Awards

• Nominated for Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion 2001
• Nominated for Best Book Award in European Politics and Society 2002
• Winner of Roland H. Bainton Book Prize 2001

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, what religious and cultural prejudices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gave rise to this confusion? Taking up these questions, John W. O'Malley works out a remarkable guide to the intellectual and historical developments behind the concepts of Catholic reform, the Counter Reformation, and, in his felicitous term, Early Modern Catholicism. The result is the single best overview of scholarship on Catholicism in early modern Europe, delivered in a pithy, lucid, and entertaining style. Although its subject is fundamental to virtually all other issues relating to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, there is no other book like this in any language. More than a historiographical review, Trent and All That makes a compelling case for subsuming the present confusion of terminology under the concept of Early Modern Catholicism. The term indicates clearly what this book so eloquently demonstrates: that Early Modern Catholicism was an aspect of early modern history, which it strongly influenced and by which it was itself in large measure determined. As a reviewer commented, O'Malley's discussion of terminology 'opens up a different way of conceiving of the whole history of Catholicism between the Reformation and the French Revolution.""

Full Product Details

9780674008137

Table of Contents

Reviews

This is a unique book focusing on an interesting issue. Roman Catholicism in the early modern age has been designated by a variety of names: Counter-Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, and the Confessional Age. Why? What contexts and presuppositions in the last two centuries have led to this multiplicity? O'Malley is a leading authority and provides here the most significant and well-documented overview of this issue and its scholarship...In the end, O'Malley proposes his own candidate for the best name for the period. Yet, this is not his primary goal alone. He wants to show 'the Catholic side' with new eyes so that the complexities of the period, frequently missed, will become apparent...O'Malley's fine study opens new paradigms and persuasively promotes a fresh way of understanding this period of Roman Catholic history. -- Donald K. McKim The Sixteenth Century Journal

In this important study, O'Malley does what his Jesuit forebears so often did--he engages in creative dialogue with approaches which, though imperfect, are likely to stay around. -- Alison Shell Times Literary Supplement [This book is] a remarkably thorough overview of how historians have sought to make sense of the way the Catholic Church responded to one of the most complex periods of her history...O'Malley brings together a vast amount of scholarship to show how the Church reacted not simply to the Protestant Reformation, but also to the other new challenges she faced in an age that witnessed both the rise of the nation state and the creation of vast imperial structures that by way of conquest carried the message of Christianity throughout the world. -- David J. Levy Catholic Herald This is a unique book focusing on an interesting issue. Roman Catholicism in the early modern age has been designated by a variety of names: Counter-Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, and the Confessional Age. Why? What contexts and presuppositions in the last two centuries have led to this multiplicity? O'Malley is a leading authority and provides here the most significant and well-documented overview of this issue and its scholarship In the end, O'Malley proposes his own candidate for the best name for the period. Yet, this is not his primary goal alone. He wants to show 'the Catholic side' with new eyes so that the complexities of the period, frequently missed, will become apparent O'Malley's fine study opens new paradigms and persuasively promotes a fresh way of understanding this period of Roman Catholic history. -- Donald K. McKim The Sixteenth Century Journal

This is a unique book focusing on an interesting issue. Roman Catholicism in the early modern age has been designated by a variety of names: Counter-Reformation, Catholic Reformation, the Baroque Age, the Tridentine Age, and the Confessional Age. Why? What contexts and presuppositions in the last two centuries have led to this multiplicity? O'Malley is a leading authority and provides here the most significant and well-documented overview of this issue and its scholarship...In the end, O'Malley proposes his own candidate for the best name for the period. Yet, this is not his primary goal alone. He wants to show 'the Catholic side' with new eyes so that the complexities of the period, frequently missed, will become apparent...O'Malley's fine study opens new paradigms and persuasively promotes a fresh way of understanding this period of Roman Catholic history.--Donald K. McKim The Sixteenth Century Journal

Author Information

John W. O’Malley was University Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University and the author of many books, including Four Cultures of the West, Trent, Vatican I, What Happened at Vatican II, and The First Jesuits (all from Harvard); The First Jesuits has been translated into twelve languages. He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a recipient of the Harvard Centennial Medal as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Society for Italian Historical Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Catholic Historical Association. O’Malley was a member of the Society of Jesus and a Roman Catholic priest.

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