Renaissance and Humanism: A Historical Perspective

Posted on Dec 19, 2024 in History

Lesson 13: The Renaissance

Renaissance and Humanism

Conceptual Problems Regarding the Renaissance

In the sixteenth century, Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) used the term Rinascita to define the cultural movement that had occurred in Italy. This marked the revival of Classicism and the renewal of man and his environment.

After a period of heightened romantic admiration for the Middle Ages, the mid-nineteenth century saw a radical change of direction. Apologies were made for having yielded to what was called “the Gothic craze,” and the Renaissance was now accepted with enthusiasm. Jules Michelet (1798-1874) and especially Jacob Burckhardt (1818-1897), author of The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), contributed decisively to this. For Burckhardt, individualism and modernity were the keys to the interpretation of the Renaissance.

Thus was born the myth of the Renaissance, received sympathetically by liberal thought, which saw it as the liberation of the human spirit, the victory of light over darkness, and the development of the modern secular spirit. According to this thesis, the Medieval and Renaissance periods were opposed in all their characteristics, and the break should be located roughly in the middle of the fifteenth century.

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, works dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan influence on the origins of Renaissance art made it clear that corrections were needed to the glowing picture designed by Burckhardt. The claim of medieval history reached its climax during the first third of the twentieth century through research on the Middle Ages.

Charles Homer Haskins found that the view that men of the Middle Ages had not known the classics and their teachings was untrue (The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, 1927). Gradually, the idea took shape that Renaissance philosophy posed no advance but, in any case, a deployment of the previous era (Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson). Some authors, even regarding it as a religious day, attenuated the contrast between then and the previous one. Thus, the limits of the Middle Ages-Renaissance antithesis became clear, leading some to interpret it, as Johan Huizinga (1872-1945) did in The Autumn of the Middle Ages, as a decline of the Middle Ages.

The Renaissance in Different Countries

Another important qualification is to consider two nearly simultaneous “rebirths” chronologically but with different manifestations. It is now clear that there are differences between the fifteenth-century Italian Renaissance and the European Renaissance of the first half of the sixteenth century.

While in Italy, the return to antiquity meant a return to national traditions, and there was a rapid turnover of artistic and intellectual ideas, in the rest of Europe, pre-existing ideas and vital national traditions were different. Therefore, the return to the classics found much stronger resistance and appeared as the first nationalist demonstrations.

The northern European Renaissance, unified under the influential figure of Erasmus, was primarily Christian and, in a way, helped to progress along the path of reform. In Italy, the rise of the secular spirit and the overriding of easements represented by the human did not, except in rare cases, mean a rejection of the Christian faith but gave rise to ambiguous attitudes and complex manifestations.

Current Meanings of “Renaissance” and “Humanism”

It seems more appropriate to apply the term Renaissance exclusively to the historical period that stretches from the mid-fifteenth century to the mid-sixteenth century. Accordingly, the term is not limited only to bright scholarly, literary, and artistic samples but embraces, like any other historical period, many aspects of life, not all consistent or equally bright.

In contrast, the term Humanism is reserved strictly for the cultural movement, the core ideas, feelings, and aesthetic values that manifested primarily in Italy and later caught on in other European countries. Here, due to special circumstances of social and intellectual concerns, it took on different aspects.

Great Inventions

Despite the profound transformation that took place in Europe in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the profound intellectual and moral revolution that marked the Renaissance and Reformation would never have occurred if it had not been for the significant inventions that developed then. These are the necessary and immediate antecedents of modern Europe:

Gunpowder, modifying political conditions and warfare;
Compass, allowing great geographical discoveries with their multiple consequences;
Printing, spreading the human mind, awakening the love of classic productions, and encouraging the free discussion of ideas.

The most momentous invention in the history of modern culture was that of the printing press, which was facilitated by the timely discovery of rag paper manufacturing. The most used writing material during the Middle Ages had been parchment. Its long preparation, shortages, and the famine made it a precious commodity. Often, old texts were deleted to write new ones (palimpsests). The heavy work of writing was multiplied by the calligraphic wonders of those clerks who devoted their lives to adorning their manuscripts with miniatures in vivid colors. Rich and complicated bindings with brooches and jewels turned those units into items only accessible to the great potentates.

The first appearance of cheap paper—plant paper, cotton, and especially rag paper—allowed for multiplied copies that could be sold at low prices, awakening the desire to read. A rapid breeding procedure was needed to further lower production. There was woodcut or engraving on a wooden board, but it was a very slow and cumbersome procedure, as it required a sheet for each page. Johannes Gensfleisch Gutenberg, born in Mainz (1397-1468), replaced the plates with moving characters, creating typography.

