1 Important modifications in the History of Christianity and in society happened in this century. Christianity was going through many problems, for example: the Inquisition, the Crusades and the sale of indulgences. It was a Christianity very centered in the figure of a single man, the pope, and loaded with dogmas. Its essence was much more based on orthodoxy than on the teachings of Jesus.
2 There arose, then, the great reformers that we already mentioned in the first part of this study. Before this reform, the Church moved itself, for it was losing space, followers and the predominance of faith. It saw itself more and more lacking of a response.
3 The Church promoted the Counter-Reformation, also called Catholic Reformation, that became notable for a council occurred in the Italian city of Trent, between 1545 and 1563. It was almost twenty years of council. It was necessary to moralize the Church; for this reason, this meeting was carried out, which resulted in the Counter-Reformation.
4 It was important to promote a counter-reform, but starting from an internal renewal, that is, it was necessary to offer to the faithful something new. Otherwise, the Church would run the risk of no longer existing. It was necessary to demonstrate that it would no longer sell indulgences and that certain practices then existing, such as sexual abuses within monasteries and cathedrals, the purchase of ecclesiastical positions (simony), the paid absolutions and the commerce of sacred goods, would no longer be permitted, for it was necessary to moralize the institution. It was an intermittent council, with discussions that went and came, for there were those favorable and those contrary to the changes.
5 In 1563, finally, they reached an agreement. The decisions were the following.
6 First point: they reaffirmed that salvation did not occur only by faith, as the Protestants defended. By faith, yes, for it is important, but also by works, capable of making the person better. Faith materialized in actions, in love.
7 Second point: as much as the Protestants wanted to abolish the dogmas and the sacraments, the Church reaffirmed the seven sacraments: baptism, eucharist, chrism, order or matrimony, confession or penance, anointing of the sick and extreme unction. A curiosity: the word “amen” does not come from Catholicism, but from Judaism, and each letter represents an expression whose sense is “that it be in this way” or “I submit myself to what I have just declared”. The difference is that, in Judaism, it is written “amén”.
8 Third point: they reaffirmed the papal authority, opposing the Protestants, who said there was no necessity of a pope. For the Church, the pope must not be idolized, but exercise the function of creating a structure of unity so that the faithful do not remain dispersed. It was necessary a unifying organ.
9 Fourth point: they reaffirmed celibacy. Until this council there were divergences. If the priest were already married, could he remain married? Some understood that yes, others that no. From this council, for someone to become priest or cleric, celibacy passed to be obligatory; he could not be married nor marry later.
10 Fifth point: the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, expression in Latin that means “Index of Prohibited Books”. Until then, without the press, producing a book was something very difficult and slow. With the press, however, the quantity of printed books grew enormously. Thus, it was understood to be necessary to create an Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
11 The writing, until this century, was all continuous, without punctuation and without spaces between the words. Not even the chapters possessed titles. The name given to this style of writing is scriptio continua (Latin term that means “continuous writing”). Who read needed to separate the words according to what he understood. For this reason, many translators ended up committing mistakes when translating certain texts.
12 In general lines, it was this that the Counter-Reformation proposed. But it also touched deep wounds. There were cases of pedophilia, priests and cardinals who maintained conjugal and extraconjugal relations, people who entered the monasteries accompanied of servants and attendants, besides priests who enriched and lived in a comfortable way. It was promoted, then, a true “internal cleaning” to present results to the faithful.
13 There arose the Society of Jesus, in 1540, by initiative of Ignatius of Loyola. He was a Spanish noble who led an aristocratic life and possessed many financial resources. One day, he was wounded by a cannonball — in this century there were already cannons. In 1453, when the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople, they used cannons to bring down the walls of the city. While he recovered from the wound, he began to read the Scriptures. He fell in love with Jesus and went to study in Paris, where were found some of the great universities of the time. One day, together with six more students, upon climbing the stairs of a church, he had an insight: it was necessary to defend the Church.
