Welcome back.
This is the last of our four lectures dealing with the Reformation.
We introduced the Reformation, talked about the cast against the church.
We talked about Luther specifically, and the Ninety-Five Theses.
We talked about Calvinism.
And today I want to end by talking about the Catholic response to the Reformation – that
is the Counter-Reformation.
This runs, just in very general, round figures, for about a hundred years, from 1550 to 1650.
There are three institutions in particular that arose in this Catholic response to the
Reformation.
I’m going to talk briefly about each – the Council of Trent; the Society of Jesus, or
the Jesuits; and the Inquisition.
I’ll start with the Society of Jesus.
These were founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, a soldier who apparently had been wounded
in one of the wars of religion.
I believe while recuperating in a hospital, he had an epiphany, and decided to spend the
rest of his life in the service of God.
He created the Jesuit order.
Again, the official name is the Society of Jesus; we generally refer to them as Jesuit
priests.
We’ll talk about the Jesuits in another context toward the end of the semester, when
we talk about imperialism, Europe imperialism in the New World.
In the creation of New France, we’ll find Jesuit priests there, trying to pave the way
for French civilization to follow as they convert the Indians, learn the languages,
things like this.
Here, the Jesuit priest could be characterized as – I heard one historian characterize
them as – how did he put it?
The Marine Corp of the Catholic Church, that is, they go in first.
They do the dangerous work, the heavy lifting, preparing the way for Christian civilization
to follow.
The Jesuits are probably the best educated men in Europe.
Of course, they’re obviously taught theology; natural history; literature; sciences.
They’re extremely devout.
These are men of great piety and learning.
This makes them perfect instruments with which to convince heretics to disavow their beliefs
and come back to the Catholic orthodoxy.
You see the Jesuits take vows of poverty and chastity so that they can devote their lives
to the service of God, whether it’s in the context of the Counter-Reformation, persuading
heretics to come back to the church, or in the context of imperialism, converting the
Indians, laying the groundwork for European civilization.
The Council of Trent, the second of these Catholic institutions to emerge during the
Counter-Reformation – This is a long-running ecclesiastical gathering of high church officials.
What are the dates here – 1545 to 1563.
So you can see, for almost two decades there are three great sessions during the Council
of Trent.
Trent is a city in Northern Italy.
It’s dominated by Italian clergy, not surprisingly.
Again, it’s a response to the Reformation, an attempt by high church officials to address
some of the problems that the Reformers have complained about and perhaps to seek some
sort of internal reform.
It affirmed many of the Catholic traditions – the pilgrimages; saints; it reaffirmed
the Nicene Creed, which we learned about when we talked about the Council of Nicaea during
the context of the Roman Empire and Constantine.
1555 – The Peace of Augsburg – This is important because here we see the impact of
the Reformation on the creation of nationalism and the sovereign nation state.
The famous quote – Whose rule?
His religion – In other words, the prince of this particular kingdom, if he’s Protestant,
then the kingdom will be Protestant; if he’s Catholic, his followers will be Catholic – at
least, in theory.
And then, finally, of course, the Inquisition.
The Inquisition is designed to created religious uniformity.
In our contemporary times we tend to look at toleration as a virtue.
So and so is tolerant of other people’s faith, so and so is tolerant of other people’s
sexual preferences; so and so is tolerant – this is a virtue in our time, isn’t
it?
Not so in medieval Europe.
Toleration could be viewed, instead of a virtue, as sin.
If we know someone who has committed heresy, has broken with the orthodoxy, who is following
the wrong path, if we tolerate that, are we contributing to his sin, and in fact, sinning
ourselves?
Our goal, our mission here is not to tolerate his deviance, his heresy, but to persuade
the heretic to disavow his incorrect beliefs and come back to the orthodoxy.
So the Inquisition is designed to create religious uniformity.
You can see this in action in Spain probably more than any other European country, whereby
priests and torturers, it’s not uncommon for them to act together to extract recantations
through torture of Protestant heretics.
You can Google this on your own computer, and you’ll see endless images.
The depictions have common themes in them.
You can see the Protestant heretic being tortured in one way or the other, on the wheel or the
rack or any other number of ways of inflicting pain.
You can see the torturers, sometimes hooded, as torturing is a degraded profession, so
they would do it incognito, quite often.
But then you would always see off to the side, priests, Jesuit or otherwise, invariably with
a scroll and a quill to take down the heretic’s recantation when it occurs under torture – again,
we talked about this when we discussed religious key terms and concepts, the martyr having
agency and the capacity to decide whether to recant and escape with his life, or to
remain stubborn in his faith, and perhaps be excommunicated from the church, or worse,
executed by ecclesiastical or state authorities.
So those are the three institutions of the Counter-Reformation that you should be familiar
with – the Society of Jesus; the Council of Trent; and the Inquisition.
Thanks for your attention.