Counter-Reformation

The Counter-Reformation, also called the Catholic Reformation or Catholic Revival, was the Catholic Church's renewal in answer to the Protestant Reformation. It is usually dated from the opening of the Council of Trent in 1545 to the end of Europe's wars of religion in 1648, though historians debate those limits. It combined internal reform, new religious orders, missions abroad and the defence of doctrine, and it also relied on censorship, the Inquisitions and the power of Catholic rulers.

Calls to reform the Church long predated Martin Luther. Councils at Constance, Basel and the Lateran in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries debated abuses such as papal nepotism and bishops who never visited their dioceses, with little lasting effect. New groups nevertheless emerged: the Oratory of Divine Love in Rome from 1514, the Theatines in 1524 and the Capuchins, a stricter branch of the Franciscans, from 1526. The most influential was the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola and formally approved in 1540, which placed itself firmly at the service of the pope.

Pope Paul III, who reigned from 1534 to 1549, is regarded as the first pope of the Counter-Reformation. He summoned the council that met at Trent in several sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. The council refused compromise with Protestant teaching. It held that salvation came through faith together with works, reaffirmed the seven sacraments and transubstantiation, and defended pilgrimages, relics, images and devotion to the Virgin Mary. At the same time it tackled long-standing complaints: bishops were required to live in their dioceses, political appointments were curbed, and priests were to be trained properly. Follow-up measures included the Index of Forbidden Books in 1559, the Roman Catechism in 1566 and, in 1570, Pope Pius V's order making a standard form of the Mass compulsory. Reforming bishops such as Carlo Borromeo of Milan set the example.

The movement produced a rich spiritual life, including the Spanish mystics Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross. The victory at Lepanto in 1571 was credited to the Virgin and spurred Marian devotion. Trent's decrees on images shaped church art, discouraging nudity and pagan themes, and the Church's patronage helped give rise to the Baroque style of Bernini in Rome and Rubens in Flanders. Calendar reform culminated in the Gregorian calendar of 1582. Scientific dissent met resistance too: Galileo was placed under house arrest, and in 1633 the teaching that the Earth moves around the Sun was condemned.

Catholic rulers drove much of the recovery. In the Low Countries, Philip II of Spain sent Alexander Farnese, who between 1578 and 1592 retook the southern provinces from Calvinist rebels; when Antwerp fell in 1585, some 60,000 inhabitants fled north. In France, decades of war between Catholics and Huguenots ended with the Edict of Nantes in 1598, which tolerated Protestants until Louis XIV revoked their right to worship in 1685. In the Habsburg lands, where Bohemia was largely Protestant, the defeat of the Bohemian Revolt of 1618–1620 was followed by expulsions, forced conversions and confiscation of Protestant estates. In 1596 the Union of Brest brought many Ruthenian Orthodox bishops into communion with Rome.

The Counter-Reformation sharply reduced Protestantism in Poland, Lithuania, France, Italy, the southern Netherlands and the Habsburg domains of Austria, Bohemia, southern Germany, Croatia and Slovenia, though Hungary kept a large Protestant minority. Persecution created waves of refugees who founded new towns in Protestant Germany. Jesuit and other missionaries carried the reformed Church across the Americas and Asia. In the Habsburg lands, Joseph II's Patent of Toleration of 1781 is often taken to mark the close of the Counter-Reformation as a political force.

Our 1530 map shows Europe as the Reformation spread, while the 1600 and 1650 maps show the restored Catholic heartlands of the Habsburg Monarchy and the divided Holy Roman Empire.