The Catholic Counter-Reformation (1517-1648)

The word Counter-Reformation is late and polemical

The term Gegenreformation does not appear in the 16th century. It was used for the first time in 1776 by the Protestant jurist Johann Stephan Pütter (1725-1807) in the introduction to his edition of the Augsburg Confession, then introduced into general historiography by Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) in Die römischen Päpste, ihre Kirche und ihr Staat im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1834-1836)^[4]. For Ranke, the Counter-Reformation is the effort by which Rome, from about 1540 onwards, regained the ground lost to Protestantism (paraphrase of the Rankean thesis): he makes it an essentially defensive movement posterior to the Reformation.

This reading long dominated. It has two major flaws: it reduces the Catholic Reformation to a mere riposte, and it suggests that without Luther nothing would have happened in Rome. Yet the Catholic reforming impetus is appreciably earlier than 1517.

The pre-Lutheran roots of the Catholic Renewal

The need for reform — reformatio in capite et in membris, "reform in the head and in the members" — is a programme carried by the reforming councils of the 14th-15th centuries, from Vienne (1311-1312) to Constance (1414-1418) where the formula was solemnly taken up^[5]. In the 15th century, several currents worked the Latin Church from within:

• the devotio moderna of the Brethren of the Common Life (Gerhard Groote, Florent Radewijns) and its masterpiece, the Imitatio Christi attributed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1418-1427), spread an interior, Christ-centred piety;
• regular observance reformed Dominican, Franciscan, Augustinian and Benedictine houses (the congregation of Santa Giustina of Padua, reformed by Ludovico Barbo from 1409 onwards; the Bursfeld observance, a reform undertaken in 1433);
• the Christian humanism of Erasmus (Enchiridion militis christiani, 1503), of Lefèvre d'Étaples, of John Colet at Oxford and of Cardinal Cisneros at Alcalá de Henares (the enterprise of the Complutensian Polyglot, printed from 1514 to 1517) sought to return to biblical and patristic sources;
• the reforming preaching of Savonarola in Florence (1490-1498), before his trial and death, testifies to a strong popular expectation.

In Rome itself, as early as 1517, the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) had promulgated the reform decree Supernae dispositionis (5 May 1514), then the bull Pastor aeternus gregem (19 December 1516) against the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges^[6]; and the Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia drafted in 1537 by a commission of nine members chaired by Cardinal Contarini — Carafa, Pole, Sadolet, Fregoso, Aleandro, Badia, Cortese and Giberti — at Paul III's request drew up an uncompromising picture of the abuses of the Curia^[7]. When Trent opened in 1545, the reforming programme had thus already matured internally for thirty years.

A fairer contemporary terminology

The historian Hubert Jedin (1900-1980), the German master of the history of the Council, proposed in 1946 a decisive distinction in his essay Katholische Reformation oder Gegenreformation?:

For Jedin, the Catholic Reformation is the self-reform of the Church — a renewal of Christian life through a return to the sources, earlier than Luther — while the Counter-Reformation denotes the struggle waged by that same Church against the Protestant Reformation; the two meet and unite at the Council of Trent (paraphrase)^[8].

Since Jedin, most Catholic historians (John O'Malley, Robert Bireley, Massimo Firpo, Adriano Prosperi) use the expressions Catholic Reformation, Counter-Reformation or Catholic Renewal indifferently. Wikipedia, like most university textbooks, keeps the term Counter-Reformation because it remains the best known — but the content designated is indeed the global movement of renewal, not a mere anti-Protestantism.

Why Trent was necessary

By the late 1530s, the Catholic Church faced a crisis without precedent since the Great Western Schism: the northern half of the German Empire had gone over to Lutheranism, German-speaking Switzerland to Zwinglianism, Geneva tipped over in 1536, England separated from Rome by Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy (3 November 1534), the Netherlands and France were profoundly worked by Calvinism. The cohesion of Latin Christendom, a thousand years old, was broken.

