Catholic Reform Movement example essay topic

Counter-Reformation Or Catholic Reformation Which Term Do You Think Is Most Appropriate This essay is a response to the question of whether the Catholic reform movement that predated Lutheran reforms and had its roots in the mid-fourteenth century was of greater importance for the recovery of the Catholic Church in the wake of the Reformation than direct reaction to the Protestant Reformation itself. Clerical absenteeism, nepotism, clerical ignorance and immorality abounded within the clergy at all levels of the Church, but they had not been suddenly introduced. Gregory VII (1078-85), Innocent (1198-1216) and Boniface V (1294-1303) had made claims about Papal Infallibility that effectively gave them mastery over all of Christendom, and it was with some success that Innocent in particular pursued this claim. However, the Great Schism destroyed the Churchs image and some claims of the Popes were discredited by the appearance of multiple claimants to the Papal throne. The move to Avignon was as a result of an inability to hold onto Rome as a safe haven. Thus, the Papacy turned its head to the fundraising necessary for the return.

Under Clement V, the Papacy in Avignon took in three times more money than the French Crown. The resentment generated by the greed of the Papacy made the return to Rome unnecessarily messy, as Martin V, elected at the Council of Constance in 1417, was forced to cede much control over national churches to national governments. The role of councils in the solving of the Schism led to an increased level of prestige for councils and the growth of Conciliar ism at a time when the Pope was being reduced to the level of being just another principality in Europe, as opposed to the supreme leader of the continent. Attempts to not only reimpose thi leadership but also to maintain the Papal income for projects such as the new St. Peters basilica led to great unpopularity.

This need for income also caused problems at a local level, as income in England for example dropped to around 5 p. a. for some priests, simply because money was being spirited away to Rome as the Papacy continued to try to draw back Martin vs. concessions. The Conciliarists at Constance passed a decree in 1415 claiming that the Councils were a General Council with authority immediately from Christ and the whole church including the Pope himself was obliged to heed their demands. The councillors decided in 1418 that decennial councils should be called. The failure of the conciliar movement can be ascribed not a lack of support, as the Schism had weakened the Papacy, but interestingly for the period, to an overly comprehensive representation of competing interest groups. Eugenius IV was able to kill the movement, as it was in the interest of the Papacy to do so, as the Papacy was generally more worldly than the councillors who wished to debate issues of faith and church structure. Just as fear of another Schism promoted the councilliary movement, fear of the Schism prevented the Concilliary movement from posing an effective challenge to the Papacy and thus of posing an effective challenge to the entrenched corruption of the Church.

The problem for local society was the differing levels of education, wealth and position amongst the clergy. This dichotomy was more obvious in the fifteenth century, as the growth of the universities led to a greater proportion of extremely well educated clergy emerging, and thus setting off greater contrast across parishes, or from generations priest to another generations priest. Few priests understood the Latin of the Mass and few preached sermons. The sixteenth century was in fact better in terms of education of the clergy and of the bishop ry than previously, but the laity were in a better position to observe their failings, and it is for this reason that reformers begun to emerge, as a greater number of people within the church were educated better, and consequently saw and decided to try to resolve problems within the Church.

The claim that the coincidence of the Catholic and Protestant Reformations proves one to be a reaction to the other is thus unsustainable. Such a conclusion overlooks the fact that Luther intended his reformation to be a Catholic reformation, and also goes so far as to claim that he was the first reformer. The Catholic reform movement can be traced to 150 years prior to Luthers initial demands. William of Occam (died 1349) and Massilia of Padua (died 1342) were important early reform writers. Although they had little impact with their writing at a popular level, Occam was important for his influence on Luther and Mars ilio was used by Thomas Cromwell as justification for the English Reformation and to prove the long-seated nature of the Churchs problems and its failure to confront them.

Occam Via Moderna was one of the great texts of the fourteenth century. Such contemporaries as John Wyclif were more popularly supported, even if Wyclif was effectively just a bargaining chip between the English Crown and the Papacy. Jan Hus was next in the line of great pre-Lutheran reformers. There was no suddenness in Huss outbursts as many of the demands he made, such as for a more pastoral church had been echoed across Europe for centuries.

