Counter-Reformation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
Illustration: The image breakers, c.1566 –1568 by Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder
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The Counter-Reformation (also the Catholic Revival or Catholic Reformation) was the period of Catholic revival beginning with the Council of Trent (1545–1563) and ending at the close of the Thirty Years' War (1648), and was initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation. The Counter-Reformation was a comprehensive effort composed of four major elements:
- Ecclesiastical or structural reconfiguration
- Religious orders
- Spiritual movements
- Political dimensions
Such reforms included the foundation of seminaries for the proper training of priests in the spiritual life and the theological traditions of the Church, the reform of religious life by returning orders to their spiritual foundations, and new spiritual movements focusing on the devotional life and a personal relationship with Christ, including the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality. It also involved political activities that included the Roman Inquisition.
Major figures
- Pius III (1503)
- Paul III (1534–1549)
- Julius III (1550–55)
- Paul IV (1555–59)
- Pius IV (1559–65)
- St. Pius V (1566–72)
- Gregory XIII (1572–85)
- Sixtus V (1585–90)
- St. Ignatius of Loyola
- St. Teresa of Ávila
- St. John of the Cross
- St. Francis de Sales
- St. Charles Borromeo
- Philip II of Spain (1527–1598)
- Mary I of England (1553–1558)
- Sigismund the Old of Poland (1467–1548)
- Sigismund II Augustus of Poland (1520–1572)
- Péter Pázmány (1570–1637)
See also
- Cologne War
- Corpus Catholicorum (series)
- Eighty Years' War
- Philip II of Spain (for more on the political side of the Counter-Reformation)
- Spanish Inquisition
- The Reformation and art
