform. An actual new calendar had to wait until the Gregorian calendar in 1582.

At the time of its publication, De revolutionibus passed with relatively little comment in the Catholic Church itself who treated the conception as little more than a mathematical convenience. However, the fact that the Earth's motion directly contradicted literal readings of the Bible and Aristotle's philosophy eventually became an unavoidable issue. This occurred when scholars like Galileo Galilei began to amass physical evidence supporting heliocentrism, or at least undermining Ptolemy. This examination of the Copernican theory was a factor in starting the scientific revolution which would eventually challenge the Church in more profound ways than their Protestant opponents ever considered.

Major Figures

• Pius III (1503)
• Paul III (1534-1549)
• Julius III (1550-55)
• Paul IV (1555-59)
• Pius IV (1559-65)
• St. Pius V (1566-72)
• Gregory XIII (1572-85)
• Sixtus V (1585-90)
• St. Ignatius of Loyola
• St. Teresa of Avila
• St. John of the Cross
• St. Francis de Sales

See also

• Protestant Reformation

Bibliograophy

Bireley, Robert The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassesment of the Counter-Reformation, Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999. ISBN 081320951X

Luebke, David M The Counter-Reformation: the essential readings, Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. ISBN 0631211047

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