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In the context of the Catholic Reformation serious concerns were expressed about the affective potency of naturalistic depictions of beautiful, sensuous figures in religious art. In theological discourse similar anxieties had long been articulated about potential contiguities between elevating, licit desire for an extraordinarily beautiful divinity and base, illicit feeling. In the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, in the decades preceding the Council of Trent, a handful of writers, thinkers and artists asserted a positive connection between spirituality and sexuality. Leonardo da Vinci, and a group of painters working under his aegis in Lombardy, were keenly aware of painting's capacity to evoke feeling in a viewer. Pictures they produced for domestic devotion featured knowingly sensuous and unusually epicene beauties. This article suggests that this iconography daringly advocated the value of pleasurable sensation to religiosity. Its popularity allows us to envisage beholders who were neither mired in sin, nor seeking to divorce themselves from the physical realm, but engaging afresh with age-old dialectics of body and soul, sexuality and spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of the sixteenth century, the Jesuits considered the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth a missionary territory. This perception was linked to the exceptional writing and publishing activity. The Jesuits not only had about seven hundred editions of their writings published before 1620, they also established their own printing presses. This article identifies the main purposes of Jesuit publishing activity, demonstrates the Society's proficiency with various printed media and reflects on their role in the dissemination of printing craft throughout the Commonwealth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines Francis de Sales's Introduction to the Devout Life through the framework of caregiving. It also uses de Sales's correspondence with two elite women, Jeanne de Chantal and Marie Brûlart, to demonstrate how de Sales's guidance for laity was put into practice. Exploring women that yearned for a richer spiritual yet also had extensive caregiving obligations that did not allow for complete withdrawal from the secular world, reveals the increased labor these women faced. Women could not neglect household and family to spend more time in prayer and devotional practices. Caregiving duties were ongoing for most women of Early Modern Europe and continue today. Exploring how caring was viewed as part of women's obligations as Christians, highlights the often-hidden labor of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that Ignatius Loyola, in proposing the "hierarchical Church" as norm for judgment and feeling, meant to evoke and commend aspects of the Dionysian tradition—especially its principle of hierarchical mediation and its affective portrait of spiritual perfection. Supporting this interpretation are considerations of the world behind the text (the reforming Dionysianism abroad in Ignatian Paris), the world of the text (the culminating position and concerns of the "hierarchical Church"), and the world in front of the text (its reception by Peter Faber and Jerome Nadal). Interpreted against a Dionysian backdrop, Ignatius's hierarchical church becomes a charter for ecclesial mysticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Europeans, Matteo Ricci's mission memoirs proved to be the most comprehensive and accessible book about China. Ricci's account of the early Jesuit mission was immensely popular, receiving translations into most European languages. Until the twentieth century, however, anyone who read Ricci's narrative was not reading what Ricci himself had written. Rather, they were reading a curated translation produced by one of his successors, Nicolas Trigault. The resulting work, De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas, was an edited translation, substantially the same but often different than Ricci's original manuscript. This article reexamines Trigault's translation, on its own terms, as an artefact of globalisation. Not only does the adaptation reveal information about the Jesuit missions that Ricci's manuscript did not, but it also had a significant impact on European Catholics, as its dissemination inspired would-be missionaries to seek their vocations in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the Protestant Reformation has traditionally been the focus of research on early modern England, the last two decades have witnessed a rapid increase in scholarship on the experience of the country's Catholics. Questions surrounding the implementation of the Catholic Reformation in England have been central since the topic's inception as a subject of academic interest, and the field has more recently captured the attention of, amongst others, literary scholars, musicologists and those working on visual and material culture. This article is a position paper that argues early modern English Catholicism, though not doing away with all continuities from before the country's definitive break with Rome, was fully engaged with the global Catholic Reformation, both being influenced by it, but also impacting its progression. Whether through reading and writing, or more physical expressions of mission and reform, English Catholicism was a vital part of the wider Catholic Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article begins by examining what is meant by the Catholic Reformation and how it relates to the other frequently used term, Counter–Reformation. It then discusses the different ways Catholics and Protestants in the early 16th century understood ecclesial reform. Next there is a consideration of the call for a general or ecumenical council to resolve the differences between the Catholics and Protestant reformers; the reasons for the delay of the council; and the reasons why the Protestants did not participate. The article then provides a summary of the three main periods of the Council of Trent: 1545–1547; 1551–1552; and 1562–1563 along with the 1547–1549 Bologna period. This is followed by a detailed overview of the reforms of the council, which were both doctrinal and disciplinary. The article shows that, while abuses related to various Catholic practices and the sacraments were addressed, the main concerns in the various disciplinary decrees related to clerical corruption and immorality. The article addresses the need for bishops to reside in their dioceses; stop clerical corruption, greed, and nepotism; and establish seminaries for the proper formation of priests. After the review of the disciplinary reform decrees, attention is given to the Catechism of the Council of Trent that served as a resource for parish priests in their instruction of the