14 For them, the Church was part of the patrimony of Christ and it was necessary to make effective the Counter-Reformation. They gathered and founded a school, arising, then, the Society of Jesus. They created a rule for this institution and took it to the pope for approval. With the papal approval, they followed forward. One of the students, Francis Xavier, departed as missionary to Asia, while Ignatius of Loyola remained in Europe. The others passed to be called Jesuits.
15 Just as they loved Jesus, they believed that it was necessary to defend Him, work in name of the faith and protect the patrimony of the Church against the Protestants, for it had been decided, in the Council of Trent, that they were heretics. It was necessary to combat them. With this, an animosity was created between Catholics and Protestants.
16 From the Society of Jesus arose the Jesuits. They began to travel through the four corners of the planet, especially through the Americas. The idea was to catechize the indigenous people. They intended to take the Catholic religion before the Protestants had the same initiative. There was a strong missionary impulse, so that the Catholic message would reach those who still had not converted.
17 It was purpose of the Portuguese Crown to collaborate, in the measure of the possible, for the expansion of Christianity, and catechesis was the principal instrument in this sense. Two Jesuits were very important in the history of Brazil: José de Anchieta and Manoel da Nóbrega. Both, on the Plateau of Piratininga, on January twenty-fifth of 1554, founded the city of São Paulo, name given in homage to Paul of Tarsus, for whom Manoel da Nóbrega had great veneration.
18 There were many abuses practiced by Jesuits, and many indigenous people were killed. However, Manoel da Nóbrega and José de Anchieta were gentle and noble men. They mixed themselves with the indigenous people, absorbed part of their culture and learned to speak the Tupi language.
19 The Society of Jesus was created to combat the expansion of Protestantism. There were many priests involved in this organization who saw themselves as opponents of the Protestant advance. They possessed a more bellicose and confrontational vision, concerned in preventing heresy and strengthening the ideals of the Inquisition.
20 However, it was not these who departed to Brazil. It was those who, even using the garments of the Jesuits, possessed a different vision. So much so that, further ahead, they were expelled from Brazil for defending the indigenous people instead of the interests of the Crown. That is, they did not fulfill that which the Crown wished that they do: pacify the indigenous people so that they would be dominated.
21 Europe is not a homogeneous block; there are many differences in its interior. In the region of Germany and of the countries of eastern Europe, the influence of the Roman Church was smaller. Martin Luther was German, and good part of the great thinkers of the later centuries also arose in this environment. Thus, eastern Europe suffered less influence of Catholic thought.
22 Already another portion of Europe, composed by countries such as France, Spain and Portugal, suffered intense influence of the Roman Church. The kings of this period also showed themselves deeply linked to this religious and political power. In this century, these three countries were strongly connected to the Roman Church.
23 In France, who governed was Catherine de Medici, Italian noble who became queen-consort of France. After the death of the king, she remained as queen-mother. Her son, Charles IX, assumed the throne, but, as he was still very young, it was his mother who guided him and practically governed the country from the backstage of the court. Catherine still had two other sons, Francis II and Henry III, besides a daughter, Margaret of Valois, known as Queen Margot.
24 The French territory, until then, was smaller. Near the border with Germany there was a region called Kingdom of Navarre, governed by Henry of Navarre. To bring Navarre closer to the French territory and expand its influence, Catherine de Medici promoted an alliance, marrying her daughter Margot with Henry of Navarre.
25 The marriage, motivated exclusively by political interests, occurred in 1572. There was, however, a great problem: Henry was Protestant and Catherine was Catholic. Extremely attached to power, she feared that her sons would not inherit the throne and that Henry of Navarre would come to occupy it. Even so, and very against her will, she promoted the marriage.
26 The ceremony happened, and the festivities lasted six days. Henry of Navarre took with him a numerous entourage, composed of Protestant Huguenots, dressed with long austere garments of black color. The streets of Paris filled themselves with Huguenots who came to watch the marriage of their king. The Cathedral of Notre-Dame became full of guests.
