Catholic scholars have sometimes objected to this name because it implies that it was merely a reaction to Luther and his movement. And without denigrating Luther, it is true that the Counter-Reformation was more than a simple reaction to Protestantism.
Long before Luther was born, and while Luther was happily wrapped up in his own spiritual problems, and devoting no thought at all to the church as a whole, there had been thousands and thousands of western European Christians who were appalled by the sad state of St. Peter's flock and pressing for reform of one sort or another.
Christian humanists tended to be among the strongest critics of Rome and the papal court precisely because they could see the contrast between first and sixteenth century Christianity. Their leader, and the most popular writer in Europe, was Erasmus of Rotterdam, and his moderate, common-sense ideas of reform had a large following. Luther benefitted from humanist scholarship -- he used Erasmus's edition of the Greek text of the New Testament, for instance. He was affected by Erasmian ideas.
But Luther quickly distinguished himself from Erasmus and many of his followers. Luther, as we have seen, soon decided that the institutional problems of the church were based in faulty, that is false, doctrine.
Not everybody who considered himself a reformer could agree with this. Erasmus himself continued to believe that humans could and must contribute to their own salvation, and that the seven sacraments were a vital aid in the struggle.
It is one of the most important facts about the Protestant Reformation that in its early days Roman loyalists were unable even to formulate a response.Those reformers who had not gone over to Luther, the men with the zeal to make real changes and remedy the abuses that fueled dissatisfaction, were almost by definition men who had no real institutional influence. If they had had power, as opposed to an inspirational dream, then they would have done something long ago. Real power was monopolized by status-quo reactionaries, men who were entirely concerned to maintain the tangible benefits of power, and who looked no farther than the next struggle with their immediate rivals. The Roman establishment was so parochial in outlook, so selfish, and so out of touch with the very idea of spirituality and religious feeling that it was completely useless for two whole decades after Luther posted the 95 Theses in 1517. (More in class about how rivalries within that establishment and fears of a general council paralyzed the loyalist church.)
The first serious efforts at reform and reconciliation did not take place until the pontificate of Paul III, who was elected in 1534. Paul was an old survivor of the rip-roaring days of the Renaissance papacy. But Paul III was smart enough to realize the seriousness of the overall situation. He allowed some daring initiatives to be taken, and at the end of his life made some important moves himself.
The first initiative permitted by Paul was the appointment of a commission to study church reform. It was made up of some of the brightest lights of the contemporary papal court. Some, like Gaspar Contarini, were liberals who hoped for quick reunification with the Lutherans, even if it meant compromise. Others, like Gian Pietro Caraffa, were hard-liners. But none of them were unthinking conservatives, and together they compiled a document called the Consilium..de Emendanda Ecclesia, A report on needed reforms in the church."
Submitted in 1537, it was a very honest and practical document, and criticized the papal despotism that had existed for the previous two or three centuries, that had allowed popes to treat the church and its offices as private property to be administered for profit.
It called for a much stricter enforcement of church law, and an end in the open market in dispensations which had brought so much discredit on the church (as in the case of Albert bp. of Magdeburg).
Another important theme was the need for better clerical education.
There was also an attack on careless speculation in the universities, and free publishing, which the authors saw as the source of heresy and impiety.
The Consilium was such an explosive document that it was never officially released. In 1538 it was leaked and published gleefully by Lutheran printers, as a confirmation of everything they had been saying about Rome. This killed the report, but it was in any case too radical. The great weakness of the papacy was that it sold dispensations, exemptions from its own laws, for cash. The main reason this was done was that the popes needed money. Paul III shared that need. Thus Paul was willing to send absentee bishops home to do their duty, or crack down on openly immoral behavior at his court, but he could not bring himself to foreswear that income.
In the same period, Paul III was also allowing discussions with the Protestants to take place, something that Charles V had been urging for years. Cardinal Contarini, the foremost of the liberal reconciliationists, was given the authority to talk to Lutheran theologians. Luther himself refused to participate, but Melanchthon, one of his closest associates met Contarini in Regensburg in 1540 and 1541. At first some progress was made, there was even an agreement about the role of faith in salvation, but the two sides could not agree on transubstantiation. After the conference both Luther and the pope rejected even the agreements that had been reached. It was already twenty years or more too late to bridge the gap in the two theologies.
Since it was now clear that compromise would not heal the split, Caraffa, the hardliner, became the leading strategist of the fight against Luther and Protestantism. Caraffa basically adopted the strategy already implemented by the Spanish church against Jews and Muslims: repression, through the tried and true methods of the inquisition, that is through censorship, the identification and isolation of independent spirits, and torture, trial and execution of anyone who looked dangerous.
Soon after the collapse of the Regenburg Colloquy, in July of 1542, Pope Paul gave Caraffa the authority to set up a Roman Inquisition to purge the Italian church. Caraffa entered into his duties with great gusto, building a prison with his own funds so that he could get to work. The Roman Inquisition was effective. By attacking the most prominent protectors and favorers of Lutheranism Rome and all of Italy were saved for a narrow orthodoxy. The creation of the Roman Inquisition and the Index of Forbidden Books (which included all of Erasmus's works and the Consilium along with actual works of heresy) marks the beginning of full-blooded repression as a papal policy.
