Lawrence S. Cunningham
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195178067
- eISBN:
- 9780199784905
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195178068.003.0010
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation ...
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This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation and two conspicuous events which characterized the Marian character of Catholicism in the 19th century: the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the rise of Marian apparitions and subsequent pilgrimage locations, most conspicuously at Lourdes in France.Less
This chapter explores the Protestant reaction against the Marian tradition of Catholicism, which was addressed by the reform of the Council of Trent. Topics discussed include the Catholic Reformation and two conspicuous events which characterized the Marian character of Catholicism in the 19th century: the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX in 1854 and the rise of Marian apparitions and subsequent pilgrimage locations, most conspicuously at Lourdes in France.
Simone Laqua-O'Donnell
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199683314
- eISBN:
- 9780191763236
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199683314.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, History of Religion
Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster examines how women from different social backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation. The focus is on Münster, a city in the north of ...
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Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster examines how women from different social backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation. The focus is on Münster, a city in the north of Germany, which was exposed to powerful Protestant influences which culminated in the notorious Anabaptist kingdom of 1534. After the defeat of the radical Protestants, the city was returned to Catholicism and a stringent programme of reform was enforced. By examining concubinage, piety, marriage, deviance, and convent reform, core issues of the Counter-Reformation’s quest for renewal, this fascinating study shows how women participated in the social and religious changes of the time, and how their lives were shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Employing research into the political, religious, and social institutions, and using an impressive variety of sources, Simone Laqua-O’Donnell engages with the way women experienced the new religiosity, morality, and discipline that was introduced to the city of Münster during this turbulent time.Less
Women and the Counter-Reformation in Early Modern Münster examines how women from different social backgrounds encountered the Counter-Reformation. The focus is on Münster, a city in the north of Germany, which was exposed to powerful Protestant influences which culminated in the notorious Anabaptist kingdom of 1534. After the defeat of the radical Protestants, the city was returned to Catholicism and a stringent programme of reform was enforced. By examining concubinage, piety, marriage, deviance, and convent reform, core issues of the Counter-Reformation’s quest for renewal, this fascinating study shows how women participated in the social and religious changes of the time, and how their lives were shaped by the Counter-Reformation. Employing research into the political, religious, and social institutions, and using an impressive variety of sources, Simone Laqua-O’Donnell engages with the way women experienced the new religiosity, morality, and discipline that was introduced to the city of Münster during this turbulent time.
Leslie Tuttle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195381603
- eISBN:
- 9780199870295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381603.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Political History
This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were ...
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This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were mostly members of urban middling groups including craftsmen and professionals. Demographically, their high fertility was the result of early, long‐lasting marriages and the employment of wetnurses. In social, economic and demographic terms, these families do not seem strikingly different from the French urban households who were beginning to adopt contraceptive practices during the same era. The chapter also reviews contemporary religious sources that not only forbade contraception, but that endowed marriage and prolific reproduction with positive spiritual value. It concludes with a brief study of the strategies some of the large families used to pass on assets and preserve harmony among their numerous progeny.Less
This chapter offers a social and demographic analysis of the large families who claimed pronatalist tax exemptions in Old Regime France between 1666 and 1760. Samples suggest that recipients were mostly members of urban middling groups including craftsmen and professionals. Demographically, their high fertility was the result of early, long‐lasting marriages and the employment of wetnurses. In social, economic and demographic terms, these families do not seem strikingly different from the French urban households who were beginning to adopt contraceptive practices during the same era. The chapter also reviews contemporary religious sources that not only forbade contraception, but that endowed marriage and prolific reproduction with positive spiritual value. It concludes with a brief study of the strategies some of the large families used to pass on assets and preserve harmony among their numerous progeny.
Richard Parish
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199596669
- eISBN:
- 9780191729126
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596669.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History
The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement ...