The denial of Papal Supremacy, as with Wyclif, was the thing to which the Church took exception, leaving Huss complaints about abuses of the church to one side. The mishandling of the affair, notably Huss death at Constance, led the Hussites to survive with some autonomy from the church thanks to the Compact ata drawn up with the Papacy. Along with even earlier reformers such as Peter Waldo, whose Waldensian's survived from the twelfth century to be absorbed into the Calvinist fold in Savoy and Piedmont. Other reformers to note were the mysticists who shared Hussite contempt for church hierarchy but also for the accumulation of wealth that characterised so much of the contemporary church. The Conciliar movement, the medieval mysticists, the Platonic humanists and revivalists (such as Savonarola of Florence) all demanded reforms. Leo Xs Lateran Council produced pre-Lutheran suggestions for reform from inside the Vatican.

Many tried to lead reform by obvious example of holy lives. Ostentatious piety is derided in the Bible, but such orders as the Order of Divine Love, which consisted initially of 50 Roman clergymen, tried to drag the lay and clerical society into a better shape by example alone. The Orders most celebrated member, Contarini, was an unordained member of the Order from an aristocratic Venetian family and actually became Venetian ambassador to Rome, the Imperial Court and elsewhere from 1518. Despite a direct revelation, he remained unordained and remained within the laity from where he tried to bring about reform by the example of decency and reason.

These lines of reformers within the old framework predated Luther, but were by no means unaffected by Luthers appearance. The movement became noticibly more purposeful and more intolerant. Giberti, another member of the Oratory, was the chief adviser to Clement VII, and the protagonist of his anti-Spanish policy and his policy of using France to liberate Italy from foreign domination. It was not until Luthers advances on one hand and the Sack of Rome on another that he found his way to the bishopric of Verona.

Placed in such a position of such influence and given his background at the Oratory, it is perhaps unsurprising that he became a model bishop, reforming his clergy and restoring the spirituality of his laity. Sadoleto, Carafa and Morone, other Oratory members, took similar roles in other seats in the absence of Papal leadership. Reformer bishops were not, however, confined to Italy. Briconnets work at Me aux took on board Luthers criticisms and worked with them to reform his diocese whilst remaining orthodox. Grippers reforms in Cologne under the eye of the archbishop von Died were famous, as were the reforms of de la Marque at Liege, who combined suppression and reform in equal measure. Although of similar lineage, attitude and action to Ximenes in Spain, these reforms were carried out with such ferocity because of the imperative need to battle Luther.

The revival of religious orders is another aspect of the revival of the Church. The health of the regular members of the Church had been seen as an indicator of the health of the whole Church, and by such a measure, the fifteenth century came off very badly. As Chaucer said a good friar is as rare as the phoenix. Worldliness, indifference, corruption and declining numbers were motifs of the era. The reaction to the fall of standards within the general religious life had led to the Oratory of Divine Love, just as the fall of the orders led to the growth of reforming movements within the mendicant orders. Offshoot movements professing a more rigid following of the rules imposed on their parent orders are an indicator of the ill-health of the monastic movement, although their foundation does show a core of reforming, conscientious, devout and persuasive members of the movements.

These observant orders were standing up against the laxity of the orders attitude to their intended austerity, apparently diluted by contact with the laity. As a result, by the early sixteenth century, the least austere of the ordained were the friars, who having contact with the laity, were not only corrupted but also seen to be corrupt. It is no coincidence that Luther was an ex-friar and that so many of his early colleagues were people fallen from holy orders. Within the community of Camaldoli under the leadership of such people as Giustiniani, the Camaldolese set up small settlements across Italy bringing Christianity to the people. The Capuchins were also set up as an offshoot of the Franciscan movement with the aim of restoring the movement to the ideals of their founder. Confirmed in 1536 by Paul, they gained individual recognition and became very popular advocates of Catholicism as they laboured amongst the poor, sick and destitute.

They attracted friends in high places, such as Vittoria Colonna, but also excited distrust amongst both the unashamedly worldly and the overly cool and rational, for they were blunt, direct and immodest about their devotion. They were lucky to survive the defection of their superior, Bernardino O chino, to the Lutherans, but they convinced Paul of their orthodoxy and were allowed to continue. The influence of the Oratory of Divine Love was also felt in the monastic world. New orders of clerks regular, were formed. Ordinary clergy and laity, as in the Oratory, lived together, took some monastic vows but formed no houses and lived within the world proper, either as parish priests or lay community members. The Thea tines (1524) were founded by Oratarians.