But a policy of repression did not eliminate the need for reform, and Paul III knew it. In 1545 political factors had finally made it possible for him to call a church council, thus satisfying the demands that Charles V had been making for nearly a quarter of a century. The council took place at Trent, in the foothills of the Alps. The place was chosen because it was in imperial territory and in Italy at the same time, a lame attempt to satisfy German demands for a meeting not under papal domination and papal demands for precisely the opposite.
The first few sessions of the Council of Trent finished off any remaining hope for an Erasmian, non-autocratic reform. Trent defended the Catholic tradition of the Later Middle Ages: the role of free will and good works in gaining salvation, the intercessory role of the clergy, and the co-equal authority of tradition and Scripture (rather than Scripture alone) in the church were all reaffirmed. This locked the door to reconciliation with the Protestants, a door both sides had already conspired to slam shut.
Likewise, Trent rejected the humanist approach to educating the clergy. This, perhaps had been the dearest ideal of the generation of Erasmus, now dead or grown old: the clergy, even the laity, should be brought into direct confrontation with Scripture. But this was seen as too dangerous, and the scholastic approach, with its reliance on authortitative interpretations, was confirmed.
Thus the council of Trent in its earliest phases has the appearance of a purely reactionary body, and one not terribly effective. But strategically, the approach taken at Trent may have been wise. Luther had made reformation a matter of theological principle. Trent consolidated what had been a diverse catholic tradition and re-established what exactly it was that the Roman church stood for: hierarchy, sacramentalism, and intercession.
Starting from this basic agreement, the leaders of the Roman church were able to do, in Trent's last sessions, in 1562 and 63, what people had been calling for over the centuries: clean up the mess at Rome.
When Pius V became pope in 1566, he was actually in a position to strike back at Protestantism. The pope's new power did not of course result simply because a new set of rules had been passed. Now the pope had willing and even zealous soldiers to carry out his will, soldiers who had been gathering slowly for decades, working and waiting for a general to lead them.
During the long period when the papacy seemed to do nothing, practical, non- or anti-Protestant reformers had fallen back on the tactics that previous generations had always depended on to renew the church: the founding of religious orders. One of the most radical aspects of Protestantism was its condemnation and aboltion of monasticism, which had fallen into disrepute almost everywhere. The catholic reformers, however, renewed the ideals and the practice of the orders.
The religious orders founded in the 16th century, like the friars of the late Middle Ages, sought to make a difference in the life of Catholic laity, and to convert both them and others to a life devoted to Christ.
Two endeavors distinguished the new orders:
It was founded by Ignatius Loyola, a Basque soldier who found religion before he had ever heard of Martin Luther. A self-educated man, he excelled in self-discipline and in his ability to attract and organize others who wanted to do some great thing for the church. He and nine companions took their first, self-imposed vows in 1534. Their main goal -- nearly 20 years after the 95 Theses -- was to preach to the infidel in Palestine. But they decided if that were impossible, they would do whatever the pope assigned them to do. War with the Turks prevented the pilgrimage, a fateful occurence that turned these Jesuits into the foremost papal shock troops against the Protestants.
Loyola developed into a spiritual and practical leader of phenomenal ability. He had gained his own self-assurance by practical meditation on sin and how to overcome it. He was able to teach this to his own followers, until they comprised a formidable body of dedicated men. There was no extreme or dramatic asceticism for them. Rather they were trained to think of the world as nothing but an arena in which they would do God's work, using the tools he gave them. And of course their dedication and education were the foremost tools they had.
The Jesuits became the educators par excellence of the Counter Reformation; they helped consolidate Catholicism, by teaching the loyal, stiffening the spines of the waverers, and reconverting the lost. They quickly became famous as advisers to men in secular authority, whose loyalty to the church was all important in the struggle.
They were the Catholic counter-pose to the dedicated Calvinists. Like Calvin's followers, were well-organized, well-educated, and absolutely certain of their mission.
They were the elite of the Catholic Church, but also typical of a new zealous spirit not confined to their order. The church had remade itself along tougher, less tolerant, more efficient lines. It is this change that made the post-Tridentine papacy able to fight both to stamp out heresy in still-Catholic countries, and recover territory either lost or nearly lost, such as Poland, Hungary, and Austria.
Counter-Reformation Catholicism is an interesting contrast to its opponent. Protestantism had begun by actualizing all the dissatisfaction of individuals and local communities oppressed by an ineffective universal authority. The post-Tridentine church capitalized on everything that was conservative in a still-conservative society: the desire for order and hierarchy. It also stood for universalism. Although all popes after Trent were Italians until very recently, they could not afford to ignore the wider world in the way their 15th c. predecessors had. Otherwise they might lose even Italy, even Rome.
BIBILIOGRAPHY
A.G. Dickens, The Counter Reformation.