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The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement in terms of Catholic particularity, as it was expressed in the writing of the French seventeenth century. This was a period of quite exceptional fertility in a range of genres: apologetics, sermons, devotional manuals, catechisms, martyr tragedies, lyric poetry, polemic, and spiritual autobiography. The chapters consider a broad cross‐section of this corpus with reference to the topics of apologetics, physicality, language, discernment, polemics, and salvation; and evidence is drawn both from canonical figures (Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, St François de Sales, Madame Guyon) and from less easily available texts. The writer's aim is to explore all those features that the heritage of the Catholic Reformation brought to the surface in France, and to do so in support of the numerous ways in which Christian doctrine could be understood as being strange: it is by turns contrary to expectations, paradoxical, divisive, carnal, and inexpressible. These features are exploited imaginatively in the more conventional literary forms, didactically in pulpit oratory, and empirically in the accounts of personal spiritual experience. In addition they are manifested polemically in debates surrounding penance, authority, inspiration, and eschatology, and often push orthodoxy to its limits and beyond in the course of their articulation. The work aims thereby to afford an unsettling account of a belief system to which early‐modern France often unquestioningly subscribed, and to show how the element of cultural assimilation of Catholic Christianity into much of Western Europe only tenuously contains a subversive and counter-intuitive creed. The degree to which that remains the case will be for the reader to decide.Less
The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement in terms of Catholic particularity, as it was expressed in the writing of the French seventeenth century. This was a period of quite exceptional fertility in a range of genres: apologetics, sermons, devotional manuals, catechisms, martyr tragedies, lyric poetry, polemic, and spiritual autobiography. The chapters consider a broad cross‐section of this corpus with reference to the topics of apologetics, physicality, language, discernment, polemics, and salvation; and evidence is drawn both from canonical figures (Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, St François de Sales, Madame Guyon) and from less easily available texts. The writer's aim is to explore all those features that the heritage of the Catholic Reformation brought to the surface in France, and to do so in support of the numerous ways in which Christian doctrine could be understood as being strange: it is by turns contrary to expectations, paradoxical, divisive, carnal, and inexpressible. These features are exploited imaginatively in the more conventional literary forms, didactically in pulpit oratory, and empirically in the accounts of personal spiritual experience. In addition they are manifested polemically in debates surrounding penance, authority, inspiration, and eschatology, and often push orthodoxy to its limits and beyond in the course of their articulation. The work aims thereby to afford an unsettling account of a belief system to which early‐modern France often unquestioningly subscribed, and to show how the element of cultural assimilation of Catholic Christianity into much of Western Europe only tenuously contains a subversive and counter-intuitive creed. The degree to which that remains the case will be for the reader to decide.
Joseph Bergin
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300150988
- eISBN:
- 9780300161069
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300150988.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This book provides a synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment. It provides an up-to-date and thorough ...
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This book provides a synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment. It provides an up-to-date and thorough account of the religious history of France in the context of social, institutional, and cultural developments during the so-called long seventeenth century. The book argues that the French version of the Catholic Reformation showed a dynamism unrivaled elsewhere in Europe. The traumatic experiences of the wars of religion, the continuing search within France for heresy, and the challenge of Augustinian thought successively energized its attempts at religious change. The book highlights the continuing interaction of church and society and shows that while the French experience was clearly allied to its European context, its path was a distinctive one.Less
This book provides a synthesis devoted to the French experience of religious change during the period after the wars of religion up to the early Enlightenment. It provides an up-to-date and thorough account of the religious history of France in the context of social, institutional, and cultural developments during the so-called long seventeenth century. The book argues that the French version of the Catholic Reformation showed a dynamism unrivaled elsewhere in Europe. The traumatic experiences of the wars of religion, the continuing search within France for heresy, and the challenge of Augustinian thought successively energized its attempts at religious change. The book highlights the continuing interaction of church and society and shows that while the French experience was clearly allied to its European context, its path was a distinctive one.
Alexandra Walsham
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199243556
- eISBN:
- 9780191725081
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199243556.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
The conclusion uses the history of a Carmarthenshire holy well to restate the themes of the main chapters of the book. It re-emphasizes the way in which the Protestant and Catholic Reformations ...