The types were first made of wood but soon wore out. They were then replaced with metal. After many trials, because the carbide paper broke and soft metal wore out quickly, Gutenberg came to discover the lead alloy, tin, and antimony that later served in printing. The invention spread very quickly, despite the opposition of copyists and librarians. The first book printed was a Bible (1445), and from that time, Gutenberg and his disciples multiplied the printing and published thousands of books, mostly older. Their perfection and affordability awakened the desire to read among all social classes.

Geographical Discoveries

Complementing the bright spiritual awakening that occurred in Europe and the popularization of printing, a series of voyages and discoveries were carried out, which found in printing the most appropriate means of propagation.

Causes and Precedents

Since ancient times, European traders had a strong desire to find a quick way to go to India, whence came precious fabrics, perfumes, ivory, and, above all, spices (clove, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, etc.), which were essential elements of medieval life. All these products reached Europe via the Arabs, either by land through Asia to the Black Sea, where Genoese sailors bought them, or by the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea to Alexandria, where they were acquired by the Venetians. These intermediaries (Arabs, Venetians, and Genoese) made European buyers pay dearly for their services and drew great wealth from trade. More than once, European buyers felt the need to dispense with their services and look directly for the way of the Indies.

Several causes sharpened that latent desire:

First, the capture of Constantinople by the Turks cut off Italian trade with the Orient and forced them not only to find a procedure to resume it but to find a different way.

Second, the feudal spirit of chivalry, which had been dominated by the awakening of the monarchy, could look to distant adventures for an outlet for their thirst for glory and wealth, which they could no longer dream of in their own country.

Finally, there was the Golden Legend of Eastern countries, the accounts of Marco Polo, a Venetian traveler of the twelfth century, who had traveled through Cathay (China) and Zipangu (Japan), describing the wonders and wealth of these countries. The country of spices, the Moluccas, the Indies—all the East appeared before the eyes of Europeans, especially the Portuguese and Spanish, as a country of great wealth, where stones and precious metals were available to the first comer.

Despite much encouragement, it was not until the fifteenth century that package tours were found.

Popular beliefs that darkened the horizon of medieval seafarers had to be overcome first. Misconceptions about the shape of the Earth, legends that surrounded a supposedly impassable torrid zone or a vacuum from which one could not return, rumors of mysterious powers, magnet stones, monsters, sirens, etc., were not intended to encourage browsers.
The compass had to be known and spread.
People had to be convinced of the sphericity of the Earth and the possibility of going around it.
Astronomical and cartographic work had to be refined.
Ships had to be modified, replacing the heavy galley with the rapid caravel.

Thus, in an atmosphere of enthusiasm, curiosity, and courage, trips were verified that tripled the length of the known world.

Portuguese Discoveries

Portugal finished its reconquest early and sought an expansionist policy in North Africa and Atlantic voyages. The Portuguese discoveries were driven by the desire to continue the fight against the infidels and to find a direct sea route to the countries of East Asia. Prince Henry the Navigator established in Sagres, near Cape San Vicente, a base for explorations in which all the scientific and technical advances of the time were experienced. Until his death (1460), he did not cease to send expeditions along the west coast of Africa. Later, in 1486, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of the continent (Cape of Good Hope). In 1497, an expedition commanded by Vasco da Gama left Portugal and, after two years, reached Calicut and Goa in India. Soon after, in 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral, swept by a storm, according to the official version, reached the coast of Brazil.

The Portuguese Empire was very extensive but was limited to coastal areas of the continents in order to establish business contacts. From India, they moved further east to Indonesia, southern China (Macao), and the Moluccas. Lisbon became an important commercial center. The victories of the Portuguese discoveries inspired the great poet Luís Vaz de Camões to write the Portuguese national epic poem Os Lusíadas.

The Discovery of America

The main protagonist in the Age of Discovery was a Genoese sailor, Christopher Columbus, whose origins are wrapped in darkness. Living in Portugal, some readings made him conceive the idea of reaching the Far East by sailing westward.

He found no support for his project in Portugal because the whole policy was directed to seek the path along the African continent and because it was thought, rightly, that Columbus’s data were wrong and the Earth’s sphere had larger dimensions. After this failure, he went to Castile, where experts found the same technical problems, but where the confidence of the queen and the expert help of sailors from Huelva made the trip possible, which was crowned with success on October 12, 1492.

