Imperial Policy and Church Income: The Sixteenth Century Mexican Church

1986 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Hennessey Cummins

The long-traditional view of the Roman Catholic Church in Spanish America as a monolithic, wealthy, and all powerful institution has been gradually modified by successive studies over the last thirty years. From these examinations emerges the picture of a complex institution characterized by diversity, and internal conflict. New research continues to enlarge and clarify understanding of the Church's role as an institution of the Spanish empire.What follows will, in highlighting the colonial Church's relationship to the Spanish crown, add to this view of it as a complex and diverse institution. An examination of crown policy with regard to Church finance in the sixteenth century shows that the episcopal hierarchy of the Mexican colonial Church had a subordinate relationship to the crown in the era of the Counter Reformation. Rather than a strong Church influencing the crown, what emerges is the portrait of a relatively weak, dependent institution, supported by the king. The secular church hierarchy had only enough power to carry out its function and serve as a counterpoint to the religious orders, not enough to achieve financial independence on its own. The basis for this relationship lies in the patrimonial nature of Castilian government and its dominant position over the Church hierarchy because of the Patronato Real.

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
John K. Thornton

From early contact with the Portuguese and conversion to Christianity in the late 15th century and continuing through the Counter Reformation, the Kingdom of Kongo resisted Portuguese colonialism while remaining steadfastly loyal to the Roman Catholic Church. Against the turbulent backdrop of the growing Atlantic slave trade, internal conflict and power struggles, and Portuguese presence in Luanda, Kongo repeatedly resisted the temptation to break from Rome and establish its own Church, in spite of Portuguese control of the Episcopate. In the late 16th century King Álvaro clashed with the Portuguese Bishop, but remained faithful to the church in Rome. In the early 17th century, Kongo armies repelled Portuguese invasions from the south while kings continued to lobby for more Jesuit and later Italian Capuchin missionaries, whom they needed, above all, to perform sacraments vital to Kongolese Catholics. Another opportunity to split from Rome came when Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita created the Antonian movement in 1704 and denounced the Catholic Church. Instead, she was captured and burned at the stake while King Pedro IV remained faithful to the Capuchin missionaries. In contrast to Portuguese Angola, where Jesuits were deeply implicated in slave trading, the Capuchins in Kongo did not own slaves and, for the most part, both resisted and criticized the slave trade.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Charles Henriques

In this article the effects of the Protestant Reformation on the Roman Catholic Church are investigated. The event of 1517, when Luther posted 95 theses on the castle church door in Wittenberg, had a profound effect on society in Europe and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) was the official response of the Roman Catholic Church to the Protestant Reformation and issued in the Catholic Reformation (Counter-Reformation). Christian thought went from a uniform approach to one of diversity. The Catholics of the day responded by focusing on strategies such as printing, the liturgy, the inquisition and finally excommunication. The wound to the unity of the Christian community was finally healed at the Second Vatican Council when the Roman Catholic Church joined the ecumenical movement of all Christian Churches. The Roman Catholic Church learnt tremendous lessons from the Protestant Reformation. In certain parts of Europe there was friction and in other parts cooperation between Protestants and Catholics. Through the course of time cooperation and dialogue won the battle eventually, as Protestants and Catholics grappled with both their common beliefs and their many differences.


2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-334
Author(s):  
Peter McCullough

This article aims to provide an introductory historical sketch of the origins of the Church of England as a background for canon law in the present-day Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church. Written by a specialist for non-specialists, it summarises the widely held view among ecclesiastical historians that if the Church of England could ever be said to have had a ‘normative’ period, it is not to be found in its formative years in the middle decades of the sixteenth century, and that, in particular, the origins of the Church of England and of what we now call ‘Anglicanism’ are not the same thing.


2008 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Frederick Quinn

ABSTRACTAlthough there is a strong movement within Anglicanism to produce a Covenant, this article argues against such an approach. Postponing dealing with today's problems by leaving them for a vaguely worded future document, instead of trying to clarify and resolve them now, and live in peace with one another, is evasive action that solves nothing. Also, some covenant proposals represent a veiled attempt to limit the role of women and homosexuals in the church.The article's core argument is that covenants were specifically rejected by Anglicans at a time when they swept the Continent in the sixteenth century. The Church of England had specifically rejected the powerful hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church and the legalism of the Puritans in favor of what was later to become the Anglican via media, with its emphasis on an informal, prayerful unity of diverse participants at home and abroad. It further argues the Church contains sufficient doctrinal statements in the Creeds, Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1886, 1888, and the Baptismal Covenant in the American Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer.Covenant proponents argue their proposed document follows in the tradition of classic Anglicanism, but Quinn demonstrates this is not the case. He presents Richard Hooker and Jeremy Taylor as major voices articulating a distinctly Anglican perspective on church governance, noting Hooker ‘tried to stake out parameters between positions without digging a ditch others could not cross. Hooker placed prudence ahead of doctrinal argument.’ Taylor cited the triadic scripture, tradition and reason so central to Anglicanism and added how religious reasoning differs from mathematical and philosophical reasoning. The author notes that the cherished Reformation gift of religious reasoning is totally unmentioned in the flurry of documents calling for a new Anglican Covenant.


1988 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Hennessey Cummins

Historians have long been interested in shedding light on the numerous, habitual transactions that constitute economic life at its basic level. Yet, questions about how men transact business as individuals, and how they feel about it are largely unanswered by traditional political and bureaucratic records, perhaps because these activities were so commonplace to the society, so well-known and unremarkable to contemporaries as to obviate remark in the records. A study of the extensive records of the Roman Catholic Church, however, can shed light on this, and many other aspects of Spanish colonial society in Mexico.