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The conclusion uses the history of a Carmarthenshire holy well to restate the themes of the main chapters of the book. It re-emphasizes the way in which the Protestant and Catholic Reformations converged with other intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural developments to transform both the physical appearance of the early modern landscape and the beliefs and practices that clustered around it. It underlines the complex and contradictory effects of the religious changes of the period and argues that they served to re-define rather than undermine the presence of the sacred in the material world. It also highlights the way in which these developments reconstituted social memory and played a key part in the forging of confessional identities.Less
The conclusion uses the history of a Carmarthenshire holy well to restate the themes of the main chapters of the book. It re-emphasizes the way in which the Protestant and Catholic Reformations converged with other intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural developments to transform both the physical appearance of the early modern landscape and the beliefs and practices that clustered around it. It underlines the complex and contradictory effects of the religious changes of the period and argues that they served to re-define rather than undermine the presence of the sacred in the material world. It also highlights the way in which these developments reconstituted social memory and played a key part in the forging of confessional identities.
Frank A. James III (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780814724439
- eISBN:
- 9780814760642
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9780814724439.003.0012
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which ...
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This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which God’s declaration of righteousness is based solely upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and the ensuing Catholic “Counter-Reformation,” in which salvation had happened, is happening, and is yet to come.Less
This overview chapter for the third part of the book covers the theologies of salvation in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. It covers both the theology of the Reformers, in which God’s declaration of righteousness is based solely upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and the ensuing Catholic “Counter-Reformation,” in which salvation had happened, is happening, and is yet to come.
Barbara B. Diefendorf
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190887025
- eISBN:
- 9780190887056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190887025.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion, European Early Modern History
The introduction first explains why “planting the cross” is an apt metaphor for the renewal of monastic life that took place in the wake of France’s Wars of Religion. It introduces the six case ...
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The introduction first explains why “planting the cross” is an apt metaphor for the renewal of monastic life that took place in the wake of France’s Wars of Religion. It introduces the six case studies that make up the book and explains how each explores a particular question, or set of questions, about how Catholic reformers envisioned and implemented the changes commonly known as the “Catholic Reformation.” The cases show that “reform” was not simply imposed from above, nor was it fixed or completed with the adoption of a new constitution or rule. Arguments for a return to a religious order’s original purity or a life of greater austerity encouraged debate about how the order should best live out its rule. The introduction concludes with a summary of the circumstances that made religious reform so urgently needed and a brief overview of how the reform movement spread.Less
The introduction first explains why “planting the cross” is an apt metaphor for the renewal of monastic life that took place in the wake of France’s Wars of Religion. It introduces the six case studies that make up the book and explains how each explores a particular question, or set of questions, about how Catholic reformers envisioned and implemented the changes commonly known as the “Catholic Reformation.” The cases show that “reform” was not simply imposed from above, nor was it fixed or completed with the adoption of a new constitution or rule. Arguments for a return to a religious order’s original purity or a life of greater austerity encouraged debate about how the order should best live out its rule. The introduction concludes with a summary of the circumstances that made religious reform so urgently needed and a brief overview of how the reform movement spread.
Andrew Dell'Antonio
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520269293
- eISBN:
- 9780520950108
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520269293.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the ...
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The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music-makers by a new professional class of performers. This book looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other commentaries on music, the visual arts, and Church doctrine, this book links the new ideas about cultivated listening with other intellectual trends of the period: humanistic learning, contemplative listening (or watching) as an active spiritual practice, and musical mysticism as an ideal promoted by the Church as part of the Catholic Reformation.Less
The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences—such as tonal music—began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music-makers by a new professional class of performers. This book looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other commentaries on music, the visual arts, and Church doctrine, this book links the new ideas about cultivated listening with other intellectual trends of the period: humanistic learning, contemplative listening (or watching) as an active spiritual practice, and musical mysticism as an ideal promoted by the Church as part of the Catholic Reformation.
Maria de San Jose Salazar
Alison Weber (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226734545
- eISBN:
- 9780226734620
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226734620.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
María de San José Salazar (1548–1603) took the veil as a Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving ...
