Our discussion questions:

1. What were the broader consequences of the Regensburg collapse?
2. There were four paths to overcoming religious division: negotiation, confrontation, spiritual renewal, and religious war? Did these have anything in commin?
3. Was there truly a Counter-Reformation or is Catholic revival a more apt term to describe the Catholic Church in the mid-sixteenth century?
4. Who can be called a reformer and was reform ever fully achieved?

Now that you will be writing chapter / article analyses, I do not wish to rain on anyone's parade, so I will try not to guide you through the assigned readings with large questions but with observations in which I might include some specific questions. I will be happy to post your questions on the relevant web pages for everyone to remember and ponder.

Be on the look-out for: Juan de Valdès, Reginald Pole, spirituali, Gasparo Contarini, Paul III, Gian Pietro Carafa (Paul IV), zelanti, Oratories, Angela Merici, Ursulines, Jesuits, Spiritual Exercises, Hermann von Wied, Variata, Regensburg Colloquy (1541), Beneficio di Cristo, Council of Trent, Ecclesiastical Ordinances, double predestination, Michael Servetus, Sebastian Castellio, Consensus Tigurinus, Jan Laski, Torda agreement (1568), Nicodemite, Christianitas, pietas

We travel widely in Chapter 5 of Reformation. We begin in Italy, learn about the Spaniard Ignatius Loyola, travel to the Holy Roman Empire to see an attempt at reconciling Catholics and Protestants fail, read about the early work of the Council of Trent, visit Calvin's Geneva at length, and discover versions of Reformed Protestantism other than that of Calvin in England and in Eastern Europe: Transylvania, Poland, and Moldavia. These eastern lands were also home to "radical Christian communities" (262)--the "r" word again--who rejected a fundamental belief of Catholic Christianity: the Trinity. I use "Catholic" (not Roman Catholic) here as broadly as MacCulloch. Note that he often refers to Calvin as a Catholic, mentioning, first of all, that Calvin was working on a model of a Reformed Catholic Church (237). For the other references see pp. 240, 246, 249, 250.

We meet again several Reformers from previous chapters, such as Melanchthon, Bucer, Bullinger, and Cranmer, and we encounter others for the first time, e.g. Bernardino Ochino, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Jan Laski. But the figure who towers above everyone is Calvin. He was a "towering force" in the pulpit. After the execution of Michael Servetus he "began widely to be perceived as not one reformer among many, but the major voice in Reformation Protestantism" (246). Does MacCulloch mean "Reformed Protestantism"? You need to be aware of the reasons for his prominence in Geneva--a commanding position that met with resistence more than once, his contribution to church organization, and his theology of predestination and of the Eucharist. What did Calvin abhor in particular? Does MacCulloch exhibit a prejudice against Calvin when he writes that he relished "getting his own way, which he identified with doing the will of God" (241)? Why does he mention that in Basel "the city and Church authorities were rapidly developing the principle that no one who hated Calvin could be all bad" (242)? How does he handle Calvin's support for the execution of Michael Servetus, one of the causes célèbres of the sixteenth-century Reformation?

Note MacCulloch's reference to "ecumenical viciousness" (245). The Catholic inquistion in Lyon arrested Servetus but lacked the clinching proof for his heresy. (You should know what Servetus' heresy was.) Calvin had the proof, and it ended up (mysteriously?) on the Lyon Inquisitor's desk We have already read about an earlier "ecumenical" venture: the teaming up of Catholic and Protestant forces to suppress the Kingdom of Münster. Why does MacCulloch think of Calvin and Münster at the same time (237, 247)?

You will also recognize how Augustine continued to influence theology in the Reformation era. (Think back about what you learned in Chapter 3.) As with Luther, Protestants such as Peter Martyr Vermigli (214) and Catholics such as Johann Gropper (229) learned from Augustine as they sought to understand how human beings are saved and who was saved. Calvin's "Augustinian theology of the majesty of God predisposed him to explore the idea" of predestination (243), and Augustine turned out to be a useful ally for Calvin as he developed his thinking about the Eucharist.

Despite Calvin's crucial role in the history of the Reformation, do not ignore the place that other Protestant leaders have in this chapter. Melanchthon springs to mind. We have already read about his inclination towards (Luther would say "proclivity") reconciliation with respect to the Augsburg Confession. We see him at it again in this chapter and learn that this engendered grave doubts about him among "self-appointed guardians of Luther's leagcy." To these Lutherans "Philippism" was a form of treachery (252).

MacCulloch mentions more conventional (to us, at least) Catholics, especially Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (1540), which he describes in one context as "an effective riposte to Protestantism" (224). With palpable pathos he tells how close Reginald Pole came to being elected pope (236-37). What would Catholicism have been like had the vote gone his way? But were Catholics conventional? What did the spirituali, Angela Merici, Gian Pietro Carafa, Paul III, and the Jesuits have to do with each other? Consider a minor character in the story of this chapter. Jérôme Bolsec started out as a Carmelite friar, that is a member of a Catholic religious order. He became a Protestant, arguing against Calvin's idea of predestination before the Genevan Company of Pastors. As an old man, "once more a member of the Roman Catholic Church" (note the reference to Roman Catholicism!), he wrote a damning biography of Calvin (242-43). We learn about, among other things, two important events in Catholic history in the 1540s: the creation of the Roman Inquisition in 1542 (231) and the meeting of the Council of Trent (234-36). You need to be aware of the significance of Trent's earliest decisions. We will learn more about Trent in Chapter 6.

Many surveys of the Reformation tack on at the end a chapter on what John O'Malley calls the Catholic side of the Reformation. See, for example, Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (1996). To some this might seem like token treatment. Notice that MacCulloch integrates Catholicism within his narrative, in part because he takes a chronological approach to the Reformation. Do you think he gives Catholicism its due?

Perhaps other authors of Reformation books have "sidelined" Catholicism because it is more difficult to understand than Protestantism. As O'Malley observes in his article, we know what we are talking about when we think of Reformation and Protestantism, but how does Catholicism fit into the picture of the "Reformation" era? His essay on Ignatius Loyola is not a biography; nor does it discuss the spiritual development and objective of the founder of the Jesuits (cf. MacCulloch, Reformation, 218-26). O'Malley does not begin with Igantius but with Hubert Jedin (d. 1981), the eminent German Church historian, who sought to clarify the nature of sixteenth-century Catholicism by liberating it from the reductionist term "Counter Reformation." Ignatius and the early Jesuits become vehicles for O'Malley to pick up, as it were, where Jedin left off in thinking about an appropriate label for Catholicism and to reflect on the combination of "Catholic" and "Reform" or "Reformation." Would O'Malley say that Hermann von Wied's provinical church council in Cologne (MacCulloch, 227) was an example of "Catholic Reform"? Even if O'Malley uses the Jesuits as a way of exploring larger questions about the nature of Catholicism, we do learn about their essential objectives.

O'Malley's essay led to two important books: The First Jesuits (1993) and Trent and all That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (2000), and most recently Trent: What Happened at the Council. These studies consolidated his reputation as a (the?) leading international scholar in the history of Catholicism in the period that we are studying. He has inspired (at least) a generation of younger researchers. If you take Hist. 439 (Catholicism in Early Modern Europe) in 06-2, you may end up reading Trent and all That.

Some concluding miscellaneous observations:

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