Abstract: The Jesuits for Society

The fortuitous discovery of early Christian images adorning the catacombs on Via Salaria in 1578 enabled scholars to address urgent, contemporary problems concerning the Catholic tradition of image veneration, which had been attacked by Protestant iconoclasts. Although the catacombs had been important devotional sites for the cult of martyrs and relics throughout the Middle Ages, the 1578 catacomb discovery was the first time that Romans connected the catacombs with the early Christian cult of images. Only after 1578 did scholars and antiquarians begin to collect and study early Christian frescoes and antiquities found in Rome’s numerous catacomb sites. Their research culminated in the publication of Antonio Bosio’s Roma sotterranea (1635), the first treatise on the Roman catacombs. After the Council of Trent (1545–1563), Catholic scholarship on the catacombs defended the early Christian origins of the cult of martyrs, relics, and images. I argue that the Tridentine Church’s claim of continuity motivated the study of early Christian art in the catacombs in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By critically evaluating images and archeological sources to support an interpretation of the Church as semper eadem (ever the same), Bosio and his sixteenth-century predecessors contributed to the development of modern historical and archeological methods. This dissertation explores the juxtaposition of imaginative and analytical interpretations of the Roman catacombs in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Early modern descriptions of the catacombs characterize these burial sites as emotive worship spaces for the early Church that evoked Christian suffering, martyrdom, and devotion to the cult of saints. I argue that the gruesome martyrdom imagery commissioned to decorate S. Stefano Rotondo and SS. Nereo e Achilleo in the last two decades of the sixteenth century imaginatively recreated what contemporaries thought early Christian worship would have been like in the catacombs. As the first in-depth study to consider the relationship between the exploration of the catacombs and the first large-scale martyrdom cycles in the late sixteenth century, this dissertation demonstrates how vivid pictorial imagination of the Christian past inspired the early Christian revival movement in post-Tridentine Rome. / text

La répartition des chapelles rurales en Gascogne et au Pays Basque qui semble « statique » révèle dans le courant des XVIème et XVIIème siècles, une mainmise de plus en plus étroite de l’Eglise tridentine. Ce phénomène s’intensifie dans les courants des XVIIème et XVIIIème siècles, avec la construction de nouvelles chapelles majoritairement vouées au culte de Marie. L’Eglise adapte un système préexistant et le perfectionne. Elle réinvestit la culture religieuse locale, dont les chapelles rurales sont un fondement et un support de l’identité gasconne et basque. Elle favorise les pèlerinages et les processions dans ces chapelles vouées au culte de Notre Dame, sapant l’influence de certaines chapelles rurales, qui constituent pour certaines, des cadres de pratiques « superstitieuses » et « profanes », à la limite de la religion légale. Elle crée, ainsi un réseau hiérarchisé, fer de lance de la réforme tridentine. Les confréries, un clergé dévoué et dans certains cas, la présence d’un ordre religieux (couvents, monastères…) encadrent les fidèles.Les chapelles rurales constituent des relais d’une « re-catholicisation ». En effet, un vaste mouvement d’acculturation des populations rurales semble mis en place par l’Eglise tridentine. Enfin, en tant que vecteur de cette « re-catholicisation » des populations rurales, les chapelles s’intègrent dans une volonté de lutter contre le protestantisme dont la forme dans le Sud-ouest est le calvinisme. Certains sanctuaires créent de véritables zones d’influence délimitant l’aire culturelle de Gascogne et du Pays Basque. / The spreading of the rural chapels in Gascony and in the Basque Country which seems « static » reveals a growing takeover by the tridentine Church in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 17th and 18th centuries, this phenomenon is intensified by new chapels mainly devoted to Mary. The Church adapts a pre-existing system and improves it. It reinvests the local religious culture founded on rural chapels which are deeply part of the Gascon and Basque identity. In these chapels devoted to Our Lady, pilgrimages and processions are furthered, undermining the influence of some rural chapels, some of which shelter “superstitious” and “secular” practices at the limit of the legal religion. Thus it creates a hierarchic organization which constitutes the spearhead of the tridentine reform. The faithful are guided by the brotherhoods, a devoted clergy and sometimes a religious order (convents, monasteries …). The rural chapels take over the “re-catholicization”. A wide movement of the rural populations’ cultural integration actually seems to be set up by the Tridentine Church. Finally, as a “re-catholicization” medium of the rural populations, the chapels integrate into a will to fight against Protestantism known as the Calvinism in South-Western France. Some sanctuaries create a real zone of influence delimiting the cultural area of Gascony and the Basque Country.

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9 Summary The SSPX is a society of Roman Catholic priests, who aren't organized in any religious order, however, it's organization is similar to many religious orders. As its mission the SSPX consider the defense of a catholic priesthood, the Tridentine Mass and the true doctrine of the Church against danger, which supposedly affected the Church after the Second Vatican Council. The SSPX was established in 1970 and its center became Ecône Seminary in Switzerland. Hereafter, a wider informal group of Catholics, who were unsatisfied with an evolution of the Church, formed around the Society. The members of this group attended masses, celebrated by SSPX priests. This group had united more after a breakup between the SSPX and superiors of the Catholic church, which was caused by an illicit ordinations of a priests and following excommunication of a founder, archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, and his nearest fellows in 1988. From that point, these believers are forming to some kind of congregations similar to parishes, but which are unofficial and improvised. These activities, as well as a sacraments celebrated by SSPX priests, are unacceptable in a catholic canon law system (however, these sacraments are valid, if they were already celebrated!). The ethos of this society is conservative - both in a relation to...

The SSPX is a community of non-monastic priests with a structure similar to that of many religious orders. It was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Its pro- gram is to defend traditional Catholic values against the danger supposedly represented by the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council. A wider community of Catholics disagreeing with developments in the Church was formed around the SSPX. Following the breakup of the SSPX with the leadership of the Church in 1988, this community gained strength and a character of a certain denomination. The Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) carried out a lot of changes, many of which have not yet been fully implemented. They concern the liturgy, pastoral care, interpretation of Scripture, and theology studies, among other issues. The common denominator of the con- ciliar reforms was to make the proclamation of Christ more comprehensible to modern man and make many things in the church consistent with the spirit of the Gospel and early Chris- tian tradition. The most significant shifts, initiated by the council, were the new approaches to ecumenism, to principle of religious freedom and to interfaith dialogue. Many circles in the Church, however, considered these changes as grinding the truths of faith; these Cath- olics began to be...

Parish clergy and religious change in Prague's diocese from Council of Trent till the end of the 17th century The religious change that happens in Bohemia in the 17th century has no equivalent in the Europe at this time: the whole country, where Catholics were in a very minority, comes back to the roman Church. This evolution is here seen from a very prosaic point of view: how lay people live this change, and so how acts the parish clergy in this matter. Conversion's strategy, at the end of the Council of Trent, was to permit the use of the chalice to the laity. The consequence of this permission was a very hazy situation in the parishes, but Holy See did nothing before the battle of White Mountain, and after the battle, he suppressed chalice, mainly for pastoral reasons. During the Thirty years War, the kingdom is the place of a general reform, which has its origins in the catholic missionary movement of the beginning of the century and in the political theories of this time. Bohemia is strongly marked by the war that acts as a catalyst; at the same time political and religious authorities were lacking. The inhabitants, usually just formal Catholics at the beginning, convert themselves more and more deeply during the 17th century. The eldest, who remembered the non-Catholics services, died during the...