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María de San José Salazar (1548–1603) took the veil as a Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving as prioress of the Seville and Lisbon convents. Within the parameters of the strict Catholic Reformation in Spain, she fiercely defended women's rights to define their own spiritual experience and to teach, inspire, and lead other women in reforming their church. María wrote this book as a defense of the Discalced practice of setting aside two hours each day for conversation, music, and the staging of religious plays. Casting the book in the form of a dialogue, she demonstrates through fictional conversations among a group of nuns during their hours of recreation how women could serve as very effective spiritual teachers for each other. The book includes one of the first biographical portraits of Teresa and María's personal account of the troubled founding of the Discalced convent at Seville, as well as María's tribulations as an Inquisitional suspect. Rich in allusions to women's affective relationships in the early modern convent, it also serves as an example of how a woman might write when relatively free of clerical censorship and expectations.Less
María de San José Salazar (1548–1603) took the veil as a Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelite nun in 1571, becoming one of Teresa of Avila's most important collaborators in religious reform and serving as prioress of the Seville and Lisbon convents. Within the parameters of the strict Catholic Reformation in Spain, she fiercely defended women's rights to define their own spiritual experience and to teach, inspire, and lead other women in reforming their church. María wrote this book as a defense of the Discalced practice of setting aside two hours each day for conversation, music, and the staging of religious plays. Casting the book in the form of a dialogue, she demonstrates through fictional conversations among a group of nuns during their hours of recreation how women could serve as very effective spiritual teachers for each other. The book includes one of the first biographical portraits of Teresa and María's personal account of the troubled founding of the Discalced convent at Seville, as well as María's tribulations as an Inquisitional suspect. Rich in allusions to women's affective relationships in the early modern convent, it also serves as an example of how a woman might write when relatively free of clerical censorship and expectations.
Ulrich L. Lehner
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- March 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190232917
- eISBN:
- 9780190232948
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190232917.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who ...
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The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who lived 250 years ago but whose ideas are as attractive as ever. This book argues that while Catholic beliefs are commonly assumed to be at odds with modernity, most of the progressive reforms associated with the Enlightenment actually began to take shape during the Catholic Counter-Reformation two centuries earlier, and were staunchly defended by enlightened Catholics during the eighteenth century. This is the forgotten story of a progressive Catholicism that actively engaged with the world. Although this mode of thought declined in the nineteenth century, it reemerged powerfully at, and after, Vatican II (1962–1965).Less
The most cherished values of modernity are unthinkable without the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Equal rights, the growth of democracy, and the idea of perpetual progress stem from thinkers who lived 250 years ago but whose ideas are as attractive as ever. This book argues that while Catholic beliefs are commonly assumed to be at odds with modernity, most of the progressive reforms associated with the Enlightenment actually began to take shape during the Catholic Counter-Reformation two centuries earlier, and were staunchly defended by enlightened Catholics during the eighteenth century. This is the forgotten story of a progressive Catholicism that actively engaged with the world. Although this mode of thought declined in the nineteenth century, it reemerged powerfully at, and after, Vatican II (1962–1965).
Alison Forrestal
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198785767
- eISBN:
- 9780191827570
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198785767.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, History of Religion
For information on the life and work of Vincent de Paul, historians still depend mainly on the standard biography produced by the Vincentian Pierre Coste, the triple volume Le Grand Saint du grand ...
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For information on the life and work of Vincent de Paul, historians still depend mainly on the standard biography produced by the Vincentian Pierre Coste, the triple volume Le Grand Saint du grand siècle, even though it is close to a century since this was published. It is now widely recognized that while the disruption of the Wars of Religion (1562–98) meant that the drive for Catholic reform began later in France than elsewhere, once it was set in motion it reached levels of intensity and creativity over the first six decades of the seventeenth century which were unmatched in any other region. The Introduction locates de Paul within the historiography of the Catholic Reformation and French religious renewal, by offering a survey of the findings of the most significant research in these areas, and identifying the questions that these evoke for the assessment of de Paul’s activities.Less
For information on the life and work of Vincent de Paul, historians still depend mainly on the standard biography produced by the Vincentian Pierre Coste, the triple volume Le Grand Saint du grand siècle, even though it is close to a century since this was published. It is now widely recognized that while the disruption of the Wars of Religion (1562–98) meant that the drive for Catholic reform began later in France than elsewhere, once it was set in motion it reached levels of intensity and creativity over the first six decades of the seventeenth century which were unmatched in any other region. The Introduction locates de Paul within the historiography of the Catholic Reformation and French religious renewal, by offering a survey of the findings of the most significant research in these areas, and identifying the questions that these evoke for the assessment of de Paul’s activities.