St. Caj etan and Carafa were Neapolitan aristocrats who moved their order from Rome to Venice, and soon inspired similar houses. The Sommaschi (1532) and the Barbarities (1533) preceded the Ursulines (1535) who were a similar movement, but for women. Whereas, the friars were known for their holiness and piety, these orders became known for the primacy in their lives of the needy: an aspect still prevalent in the lives of the monks and friars, but viewed as less important than the offices, prayer and masses that dominated their lives. The idea of preaching, nursing and teaching the masses as an offering to God over a life of prayer were not pre-Reformation ideas, and although based on older foundations, were acted upon, accelerated and altered because of the need for Counter-Reformation changes. The influence of humanists such as Pole, Morone and Contarini is also vital.

Pole was a cousin of Henry V whose temper was conciliatory and whose guide was reason. Eager to sign treaties and discuss differences, these humanists were a world apart from such holy fools as Carafa and Giustiniani who saw differences and unorthodoxy as heresy. Although all were agreed that the Church needed reform, the lack of worldliness of Pole compared with the political life of Giberti and diplomatic experience of Contarini meant that ultimately the effectiveness of reformers was often based on factors outside theology, personality and motivation. Carafa was very embittered, but along with Contarini and Giberti, was a great reformer, thanks to his realism and his understanding of the world assets, skills lacked by Clement VII. The Catholic Reformations first champion and final supporter was Paul. Appreciating the need for reform, he appointed Contarini.

Although he did also appoint two of his adolescent grandsons at the same time, the appointment was a big step. He would add Pole, Carafa and Sadoleto amongst others to the College in 1536, another gesture of his commitment to Reform, and all of these people in 1537 would join a council of nine to reccomend reforms. Their 1537 report Con silium de emend enda ecclesia had a firm preface about the role of the Papacy in the problems of the Church, and criticises the self-interest of the Popes and their false councillors. The sale of Venal Offices was specifically criticised.

The failure to recognise such obvious abuses as the appointment of children, sale of benefices, pluralism, non-residence, dishonesty and idleness in the Curia, monastic corruption, dissensions bought and sold, simony and the paucity of the diocese of Rome itself. The book was not really a part of the Counter-Reformation however, eventually finding its way onto the Index of Prohibited Books. Having said that, Paul did try to reform the Datary and the Penitentiary. The Sack of Rome however, had wiped out papal income. With two fifths of his predecessors income, Paul struggled to make ends meet, and as such was in no position to reform. This attempt by Paul marked the end of the old Catholic Reform movement as an independent entity, and its absorption into an assault on Luther and his colleagues.

This last generation of pre-reformation theologians were the last hope for genuinely altruistic and spiritual reformation of the church without the bitter catalyst of the split of the Church. The banning of heterodox ical works was just one side to the Counter-Reforms. The Orthodox was also ratified, clarified and reasserted. The four schools of thought at the time, the pure Thomists (confined to the Dominicans by this time) who followed Aquinas, the Duns Scotus Thomists, (the via antiqua), the Nominalists and the Augustinian school...

The high level subtleties between the four were not as obvious as the differences allowed to continue between pure orthodoxy and popular Catholicism. Mariolatry, the worship of Mary and the downgrading of the role of Christ and the Trinity, genuinely pagan festivals incorporated into Christianity and other superstitions were also in need of clarification. Such clarification was vital for Paul, but for Charles V, the issue of repairing the Church by means of repairing the hierarchies was more important. The Church Council, which met from 1545 onward, reflected the desire of Paul to clarify doctrine as a means to securing the independence of the Curia to govern the hierarchy. Although the Council of Trent did discuss problems like pluralism and non-residency, its enormous output was almost entirely concerned with doctrine. Its composition (Papal Legates) ensured that the attacks on the Papacy of earlier councils did not occur, and the Council endowed a much clearer corpus of doctrine to the church.

The need to clarify the doctrine established the Churchs view of itself no longer as the Church, but as the Roman Catholic Church one of several such established churches. It is perhaps thanks to Carafa and his colleagues that the Council allowed no concessions to the Protestants. Paul hurried the Council in 1546-7 onto the subjects raised by Luther and the Counter-Reformation bloc in the Curia got the result they desired. The Regensburg compromise (Double Justification) was dropped entirely by 1546 and Thomism came into conflict with the Council. The Augustinian compromises to Luther were dropped as the Councils attitude was that Luther had taken a step too far and to pander to the Lutherans would be to denigrate the sanctity of their own religion for the benefits of heretics to whom their compromises meant nothing. The hijacking of the General Council of the Church so long a weapon on the conciliatory parties fell into the hands of Carafa hardened group of anti-Protestants.