To this external crisis was added the internal crisis documented by the 1537 Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia: massive episcopal absenteeism, accumulation of benefices, theological ignorance of the lower clergy, venality of the Curia, abuses in the preaching of indulgences. No doctrinal manual carried authority; confusion over justification, the sacraments and grace favoured the spread of Reformed theses.

In a letter to Cardinal Cervini dated 6 December 1542, Carlo Gualteruzzi, secretary to Reginald Pole, urged resisting troublemakers to their face — after the Apostle's example (Gal 2:11) — and expounding to the faithful, in Latin as in the vernacular, Roman doctrine on the disputed points (paraphrase)^[11].

Trent answered this double demand simultaneously: defining the controverted doctrine and reforming ecclesiastical discipline. The two series of decrees — de fide (on faith) and de reformatione (on discipline) — were published in parallel at each session.

The six great doctrinal acts

Of the council's 25 sessions, six great acts are decisive — some dogmatic (de fide), others disciplinary (de reformatione).

For the detail of each session, see the specialised article on the Council of Trent.

The decree on justification (Session VI)

The decree on justification (13 January 1547) counts among the major Catholic theological texts of the 16th century, as the historian Heiko A. Oberman, a leading Luther specialist, emphasises (paraphrase)^[12]. It establishes a balanced doctrine refuting both the Lutheran doctrine of imputed righteousness and the Pelagian doctrine of justification by pure works.

The decree affirms in sixteen chapters and thirty-three canons:

1. the universality of original sin (chapter I) and man's inability to save himself by his own strength;
2. the absolute necessity of prevenient grace (chapter V): God forestalls man before any cooperation;
3. man's free cooperation with grace, without which there is no justification (canon 4);
4. justification as a true interior transformation (non sola reputatio, "not by imputation alone", canon 11), not as a mere extrinsic imputation of Christ's righteousness;
5. preservation and growth in grace through works of charity informed by faith;
6. the possibility of losing grace through mortal sin and of its restoration through the sacrament of penance.

As the Anglican historian Alister McGrath shows in Iustitia Dei (Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed. 2005), the thirty-three canons appended to the decree in reality condemn certain caricatures of Protestantism rather than Protestantism itself (paraphrase)^[13].

The 16th century saw the birth or reform of some ten new religious orders which became the principal pastoral and missionary relays of the Catholic Reformation. All share a triple characteristic: strict regular observance, apostolic mobility (a break with the stable monastic model), Christ-centred spirituality.

The Theatines (1524)

The first properly Counter-Reformation order, the Regular Clerics Theatine (from the name of Teate-Chieti), were founded in Rome on 14 September 1524 by Saint Cajetan of Thiene (1480-1547) and Gianpietro Carafa, the future Pope Paul IV (1555-1559). They aimed to regenerate the secular clergy through radical evangelical poverty, preaching and care of the sick. The bull Exponi nobis (24 June 1524) of Clement VII granted them the right to live exclusively on spontaneous alms^[14].

The Capuchins (1525)

Founded by Matteo da Bascio (1495-1552) in 1525 as a strict branch of the Observant Franciscans, the Friars Minor Capuchin are distinguished by the long beard, the brown habit with pointed hood (whence their name, cappuccio), itinerant popular preaching and care of plague victims. Officially recognised by the bull Religionis zelus (3 July 1528) of Clement VII, they became one of the most dynamic orders of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, France and Germany. Saint Lawrence of Brindisi (1559-1619), a Capuchin, would be proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1959.

The Society of Jesus (1540)

The most remarkable order is the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) and six companions (Francis Xavier, Peter Faber, Diego Laínez, Alfonso Salmerón, Nicolás Bobadilla, Simão Rodrigues) at the church of Saint-Pierre de Montmartre on 15 August 1534 (the Montmartre vows), then officially approved by Paul III on 27 September 1540 by the bull Regimini militantis Ecclesiae^[15].

