The early 16th-century religious revolution, known today as the Protestant Reformation, rocked the Roman Catholic Church to the core by challenging its long-held position at the heart of Christian worship in the Western World. Protestantism changed the way in which Western society viewed organized religion and captured the hearts and minds of many worshippers, compelling Roman Catholic leaders to hit back with a series of measures designed to reform their church from within. This movement to re-establish the Roman Catholic Church as the dominant spiritual authority in Western Europe has come to be regarded as the Counter-Reformation.
Martin Luther’s 1517 work, Ninety-Five Theses, is widely credited with kickstarting the movement that led to the establishment of the Protestant Church. The German theologian challenged papal authority by attacking corruption within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly with regard to the controversial practice of selling “indulgences” for the absolution of sins. At the heart of the Reformation was a desire to return to a more personal and independent form of faith, one in which believers turned directly to God and the Bible for spiritual guidance rather than relying on the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church.
Luther’s challenge to Roman Catholicism received widespread support and led the way for other religious reformers such as John Calvin in France and John Knox in Scotland. In England, political factors also came into play. Here, the move to Protestantism largely came about because of Pope Clement VII’s refusal to annul Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. The English monarch was intent on marrying Anne Boleyn and so proceeded to establish the Church of England, declaring himself to be its Supreme Head.
Clement VII’s successor as Pope, Paul III, has been credited with spearheading the development of the early Counter-Reformation movement. Early on in his Papacy, Paul III appointed an internal commission of cardinals to produce a report on abuses within the Catholic Church. At its head was Gasparo Contarini, a former Venetian diplomat with a long history of speaking out on the need for reform. Paul III elevated him to the office of cardinal just a year before this appointment, presumably with this role specifically in mind.
Contarini and his fellow commission members highlighted a number of key areas ripe for reform in the Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia, or Advice for the Emendation of the Church’s Life. Responding to a widespread sense of disillusionment with the dissolute behavior of an alarmingly high proportion of the Catholic clergy, the report emphasized the Church’s lack of due diligence in the appointment of priests, commenting that those admitted to Holy Orders included “the most unskilled, men of the vilest stock and of evil morals”.
The report also emphasized the urgent need to clamp down on the heretical practice of simony, described as “a crime so great that there is none more dangerous or more scandalous”. The general term of simony was applied to the act of buying or selling anything of a spiritual nature, ranging from ecclesiastical office to religious sacraments.
Mindful of the need to win Pope Paul III’s support for their proposed reforms, the commission members excluded him from direct criticism, but firmly laid the blame for this long-running fiscal abuse at the door of his papal predecessors. In reality, Paul III’s own behavior was not always exemplary. As well as being the father of four illegitimate children, he provoked accusations of nepotism when he prematurely elevated two of his teenage grandsons to the role of cardinal.
In response to this groundbreaking report, Pope Paul III convened an ecumenical council. Originally scheduled to open in Mantua in May 1537, the council was postponed on several occasions as a result of an ongoing war between France and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as widespread opposition to the proposed reforms. This prompted Martin Luther to issue a scathing response, commenting: “They are worried that if a council were to be held, they might have to forfeit a feather or lose a hair…”
Eventually, peace returned to Europe and, after a delay of some nine years, the long-awaited ecumenical council opened in the city of Trento, in what is now northern Italy. Thereafter, the Council of Trent met intermittently between December 1545 and December 1563, holding a total of 25 sessions which were divided into three distinct periods. The first phase ended with the death of Paul III, in November 1549. The Council then did not formally resume its activities until May 1551 and was only active for a year before it was suspended once more because of concerns regarding the safety of delegates. After a significant hiatus, it was finally reconvened for the third and final time in 1562 during the papacy of Pius IV.
The Council of Trent undertook the significant task of redefining Catholic doctrine and practices in the light of the Protestant Reformation, passing a series of decrees that reaffirmed the Church’s position on fundamental topics like the sacraments, scripture and original sin. Along the way, its members also formally condemned some key Protestant tenets of faith, notably the concept of sola fide, first championed by Luther, that salvation is achieved by faith alone rather than by good works.
The Council also recognized the urgent necessity of dealing with the Catholic clergy’s poor image problem, introducing a series of measures that were aimed at establishing a new model for behavior. These included a requirement for every bishop to reside in his own diocese and to take a more active role in supervising the clergy under his jurisdiction.
Another key reform recognized the importance of ensuring that those who planned on entering the Church were far better prepared for priesthood, introducing a requirement for all future clergy to undergo a period of rigorous spiritual and intellectual training before undertaking the role. Theological colleges, known as seminaries, were established in every diocese, with strict guidelines issued on the study of core subjects and the suitability of candidates.
The Council of Trent is rightly recognized as playing a hugely influential role in the Counter-Reformation in terms of providing a framework for the reforms necessary to address the key issues first highlighted in the Consilium de Emendanda Ecclesia. However, the eventual success of its measures ultimately depended on the willingness of Western Europe’s political leaders to sanction them. Some countries, including Poland, Portugal and Spain, actively supported the Council’s decrees. Others, though, refused even to acknowledge their existence, notably England, where the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I now reigned.
King Philip II of Spain proved to be a particularly zealous supporter of the Counter-Reformation movement, once famously declaring to Pope Pius V: “Rather than suffer the least damage to religion and the service of God, I would lose all my states and a hundred lives if I had them; for I do not propose or desire to be the king of heretics”.
During his reign, he broadened the activities of the infamous Spanish Inquisition to wage war on those whom he considered to be heretical Protestants in his own land. The Spanish King also took the fight overseas, notably when he launched the Spanish Armada in 1588 with the aim of invading Protestant England. This unsuccessful invasion attempt was partly motivated by political reasons relating to recent English support for the Dutch Protestants in their rebellion against Spain, but at its heart was also a desire on the part of the Spanish King to restore Catholicism to England. In any event, the Spanish Armada proved to be just one in a series of long-running military conflicts caused by the schism in the Roman Catholic Church.
The Jesuit movement (aka the Society of Jesus) also played a key role in the Catholic pushback against Protestantism. The most successful of a number of new Catholic religious orders established during the Counter-Reformation, the Society of Jesus was formally established in 1540 during the papacy of Paul III. Making Rome their headquarters, the Jesuits were at the forefront of the movement to improve educational standards amongst the priesthood through the establishment of seminaries. Of equal note was their missionary work overseas, which proved to be the most successful in spreading the message of the Counter-Reformation and enabled the Catholic message to reach new ears during an age of unparalleled European global exploration.
The period known as the Counter-Reformation is usually considered to have concluded with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the long-running European wars of religion. This is disputed by some historians, who argue that religion-driven conflicts continued long after that date, citing, as examples, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England and the early 18th-century War of the Spanish Succession.
In the long run, any hope that the Counter-Reformation would ultimately heal the division between the Catholic and Protestant Churches in Western Europe proved unfulfilled. In truth, the Council of Trent’s decrees on Church doctrine only served to illustrate the deeply differing theological stance of the two religious movements. Yet this fundamental reset of the Catholic Church heralded a considerable revival in its fortunes following a period when, for a while, it appeared to have been fighting for its very survival.
