General

1. As you do the reading, list the key words, concepts, persons, institutions, and events, that you encounter. Jot them down, type them up, bring them to class, and be prepared to explain why they are significant.

2. What are the key things you have learned about early modern Catholicism from this week's reading? Jot them down, type them up, bring them to class, and be prepared to share them with the seminar.

3. Remember Bireley's argument about "refashioning." Do the chapters assigned for this week present evidence in support of his argument? Does the evidence contradict the argument or point to some other argument about early modern Catholicism?

Bireley, Refashioning of Catholicism, 70-146.

4. Do relations between the Catholic Church and the emerging early modern states point to "the decline of the papacy" (71)?

5. Why were Philip II of Spain and Duke Maximilian of Bavaria "Counter Reformation princes" (81)? Is the term an appropriate one for them? Was Cardinal Richelieu a "Counter-Reformation" statesman?

6. Two key and related concepts that we encounter frequently in Bireley are "evangelization" and "christianization." What does he mean by these concepts? Do you think he agrees with Delumeau that rural Europe was fundamentally pagan before the Reformation era (6)?

7. Who were the agents of christianization? What were its methods? What was its purpose? Was it popular? Did it meet with any opposition? Was it successful? (Survivors of Hist. 320 may wince at the question of success! But Bireley raised the issue!)

8. What aspects of christianization gave Catholics a distinct confessional identity? Do you think that christianization is simply another way of referring to confessionalization?

9. Bireley maintains that "education was the most prominent instrument of Catholic Reform" (121). Does this make sense to you? Why or why not?

10. Who benefited from education? What was taught? Who did the teaching and at what sort of schools? What was the purpose of education? To answer the last question think of what purpose education serves in our own society and compare that with the early modern Catholic scene.

Alexandra Walsham, "Miracles and the Counter-Reformation Mission to England," Historical Journal 46 (2003): 779-815.

11. Define "thaumaturgic," "recusant," "sacramental," and "rood." Here are links to other terms in the article: church papists, ex opere operato, amice, stole, Venerable English College, Archpriest controversy: short explanation, long explanation, Gunpowder Plot, Gunpowder Plot Society

12. What are Walsham's principal primary sources? What problems do they present for researchers? Why are they valuable?

13. What is Walsham's argument? How does her article fit into existing scholarship on Catholicism?

14. When discussing miracles, "Counter Reformation writers had to tread a perilous tightrope" (788). How did Catholicism, not simply Protestantism, contribute to the formation of this tightrope?

15. Who disseminated the miracle stories in England? What various types of miracle stories did they tell? What various purposes did these stories serve? Consider not only reports of healing but also of exorcisms, prophecies, visions, and of living saints.

16. What access did English Catholics have to relics and sacramentals?

17. What does Walsham's article tell us about laypeople, clergy, and the relationship between the two?

18. Notice the different ways in which Walsham names or identifies Catholicism in the early modern era. What are the names that she uses? Do they accurately reflect the information about Catholicism that she provides. If so how? Or does Walsham use the names casually without much thought to their appropriateness for Catholic history?

19. Is Walsham's article relevant to Bireley's argument about "refashioning"? If so, does it support or contradict his argument?