CATHOLIC REFORM. — The Catholic Reform of the sixteenth century was the Church’s return to an ideal of Christian life through inner renewal. It was the premise of the Catholic Restoration, through which the inwardly renewed Church turned to the external world in order to defend itself against Protestantism and regain the ground lost because of II. The Protestant Reformation did not produce the Catholic Reform, but indirectly favored it against its own will.
I. ORIGIN OF THE CATHOLIC REFORM
After the various attempts by the Councils of Constance and Basel to bring about the reform of the Church, deemed necessary for a long time, by changing its constitution and especially by periodically holding general councils superior to the papacy, several fifteenth-century pontiffs—Pius II, Sixtus IV, and Alexander VI—undertook a reform of the Roman Curia and of the Church in general, but without effect. The true Catholic Reform did not begin in capite but in membris, therefore not from above but from below, that is, through the self-reform of its members. The Mendicant Orders in particular worked to restore the strictness of the Rule in their convents, and, being the great ministers of souls, acted upon the masses through their great preachers. Bernardino da Siena, Giovanni da Capestrano, and Giacomo della Marca emerged from the Franciscan Order; moreover, Francesco di Paola founded the Minims; Antonino da Firenze and Savonarola emerged from the Dominican Congregation of S. Marco; among the Germans of the same Order, the popular writers Nider and Herold exerted great influence; among the Augustinians arose the Congregations for Reform at Lecceto, S. Giovanni a Carbonara, and the Lombard Congregation; among the Carmelites, the Mantuan Congregation. In the Order of the Benedictines, the Congregations of S. Giustina, Valladolid, Chézal-Benoît, and Bursvelde were formed; among the Augustinian Canons, the Congregation of Windesheim, from which came Standonck, the reformer of S. Victor in Paris. All these reforms of the Orders in the late Middle Ages were very important for preserving the true Christian spirit both within the convents and beyond them. In particular, the Charterhouse of Cologne was the starting point of the Catholic Reform in Germany.There was no lack of zealous bishops who worked with all their strength in their dioceses against the most flagrant abuses. The Italian episcopate produced men such as Lorenzo Giustiniani, Antonino da Firenze, Bertini of Foligno, and Barozzi of Padua; in France, the provincial synods of Sens in 1485 and the reformed convent of Tours in 1493 initiated the reform of the secular clergy. The records of visitations to the English dioceses show that religious life there too was by no means languishing; the German episcopate produced a long succession of reforming bishops, such as Hewen and Randegg at Constance, Ramung at Speyer, Scherenberg at Würzburg, and Zollern at Augsburg; and some German princes used papal privileges to promote the reform of the Church, as, for example, the dukes of Saxony for the reform of the convents in 1485. The fifteenth century was by no means a period of religious decadence, as the early Protestant movement wished to portray it, but rather a religiously vibrant, indeed restless, age. And the Protestant Reformation used this restlessness for its own purposes.
The devotio moderna, founded in the Netherlands by G. Groote, sought to model religious life on the example of Christ, and from it emerged the Fratres vitae communis, communities of several laymen without vows, which spread throughout the Netherlands and northern Germany.
The renewal therefore had its origins in the supernatural foundations of the Church itself. The decisive impulse came from Italy and Spain. The terrible end of Savonarola did not prevent many from heeding his call to penance. Independently of him, centers of reform were formed
in Italy: Bernardino da Feltre founded the Oratory of S. Girolamo at Vicenza in 1494. In Genoa, the layman Ettore Vernazza followed him with the Oratory of Divine Love (v. COMPAGNIA DEL DIVINO AMORE).
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Oratory established itself in Rome, and from it emerged Gaetano da Thiene and Gian Pietro Carafa, founders of the Order of the Theatines. In Venice, a group of young nobles, almost all laymen, devoted themselves to a rigorously religious life; two of them, Quirini and Giustiniani, entered Camaldoli, and in 1513 they drafted for Leo X an extensive memorandum on reform, the most important of the period preceding the Catholic Reform properly so called. PATARINI (v.) also belonged to that group; in 1516, while still a layman, he wrote the De officio episcopi, which presented the ideal of the apostolic bishop. At the inauguration of the Fifth Lateran Council, the Augustinian superior general Egidio da Viterbo maintained as the basis of the Catholic Reform that: Homines per sacra immutari fas est, non sacra per homines.
