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8 Scripture and Theology in Early Modern Catholicism Donald S. Prudlo The Counter-Reformation is a period in the history of the Roman Catholic Church during which the Church dealt with issues arising from the emergence of Protestantism.Though Catholic reform predated Martin Luther, nonetheless the challenges that he and other reformers presented led the Church to make serious and sustained changes.The focus of the Counter-Reformation was the Council of Trent (1545–63), an event that left few areas of Catholic life untouched.The Council issued broad dogmatic decrees on the sacraments, the scriptures, justification, and Church government, in addition to passing many ordinances on internal Church reform.The thorough reforms initiated at Trent largely stanched the loss of Catholics to Protestantism in Europe. Catechesis and priestly formation became more systematic, and doctrine was well clarified in opposition to Protestant ideas. Indeed, the reform process that began at Trent was so far reaching that the period until at least the nineteenth century can be called the Counter-Reformation in the Catholic Church. Changes associated with the Catholic Counter-Reformation include the foundation of the Jesuit order, an elite group of intellectual priests, which grew quickly and became commonplace both in the highest echelons of European society and on the front line of missionary territories.The Counter-Reformation also saw an explosion of Catholic education with the foundation of seminaries and schools.The Latin Vulgate edition of the scriptures was updated to agree more fully with ancient texts, and the Catholic liturgy was simplified and systematized throughout the Catholic world. A proliferation of missionary efforts in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Canada more than made up for numerical losses sustained in northern Europe, and made Roman Catholicism a worldwide religion.The Church also continued its patronage of the arts, espe134 cially in relation to the Baroque style and to polyphonic music. While portrayed by many as a reactionary period in the Church’s history, it was at the same time a healthy and innovative age for Roman Catholicism. Before the Protestant Reformation the Bible was chained to the Church, both literally and figuratively. Such is the contention made by many about this period. The literal part is easily dealt with: the Church certainly did chain the scriptures in churches, to prevent the theft of the expensive and sometimes very beautiful texts. The figurative part, however, has become a shorthand way to describe the Catholicism of Luther’s time. The Holy Scriptures were “chained” to arcane mystical interpretations and to Church authority, as opposed to the freedom betokened by the coming Reformation. This chapter will examine the content of this claim by taking a look at the rich and highly complex fabric of Early Modern Catholicism ’s relation to the scriptures. Early Modern Catholicism was far more than simply Counter-Reformation ; it was a paradoxical mixture of rigid conservatism and bold innovation . No single name completely identifies the phenomenon, but the term “Catholic Reform” offers a rich compromise.1 It captures the idea that the reform in Catholicism was not merely a response, but a process that both antedated the Protestant Reformation and also went beyond it, penetrating into areas left unchallenged by the reformers. Long before Luther made its need acute, reform was already underway in the Church in various forms. Ironically, the Bible was one of the areas where reform had penetrated most deeply in the period just prior to the Protestant Reformation. In order to situate the scriptural theology of Early Modern Catholicism, we must look at developments in scholarship, from the editing of texts to the principles of scriptural interpretation (exegesis), so that we can locate scripture in relation to the Catholic Church itself. The reform in scriptural theology did not proceed evenly or smoothly. A wide gulf appeared between the new movement of Renaissance humanism and the older and more traditional patristic and medieval methods of interpretation, which were strongly entrenched in the scriptural theology of the Church. These methods were based around the usage of a common text: the Latin Vulgate, translated by St. Jerome near the end of the fourth century.2 Western scriptural theology used no other version for nearly one thousand years.3 Given Catholicism’s deep respect for tradition, this common text gradually led to common interpretations, which then eventually became enshrined in what was known as the ordinary gloss, or standard Scripture and Theology in Early Modern Catholicism 135 [13.59.218.147] Project MUSE...

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