faithful. The final section considers viewpoints of different historians regarding the effect of the Council of Trent on reform within the Catholic Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-Tridentine liturgical books printed in Poland have not attracted much attention from book historians. However, given their special, sacred, and confessionally unifying status, they provide interesting material for comparative study of printing in the large European cities (e.g., Antwerp, Venice), and smaller provincial centers such as Kraków. The paper presents as products of the printing press the Psalterium, Antiphonarium and Graduale Romanum printed in Kraków in 1599-1600 by Andrzej Piotrkowczyk as well as later editions of these works. The decision to commission them in a local print shop rather than abroad came after prolonged debates within the Polish Catholic hierarchy. Materials used by the printer (paper, type, ornaments etc.) and the results he achieved (typography) are analysed at the backdrop of European printing and related to more general problems involved with the production of complex and voluminous books in the economic and cultural realities of an Eastern European city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Topoi: Revista de História is the property of TOPOI: Revista de Historia, Programa de Pos-graduacao em Historia Social da UFRJ and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on a thorough reading of Saint Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises (1541), this article inquires about the theological foundation that prompted a spiritual revolution and allowed the consolidation of a visually centered religious culture in Spain during the second half of the sixteenth century. Given the treatises's handbook nature, part of the study will center on certain authors, Jerónimo Nadal and Fray Luis de Granada, for example, who were responsible for interpreting and expanding it. One element that is traced and examined within this new way of comprehending the visual is the role of the faithful as a spectator confronting a sacred image. How should he respond to the image and how must he conceive the nature of the divine with regard to it? By trying to answer these questions, the reader is encouraged to reflect upon a key period in the history of European religious art, the moment in which the confessional battle consolidated two very distinct ways of approaching divinity: word and image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the social status of widowhood during the Catholic Reformation as described by male canonical authors. Widows were traditionally viewed in a negative light in the early modern period. After the Council of Trent, clerics and moralists argued that they could become useful to society. By exploring the canonical discourse on widows that emerged during the Catholic Reformation this article aims to point out that charitable acts as well as the act of providing education to children or other members of society became key elements in the shifting views on widowhood. These canonical authors offered advice on how women could become «perfect widows» and thus serve their family, the Church, the state and, as a result, the society as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of HORIZONTE: Revista de Estudos de Teologia e Ciências da Religião is the property of HORIZONTE: Revista de Estudos de Teologia e Ciencias da Religiao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Catholic missionaries baptized thousands of Vietnamese in the seventeenth century. To strengthen identification with Catholicism, they encouraged converts to marry other Catholics and discouraged traditional polygyny and divorce. However, missionaries complained that Catholics continued to wed gentiles, that they divorced, and that men married multiple wives. So while missionaries celebrated large numbers of baptisms, they worried that they had failed to construct a strong boundary around their religious community. The problem was that their rules were socially disruptive. Even European Catholic countries, such as France, undermined ecclesiastical control of marriage to meet the imperatives of family formation and state building. So too in Vietnam Catholics claimed that, in marrying non-Catholics, practicing polygyny, and allowing divorce, they were only following their laws and the "customs of the country." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of the 17the century, the free royal city of Prešov underwent stormy religious development with many changes, which fundamentally influenced its further development. The development of the Confessional composition built up on its previous period, and continued so, almost undisturbed and without any external intervention, until the last third of the century, which was characterized by the complete Evangelic, or more precisely Lutheran dominance. The Lutheran or later Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (ECAV) was until 1671 the only religious organisation in the town of Prešov. Forced Catholic Reformation in the 70s meant not only the transitional extinction of the Evangelical Church, but also the establishment of the Roman Catholic parish, which maintained its position even during the period of restitution of religious freedom for the Protestants during the uprising of Emeric Thököly. Further strengthening of the Catholic Church was brought by the new Catholic Refomration after 1687 and the unlawful denial of the right for the Evangelicals to public religious practice. The Rákóczi Uprising (1705 - 1711) was the first and for long the only period of the real religious tolerance in the history of the town, during which the Evangelical and Catholic parish co-existed, and following the year 1707, even the Reformed Church was active. The population of other religions was quite rare and they did not establish their own Church organisation. Those were predominantly Orthodox trade-men present in the town from the end of the century and the Jews residing in the town during annual and weekly markets only. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study attempts to highlight the inter-ecclesiastical relations in the 18th century Transylvania, and to recover two new documentary collections issued in the 18th and 19th centuries, currently stored in the Batthyaneum Library and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese Archives of Alba Iulia. Ignatius Batthyány (1780-1798) is a Roman Catholic Bishop whose interest in the history and culture of the Romanian Church is generally known. The novelty of the present approach brings up the intellectual bishop's effort to collect and systematize previous and contemporary documents of his age about the Romanians' ecclesiastical history. Unknown documents support the author of the study to retrace the institutional and personal relations between the Roman Catholic bishop of Alba Iulia Ignatiu Batthyány and two united Greek Catholic bishops of Blaj: Grigorie Maior (1773-1782) and Ioan Bob (1782-1830). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this edition of Marcin Białobrzeski's Kazanie o przyjmowaniu ciała i krwie Pana Jezu Krysta pod jedną osobą is to remind an important voice in the discussion between Catholics and Protestants about the manner of receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist under one or two kinds. Beginning with Jan Hus, one of the postulates raised by the supporters of the reform of the Catholic Church was to introduce the practice of administering Holy Communion to the laity under two kinds, to which the Catholic Church's legislation opposed. In Protestant communities, the Eucharist was administered under both kinds and lay Catholics also demanded the introduction of this practice. In 1578, in response to ever more frequent postulates, bishop Marcin Białobrzeski gave the Good Thursday sermon in Kamieniec Podolski, in which he explained to the audience the reasons why Catholics were administered Holy Communion under one kind only. The sermon was written down and published a year later in Cracow in the press house of Andrzej Piotrkowczyk, and next included in a collection of his sermons entitled Postylla ortodoxa (1581) as a sermon for Good Thursday. The bishop mainly called for retaining love and unity recommended by Jesus during the last supper. The main message of the sermon was to prove the complete sufficiency of receiving the Eucharist under the form of bread only. He also strove to demonstrate that the Eucharistic kinds are disproportionately insignificant as compared to the question of faith in Christ's sacramental presence in the Holy Communion. Białobrzeski drew his arguments from the Holy Scripture, the writings of the Church Fathers, the council and synodal legislation, as well as from the studies of history and nature. Apart from the rational line of thought, he also tried to convince his listeners to this practice by engaging in an apparent dialogue with them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are now a number of ways to describe the phenomena which come under the umbrella of innovations in Roman Catholicism in the early modern period including "Counter Reformation"; "Catholic Reformation" and "Early Modern Catholicism." After a brief survey of the various labels used by scholars over the last half century or more, this article seeks to rehabilitate the use of the label "Counter Reformation" in the light, particularly, of the determining role played by the Holy Office (aka Roman Inquisition) in shaping the Catholic Church down to Vatican II (1962-65). A key role in this was played by Gian Pietro Carafa, who was made head of the congregation of the Holy Office at its foundation in 1542 and who became pope as Paul IV in 1555. During the key decades from the 1540s to 1570s the Inquisition in Rome set the agenda and by means, not only, of a series of trials of prominent members of the clerical establishment whom they regarded as their enemies, succeeded in intimidating their opponents. In doing so they also subverted episcopal authority, whose strengthening had been a watchword at the Council of Trent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Archivo Ibero-Americano is the property of Editorial Cisneros and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Estudios Sobre Educacion is the property of Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, S.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article proposes an analysis of the homiletic work, Didahii, a representative but insufficiently studied book for the Central European and Transylvanian Catholic Enlightenment. The study underlines the peculiarities of Maior's conception in relation to the Transylvanian homiletic literature. On the one side, there is an analysis of the approached topics and the influences of the previous manuscript or cultic literature from Transylvania (17th - 18th centuries). On the other side, there is an investigation on the impact of the ideas of Catholic Reformation and Central European enlightenment on Petru Maior. The work is unique for the Romanian enlightenment in Transylvania. It puts into value the experience of the Viennese rationalist pedagogy of the time, based on the previous existence of a rich and extremely efficient formative Transylvanian homiletic literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with changes in the status of teachers and the shaping of Lutheran families of teachers in the 16th and 17th centuries in the Trenčín, Liptov and Orava districts of the superintendency. It describes the formation of the families and their background. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the lives of nuns during the Counter-Reformation of the 16th and 17th centuries. It looks at their daily lives, how they subsisted, what motivated them to enter the convent, the role of confessors in their lives, and how they experienced the Catholic Reformation. The article explains that the reforms issued by the Council of Trent mandated a cloistered life for nuns, with increased separation from family and lay society. It notes that women entered the convent for various reasons, including a genuine desire to serve God, economic necessity, and self-protection.

The article studies the implementation of the Catholic Reformation in Portugal under Spanish kings Felipe II, Felipe III, and Felipe IV between 1580 and 1640, when the country's monarchy was subsumed under the Spanish crown. It examines the roles of, and relationships between, different interests and powers in this process, including the monarchy, the papacy, bishoprics, and local authorities. The article maintains that, despite difficulties encountered in introducing reforms mandated by the Council of Trent, the reform of the Portuguese monarchy was completed successfully by the mid-17th century.

For both (primarily local) Jews and (primarily immigrant) Muslims, becoming Catholic in seventeenth-century Venice entailed a prolonged process of social transformation and insertion into new relations of patronage and surrogate kinship. This article traces these converts' long trajectories after baptism and their ongoing relationship with a charitable institution, the Pia Casa dei Catecumeni (Holy House of the Catechumens). It shows how the Pia Casa was instrumental in shaping distinct forms of charity and surveillance that brought together Venetian élites' corporate spiritual and civic claims while also furthering their individual and family interests by weaving dense networks of patronage. Ultimately, the article considers how conversion operated as a project of metropolitan subject making in the context of Venetian–Ottoman imperial competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]