Its specificity is threefold:

• a fourth vow of direct obedience to the Pope concerning missions (circa missiones);
• apostolic mobility without choral obligation or enclosure, a departure from the millennial monastic tradition;
• an exceptional intellectual formation: fifteen years of study on average before solemn vows, the prelude to a school network already considerable at Ignatius's death — about 46 schools and a hundred houses spread across 12 provinces^[16] (the figure of 800-plus establishments, including 612 colleges, would only be reached at the 18th-century peak, around 1773).

Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, written at Manresa between 1522 and 1524 and published in 1548 with Paul III's imprimatur, became the spiritual matrix of the Society. They rest on a four-week journey structured around meditation on the last ends, the life of Christ, the Passion and the Resurrection, with systematic discernment of spirits^[17].

"Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul; and the other things on the face of the earth are created for man, and to help him in the pursuit of the end for which he was created." — Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, no. 23 — Principle and Foundation, 1548^[18]

At Ignatius's death (31 July 1556), the Society counted about 1,000 Jesuits; in 1615, towards the end of Claudio Acquaviva's generalate, they were 13,000; in 1773 (suppression by Clement XIV), 22,589^[19].

The other orders

Other foundations complete this landscape:

• the Barnabites (Regular Clerics of St Paul, founded in Milan in 1530 by Saint Anthony Mary Zaccaria, approved in 1533);
• the Somaschans (1532, Saint Jerome Emiliani, orphans)^[20];
• the Ursulines (1535, Saint Angela Merici, at Brescia) — the first teaching women's order;
• the Hospitaller Brothers of Saint John of God (1537, Granada);
• the Discalced Carmelites of Spain (Teresa of Avila, 1562; John of the Cross, 1568);
• the Oratory of Rome (Philip Neri, c. 1564, approved by Gregory XIII in 1575);
• the Lazarists or Congregation of the Mission (Saint Vincent de Paul, 1625);
• the Daughters of Charity (Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, 1633), the first unenclosed religious sisters.

The Catholic 16th century is one of the most saint-rich centuries in the entire history of the Church: several dozen canonisations concern figures of the Catholic Reformation — a pace unprecedented since the central Middle Ages^[21]. Here are the major figures.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)

A former Basque soldier wounded at the siege of Pamplona (20 May 1521), converted during his convalescence by reading Ludolph of Saxony's Vita Christi and the Golden Legend, Ignatius of Loyola shut himself in the cave of Manresa (1522-1523) where he drafted the first traits of his Spiritual Exercises. A student in Paris (Sainte-Barbe and Montaigu, 1528-1535), he gathered there the nucleus of his first companions. Ordained priest in Venice (24 June 1537), he settled in Rome in 1540 and became the first Superior General in April 1541. He died in Rome on 31 July 1556; canonised by Gregory XV on 12 March 1622. See the detailed article Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

Born Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada in Avila on 28 March 1515, entering the Carmel of the Incarnation at age 20, Teresa of Jesus experienced a decisive interior conversion in 1554 before an Ecce Homo. In 1562 she undertook the reform of Carmel: foundation of the monastery of Saint Joseph of Avila with a return to the primitive rule (1247) and strict enclosure. Her meeting in 1567 with John of the Cross launched the men's branch.

She founded seventeen houses of Discalced Carmelite nuns between 1562 and 1582. Her written spiritual work — the Book of the Life (1565), the Way of Perfection (1566), the Interior Castle (1577), the Foundations (1573-1582) — is one of the summits of universal Christian mysticism. She died at Alba de Tormes on 4 October 1582; canonised by Gregory XV on 12 March 1622 together with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri and Isidore the Labourer (canonizatio quinque sanctorum). Proclaimed the first woman Doctor of the Church by Paul VI on 27 September 1970.

"Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you; all things pass away; God never changes; patience obtains all things; whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone suffices." — Saint Teresa of Avila, autograph bookmark (the so-called "Nada te turbe") kept in her breviary at Alba de Tormes, found after her death in 1582 — not a collection of Poems^[22]

Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591)

Teresa's companion in the reform of the male Carmel, Juan de Yepes y Álvarez took the name John of the Cross in 1568 at the foundation of the Duruelo house (28 November 1568). Imprisoned by the mitigated Carmelites at Toledo (December 1577 — August 1578), he composed during his captivity the first stanzas of the Spiritual Canticle. Freed, he became one of the greatest doctors of Catholic mysticism: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night, Spiritual Canticle, Living Flame of Love. He died at Úbeda on 14 December 1591; canonised by Benedict XIII on 27 December 1726; proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pius XI on 24 August 1926. See the detailed article Saint John of the Cross.

