In addition to the Jesuits, other Roman Catholic religious orders owe their origin to the Reformation. The Capuchin friars renewed the ideals of the Franciscan order, and by their missions both within and beyond the historical boundaries of Christendom they furthered the revival of Roman Catholicism. The Theatines were founded by Gaetano da Thiene and the bishop of Chieti (Theate), Gian Pietro Carafa, who later became Pope Paul IV (reigned 1555–59); both through the program of the order and through his pontificate, the correction of abuses in the church assumed primary importance. Despite the attacks of the Reformers on the institutions and even the ideals of monasticism, it was in considerable measure a reformed monasticism that carried out the program of the Roman Catholic Reformation. The Counter-Reformation
Recognition of the scope and success of the internal movements for reform within 16th-century Roman Catholicism has rendered obsolete the practice of certain earlier historians who lumped all these movements under the heading “Counter-Reformation,” as though only Protestantism (or, perhaps, only the historian’s own version of Protestantism) had the right to the title of “the Reformation”—hence the use here of the term Roman Catholic Reformation. Yet that does not deny a proper meaning of “Counter-Reformation” as part of the larger phenomenon, for counteracting the effects of Protestantism was part of the program of the Council of Trent, the Society of Jesus, and the papacy during the second half of the 16th century and afterward. Indeed, the papacy established two institutions, the Roman Inquisition and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“Index of Forbidden Books”), specifically to combat the Protestant Reformation.
The Counter-Reformation was instituted wherever there had been a Protestant Reformation, but it met with strikingly varied degrees of success. Most of the “German lands” in which Luther had worked remained Protestant after his death in 1546, but major territories, above all Bavaria and Austria, were regained for Roman Catholicism by the end of the 16th century. The Wars of Religion between 1562 and 1598 regained France for the Roman Catholic cause, though the Edict of Nantes (1598) granted a limited toleration to the Protestants; it was revoked in 1685. Perhaps the most complete victory for the Counter-Reformation was the restoration of Roman Catholic domination in Poland and in Hussite Bohemia.
The victory of the Habsburg Counter-Reformation in Bohemia and the defeat of Czech Protestantism were a consequence of the Battle of White Mountain (1620), in the early years of the Thirty Years’ War. Often called the first modern war, this series of conflicts devastated the populations of central Europe, Roman Catholic at least as much as Protestant. The conclusion of the war in the Peace of Westphalia (1648) meant for Roman Catholicism the de facto acceptance of the religious pluralism that had developed out of the Reformation: Protestantism, both Lutheran and Calvinist, obtained a legal standing alongside Roman Catholicism in what had previously been regarded as “Catholic Europe.” Indeed, what began as a “religious war” aimed at resolving the confessional impasse brought about by the Reformation led eventually to a military alliance between Cardinal Richelieu of France and the Lutheran king of Sweden, Gustav II Adolf. Thus did the process of the secularization of politics render the old antitheses—including finally the very antithesis between Roman Catholic and Protestant—less relevant than they had once been. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan Michael Frassetto Post-Reformation conditions
The peace of 1648 may have meant that the era of the Reformation had ended, but for those who remained loyal to the see of Rome it meant that what had been thought of as a temporary disturbance would now be a permanent condition. Although the church still claimed to be the only true church of Jesus Christ on earth, in the affairs of the faithful and those of nations it had to accept the fact that it was just one church among many. The Roman Catholic Church was also obliged to deal with the nation-states of the modern era individually. To understand the history of modern Roman Catholicism, therefore, it is necessary to consider trends within particular states or regions—such as France, Germany, the New World, or the mission field—only as illustrations of tendencies that transcended geographic boundaries and that permeated the entire life of the church. Most of the development of Roman Catholicism since 1648 makes sense only in the light of this changed situation.
The results of the change became evident in the papacy of the 17th and 18th centuries. On June 6, 1622, Gregory XV (reigned 1621–23) created the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, hence propaganda), which was renamed the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in 1967. Its responsibility was, and still is, the organization and direction of the missions of the church to the non-Christian world, as well as the administration of the affairs of the church in areas that do not have an ordinary ecclesiastical government. While the congregation usually appointed vicars apostolic—bishops with only delegated authority over mission countries where the hierarchy had not yet been established—some nations, such as the United States, whose hierarchy was established in 1789, and Great Britain, whose hierarchy was restored in 1850, remained subject to Propaganda Fide until 1908. It has therefore played an important role in the efforts to restore Roman Catholicism in Protestant and, to some degree, in Eastern Orthodox territories. Developments in France The Gallican problem
In many ways the course of the church’s history has been determined by its relations with individual political powers rather than by the leadership of the popes. Ecclesiastical and secular governments were put on a collision course throughout Europe not only by the shrinking authority of the church as a consequence of the Reformation but also by the expanding ambition of the state as a consequence of the growth of nationalism. France, “the first daughter of the church,” was the nation-state whose development during the 17th and 18th centuries most strikingly dramatized the collision, so much so that Gallicanism, as the nationalistic ecclesiastical movement was called in France, is still the term used to refer to the efforts of any national church to achieve autonomy.
Autonomy from Rome usually implied subjection to the French crown, particularly during the reign of Louis XIV, who sought to extend the so-called prerogatives of France when Rome resisted. A conclave of bishops and deputies met on March 19, 1682, in Paris and adopted the Four Gallican Articles, which had been drafted by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, a French bishop and historian. These asserted that (1) in temporal matters rulers are independent of the authority of the church, (2) in spiritual matters the authority of the pope is subject to the authority of a general council, as had been declared at the Council of Constance, (3) the historic rights and usages of the French church cannot be countermanded even by Rome, and (4) in matters of faith the judgment of the pope must be ratified by a general council.