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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]

The present study attempts to highlight the originality of the Romanian Enlightenment in Transylvania, looking at the way in which the pre-Enlightenment ideas belonging to Dimitrie Cantemir, grounded in the ideological structure of pre-Romanticism in Central Europe, germinated into the discourse of the members of the Transylvanian School. On the one hand, the author of the study investigates, for each member of the Transylvanian School (Gherontie Cotore, Samuil Micu, Gheorghe Șincai, Petru Maior, Ioan Budai-Deleanu), the takeovers from Cantemir's work, and, on the other hand, their civic, militant, pragmatic interpretation appropriate to the political priorities in Transylvania. [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]

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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]

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]

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]

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]

The canonization of 1622, in wich Blessed Isidore the Farmer, Ignatius Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri were inscribed in the Canon of Saints, was memorable for several reasons. It’s period of gestation was not easy. Pope Paul v had decided to canonize Isidore the Farmer, a decisión that was accepted by his successor, Gregory xv. The strong pressure to which the Pope was subjected both by the Catholic Monarchs and by the Orders to which the new saints belonged, especially the Jesuits, determined their joint canonization in the short term, first adding Blessed Teresa, then Ignatius and Xavier, and, finally, in order to avoid an exclusively Spanish ceremony, at the request of the Congregation itself, Philip Neri. Without denying the political side of the canonization, this paper offers several convergent lines of interpretation in order to demonstrate that the canonization in 1622 was not only the canonization of the protagonists of the Catholic Reformation but, symbolically, of the Church’s own Reformation itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

This article has three aims. First, it reacts to the doubts expressed recently about the possibility of making generalizations about Catholicism after the Council of Trent. Second, it discusses the different uses of the term "Catholic Reformation" and proposes a definition that involves a movement toward the universalization of divine love. And third, it also discusses the success of confessionalization in some parts of Europe and the reasons why it was not a top-down process. The emphasis on disciplining endeavors in the analysis of the history of confessionalization misses the integrative character of various devotional practices in Baroque Europe and fails to pay sufficient attention to the religious constraints affecting political actors. [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.)

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.

The Eucharist, as a theme of artistic creation, has its origins in the beginning of Christianity, inspiring numerous representations throughout history. In the formulation of the Eucharist, the Council of Trent was a crucial moment in the fight against the Protestant heresies, reaffirming the dogma of the Real Presence and the excellence of the Blessed Sacrament over the remaining sacraments. The renewed doctrinal corpus of the Council resulted in the increase in the styles of artistic representation of the Eucharist, in the centuries following Trento, showing an emphasis on improving the understanding of the complexity of the mystery and, through theology of the image, a full experience of the Eucharistic practice. This study addresses the Portuguese reality, by focusing the collection of Eucharistic paintings of the churches in the diocese of Lisbon, in order to identify and meet the Eucharistic themes, through the systematization of the issues, and analysing the standard schema of the iconographic representation, in order to understand their Eucharistic meaning and its formulation modes. The dissertation reveals a field of painting that is specifically rich in giving substance to the discourse on the Eucharist; serving-type schemes of representation allude to the dogma and doctrine of transubstantiation, but also to give relief to the ecstatic and the apotheosis, favouring the contemplative dimension, hortatory and triumphalism of the Eucharist. This work provides the first organized and representative inventory of Eucharistic paintings from the estate of the churches in the diocese of Lisbon possesses, from the last quarter of the seventeenth century to the late eighteenth century. Integrating a set of 472 paintings, almost all unpublished, this glorious inventory is very diverse and rich, either on the variety of subjects as in relation to the diversity of iconographic schemes, with great relevance for the study of visual expression of the features. Eucharist, especially in its speech forms, which were proven to attest to the Tridentine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mainly use of infrared spectroscopy and colorimetry allowed the characterization of the pigments and compounds of the wall paintings from the Monastery of San Isidoro del Campo in Seville, dated on the 15th century. Calcite, quartz and albite were detected in the ground mortar layers. As pigments, red ochre, yellow ochre, paratacamite, atacamite, azurite and carbon black were used, and also lime as the binder, therefore the fresco technique was employed. Both FTIR-ATR and FTIR (in transmission) experiments were performed. Comparison between materials used in some of the wall paintings from Seville in this period was performed. The article revealed important information about wall paintings within a historical context related to the 15th century Catholic Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]