Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era

by John W. O'Malley

Book Overview

Counter Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, the Confessional Age: why does Catholicism in the early modern era go by so many names? And what political situations,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674000870
• ISBN13: 9780674000872
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Good historiography overview

John W. O'Malley since the early 1990s has advocated the use of "Early Modern Catholicism" to identify the "Catholic side" of the Reformation. That is, however, not his primary goal in Trent and All That. For those who are familiar with his earlier efforts, he puts forth the name as, yet another, alternative to "Catholic Reformation," "Counter Reformation," and their many counterparts. The main purpose of his book is to illuminate the inadequacies and inherent problems in the current nomenclature for the beliefs, thoughts, and actions of Catholic leaders and laypersons during a not-yet-accurately-designated period of time that includes all or parts of the sixteenth century. O'Malley's goal in Trent is to "help us view `the Catholic side' [of the Reformation] with new eyes, so that we become more aware of a breadth, depth, and complexity that earlier historians frequently either missed or, more often, forced into an inappropriate or inadequate interpretive framework--by inadequate naming." (p. 9) He argues, accepting that the damage of misnaming has already been done, "we need to accept the multiplicity of names as a good thing," yet "apply these name more reflectively," and "add `Early Modern Catholicism' to the list. (p. 5) O'Malley does little to refute previous criticism that "Early Modern Catholicism" is chronologically indeterminate and does not add much to the widely-accepted "Early Modern History". I believe the church historian to be well aware that the vague reasoning supporting the term in the last few pages of the book will not silence his critics. His modest defense lends more space for O'Malley to address his principal interest in this book: the errors in the historiography of the Reformation because of the names applied to the Catholic side of it. He presents a critique of the historiography involving Catholicism in the Reformation that is credible, persuasive, and unimpeded by undefined terminology. From the outset, O'Malley puts forward a linear, clearly telegraphed argument that historians' implementation and acceptance of names has contributed to a view of Catholics before, during, and since 1517 that lacks necessary sophistication. He faults Protestant, Catholic, and secular scholars for this deficiency. Protestants took hold of the name "reformed" early on and have since written Reformation history from the position of their changing of a church desperately in need of repair. It is reasonable that from 1692 when Viet Ludwig von Seckendorff used "reformation" in the title of his response to the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg's history of Lutheranism that the word became identified with a Protestant response to Catholicism and eventually took on anti-Catholic meanings. Catholic historians have not only been unable, until recently, to refute this view, but have also been complicit in its propagation. In his review of the historiography's development and the underestimated consequence of names in that development is w

Naming Catholicism in the Era of Reform

By what label should historians refer to the "Catholic side" during the era of the Protestant Reformation? In John O'Malley's, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in The Early Modern Era, the reader is introduced to the complexities surrounding the nomenclature of distinct historical era's, and more specifically, to the problem of naming the Catholicism of the late medieval/early modern era. Throughout the work, the author argues that terms are not neutral; they invite investigation in certain directions but they also direct attention away from other avenues of inquiry. In other words, they filter and exclude just as much as they allegedly describe. O'Malley proposes a three-fold solution to this taxonomic dilemma: 1) a welcome acceptance of the multiplicity of names that have arisen as positive descriptors of the era; 2) a more careful reflection in the employment of these terms by historians; and 3) the addition of "Early Modern Catholicism" as a more comprehensive designation than the others. He attempts to persuade the reader to accept his proposal principally by tracing the history of the various terms for the Catholic side, and indeed this review of the naming process constitutes the vast majority of the book. The book begins with a survey of the semantic landscape of the term "reform." O'Malley argues that the term "reform" has a rich Catholic tradition that antedates the Protestant Reformation by approximately 500 years. In spite of the Catholic heritage of this term (and it's close association with an emphasis on the centrality of canon law), O'Malley argues that with the passage of time, the word "reform/reformation" came to be appropriated by Protestants and given a new sense (particularly since they divorced the term from any connection with canon law). By the late 17th century (especially in Germany) the term "Reformation" was firmly established in Protestant historiographical vocabulary as a distinct historical epoch and, as a term, it was equated with Protestantism. Following closely was the emergence of a dependent concept - that of "Counter-Reformation," which was equated with the Anti-Reformation efforts of the Roman Catholic Church. When these terms were used by Protestants, they were freighted with many assumptions and biases that were overtly hostile to the Catholic communion (particularly the assumption that the late medieval church was utterly and thoroughly corrupt and that there could be no genuine reform except Protestant Reform). It was in this context that Roman Catholic scholar Hubert Jedin published his seminal essay in 1946 entitled "Catholic Reformation or Counter Reformation?" Jedin's influential essay argued for the legitimacy of the term Catholic Reform together with the term "Counter Reformation," although when he used this term it reflected a primarily defensive Catholic posture against the "Protestant attack." The tension that Jedin struggled with, however, was how to properly apply the t

A good basic introduction to the problems involved

This book provides an excellent introduction to the basic historiographical problem involved in studying the early modern Catholic Church: what should we call the period? The author reviews the various solutions, (Counter-Reformation, Catholic Reformation, Catholic Reform, Catholic Confessionalization, Catholic Revival) and the history of the use of those terms. Then he proposes an additional term: "early modern Catholicism," which should be used besides all of the others. This begs the question, of course, of what exactly "early modern" means--a not entirely uncontroversial term in itself. The best part of the book is the reviews of where the current terms came from historically and why they were used. The solution is less compelling, simply because words like Counter-Reformation and Catholic Reformation are not only well-dispersed and easily understood, but they are still meaningful to the people who are using them. Also, the writer intentionally stays out of evidential debates by saying "that's material for a longer book". This is really a book about historiography--if you want info about the Catholic Ref., check out Bireley or Hsia or Mullett. On the other hand, this would be a really great book for graduate students who need a quick update on this info for their exams.