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This book explores how conceptions of episcopacy (government of a church by bishops) shaped the identity of the bishops of France in the wake of the reforming Council of Trent (1545–63). It demonstrates how the episcopate, initially demoralised by the Wars of Religion, developed a powerful ideology of privilege, leadership and pastorate that enabled it to become a flourishing participant in the religious, political and social life of the ancien regime. The book analyses the attitudes of Tridentine bishops towards their office by considering the French episcopate as a recognisable caste, possessing a variety of theological and political principles that allowed it to dominate the French church.
chap 1 22/3/04 12:11 pm Page 19 1 Catholic renewal and episcopal traditions in the sixteenth century In the eyes of its Catholic contemporaries in the early 1560s, the French episcopate must have appeared to be in an enviable position. A highly influential role in the formulation of the Council of Trent’s reform programme left its mark for posterity in the shape of the final decrees and earned its members the respect of the entire Catholic church, an impression not lessened by the fact that the French delegation had only been present at the Council’s final
her honour has been irretrievably lost, ignores the rapist’s offer to help her marry, and drowns herself in the river Olio.69 What constituted an enforceable promise of marriage? Should a betrothal followed by sexual relations lead inexorably towards a wedding, or could a man break his word without suffering unpleasant legal or social consequences? Was an engagement virtually equivalent to a marriage, or was it a potential trap for trusting young women? The decree on marriage enacted by the Council of Trent in 1563 tried to dispel uncertainty by dismissing
distinct from the Gallican church, and furthermore both territories had recognised the decrees of the Council of Trent in full.10 But, as their societies and cultures were so closely linked to France, there was also a long-standing tradition of interaction across the frontier. As described in Chapter 1, French influences permeated these frontier territories in several ways, through overlapping political and diocesan boundaries, and a shared intellectual landscape. Many religious orders in Lorraine and Savoy depended on French provinces, so exchange of ideas as well as
Protestants. The sharp decline in the number of canonisations by the papacy in the sixteenth century, in particular the lengthy period 1523–88, in which there were none at all, gives some indication of the sensitivity of the popes on this matter and of the intramural debates between reformers and hard-line traditionalists then going on within the Roman curia. The eventual responses came in actions spread over a period of eighty years, from the 1560s to the 1640s. 8 First of all, the Council of Trent reasserted in 1563 the validity of the cult of
4 The domestic and international roles of Irish overseas colleges, 1590–1800 Thomas O’Connor Contested historiographies It is unfortunate that the emergence of the Irish college network in Europe followed the council of Trent and its 1563 decree on clerical education, Cum adolescentium aetas. This accident of timing made the former seem the consequence of the latter, creating the impression that the foundation of the colleges was the rolling out of a coherent counter-reformation pastoral strategy.1 At the other end of the colleges’ lifespan there was a second
examines the Chambers_O’Connor_Printer.indd 174 08/09/2017 09:53 THE MARONITE COLLEGE IN EARLY MODERN ROME 175 college’s network of European connections in order to understand the activities of the Maronite diaspora especially, as Pierre Raphaël has already underlined, the role of its alumni in the international Republic of Letters. From missionaries in Mount Lebanon to young Maronites in Rome After the Council of Trent, and especially during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–1585), the Roman Catholic Church, partly in response to the reformers, mounted a
seemingly Protestant traits in an ostensibly Catholic text is to regard these traits not as ‘Protestant’ at all, but rather as part of the growing European movement of humanism and Catholic reform. The Council of Trent The most prominent aspect of Catholic reform to shape Scottish religion in the early sixteenth century was the Council of Trent, a general council of the Catholic
Between 1598 and 1800, an estimated 3, 271 Catholic women left England to enter convents on the Continent. This study focuses more particularly upon those who became Benedictines in the seventeenth century, choosing exile in order to pursue their vocation for an enclosed life. Through the study of a wide variety of original manuscripts, including chronicles, death notices, clerical instructions, texts of spiritual guidance, but also the nuns’ own collections of notes, this book highlights the tensions between the contemplative ideal and the nuns’ personal experiences. Its first four chapters adopt a traditional historical approach to illustrate the tensions between theory and practice in the ideal of being dead to the world. They offer a prosopographical study of Benedictine convents in exile, and show how those houses were both cut-off and enclosed yet very much in touch with the religious and political developments at home. The next fur chapters propose a different point of entry into the history of nuns, with a study of emotions and the senses in the cloister, delving into the textual analysis of the nuns’ personal and communal documents to explore aspect of a lived spirituality, when the body, which so often hindered the spirit, at times enabled spiritual experience.