However, one of the most important aspects of the Catholic fightback was the Society of Jesus. Founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, a Basque ex-soldier, who had met Lutheranism and discovered that he hated it, the Orders founders (Loyola, Lefevre, La inez, Salmeron, Bobadilla, Rodriguez and Xavier) were gathered by Loyola and made into Loyolas own disciples. Loyolas Spiritual Exercises was a book of some power and believed in neither mystic retreat, nor in crazed devotion, but instead in a indifference to the world backed up by knowledge of God and controlled mystic experience. The vow the seven took in 1534 to serve the Pope as he wished, or to perform missionary work in the Holy Land led them to Venice where they intended to go to the Levant but diplomatic issues prevented their travel.

As a result, they ended up in 1538 in Rome where they formed an order. The Society was arranged in total obedience to the provost of the Society and was set up with the aim of teaching Christianity to children and the uneducated. Loyolas assertion that the Society would serve as soldiers in faithful obedience to the most holy lord Paul and his successors was what swung Paul to approve the Society and as such, the Society, described by Bonney as shock troops of the Counter Reformation was founded in 1540 by the Bull Regi mini militant is ecclesia e. Ignatius took the first generalship despite gallstones that went undiagnosed for twenty years, and led the order with great strength for fifteen years. Short, slight, ill, lame from his wounding as a soldier at Pamplona, of limited intelligence and never a great preacher, scholar or theologian, Ignatius was still a great leader, and his mysticism which increased as he grew older and his coolness and practicality, results of his un theological attitude to theology resulted in a clear, obvious and instructive understanding of the soul.

Trappings of the other orders such as dress, food and daily orders were abandoned as Loyola wanted his priests to live within the world, not just near it, and to act accordingly. The Jesuits were educated to a very high degree and in modern thought, not just in one inflexible doctrine. As such, the order was radically different from older orders. Loyola founded an order of missionaries at the service of the Pope with the aim of moving east to the Levant, or west to the New World.

Loyola did not envisage Christian Germany as being his goal, but the Popes aim was Loyolas aim, and the Jesuits waded into Germany. So modern and successful was their programme that the fathers were inundated with requests from families asking them to teach boys with no intention of becoming Jesuits. Germany saw a rash of new schools founded. Vienna, Cologne, Prague and Ingolstadt all saw large Jesuit centres established.

Paul came to welcome the Jesuits and so great was the change in opinion concerning the need for reform that the humanist Pole was favourite for election to the Papacy. Alas, they were wrong and by 1542 Giberti and Contarini were dead. The conciliatory humanist reformers were gone and in their place, such bitter critics of Luther as Carafa rose. Although Paul immediate successor Julius was a reformer in the mould of Paul and reconvened the Council of Trent, he was to be the last of the line of old reformers, as he was replaced by Carafa. Carafa, even before his appointment as Paul IV, squeezed the bull Lice t ab initio from Paul revitalizing the Italian inquisition, in a move that set the tone for his papacy. Modelled on the Spanish Inquisition, the Italian model, headed by Carafa had the power to confiscate, imprison and punish throughout the peninsular.

The Inquisition controlled the growth not only of Protestant, Anabaptist, Anti trinitarian ideas, but also of some orthodox reform, especially under Paul IVs leadership. Morone was imprisoned on charges of heresy and Pole was saved only by a timely return to England. Under Paul IV, Italy lapsed into intellectual stagnation. The Index Libro rum Prohibitor um (1559) was just one aspect of the repression of Pauls inquisition.

Pauls personal dislike of Ignatius almost caused him to dissolve the Society. Paul IVs brutality and aggression in such actions as cleansing the Curia and makes him the first Counter-Reformation pope, but in his politics (alienating Spain) he almost set the Counter-Reforms back some time. The period of 1540-1560 saw a move from the humanist reformers who were built in the mould of Ximenes and Pole and whose basis for reform was a longstanding disdain for the iniquities of the Church to a move to specifically counter the advances of Luther. As the people who could remember united Christendom died off, the permanence of the split came to be realised and accepted.

It was in the battle to win back Germany that the Counter-Reformation was forged as it became to be known and in the battle against Luther that its weapons: the Inquisition, the Jesuits, repression and renewed Papal Supremacy were forged, ready for the fight with the less compromising Calvinists. To answer, until the election of Paul IV I would use the term Catholic Reformation and thereafter, I would use the term Counter-Reformation. Elements of the Catholic Reformation were concerned specifically with Luther and their development was accelerated by the need to heal the split, but their principles, literature, aims objectives and ideology predated Luther as they were in a long line of reformers who, including the early Luther, punctuated the previous centuries.