Columbus thought he had reached islands located a short distance from the eastern coast of Asia. He ignored the existence of a continent separating the Pacific and Atlantic and believed the Earth to be smaller in size. However, from this double error, the greatest discovery of all time was born.

If the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella was marked by the great achievement of the discovery of America, that of their grandson, Charles I (1516-1556), saw the great expansion of the Spanish empire in the New World. A handful of brave men set out to conquer the vast continent that existed after the first discovered lands. This conquest had a number of general features, among which may be mentioned:

Little direct intervention of the Spanish monarchy; royal armies were rarely sent to America.
The conquest was carried out by small groups of men under high-energy leaders, who had previously signed capitulations with the monarchy authorizing the issuance and appointing them to prominent positions.
The conquerors had to deal with people of culturally diverse backgrounds, from roving bands in some regions to powerful and populous empires in others.
The environment in which they had to cope was most often completely hostile.
At times, the Spanish took advantage of rivalries among the Indians. They also learned the advantage of surprise and fear that the natives had for the emergence of men different from them. The same occurred with the use of firearms and horses, which were unknown in America.
The inevitable conquest involved violence and cruelty, typical of rough men used to settling their affairs without any regard for human life.
It was not only the thirst for riches that moved the conquerors; the desire for glory and adventure, the desire to extend the name of their homeland, and the faith of Christ were some of their motivations.

After the conquest of the American territories by the Spanish, the company began to integrate into European civilization the indigenous peoples who lived in great cultural backwardness. Spain transplanted to the new world its population and cultural institutions with a humane and Christian spirit not found in the colonial enterprises of other nations. Those lands were considered an extension of Spain, and the splendid reality of Spanish America is the best defense of the work that was performed there.

Our work was not only one of exploitation but also of people because from the beginning, a critical mass of Spanish went to India. Some kept their pure white form, forming the Creoles, or whites born in America, but a greater proportion were fused with indigenous people, giving rise to the mestizos, of mixed blood, who now form the majority of the population in many nations of the New World.

The Indians were forced to work on large agricultural estates and mines. In principle, in many cases, they were treated cruelly, but soon arose among the Spanish themselves ardent defenders, the most famous of them all being Fray Bartolomé de las Casas. The concern of the Spanish governments to protect indigenous people from the abuse of individuals is revealed in the many very humane laws enacted since the beginning.

Implications of the Findings

The discoveries made by the inhabitants of the Old World had major implications for humanity:

Apart from the extension of the then-known world, there was a notable increase in scientific knowledge in many different materials, such as Marine and Natural Sciences, to cite two examples.
Trade enjoyed great development, and the main maritime trade routes moved from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean, which resulted in the enrichment of a number of cities that were established in new commercial centers.
The vast influx of precious metals from American mines remediated the currency shortages that existed in Europe, boosted economic development, and caused a general rise in prices that had major social and political repercussions.

America was also affected, and in huge measure, by the new situation. Here are some of the main consequences for the Americas:

Incorporation of large parts of America into Western civilization. This was especially influenced by the spread of Christianity, the creation of universities, printing, etc.
Coming to America of plants and animals previously unknown and that changed the lives of many regions’ agriculture (wheat, grapes, olives, rice, horses, pigs, sheep, etc.). There was also a loan in this regard in the opposite direction, i.e., from America to Europe (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, corn, snuff, etc.).
Indigenous population decline due to wars, epidemics, and the excessive work to which they were subjected in some places.
Arrival in the continent of a large number of black slaves.
Emergence of a new class of mixed-race people from marriages among the many indigenous people and settlers.

Economic Transformations

The Renaissance saw great expansion in Europe, accompanied by significant social changes. In the second half of the sixteenth century, struggles arising from religious issues clouded the horizon, announcing the seventeenth-century depression.

Demographic Expansion

After the slump caused by the terrible epidemics of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century, the European population began to grow vigorously. To cope with the increased population, new land was brought under cultivation, and efforts were made to increase the yield of cultivated land. But the technique was still poor, transport was expensive and poor, and storage methods were inadequate. Crop failures were followed by times of famine, accompanied by epidemics. Nevertheless, the population of Western Europe became higher in the Renaissance than at any previous period in its history.

