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18-06-2015, 08:16

THE CHURCH FIGHTS BACK

As Protestantism swept triumphantly over almost all of northern and central Europe (even in Italy, whole towns threatened to defect), the Catholic Church took decisive steps to combat its enemies and to reform itself. During the Counter Reformation leading theologians met in neutral territory just north of Italy at the Council of Trent (above) to hammer out clear statements of orthodox belief. Missionaries swept through Asia, Africa and the Americas and won hordes of converts. A strict new order of priests, the Jesuits, preached and taught in their own colleges with such fervor that soon they won back to Catholicism most of the people of Poland and many of those who had left the Church in Germany, Hungary and Bohemia. Gone were the days of cynical, pleasure-loving Renaissance popes; now the Church was ruled by stern men like Paul IV, who said, “Even if my own father were a heretic, I would gather wood to burn him."

THE VIRGIN TRIUMPHANT

Kneels between Christ and a banner extolling, her virtues, in a fresco by It Domenichino. Below her a girl symbolizing Prayer holds

A rosary, and a Catholic hero treads a defeated Luther and Calvin underfoot.


CHRIST CRUCIFIED IS borne to heaven by God in a work by El Greco.



 

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