27 On the night of twenty-fourth of August, the men closest to Catherine convinced her that the Huguenots intended to kill king Charles IX to take the power, which was not true. However, they were so convincing that they ended up persuading the queen-mother that Henry of Navarre had lodged himself in the palace to promote a coup, assassinate the king and assume the throne.
28 Then, Catherine gathered herself with the son, whom she always manipulated due to his fragility of character, and convinced him that the son-in-law really intended to take the power. Charles IX did not believe immediately, but ended up yielding, as so many other times he did before the maternal counsels. She told him to order the death of all.
29 “Let them kill all”, he ordered.
30 It was the order that the conspirators awaited to execute their plans. They went out, then, initially through the palace, assassinating the guests. Margot managed to hide Henry in her chambers. They searched for him, but did not find him. Next, they went to the streets, killing the Huguenots. The massacre was horrendous and lasted days, until thousands were killed. It was not only a single night, as many times is reported.
31 The Protestants also killed Catholics after being attacked; it was a confusion without size! There were many other episodes of violence between Catholics and Protestants, and they were quite frequent. However, this was the most significant and the most violent of all, known as “The Night of Saint Bartholomew”, occurred on twenty-fourth of August of 1572, date that had already been dedicated by the Church to Saint Bartholomew, reason why the massacre received this name.
32 Catherine de Medici, however, did not see her ideals become realized, for her son Charles IX came to die little time after the massacre. Henry III assumed the throne, but also died, and the crown ended up remaining with Henry of Navarre, her son-in-law...
33 As Henry of Navarre did not possess blood connection with the Medici family, he inaugurated the Bourbon dynasty in France. His grandson would be Louis XIII.
34 In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus (astronomer, mathematician and Polish cleric, famous for being considered the “father” of modern astronomy) published the work De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), in which he presented the idea that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, but a planet that rotated around the Sun. He brought, thus, a new perspective to humanity. This occurred in a time in which the Inquisition still persecuted, tortured and killed those considered heretics by the Church.
35 In this century there were advances in medicine, in cartography and in engineering. Starting from the previous century, considered a century of transition to the 16th century, humanity needed to advance. Not anymore a process of exclusion, in which science and religion were placed on opposite sides, but both walking together so that we could evolve as immortal spirits that we are.
36 Two saints, mystics and Spanish reformers marked deeply this period: Teresa of Ávila (Carmelite nun, mystic and Spanish writer) and Saint John of the Cross (priest, Carmelite friar, poet and Spanish mystic). Together, they founded the Order of the Discalced Carmelites. They became known as the barefoot Carmelites, for they walked without footwear, calling people to live as Jesus lived: in simplicity, in detachment and in fraternity.
37 Saint Teresa of Ávila is famous for her deep spirituality. She had very intense mystical ecstasies, in which she affirmed to see and converse with Jesus, and the Church did not always know how to deal with these experiences. She taught that, by means of prayer, the creature connected itself to the Creator. She is author of diverse works, among them her masterpiece, The Interior Castle (or dwellings), in which she describes the soul as a crystal castle composed of various dwellings, until reaching the encounter with the divine.
38 She defended that it was necessary to seek more and more one’s own interiority, for the process of connection with Christ is not external, but internal. The more one travels into oneself, expanding one’s own consciousness, greater is the capacity to understand the will of the Creator of life. She was canonized on March 12 of 1622.
39 She had a great protector: Saint John of the Cross. He is considered one of the greatest writers and theologians of Christian spirituality. Always turned to the life of prayer, poverty and contemplation, he taught that the soul passes through a deep purification to reach the intimate union with God. He was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1726 and proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1926.
40 It is told that, one time, Teresa of Ávila had gone out for one of her pilgrimages mounted on a mule. It rained a lot that day and, in a certain stretch of the path, it was necessary to cross a river. The waters were flowing strongly, but the crossing was inevitable. She tried to cross it, however was dragged by the current. Fighting to save herself, she struggled already almost without strength. She perceived that she was drowning when the hand of Jesus pulled her out of the river, saying:
— Are you seeing, Teresa, how I treat my friends?
To which she answered:
— Yes, Lord, that is why you have so few!