At the end of the sixteenth century, France was the most populous country, with some 16 million inhabitants, followed by Italy and Germany. Spain had barely eight million, England five, and Portugal one. These figures seem very small now, but it should be noted that with the methods then known, it was not possible to feed more people. Cities were also much smaller than today. Only London, Paris, and Naples had over 200,000 inhabitants. Seville, then the largest Spanish city, had 120,000, and Barcelona had some 50,000.

The birth rate was very high; many couples had eight or more children, but half died before the age of ten. This high mortality from epidemics caused the population growth rate to be slow, although higher than in previous centuries.

Economic Expansion

The increase in population would not have been possible without a parallel increase in production. Several factors were involved in this economic expansion, some material and others psychological.

Among the material factors, the stimulation of the great voyages and discoveries, new products, and, above all, large quantities of gold and silver that came from American soil should be mentioned first. The precious metal production in Europe was small, and there was no paper money. The shortage of means of payment was a brake on economic development. In the early sixteenth century, gold began to arrive, followed by silver from Peru and Mexico. These treasures came to Spain and were coined in Seville, but most of them went abroad to pay for foreign goods and to fund the wars of the kings of the House of Austria.

This injection of coins was a huge economic stimulus that intensified industrial production and transatlantic trade. It also produced a rise in prices, a phenomenon that surprised contemporaries, who were not used, as we are, to permanent inflation. This effect was noticed earlier and more strongly in Spain, which became the most expensive country in Europe. Many foreigners came to Spain, attracted by high wages. Some settled permanently; others returned to their land with their savings. The high cost of living also hurt Spanish industry products, which could not withstand competition from foreign products.

Along with the increasing population and circulating currency, psychological factors were involved in the economic expansion.

The spirit of the Renaissance was conducive to individualism, adventure, and the desire for luxury and enrichment. Notable individuals emerged as businessmen and bankers, such as the Medici and Spinola in Italy and the Fugger and Welser in Germany. There were also religious factors. While the Catholic Church frowned upon loan interest and other practices that seemed usurious, Jews, many in the Netherlands, and Calvinists easily adapted to new technologies and commercial capitalism. Banking was born in Italy but developed more strongly in Protestant countries.

The dominant economic doctrine was mercantilism, which advocated a state-led economy with strong industrial development and export support to achieve a trade surplus and accumulate a surplus of gold and silver.

Social Aspects

Renaissance society remained hierarchical, like that of the Middle Ages, but the new economic circumstances led to profound changes in Western nations. In Eastern Europe, the economy remained agrarian, and society traditional. In contrast, in the West, the old social categories based on spiritual values and family came into conflict with new categories created by money.

Solutions to this conflict varied, depending on the country. In the Italian commercial republics (Venice, Genoa, Florence), the ancient nobility belonged to the great families of traders and financiers who formed the ruling oligarchy. In the Netherlands, England, and Germany, the nobility of blood coexisted with the traditional business bourgeoisie. In France, many bourgeois bought official positions, especially in the judiciary, and formed a nobility of the robe, distinct from the nobility of the sword, although marriage links between them were frequent. In Spain, the majority of the bourgeoisie tried to forget the origin of their fortune and procured a title of nobility or royalty.

People living on fixed incomes, such as officers, stockholders, and other members of the middle class, were affected by rising prices, but not the nobles who perceived their land rents in kind, or the clergy, who in Catholic countries perceived tithes and first fruits of the products of the land and continued to receive donations from the faithful. In Protestant countries, much of the church property was in the hands of kings and princes.

Artisans were still grouped into classes, as in the Middle Ages. Many non-unionized occupations also had ordinances and formed guilds that, in addition to pious purposes, maintained hospitals and other social welfare institutions.

Along with crafts, a veritable pre-capitalist industry began to emerge, in which hundreds of workers were employed in large workshops, or they were home workers hired by an employer. This industrial concentration was common in the textile industries. Wool achieved great development in England and Flanders, which consumed Spanish wool, and silk in Florence, Lyon, Toledo, Granada, Seville, and Valencia.

The peasants made up the vast majority of the population. Their situation varied greatly. Large landowners benefited from rising prices. Tenants were very unhappy, as were settlers, who were exploited by owners and lords. There were bloody uprisings, sometimes drawing on political grounds (Castile) or religious pretexts (uprising of the peasants of Germany). In no case were they successful, and their condition worsened even more.

There were also social strata whose legal status was lower: black slaves and Muslims in Spain and Portugal, Jews in Italy and Germany, Moorish Spain, and a considerable number of vagrants and beggars. Public order forces were scarce, and although punishments were heinous, crimes of all kinds abounded.

