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The English Secular Clergy and the Counter-Reformation

1983; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0022046900037015

1469-7637

Eamon Duffy,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

The century from the calling of the Council of Trent to the conclusion of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle stands out as one of the most creative in the pastoral history of Christian Europe. The great number of new apostolic orders, the devotional flowering in France which tamed and domesticated the mysticism of Spain for everyman, the renovation of the parish and the priestly life aspired to by Carlo Borromeo, Pierre Berulle and Vincent de Paul are all aspects of a transformation which is the spiritual face of the baroque. The practice of confession stands somewhere near the centre of this transformation. From an annual social rite concerned essentially with the restoration of peace and the guaranteeing of restitution, it became a monthly or even weekly private rite of reconciliation of the penitent with God. It became, too, the focus for the direction of souls which was now seen, supremely in the work of Francis de Sales, as a central part of the work of the priest. The Salesian tradition was to dominate the flood of devotional manuals published in every European language in the seventeenth century, and in it the practice of confession was developed beyond the juridical and canonical framework of Trent, and turned into a subtle and highly personal instrument of spiritual direction.