Andrew Dell'Antonio
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520269293
- eISBN:
- 9780520950108
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520269293.003.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, Western
Leaders of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation understood the role of visual art as entirely bound to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sacred and placed the ultimate onus of that ...
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Leaders of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation understood the role of visual art as entirely bound to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sacred and placed the ultimate onus of that understanding on the properly disposed recipient. They also set about positing musical experience and most crucially the listener's appropriate parsing of that experience, as a privileged path to union with the divine. A focused approach to musical realization developed primarily in elite roman circles, in the first decades of the seventeenth century. One of the central contentions of this study is that the nonspecificity of musical description in seventeenth-century accounts can be read as a purposeful strategy on the part of some writers to establish a non-technical musical-descriptive frame. The chapter illustrates this elite discourse on listening as a “spiritual practice” because the individuals whose writings are examined describe the phenomenon of listening as an active, carefully applied process that is designed to establish a privileged connection with the divine.Less
Leaders of the post-Tridentine Catholic Reformation understood the role of visual art as entirely bound to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the sacred and placed the ultimate onus of that understanding on the properly disposed recipient. They also set about positing musical experience and most crucially the listener's appropriate parsing of that experience, as a privileged path to union with the divine. A focused approach to musical realization developed primarily in elite roman circles, in the first decades of the seventeenth century. One of the central contentions of this study is that the nonspecificity of musical description in seventeenth-century accounts can be read as a purposeful strategy on the part of some writers to establish a non-technical musical-descriptive frame. The chapter illustrates this elite discourse on listening as a “spiritual practice” because the individuals whose writings are examined describe the phenomenon of listening as an active, carefully applied process that is designed to establish a privileged connection with the divine.
Barbara B. Diefendorf
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190887025
- eISBN:
- 9780190887056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190887025.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion, European Early Modern History
The chapter examines efforts the Trinitarians of Provence made to reverse a long decline and to adapt their medieval order to reflect the new spiritual climate of the Catholic Reformation. The reform ...
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The chapter examines efforts the Trinitarians of Provence made to reverse a long decline and to adapt their medieval order to reflect the new spiritual climate of the Catholic Reformation. The reform was made by ordinary members despite opposition from their superior general in Paris, who envisioned reform only as a return to the order’s original rule. Founded to ransom Christian slaves in the Mediterranean, the order had fallen away from its rule and experienced declining vocations and impoverishment in the Wars of Religion. The chapter argues that the Provençal monks took their model of religious life from the reformed congregations of Capuchins and Recollects and not from a desire to return to some imagined primitive purity. They wanted to govern their houses in a more collaborative way, to better educate their priests, and to create a more spiritualized community with the interiorized personal piety that characterized the Catholic Reformation.Less
The chapter examines efforts the Trinitarians of Provence made to reverse a long decline and to adapt their medieval order to reflect the new spiritual climate of the Catholic Reformation. The reform was made by ordinary members despite opposition from their superior general in Paris, who envisioned reform only as a return to the order’s original rule. Founded to ransom Christian slaves in the Mediterranean, the order had fallen away from its rule and experienced declining vocations and impoverishment in the Wars of Religion. The chapter argues that the Provençal monks took their model of religious life from the reformed congregations of Capuchins and Recollects and not from a desire to return to some imagined primitive purity. They wanted to govern their houses in a more collaborative way, to better educate their priests, and to create a more spiritualized community with the interiorized personal piety that characterized the Catholic Reformation.
Barbara B. Diefendorf
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190887025
- eISBN:
- 9780190887056
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190887025.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion, European Early Modern History
This book examines how Catholic reformers envisioned and implemented changes to monastic life in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France. Scholars of France’s Catholic Reformation have ...