The Breakdown of Western Christianity

Conceptual Clarification: Catholic Reformation, Protestant Reformation, and Counter-Reformation

The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation can be included in the general movement of reform that had been brewing within the Church since the early fifteenth century (Catholic Reformation). It represents the wing that, instead of promoting a renewal of ecclesial life, eventually segregated a part of Christendom from the Roman Catholic Church.

The term Counter-Reformation can be applied to Catholic reform once it stood in front of the Protestant Reformation. The phenomenon is twofold: an internal revival, reform itself, and an offensive and defensive reaction against Protestantism.

Historical Roots of the Protestant Reformation

Following García Villoslada, the different circumstances may be ordered as follows: roots of a moral and ecclesiastical, theological, spiritual, and religious nature, and finally, political, social, and psychological. But today, it seems indisputable that the root causes of the Lutheran Reformation were religious in nature. That does not mean that there were no other factors that contributed to the division, with much broader religious dimensions and aspects that go beyond the purely theological and ecclesiastical.

Roots of Moral and Ecclesiastical Nature

Weakening of Pontifical Authority

It is clear that the decline of the Pope’s religious prestige cannot in itself explain a phenomenon like Protestantism, but it did facilitate its appearance in various ways. In any social institution where authority is diminished, revolution is possible. Undoubtedly, the decline of the papacy, with the increasing decline of its prestige and spiritual authority, contributed to half of Christian Europe (created, in large part, by the papacy) loosening its ties to the point of complete divestment.

Anti-Roman Nationalism

Germanic anti-Roman nationalism, imbued with passion, had a positive influence, especially since 1519, on the Lutheran revolution. “The ancient opposition between Roman and Germanic character” (Gerhard Ritter) eventually moved to the religious sphere, breaking the union between Roman and Germanic that gave rise to the great culture and civilization of the Roman-Germanic Middle Ages. Luther’s compatriots harbored resentment, mistrust, bitterness, and ill will against Rome and the Pope.

The grievances or charges that caused the complaints of the German nation against Rome have a well-known name in history: Gravamina Nationis Germanicae, petitions of grievances that mixed real abuses of a disciplinary nature with others of an economic nature, which were odious to the papal curia and disguised their own interests, prejudices, and grievances against Rome.

The Role of Scandals and Abuses

Protestants and Catholics used to repeat that a major cause of Lutheranism had been the scandals of the clergy and the disciplinary and administrative abuses of the Roman curia. Protestants reasoned thus: the moral decadence of the Church was so deep that the Christian conscience of certain elected people could not endure it, and it was necessary to rise up against this situation. Such a conception of history may be considered unsustainable: the deeply religious people who followed Luther did so not in reaction to clergy abuse but out of intimate sympathy with Lutheran dogmas.

Even less can it be considered that, having made public Luther’s heresy during the preaching on indulgences, it was only a protest against the abuses committed in this area. When he published his 95 Theses, and for several years, his mind was imbued with an unorthodox theology that was to lead to rebellion, not the spectacle of abuse. What the Lutheran Reformation proposed was not a moral reform and discipline but a substantial transformation of the Church of Christ.

Does this mean that corruption and abuses had no influence on the Reformation? They certainly had some influence on its rapid spread because many who could not endure the law of celibacy, fasting and abstinence, and sacramental confession went over to Protestantism. They also served as a pretext for its innovators to attack the Roman Church and present themselves as the only true reformers.

Theological Roots

Decline of Theology

After the golden age of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, the fourteenth century saw enormous shredding fermentation, activated by bold thinkers, most notably William of Ockham. Humanists directed their attacks against the scholastics, disregarding their external form and method, but Luther went much further, ignoring all medieval theologians, with St. Thomas in the lead, and rejecting their doctrines as false perceptions, underpinned by the philosophy of the great pagan Aristotle, not the Gospel of Christ.

Heterodox Environment

If the current war of orthodoxy became antagonistic and contributed with their disputes and decadent ways to increase the “theological blackout” that prevailed in the two centuries before Trent, swarming bugs of radical heterodoxy in some way prepared the way for those of the sixteenth century. We refer in particular to those of John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, without neglecting other more outlandish and even dangerous theories.

None of them exercised direct influence on Luther but created an unorthodox environment at several universities, with heresies like those that arose later and especially ecclesiastical contempt.