Saint Charles Borromeo (1538-1584)

Nephew of Pope Pius IV (Giovanni Angelo Medici, 1559-1565), Carlo Borromeo was created cardinal at 22 (31 January 1560) and papal secretary of state. He actively took part in the third period of the Council of Trent (1562-1563) as legate. Archbishop of Milan from 1565, he became the model of the Tridentine bishop: systematic pastoral visitations (he would make more than 30 in the Alpine valleys), provincial councils (6 between 1565 and 1582), foundation of diocesan seminaries, strict application of Trent's decrees, heroic devotion during the Milan plague (1576-1577).

His correspondence and the six provincial councils (1565, 1569, 1573, 1576, 1579, 1582) as well as the eleven diocesan synods he presided over made the archdiocese of Milan the experimental model of the Tridentine Church^[23]. He died in Milan on 3 November 1584; canonised by Paul V on 1 November 1610. See the detailed article Saint Charles Borromeo.

Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595)

A Florentine settled in Rome, Filippo Neri first led the life of a consecrated layman in the streets of the City (1534-1551). Ordained priest at 36, he founded in 1554 the Confraternita della Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini to welcome pilgrims. His confessional in the church of San Girolamo della Carità became a hearth of conversion for the whole Roman nobility.

Around 1564, he gathered around him a group of secular priests who met in an oratorium for common prayer and spiritual conferences; this community became in 1575, by Gregory XIII's bull Copiosus in misericordia, the Congregation of the Oratory, a new kind of order in which members take no vows but live in common through charity. Nicknamed the 'apostle of Rome' (apostolus Urbis), Neri combined evangelical joy, provocative humility and mystical depth. He died in Rome on 26 May 1595; canonised by Gregory XV on 12 March 1622.

Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622)

Bishop of Geneva (residing at Annecy since Geneva's passage to Calvinism), Francis de Sales is the apostle of a spirituality accessible to the laity. His Introduction to the Devout Life (Lyons, 1609) met with immediate European success (some forty editions and many translations in the author's lifetime, according to the usually repeated counts)^[24]; his Treatise on the Love of God (Lyons, 1616) is a summit of spiritual theology. He founded with Saint Jane Frances de Chantal the Order of the Visitation (Annecy, 6 June 1610). He died in Lyons on 28 December 1622; canonised by Alexander VII on 19 April 1665; proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pius IX on 16 November 1877; proclaimed patron of Catholic journalists and writers by Pius XI on 26 January 1923.

From the opening of his Introduction to the Devout Life (Part I, chap. 2), Saint Francis de Sales teaches that devotion does not lie in exterior practices but in conformity of the will with God's: it is the heart that must be given, the rest follows (paraphrase)^[25].

The other reforming saints

Other leading figures complete this pantheon: Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552), missionary to the Indies and Japan; Saint Peter Canisius (1521-1597), apostle of Catholic Germany and author of the Catechismus minimus (1556) which would be reprinted 200 times; Saint Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), Jesuit controversialist, cardinal, author of the Disputationes de controversiis (1586-1593); Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), apostle of the galley slaves and founder of the Lazarists; Saint Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641), co-foundress of the Visitation; Saint Pius V (1504-1572), reforming pope; Saint Joseph Calasanz (1557-1648), founder of the Piarists for the free schooling of poor children; Saint Camillus de Lellis (1550-1614), founder of the Camillians (hospitals).

Eight principal popes led the Counter-Reformation between 1534 and 1605.