Self-sanctification and the apostolate were the fundamental principles on which, in years of war and misery, Girolamo Miani (v.) ZACCARIA, SANTO (v.), both still laymen, founded the Orders of the Somaschi and the Barnabites.
The Catholic Reform flourished in Spain through the impetus of the entire people, which had fought victoriously for the liberation of the country from the Moors, a victory crowned by the conquest of Granada under Ferdinand and Isabella. With Isabella’s support, Ximenes de Cisneros and Talavera displayed their reforming zeal; religious studies, especially scholastic studies, flourished at Valladolid, Alcalá, and Salamanca; from the school of Francisco de Vitoria emerged the great theologians whom Spain sent to Trent. The conversion of the Basque gentleman Iñigo de Loyola at Manresa and his Exercitia Spiritualis were destined to give the greatest impulse to the Catholic Reform.
II. BEGINNINGS OF THE CATHOLIC REFORM IN ROME (1534–63)
The individual reforms may be compared to little streams which, flowing from various sides and tending toward the same goal, could not be united into a single river until the Papacy, reached by them, coordinated them. On the Catholic side, reform was desired even before the apostasy began in the north. Yet it is undeniable that the latter contributed to ensuring that the necessity of a radical reform of the Church at its very heart, in Rome, would not merely be recognized in theory but also put into practice. Adrian VI, full of zeal, reigned for too short a time for his pontificate to bring about any effective change. Clement VII, although personally irreproachable, did nothing serious for the Catholic Reform and the Council. Only Paul III incorporated reform into his program and began to implement it by calling into the Sacred College several uncompromising supporters of the reform party, such as Contarini, Carafa, Pole, and Sadoleto, and later Cervini, Morone, Cortese, and others, thus initiating the transformation of the College itself. Since the Council was delayed in meeting for chiefly political reasons, the Pontiff, influenced by the commission for the Catholic Reform convened at the end of 1536 and by its Consilium de emendaea Ecclesia, reformed the curial authorities: although it did not achieve the results desired by the best reformers, it gradually eliminated the major abuses through greater severity, above all in the choice of cardinals and bishops. The activity of Gian Matteo Giberti at Verona was taken as an example by other bishops; people now understood what serious abuses were constituted by neglect of the obligation of residence and by the cumulatio beneficiorum; and although their complete abolition was not immediately achieved, it was nevertheless recognized as indispensable. The impetus toward Catholic Reform in the Mendicant Order, given by superiors such as Seripando and Audet, and especially the approval of the Society of Jesus, were further steps toward the Catholic Reform.The decrees of the Council of Trent subsequently accelerated the Catholic Reform; in particular, the decree on the obligation of residence for bishops and parish priests (sess. VI) combated a series of serious abuses, but at first its effect was limited, because the decrees did not enter into force for lack of pontifical confirmation. And the attempts of the bishops of Spain and Portugal to apply spontaneously individual decrees, such as the one concerning the reform of exempt chapters, led Julius III to consider implementing the decrees of the Council of Trent through a great bull on the Catholic Reform and, consequently, as papal laws concerning the Catholic Reform. Julius III, however, died before the publication of the bull Licei ab initio.
The pontificate of Paul IV gave decisive impetus to the Catholic Reform in the city of Rome and in the Roman Curia: the reforming element in the College of Cardinals was strengthened through the election of deeply religious men such as Ghislieri, Scotti, and Reumano; the practice of dispensations was more strictly regulated, and severe action was taken against «apostates» from religious Orders and against offenses against religion.
The reaction against the Carafa regime under Pius IV no longer placed the victory of reform ideas in jeopardy. Pius IV continued the directives of Paul III by convening the Council of Trent for the third time in 1561–63.
The Catholic Reform was advanced not only by the promulgation of the decrees at Trent, but also by the fact that the papacy itself supervised their execution, preventing what had occurred at the Fifth Lateran Council, namely, that they should remain a dead letter.
III. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CATHOLIC REFORM (1563–1620)
The will of the pontiffs to implement the Catholic Reform was shown not only by the fact that Pius IV sanctioned the decrees of the Council of Trent without making any alterations to them (with the bull Benedictus Deus of 26 January 1564), but also by the establishment of a congregation of cardinals charged with supervising the execution of the decrees and, from 2 August 1564, with providing their authentic interpretation in doubtful cases, a function previously reserved to the Holy See. It was no less important that the Pope’s nephew, Carlo Borromeo, in his apostolic activity as archbishop of Milan, should have offered the example of a reforming bishop and, through the decrees of the provincial Synods of Milan of 1565 and 1569, supplied a model for the practical application of the decrees of Trent to the concrete needs of dioceses. Borromeo’s living example was no less important for the purposes of the Catholic Reform than the decrees themselves.The successors of Pius IV, Pius V and Gregory XIII, pursued the implementation of the Catholic Reform unswervingly and made it a consuetudo. Pius V in particular fulfilled the tasks entrusted by the Council to the Papacy: in 1567 there appeared the Catechismus Romanus, a dogmatic and moral manual for parish priests; in 1568 the reformed Breviarium Romanum; and in 1570 the Missale Romanum. All these works brought an end to arbitrariness in the liturgical sphere and produced greater uniformity. Numerous provincial and diocesan synods in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Poland saw to the application of the decrees of Trent. Seminaries were established for the formation of priests, first of all that of Rieti in 1564, followed by the Seminarium Romanum in 1565; in 1584 the Collegium Romanum was founded, a central university directed by the Jesuits. The apostolic nuncios increasingly promoted the Catholic Reform alongside their diplomatic duties: their number was increased, and the nunciatures of Cologne, Brussels, and Graz were consequences of the Catholic Reform. Alongside the regular nuncios there were extraordinary ones, such as Ninguarda and Porzia in southern Germany and Austria.
Sixtus V followed his predecessors and completed the work by reforming ecclesiastical administration, which had deliberately been left unmentioned at Trent, and by founding fifteen permanent congregations of cardinals as supreme administrative authorities.
While the Papacy placed itself at the head of the Catholic Reform, it simultaneously gathered together and coordinated all the existing Catholic tendencies, so that they might form a single mighty river. This internal growth benefited the position of the papacy itself and increased its moral authority. In 1600, at the height of the Catholic Reform, the Pontiff was far more influential and possessed much greater power than he had a hundred years earlier. Rome was now at the center of the Catholic world: in the late Middle Ages, benefice-hunters had flocked there in search of ecclesiastical appointments; now young men from every country came there to prepare themselves for the care of souls and to study at the universities and national colleges that were continually being founded. A new flowering of scholasticism in Rome, Salamanca, and Coimbra, with figures such as Bellarmine and Suárez, was added to the first great successes of positive theology and Church history: vedi, p. es., Melchior Cano and Baronio.
Auxiliary troops of the papacy in the implementation of the Catholic Reform were the religious Orders, headed by the Society of Jesus, whose colleges spread throughout the entire Catholic world like a dense network and became nurseries of zealous Catholic laymen; the Theatines, from whom many able bishops emerged; and the Capuchins, who worked among the masses as missionaries. Nor should one forget the ancient Orders, now profoundly renewed, which yielded nothing to the new Orders in zeal or success. The new spirit of the Catholic Reform was manifested in a great number of courageous bishops, among whom Carlo Borromeo, Tommaso di Villanova, and Francesco di Sales were raised to the honors of the altars. Alongside them stood the great ministers of souls Filippo Neri, Giovanni d’Avila, and Pietro Canisio; Teresa di Avila and Giovanni della Croce combined apostolic activity with mystical contemplation. These Saints infused the laws with a life-giving spirit and gave strength to the Catholic Reform.
The Catholic Reform remained alive and active into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially in the countries invaded by Protestantism. Its greatest flowering, however, occurred in the seventeenth century. Internally strengthened, the Church counterattacked Protestantism and attempted to win back the countries that had been taken from it; from the Catholic Reform there thus emerged the Counter-Reformation, also often called the Catholic restoration.