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This book examines how Catholic reformers envisioned and implemented changes to monastic life in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France. Scholars of France’s Catholic Reformation have tended to focus on the movement’s later stages and, taking a top-down approach, view it from the perspective of activist clerics seeking to impose a fixed idea of religious life. This study focuses instead on the movement’s beginnings and explores the aims and tactics of proponents of reform from different but overlapping perspectives. The six case studies draw from three regions—Paris, Provence, and Languedoc. The first chapters tell the story of religious caught in the direct path of the Wars of Religion, which reduced France to near anarchy in the sixteenth century. Chapter 1 tells of the difficulty traditional women’s orders had surviving—much less reforming themselves—in Protestant-dominated Montpellier. Chapter 2 examines the rebellion of Paris’s Feuillants against both their ascetic abbot and the king during the Holy League revolt. Chapter 3 recounts the implantation of the militant Franciscans called Capuchins in the Protestant heartland, Languedoc. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the struggle to reform two old orders—the Dominicans and Trinitarians—that had fallen into decay. Chapter 6 explores conflicting interpretations of Teresa of Avila’s legacy at France’s first Carmelite convents. The book illuminates persistent debates about what constituted religious reform and how a reform’s success should be judged. It shows reform to have been lived as an ongoing process that was more diverse, experimental, and experiential than is often recognized.Less
This book examines how Catholic reformers envisioned and implemented changes to monastic life in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century France. Scholars of France’s Catholic Reformation have tended to focus on the movement’s later stages and, taking a top-down approach, view it from the perspective of activist clerics seeking to impose a fixed idea of religious life. This study focuses instead on the movement’s beginnings and explores the aims and tactics of proponents of reform from different but overlapping perspectives. The six case studies draw from three regions—Paris, Provence, and Languedoc. The first chapters tell the story of religious caught in the direct path of the Wars of Religion, which reduced France to near anarchy in the sixteenth century. Chapter 1 tells of the difficulty traditional women’s orders had surviving—much less reforming themselves—in Protestant-dominated Montpellier. Chapter 2 examines the rebellion of Paris’s Feuillants against both their ascetic abbot and the king during the Holy League revolt. Chapter 3 recounts the implantation of the militant Franciscans called Capuchins in the Protestant heartland, Languedoc. Chapters 4 and 5 examine the struggle to reform two old orders—the Dominicans and Trinitarians—that had fallen into decay. Chapter 6 explores conflicting interpretations of Teresa of Avila’s legacy at France’s first Carmelite convents. The book illuminates persistent debates about what constituted religious reform and how a reform’s success should be judged. It shows reform to have been lived as an ongoing process that was more diverse, experimental, and experiential than is often recognized.
Barbara B. Diefendorf
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- March 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190887025
- eISBN:
- 9780190887056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190887025.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion, European Early Modern History
The conclusion argues that France’s Catholic Reformation benefitted from reform efforts initiated in Italy and Spain but was most profoundly shaped by France’s experience of religious war. The ...
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The conclusion argues that France’s Catholic Reformation benefitted from reform efforts initiated in Italy and Spain but was most profoundly shaped by France’s experience of religious war. The movement’s origins lay in the perceived need both to fight the spread of Protestant ideas and to raise standards of clerical behavior. Summarizing the diverse ways in which religious communities responded to the challenges of heresy and civil war, the conclusion further argues that the old religious orders, which had suffered greatly in the conflicts, found themselves at a serious disadvantage when wealthy elites shifted their patronage at the wars’ end to the new reformed congregations, whose penitential fervor and rigorous asceticism had captured their imagination. The new congregations grew at a rapid pace, while the old orders struggled to overcome wartime debts and destruction, fought to determine what reforms to enact, and pressured recalcitrant members to accept their programs for change.Less
The conclusion argues that France’s Catholic Reformation benefitted from reform efforts initiated in Italy and Spain but was most profoundly shaped by France’s experience of religious war. The movement’s origins lay in the perceived need both to fight the spread of Protestant ideas and to raise standards of clerical behavior. Summarizing the diverse ways in which religious communities responded to the challenges of heresy and civil war, the conclusion further argues that the old religious orders, which had suffered greatly in the conflicts, found themselves at a serious disadvantage when wealthy elites shifted their patronage at the wars’ end to the new reformed congregations, whose penitential fervor and rigorous asceticism had captured their imagination. The new congregations grew at a rapid pace, while the old orders struggled to overcome wartime debts and destruction, fought to determine what reforms to enact, and pressured recalcitrant members to accept their programs for change.