1964 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Kingdon

In this age of growing ecumenicism, many scholars are turning to the history of the sixteenth century for a fresh examination of the origins of those ideas and institutions which continue to divide the Christian community. During these years of the widely publicized meetings of an ecumenical council sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church, many are turning specifically to the canons and decrees drafted by the Council of Trent for a fresh study of the extent to which they do or must divide Christians. But fully to understand these Tridentine decisions from an ecumenical perspective requires not only a knowledge of their texts and of the debates from which they emerged. It requires also a knowledge of the hostile reactions which they aroused among the many Christians who would not accept these decisions or the authority of those who promulgated them. An interesting spectrum of such reactions can be found among French criticisms of Trent published during the sixteenth century. Of these publications, three semto me to demonstrate this proposition neatly: one by a distinguished French theologian, John Calvin; a second by a dustinguished French Jurisconsult, Charles Dumoulin; a third by a prominent French lawyer and historian, Innocent Gentillet. These works have not been ignored by such experts on the historiography of Trent as professor Jedin. But I feel they merit a more detailed and more considered examination than they have as yet received. This paper sketches some of the lines upon which such an examination might proceed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-116
Author(s):  
Radmila Radić

The Kingdom of SCS and the Holy See established diplomatic relations in March 1920. The Holy See accepted the new country with hostility and hesitation. The nuncio monitored not only the state’s religious policy but also the political atmosphere. He wanted to achieve unity among Roman Catholics in the civil and political spheres. The authorities of the Kingdom of SCS emphasized the need to maintain religious unity as the primary motivation in preparation for the concordat negotiations. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy dissatisfied with the state’s religious legislation asked the Holy See not to sign a concordat until their conditions were met. Much of the controversy during the talks concerned government ownership of church land, the establishment of religious orders, and the appointment of bishops. The negotiations were postponed with the intention of being continued. The 1925 talks did not achieve the goal but helped to define certain issues.


2013 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham A. Duncan

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) is regarded as one of the most significant processes in the ecumenical church history of the 20th century. At that time, a younger generation of Roman Catholic theologians began to make their mark in the church and within the ecumenical theological scene. Their work provided an ecumenical bridge between the Reforming and the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical traditions, notwithstanding the subsequent negative response of the Roman church hierarchy. Despite important advances, recent pontificates significantly altered the theological landscape and undermined much of the enthusiasm and commitment to unity. Roman Catholic theological dissent provided common ground for theological reflection. Those regarded as the ‘enemy within’ have become respected colleagues in the search for truth in global ecclesiastical perspective. This article will use the distinction between the history and the narratives of Vatican II.


1990 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 99-108
Author(s):  
Sheridan Gilley

In his famous essay on von Ranke‘s history of the Popes, Thomas Babington Macaulay remarked that the ‘ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy… the Catholic Church makes a champion’. ‘Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new Society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church.’ Macaulay’s general argument that Roman Catholicism ‘unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent’, depends for its force on his comparison of the Catholic Regular Orders with the popular preachers of Nonconformity. As the son of a leader of the Clapham Sect, his witness in the matter has its interest for scholars of the Evangelical Revival, and has been echoed by Ronald Knox in his parallel between Wesley and the seventeenth-century Jesuit, Paolo Segneri, who walked barefoot 800 miles a year to preach missions in the dioceses of northern Italy. More recently the comparison has been drawn again by Owen Chadwick, with the judgement that the ‘heirs of the Counter-Reformation sometimes astound by likeness of behaviour to that found in the heirs of the Reformation’, and Chadwick’s volume on the eighteenth-century Popes contains some fascinating material on the resemblances between the religion of the peoples of England and of Italy. An historian of Spanish Catholicism has compared the Moravians and the mission preachers of eighteenth-century Spain, not least in their rejection of modern commercialism, while an American scholar has traced some of the parallels between nineteenth-century Protestant and Catholic revivalism in the United States. Not that Wesleyan historians have been attracted to study the great movements of revival religion in the Catholic countries in Wesley’s lifetime—a neglect which is hardly surprising. One point of origin of the Evangelical revival was among refugees from Roman Catholic persecution, and for all the popular confusion, encouraged by men like Bishop Lavington, between Methodists and Papists, and for all Wesley’s belief in religious toleration and tenderness for certain Catholic saints and devotional classics, he was deeply hostile to the Roman Catholic Church, as David Hempton has recently shown. Yet there are many points of likeness as well as difference between the enthusiasts of Protestant and Catholic Europe, and both these need to be declared if Catholics and Protestants are ever to attempt to write an ecumenical history.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Erik A. de Boer

Abstract In their critique of the hierarchy in the Roman Catholic Church most reformers in the sixteenth century did not argue for retaining the office of bishop. In the English Reformation, led by the king, the bishopric was reformed, and in Hungary, too, the office of bishop survived. Did reformers like John Calvin fundamentally reject this office, or did they primarily attack its abuse? Investigation of the early work of Calvin shows a focus on the meaning of the biblical term ‘overseer’ and on preaching as the primary function of the episcopacy. While the title of bishop is reserved for the one head of the church, the office of the preacher is brought to a higher level. As moderator of the Company of Pastors in Geneva, Calvin would have a standing in the city comparable to the ousted bishop.


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