Paul III Farnese (1534-1549) is the "first pope of the Counter-Reformation". Elected on 13 October 1534, he convoked the council (1544), approved the Society of Jesus (1540), reorganised the Roman Inquisition (Licet ab initio, 21 July 1542) and created the cardinal legates — Reginald Pole, Marcello Cervini, Giovanni Morone — who would direct the council.

Julius III Del Monte (1550-1555) reopened the council for its second period (1 May 1551 — 28 April 1552, Sessions XIII to XVI): the decrees on the Eucharist (Session XIII, 11 October 1551) and penance date from his pontificate. The resumption of war between Charles V and Henry II forced him to suspend the council again in 1552.

Paul IV Carafa (1555-1559), a former founder of the Theatines, led the Counter-Reformation in its most rigorous dimension: promulgation of the first Index librorum prohibitorum (1559), persecution of Judaizers and Marranos, reform of the Curia. His intransigence provoked a popular riot in Rome at his death.

Pius IV Medici (1559-1565) reopened and closed the council (third period, 1562-1563), confirmed the decrees by the bull Benedictus Deus (26 January 1564), created the Congregatio Concilii (2 August 1564), and published the Professio fidei tridentinae (13 November 1564) — a formula of faith compulsory for every bishop and every ecclesiastical teacher.

Saint Pius V Ghislieri (1566-1572) — a rigorous Dominican from the Inquisition — embodies the methodical application of the Tridentine decrees: promulgation of the Roman Catechism (1566), the Breviary (1568), the Missal (1570), edition of Saint Thomas Aquinas's Summa, Thomas having been proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1567, organisation of the Holy League which triumphed at Lepanto (7 October 1571). Canonised by Clement XI in 1712.

Gregory XIII Boncompagni (1572-1585) founded the Roman College (the future Gregorian University) and a network of 23 national colleges in Rome for the formation of priests from all over Europe; he reformed the calendar by the bull Inter gravissimas (24 February 1582).

Sixtus V Peretti (1585-1590) — a Franciscan and former inquisitor — reorganised the Roman Curia by the constitution Immensa aeterni Dei (22 January 1588) which instituted the 15 permanent cardinalatial congregations, a structure kept until John Paul II's reform in 1988. He fixed the number of cardinals at 70 (Postquam verus, 3 December 1586), undertook Rome's great urban works (completion of St Peter's dome, 1590) and had the Sixtine Vulgate (1590) published, corrected and republished as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate (1592) by Clement VIII.

Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592-1605) welcomed in 1595 the return of Catholic France with Henry IV's absolution, after the king's conversion (25 July 1593); he had the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate published (1592, a revision of the 1590 Sixtine edition) and supported the Controversia de auxiliis opposing Dominicans and Jesuits on grace.

The creation of diocesan seminaries

The decree of Session XXIII, canon XVIII (Cum adolescentium aetas, "when the age of adolescence…", 15 July 1563) is regarded by many historians as Trent's most important reform in the long term. It prescribes that "each cathedral, metropolitan or greater church shall be bound to educate, in a college to be chosen by the bishop [...], a certain number of young men of the town and diocese, or, failing that, of the province, in piety and ecclesiastical discipline"^[26].

The word seminarium ("nursery") denotes an establishment where young priestly vocations are cultivated from an early age (12 at minimum). Before Trent, the secular clergy was formed in a scattered way: a resident bishop, rare cathedral schools, private courses. After Trent, each diocese had to open its seminary.

Application was slow — the first post-Tridentine seminary was opened in Milan in 1564 by Charles Borromeo; in Rome, the Roman Seminary was founded by Pius IV on 1 February 1565 and entrusted to the Jesuits; in France, the effort was carried from the 17th century onwards by Saint Vincent de Paul (Saint-Lazare, 1632), Jean-Jacques Olier (Saint-Sulpice, 1641), Saint John Eudes (Caen, 1643) and Adrien Bourdoise (Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, 1612)^[27].