Influence of Ockham on Luther

Ockham’s teachings, which are not very tidy in his books (he died too young), had enormous significance:

The claim that man is not given importance in acquiring merit because between the latter, God, and his creation, there is a gap impossible to bridge.
For the same reason, reason was not given to know with sufficient certainty beyond the senses because it lacks the means to discover general principles.
Societies, including the Church, could be considered as nothing other than the sum of the subjects or of the Christian faithful.

The second generation of Ockham’s disciples, who lived in the second half of the fourteenth century, defended the simple laymen’s access to the interpretation of Scripture without having to submit to the Magisterium of the Church, and that the Council, as representing it, was superior to the Pope.

At the outbreak of the Western Schism in 1378, the University of Paris was divided into two camps, and Ockhamist teachers who refused to accept Clement VII, Pope of Avignon, left and were approved by Urban VI to form new General Studies in other countries. Then came the University of Wittenberg, where Luther taught a century later.

Protestantism accepted nominalism and voluntarism far beyond what the fourteenth-century masters admitted. Martin Luther made extensive efforts to overcome the contradictions of nominalism but without abandoning the radical pessimism regarding man, denying free will and rational capacity to know with certainty. The fundamental cause of the rift between Erasmus and Luther, which is like the sign of the irreparable division, is precisely there.

Meaning of the Protestant Reformation

Its initiator was the Augustinian Martin Luther, and its great theorist and systematizer, Philip Melanchthon. According to Protestants, the only thing that really comes from God is the Holy Scripture, to be freely interpreted by the believer without any interpreting authority. The Christian’s only religious duty, they say, is the relationship of the soul with God by receiving God’s word.

The consequences of this confinement of religion to the privacy of the subjective were immense: the life of culture and politics were divorced from the religious to be made outside the subjective. The freedom of thought and the secularization of the state were well cemented by Protestantism. Religion would no longer be a bond or union of men and nations but would become a purely individual matter that cannot be constructed or imposed and cannot serve as a guiding principle of culture or the common life of men.

Catholic Reform and Counter-Reformation

As we have already seen when dealing with the causes of the Protestant Reformation, there existed within the Catholic Church irregularities and defects sufficient to justify a latency of discontent. Hence, from within the Church itself, restoration and reform were born. The organization of a systematic and comprehensive Catholic reform failed in this period, but there were attempts to do it on a more limited and personal level. These include the work carried out in Spain by illustrious churchmen such as Hernando de Talavera and Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros Mendoza, who, always with the support of the monarch, reformed the regular and secular clergy. The clergy were so purified in status and condition that Protestant doctrine had little root in Spain, and the Spanish clergy had a strong influence at the Council of Trent.

The main instrument of the true Catholic Reformation was the Council of Trent, which developed in three stages:

First stage (December 1545 – September 1549)
Second stage (May 1551 – April 1552)
Third stage (January 1562 – December 1563)

Amid the upheavals caused by political and religious strife in Europe, the Church made a formidable effort to save the image of the “new” man and to invite all Europeans to defend it. This effort is called Trent, where Protestants would not come. In its three stages, the Council defended the three most solid foundations upon which human dignity can be built:

First, it said that human nature is capable of obtaining merit and making creative works beyond the narrow confines of the world. Therefore, it denied that faith without works would suffice and invited men to operate over the world.
Then it defended the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, which meant the establishment of substantial and permanent communication between immanence and transcendence. Hence, it also extracted the following: the recovery of sinners and that no moral position can be considered irreversible.
Finally, it defended the ability of reason to illuminate even the truths of faith.

Second, effective tools for Catholic reform were the new religious orders. Features of this moment are the Congregations of regular clerics who do not practice monastic traditions, which they consider incompatible with the cure of souls, but choose religious life as a means of ensuring the highest perfection and greater effectiveness in ministry. First of all must be considered the Society of Jesus, founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola.

These efforts by the Catholic Church resulted in a complete overhaul:

On the one hand, it operated the true Reformation. Although it cost the loss of large areas because of heresies and Protestant rebellions, it had the excellent effect of regenerating the Church, giving it back lost strength, making it regain a good part of the territories lost, and putting it in a position to fight for the future.
In addition, it expanded its domains in the missions. With the strength it announced from the reforms carried out inside and the new instruments that the Church had, extraordinary progress was made in overseas missions, surpassing all that had been done so far and more than making up for the losses in Europe.

Cf. García Villoslada, Ricardo, Historical Roots of Lutheranism, BAC, Madrid, 1976, 47-245.

In Spanish, grievances or harassment.