Alison Forrestal
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198785767
- eISBN:
- 9780191827570
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198785767.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History, History of Religion
This book offers a major reassessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional ...
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This book offers a major reassessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional explanations for de Paul’s prominence in the dévot reform movement that emerged in the wake of the Wars of Religion, it explores how he turned a personal vocation to evangelize the rural poor of France into a congregation of secular missionaries, known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Lazarists, with three interrelated strands of pastoral responsibility: the delivery of missions, the formation and training of clergy, and the promotion of confraternal charity. It demonstrates that the structure, ethos, and works that de Paul devised for the Congregation placed it at the heart of a significant enterprise of reform that involved a broad set of associates in efforts to transform the character of devotional belief and practice within the church. The book’s central questions concern de Paul’s efforts to create, characterize, and articulate a distinctive and influential vision for missionary life and work, both for himself and for the Lazarist Congregation, and it argues that his prominence and achievements depended on his remarkable ability to exploit the potential for association and collaboration within the dévot environment of seventeenth-century France in enterprising and systematic ways. It is the first study to assess de Paul’s activities against the backdrop of religious reform and Bourbon rule, and to reconstruct the combination of ideas, practices, resources, and relationships that determined his ability to pursue his ambitions.Less
This book offers a major reassessment of the thought and activities of the most famous figure of the seventeenth-century French Catholic Reformation, Vincent de Paul. Confronting traditional explanations for de Paul’s prominence in the dévot reform movement that emerged in the wake of the Wars of Religion, it explores how he turned a personal vocation to evangelize the rural poor of France into a congregation of secular missionaries, known as the Congregation of the Mission or the Lazarists, with three interrelated strands of pastoral responsibility: the delivery of missions, the formation and training of clergy, and the promotion of confraternal charity. It demonstrates that the structure, ethos, and works that de Paul devised for the Congregation placed it at the heart of a significant enterprise of reform that involved a broad set of associates in efforts to transform the character of devotional belief and practice within the church. The book’s central questions concern de Paul’s efforts to create, characterize, and articulate a distinctive and influential vision for missionary life and work, both for himself and for the Lazarist Congregation, and it argues that his prominence and achievements depended on his remarkable ability to exploit the potential for association and collaboration within the dévot environment of seventeenth-century France in enterprising and systematic ways. It is the first study to assess de Paul’s activities against the backdrop of religious reform and Bourbon rule, and to reconstruct the combination of ideas, practices, resources, and relationships that determined his ability to pursue his ambitions.
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226734545
- eISBN:
- 9780226734620
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226734620.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
This chapter focuses on the life of María de San José Salazar, her origins, writing, and her Book for the Hour of Recreation, which voices the concerns of a woman who was content to work within the ...
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This chapter focuses on the life of María de San José Salazar, her origins, writing, and her Book for the Hour of Recreation, which voices the concerns of a woman who was content to work within the parameters of what she understood to be the non-negotiable limitations on women's roles during the Catholic Reformation. Her poetry demonstrates that she had mastered a wide variety of metrical forms, from the Italianate sonnet to the folkloric Castilian villancico. The absence of genealogical records for her family suggests that María was an illegitimate child of a highly placed member of Doña Luisa's household. In 1562, Doña Luisa asked the Carmelite provincial of Castile to allow Teresa de Jesús, a nun from Avila with a growing renown for saintliness, to stay with her in Toledo. María relates that she and her companions were fascinated by the nun and more than once spied on her through cracks in the door as she prayed in ecstasy.Less
This chapter focuses on the life of María de San José Salazar, her origins, writing, and her Book for the Hour of Recreation, which voices the concerns of a woman who was content to work within the parameters of what she understood to be the non-negotiable limitations on women's roles during the Catholic Reformation. Her poetry demonstrates that she had mastered a wide variety of metrical forms, from the Italianate sonnet to the folkloric Castilian villancico. The absence of genealogical records for her family suggests that María was an illegitimate child of a highly placed member of Doña Luisa's household. In 1562, Doña Luisa asked the Carmelite provincial of Castile to allow Teresa de Jesús, a nun from Avila with a growing renown for saintliness, to stay with her in Toledo. María relates that she and her companions were fascinated by the nun and more than once spied on her through cracks in the door as she prayed in ecstasy.