The Roman Catechism (1566)

The Catechismus ex decreto Concilii Tridentini ad parochos — the Roman Catechism — appeared in Rome from Paolo Manuzio's press on 24 September 1566. Requested by Session XXIV of the council (1563), it was drafted by a commission chaired by Charles Borromeo, whose principal theologians were the Dominicans Egidio Foscarari (Bishop of Modena) and Leonardo Marini (Archbishop of Lanciano), assisted by the Tridentine Fathers Muzio Calini and Francisco Foreiro.

Distinct from children's catechisms, it is a manual for parish priests for Sunday preaching. It is structured in four classical parts:

1. the Apostles' Creed (faith);
2. the sacraments (means of grace);
3. the Decalogue (Christian morality);
4. the Lord's Prayer (prayer, in particular the Our Father).

This four-part structure — faith, sacraments, morality, prayer — would inspire the plan of John Paul II's Catechism of the Catholic Church in 1992: kinship of plan only, since the third part of the CCC ("life in Christ") goes far beyond the Decalogue alone. The Roman Catechism was translated into the principal European vernacular languages from the end of the 16th century and remained the major catechetical reference until 1992.

Tridentine liturgy

Session XXII (17 September 1562) had requested a revision of the Missale Romanum to unify the Latin liturgy. The bull Quo primum tempore of Saint Pius V (14 July 1570) promulgated the reformed Roman Missal which imposed a single form of the Mass on the whole Latin Church, except for rites more than 200 years old (Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Lyonese, Dominican, Carthusian, Carmelite, etc.).

The Tridentine rite enjoyed a remarkable historical stability: it remained the normative form of the Latin liturgy for nearly four centuries, until the promulgation of the new Missal by Paul VI on 3 April 1969 (Missale Romanum). Benedict XVI's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum (7 July 2007) would recognise this form as the "extraordinary form" of the Roman rite, a status modified by Francis's motu proprio Traditionis Custodes (16 July 2021).

The Index of Prohibited Books

Before Trent, several local indexes already existed (Louvain 1546, Paris 1547, Venice 1548). The first official Roman Index was promulgated at the end of December 1559 under the name of Paul IV (d. 18 August 1559) — the Roman edition by Antonio Blado dated 30 December 1559^[28] — and revised by Trent (Tridentine Index, March 1564) which softened some of its clauses. The Congregation of the Index, created by Pius V in 1571, would update it for three centuries; it was published 32 times before its abolition by Paul VI in 1966^[29].

The Index was never an instrument of massive preventive censorship: it listed only about 4,000 condemned works out of the hundreds of thousands published between 1559 and 1966. Its principal function was to flag works dangerous to faith or morals, for the use of bishops, booksellers and instructed faithful.

The Catholic Reformation was no retreat into Europe: it was also the greatest missionary impetus in Christian history after the evangelisation of antiquity. The 16th century saw the birth of a truly worldwide Christianity.

Asia

Saint Francis Xavier (1506-1552), Ignatius's companion, arrived at Goa in May 1542 as apostolic nuncio. He evangelised the Paravars of the Fishery Coast (southern India), the Moluccas and Malacca, then arrived in Japan on 15 August 1549, the first Christian missionary in Japan. He died on the island of Shangchuan (China), at the gates of the forbidden empire, on 3 December 1552.

At Goa, the Jesuit College of St Paul became the first theological and linguistic centre of Christian Asia. The Japan mission experienced an extraordinary boom (on the order of 300,000 Christians around 1614, according to the usual estimates of mission historians^[30]), then suffered the Tokugawa persecution (the 1614 anti-Christian edict, the martyrdom of 26 Christians at Nagasaki on 5 February 1597, and of thousands of others until 1639). See the specialised article The Jesuit missions in Japan.

In China, Father Matteo Ricci S.J. (1552-1610), who arrived in Macao in 1582, won the confidence of the mandarin elite through his mastery of classical Chinese, mathematics, astronomy and cartography. He reached Beijing in 1601 and obtained imperial authorisation to reside there. His inculturation strategy — scholar's dress, reading of the Confucian classics, interreligious dialogue — laid the foundations of an original Chinese mission, later contested in the Chinese Rites Controversy (17th-18th centuries). See the specialised article The Jesuit missions in China.

