had taken a step too far and to pander to the Lutherans would be to denigrate
the sanctity of their own religion for the benefits of? heretics to whom their compromises meant
nothing.? The hijacking of the General
Council of the Church ? so long a weapon on the conciliatory parties ? fell
into the hands of Carafa?s hardened group of anti-Protestants. However, one
of the most important aspects of the Catholic fightback was the Society of
Jesus.? Founded by St. Ignatius Loyola,
a Basque ex-soldier, who had met Lutheranism and discovered that he hated it,
the Order?s founders (Loyola, Lefevre, Lainez, Salmeron, Bobadilla, Rodriguez
and Xavier) were gathered by Loyola and made into Loyola?s own disciples.? Loyola?s Spiritual Exercises was a
book of some power and believed in neither mystic retreat, nor in crazed
devotion, but instead in a ?indifference? to the world backed up by knowledge
of God and controlled mystic experience. The vow the
seven took in 1534 to serve the Pope as he wished, or to perform missionary
work in the Holy Land led them to Venice where they intended to go to the
Levant but diplomatic issues prevented their travel.? As a result, they ended up in 1538 in Rome where they formed an
order.? The Society was arranged in
?total obedience? to the ?provost? of the Society and was set up with the aim
of ?teaching Christianity to children and the uneducated.?? Loyola?s assertion that the Society would
?serve as soldiers in faithful obedience to the most holy lord Paul III and his
successors? was what swung Paul III to approve the Society and as such, the
Society, described by Bonney as ?shock troops of the Counter Reformation? was
founded in 1540 by the Bull ?Regimini militantis ecclesiae?. Ignatius
took the first generalship despite gallstones that went undiagnosed for twenty
years, and led the order with great strength for fifteen years.? Short, slight, ill, lame from his wounding
as a soldier at Pamplona, of limited intelligence and never a great preacher,
scholar or theologian, Ignatius was still a great leader, and his mysticism
which increased as he grew older and his coolness and practicality, results of
his untheological attitude to theology resulted in a clear, obvious and
instructive understanding of the soul.?
Trappings of the other orders such as dress, food and daily orders were
abandoned as Loyola wanted his priests to live within the world, not just near
it, and to act accordingly.? The Jesuits
were educated to a very high degree and in modern thought, not just in one
inflexible doctrine. As such, the order was radically different from older
orders. Loyola founded
an order of missionaries at the service of the Pope with the aim of moving east
to the Levant, or west to the New World.?
Loyola did not envisage Christian Germany as being his goal, but the
Pope?s aim was Loyola?s aim, and the Jesuits waded into Germany. So modern and
successful was their programme that the fathers were inundated with requests
from families asking them to teach boys with no intention of becoming
Jesuits.? Germany saw a rash of new
schools founded. Vienna, Cologne, Prague and Ingolstadt all saw large Jesuit
centres established.? Paul came to
welcome the Jesuits and so great was the change in opinion concerning the need
for reform that the humanist Pole was favourite for election to the Papacy.? Alas, they were wrong and by 1542 Giberti
and Contarini were dead. The conciliatory humanist reformers were gone and in
their place, such bitter critics of Luther as Carafa rose.? Although Paul III?s immediate successor
Julius III was a reformer in the mould of Paul III and reconvened the Council
of Trent, he was to be the last of the line of old reformers, as he was
replaced by Carafa. Carafa, even before his appointment as Paul IV, squeezed
the bull ?Licet ab initio? from Paul III revitalising the Italian
inquisition, in a move that set the tone for his papacy.? Modelled on the Spanish Inquisition, the
Italian model, headed by Carafa had the power to confiscate, imprison and
punish throughout the peninsular.? The
Inquisition controlled the growth not only of Protestant, Anabaptist,
Antitrinitarian ideas, but also of some orthodox reform, especially under Paul
IV?s leadership.? Morone was imprisoned
on charges of heresy and Pole was saved only by a timely return to
England.? Under Paul IV, Italy lapsed into
intellectual stagnation.? The Index
Librorum Prohibitorum (1559) was just one aspect of the repression of
Paul?s inquisition. Paul?s
personal dislike of Ignatius almost caused him to dissolve the Society.? Paul IV?s brutality and aggression in such
actions as cleansing the Curia and makes him the first Counter-Reformation
pope, but in his politics (alienating Spain) he almost set the Counter-Reforms
back some time. The period of
1540-1560 saw a move from the humanist reformers who were built in the mould of
Ximenes and Pole and whose basis for reform was a longstanding distain for the
iniquities of the Church to a move to specifically counter the advances of
Luther. As the people who could remember united Christendom died off, the
permanence of the split came to be realised and accepted.? It was in the battle to win back Germany
that the Counter-Reformation was forged as it became to be known and in the
battle against Luther that its weapons: the Inquisition, the Jesuits,
repression and renewed Papal Supremacy ? were forged, ready for the fight with
the less compromising Calvinists.? To
answer, until the election of Paul IV I would use the term Catholic Reformation
and thereafter, I would use the term Counter-Reformation.? Elements of the Catholic Reformation were
concerned specifically with Luther and their development was accelerated by the
need to heal the split, but their principles, literature, aims objectives and
ideology predated Luther as they were in a long line of reformers who,
including the early Luther, punctuated the previous centuries.