Joseph Bergin
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300150988
- eISBN:
- 9780300161069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300150988.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Religion
This chapter describes the presence of the religious orders within France referred to as “the white mantle of the churches.” The place where many of the greatest religious orders were founded and ...
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This chapter describes the presence of the religious orders within France referred to as “the white mantle of the churches.” The place where many of the greatest religious orders were founded and developed, France's landscape was heavily dotted with old and new, male and female religious orders. With the Catholic Reformation, the latest and perhaps the most intensive round of foundations began, adding new “religions”—as religious orders were commonly described since the Middle Ages—to the existing ones, which by way of response often found themselves regrouping, reforming, and sometimes expanding in new formations. If the sheer scale of the presence of the regulars in France, in both town and country, is difficult to convey as a whole, it is largely because of the considerable plasticity of the successive forms that this presence possessed, which can lead historians of the ancien regime church to underestimate them.Less
This chapter describes the presence of the religious orders within France referred to as “the white mantle of the churches.” The place where many of the greatest religious orders were founded and developed, France's landscape was heavily dotted with old and new, male and female religious orders. With the Catholic Reformation, the latest and perhaps the most intensive round of foundations began, adding new “religions”—as religious orders were commonly described since the Middle Ages—to the existing ones, which by way of response often found themselves regrouping, reforming, and sometimes expanding in new formations. If the sheer scale of the presence of the regulars in France, in both town and country, is difficult to convey as a whole, it is largely because of the considerable plasticity of the successive forms that this presence possessed, which can lead historians of the ancien regime church to underestimate them.
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804752817
- eISBN:
- 9780804767897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804752817.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
The people of Oberwesel-Bacharach sought the canonization of the Good Werner of Oberwesel in 1417. Whatever their reason for doing so, the testimonies they left behind were used by the Bollandists to ...
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The people of Oberwesel-Bacharach sought the canonization of the Good Werner of Oberwesel in 1417. Whatever their reason for doing so, the testimonies they left behind were used by the Bollandists to highlight some of the Catholic Reformation's most important doctrinal cruxes, as well as its negative opinions and anxieties about Jews living in the midst of Catholicism. The one major charge against Jews that is not raised by the Werner tale is that of usury, something that the story of Richard of Pontoise is able to do. Lending's most vocal critics, fifteenth-century Observantine Franciscans, called the Jews “truly wild and thirsty dogs, who [through their lending activity] have sucked and go on sucking our blood.” In his ritual murder story entitled Passion of Richard of Pontoise, written in 1498, Robert Gaguin claims that Richard's martyrdom persuaded King Philip Augustus to liberate France from the Jews and, in particular, from the oppressive claws of Jewish lending.Less
The people of Oberwesel-Bacharach sought the canonization of the Good Werner of Oberwesel in 1417. Whatever their reason for doing so, the testimonies they left behind were used by the Bollandists to highlight some of the Catholic Reformation's most important doctrinal cruxes, as well as its negative opinions and anxieties about Jews living in the midst of Catholicism. The one major charge against Jews that is not raised by the Werner tale is that of usury, something that the story of Richard of Pontoise is able to do. Lending's most vocal critics, fifteenth-century Observantine Franciscans, called the Jews “truly wild and thirsty dogs, who [through their lending activity] have sucked and go on sucking our blood.” In his ritual murder story entitled Passion of Richard of Pontoise, written in 1498, Robert Gaguin claims that Richard's martyrdom persuaded King Philip Augustus to liberate France from the Jews and, in particular, from the oppressive claws of Jewish lending.