The Americas

In Mexico, evangelisation was massive after the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe to Saint Juan Diego (9-12 December 1531): several million baptisms in a few years, according to the Franciscan chroniclers of the time — the figure of eight million, often repeated, remaining a traditional estimate to be handled with caution^[31]. In Peru, Saint Toribio de Mogrovejo (1538-1606), Archbishop of Lima, methodically applied Trent through three provincial councils (1582, 1583, 1591) — the Third Council of Lima (1582-1583) published the first trilingual Spanish-Quechua-Aymara catechism.

The Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay (1609-1768) became a unique social and religious experiment: up to some 150,000 evangelised Guaranis, according to estimates, living in autonomous missionary city-states. See the specialised article The Jesuit missions of Paraguay.

Africa

The evangelisation of the kingdom of Kongo, baptised from the end of the 15th century (Nzinga a Nkuwu, baptised under the name of John I on 3 May 1491), was consolidated in the 16th century by Portuguese Franciscan and Jesuit missions. King Afonso I (1509-1543) governed as a Christian and sent his son Henry to Rome, appointed by Leo X titular bishop of Utica on 5 May 1518^[32] — the first known bishop of Central Africa in the history of the Church.

Session XXV of the council (3-4 December 1563), in the Decretum de invocatione, veneratione et reliquiis Sanctorum et de sacris imaginibus, reaffirmed the legitimacy of sacred images against Protestant iconoclasm and specified their pedagogical function:

"Through images painted or otherwise represented, the people shall be instructed and confirmed in the articles of faith which are to be retained and assiduously meditated upon. [...] Let all superstition, all quest for sordid gain, all lasciviousness be avoided in the representation and ornament of sacred images." — Council of Trent, Session XXV, Decretum de sacris imaginibus, 3 December 1563^[33]

This decree became the theoretical manifesto of a renewed art. Émile Mâle, in L'Art religieux après le Concile de Trente (Armand Colin, 1932 — 2nd ed. 1951), showed how the Catholic art of the 16th-17th centuries implemented this decree along three axes: iconographic rigour (specifying the saints' attributes, condemning fanciful inventions), edifying emotion (touching the heart, arousing devotion), pedagogical clarity (instructing the illiterate)^[34].

The Baroque masterpieces of the Counter-Reformation are numerous: façade and plan of the Gesù in Rome (Vignola and Della Porta, 1568-1584), prototype of the single-nave Jesuit church designed for preaching; the vault of Sant'Ignazio by Andrea Pozzo (Allegory of the Missionary Work of the Society, 1691-1694 — the trompe-l'œil false dome of the same church dating from 1685); the martyrdoms by Caravaggio (Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, 1600; Crucifixion of Saint Peter, 1601); eucharistic devotion by Peter Paul Rubens (Triumph of the Eucharist, 1626-1628); mystical ecstasies by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome, 1647-1652); Murillo's Immaculate Virgins (1660-1665); Zurbarán's Carmelite Saints (1635-1640).

Catholic Baroque art is distinguished from the other reforms by its carnal realism and its refusal of iconoclastic austerity. Where Calvin closes churches, removes statues and paintings, and whitewashes walls, the Counter-Reformation assumes matter: painting, sculpture, liturgical polyphony (Palestrina, Missa Papae Marcelli, 1567), great organs, stained glass, liturgical ornaments, processions and expositions of the Blessed Sacrament. This aesthetic rests on a precise theological conviction — the Incarnation: if the Word was made flesh, Christian art can and must honour the sensible.

As Émile Mâle shows in substance from the introduction to his masterwork: where Protestantism removes images, Catholicism multiplies them and makes beauty a school of faith (paraphrase of the argument on pp. 1-2)^[35].

A largely successful reform

On the doctrinal plane, Trent gave the Catholic Church a dogmatic coherence that held for four centuries without major revision, until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) — and even Vatican II did not contradict the Tridentine definitions, in keeping with the hermeneutic of continuity recalled by Benedict XVI in his address to the Curia of 22 December 2005.

