EVANGELISM. – It is a Catholic reform movement of the first half of the 16th century. The name, however, is of recent origin and was coined by Pierre Imbert de la Tour to designate the French reformist tendencies. Hubert Jedin later applied it to the parallel Italian currents. The term aims to emphasize the fundamental tendency of the movement: the reform of Christian life through a return to the spirit of the Gospel, distinguishing it from the Protestantism of the same period and from the so-called Counter-Reformation that followed II. Evangelism was chronologically the last among the attempts at Catholic reform that preceded it, which aspired to reform the Church in its members.
The roots of evangelism lay, on the one hand, in the *devotio moderna* and in Erasmus, and on the other, in Ficino’s Neoplatonism, in Savonarola’s mysticism of the Cross, in the ethics of the Company of Divine Love, and even in the heterodox Spanish mysticism of the Alumbrados.
Evangelism was not the original creation of a particular religious reformer but arose spontaneously from the inspirations and needs of the time, in various places. In France, the center of evangelism was Meaux under Bishop Briconnet and Lefèvre. In Italy, evangelism flourished for barely ten years, from 1534, when the Spanish humanist Juan de Valdés settled in Naples and gathered around him a circle of like-minded individuals. Soon after, similar groups formed in Venice around Cardinal Contarini, in Lucca around Vermigli, prior of the Augustinian Canons, in Viterbo around Cardinal Pole, and in Rome around the marchioness of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna. They had no particular organization or fixed program but were united by shared aspirations. This elevated devotion, formed in the humanistic spirit, was spread and propagated among the wider public by preachers such as Bernardino Ochino and by anonymous writings like the *Trattato utilissimo del beneficio di Gesù Cristo crocifisso verso i cristiani*. The followers of evangelism formed the moderate current of reformers within the College of Cardinals (Cervini, Contarini, Pole, Morone, Ercole Gonzaga, Sadoleto, etc.). An expression of their spirit is the *Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia* (1537). They still hoped to avoid a rupture by meeting, with understanding, the demands of the Protestants. When, at the Diet of Regensburg, Contarini presented the thesis of *duplex iustitia* (1541), it seemed for a moment that the triumphant moment of evangelism had arrived, and reconciliation between Protestants and Catholic doctrine was hoped for. The failure of the negotiations brought about the failure of evangelism itself. The following year, Contarini died, Ochino apostatized, and the Inquisition was established.
When it seemed that evangelism might once again rise and even conquer the papal throne in the 1549 conclave, Cardinal Pole fell one vote short—specifically, the vote of Pietro Carafa, who, under the name of Paul IV, then initiated the so-called Counter-Reformation. The tendencies and figures of evangelism either separated from the orthodox ones (Ochino, Vergerio, Vermigli fled) or merged with other sects, especially Anabaptism and Socinianism. Few were executed (e.g., Carnesecchi), while many remained faithful to the Church, in which they effected a profound spiritual renewal (Morone, Pole, Seripando, etc.).
Evangelism was by no means a theological system but rather a very serious and noble, yet uncertain and divided, religious attitude. Characteristic of this irresolute stance is the advice Pole gave to Vittoria Colonna: *believe as if justification depended on faith, but act as if eternal salvation depended solely on good works*. Reduced to a formula, the fundamental principle of evangelism would be as follows: justification through faith, without, however, excluding good works. Nevertheless, its followers refrained from any overly binding or precise definition, awaiting the upcoming definitions of the council.
Undoubtedly, evangelism had many traits in common with Protestantism, such as Paulinism, extreme Augustinianism (the pessimism of its conception of the world and man), aversion to any Scholastic speculation and legal formalism, the aspiration toward a spiritualized Church and a simple, Christ-centered piety in the spirit of the Gospels, the study of the Bible, and the participation of the laity in the examination of religious problems.
There was, however, a substantial difference between evangelism and Protestantism: evangelism did not protest, did not seek to reform the Church through violence, but rather the individual faithful through faith. Evangelism sometimes seemed close to heresy but was never schismatic. It lacked the revolutionary character, as well as the dogmatic one. It was a transitory phenomenon and did not claim to be anything else. It was an aristocratic movement and, as such, did not aim at winning over the masses. To a soul struggling with spiritual and religious problems, evangelism offered nothing more than a mysticism of spiritual interiority, somewhat tinged with a sweet resignation.