On the pastoral plane, application was slower but profound: between 1565 and 1700, the European secular clergy was transformed. Bishops resided in their dioceses, visited parishes, founded and financed seminaries. The intellectual and moral level of the lower clergy was appreciably raised. The sacraments were better administered, preaching better prepared.

On the missionary plane, the world's religious cartography was overturned: Christianity ceased to be an essentially European religion. At a time when Western Europe was fragmenting, Catholicism spread to Asia, Africa and the Americas. At Pius V's death in 1572, Roman Catholicism would have counted on the order of 80 million faithful; at Clement VIII's death in 1605, on the order of 100 million; in 1700, nearly 130 million — simple orders of magnitude, systematic pontifical statistics only beginning with Leo XIII^[36].

On the geopolitical plane, Catholicism progressively reconquered several lost zones: Bohemia after the Battle of White Mountain (8 November 1620), Poland through the missions of Skarga's Jesuits, Austria through the Habsburgs, Bavaria through the Wittelsbachs, part of the southern Netherlands (the future Belgium).

Limits and shadows

Several shadows persist. The rupture with Protestantism would never be healed: it took the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (Augsburg, 31 October 1999) for a partial consensus to be signed between Rome and the Lutherans. The European wars of religion (France 1562-1598, Netherlands 1568-1648, Thirty Years' War 1618-1648) would claim several million lives — estimates vary widely, the Thirty Years' War alone being assessed at between 4 and 8 million victims according to historians.

The Roman Inquisition reorganised by Paul III in 1542, and the Spanish Inquisition (which depended on the Crown), exercised a repression which, without reaching the fantastical scale of the "black legend" — see the article The Spanish Inquisition put to the test of the archives and Heretics and the black legend of the Inquisition — remains a historical reality nonetheless. The trial of Galileo (1633) durably marked the external perception of Catholicism vis-à-vis modern science — a disciplinary and hermeneutical as much as astronomical affair, for which John Paul II acknowledged in 1992 the misunderstandings and errors of the theologians of the time^[37].

Finally, certain pastoral balances remained imperfect: Jansenist rigour would develop precisely in reaction to excesses attributed (sometimes unjustly) to Jesuit spirituality and Tridentine sacramental practice; the quarrel over grace (De auxiliis, 1597-1607) divided Thomist Dominicans and Molinist Jesuits without a papal decision settling it.

The verdict of contemporary historiography

Twentieth-century Catholic historiography, around Hubert Jedin, John W. O'Malley, Robert Bireley, Massimo Firpo, Adriano Prosperi and Wolfgang Reinhard, concludes almost unanimously that the Catholic Reformation was an internal success but an ecumenical failure.

For John W. O'Malley S.J. (Trent: What Happened at the Council, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 2013), Trent saved the dogmatic unity of Catholicism and endowed it for four centuries with a theological coherence without equivalent, but without reconciling the Reformers: the Christian rupture became structural (paraphrase)^[38].

The Catholic historian Brad S. Gregory, professor at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana), goes further in The Unintended Reformation (Harvard University Press, 2012): he maintains that Protestant fragmentation is the origin, in the long term, of Western secularisation itself, and that the Counter-Reformation constituted, paradoxically, one of the last great coherent efforts to maintain the public place of the sacred (paraphrase)^[39].

• Read the specialised article on the Council of Trent (1545-1563) — detail of the 25 sessions, dogmatic and disciplinary decrees.
• Read The Protestant Reformation (1517-1555) — analysis of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, the five solas and Protestant fragmentation.
• Read Answers to Protestantism — the hub page for the eleven classic objections and their Catholic answers.
• Read Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) — biographies of the two principal Reformers.
• Read Calvinist predestination (TULIP) and the Catholic answer — detailed refutation of strict Calvinism.
• Read the series on the Cluniac reform, the Gregorian reform and the Carolingian reform — the medieval precedents of the Catholic Renewal.
• For the reforming saints, see Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint Francis de Sales.