A Saint to Remember in Evil Days

It seems to me that many Catholics are tempted to discouragement these days, not only by the obvious failure of the New Pentecost™, but by the ideological conceit of many of our leaders that we must constantly look backwards to the halcyon days of that failure, the 1970s. The thing about looking backwards, however, is that the more you do it, the easier it gets keep looking further and further back; this is also known as Studying History. Looking back, then, to an historical era similar to our own in many ways, today is the feast of a Saint whose life provides us with a good example of what to do when the Church is in dark times, and perhaps an antidote to our temptations to discouragement. 

The Vision of St Cajetan, by Michelangelo Buonocore, 1733. While praying in the Chapel of the Crib at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome on Christmas Eve, the Saint beheld the Virgin Mary, who then passed the Baby Jesus to him to hold; he is frequently represented this way in art.

St Cajetan was one of the founders of the Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, the very first order of Clerks Regular. They are usually referred to as the Theatines, since one of the other founders, Gian Pietro Caraffa, was bishop of the city of Chieti, “Theate” in Latin, in the Abruzzo region; he would later be elected Pope with the name Paul IV (1555-59). Cajetan himself was born to a noble family of Vicenza in the Venetian Republic, but spent much of his life in Rome. After studying theology and both civil and canon law, he came to the capital of Christendom in 1506, convinced that he was called to do some great work there. He was ordained a priest in 1516, and was actively involved in the foundation or revival of several small confraternities, both in Rome itself and northern Italy, through which zealous and devout Christians, clergy and laity, were able to keep the true spirit of their faith alive.

The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints describes the state of the Church in his time as “not less than shocking. The general corruption weakened the Church before the assaults of Protestantism and provided an apparent excuse for that revolt, and the decay of religion with its accompaniment of moral wickedness was not checked by the clergy, many of whom, high and low, secular and regular were themselves sunk in iniquity and indifference. (my emphasis) The Church was ‘sick in head and members’.”

To elaborate on this solely in reference to Rome: St Cajetan was ordained in the reign of Pope Leo X. Bad historians, who abound in every age, have in some respects unfairly tarnished the reputation of the two Medici Popes of the early 16th century, Leo (1513-21) and his cousin Clement VII (1523-34), along with that of their entire family. Nevertheless, Leo presided over one of great abject failures among the ecumenical councils, Lateran V (1512-17), which was called in part to deal with serious abuses that had become almost omnipresent in the Church, and did absolutely nothing to correct them. (The agenda of the Council of Trent is to no small degree that of Lateran V, done properly.) The failure of Lateran V did much to encourage the Protestant revolt, which could credibly point to the two highest authorities in the Church, the Pope and the ecumenical council, as evidence that things had gone badly wrong within it. Clement VII would then steer Rome into one of its greatest political catastrophes, the infamous Sack of 1527.

Pope Leo X, with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici (left), the future Clement VII, and Luigi de’ Rossi, painted by Raphael in 1518-19.

Among those who participated in the conclaves that elected them was one Alessandro Farnese; his sister Giulia was the mistress of the infamous Pope Alexander VI Borgia, who made him a cardinal in 1493. In accordance with one of the common abuses that Lateran V notoriously failed to correct, Cardinal Farnese held several incompatible benefices at the same time, in order to draw the revenues attached to them. He was simultaneously first a Cardinal-Deacon, then a Cardinal-Bishop, while also administrator of a see in France, archpriest of the Lateran basilica in Rome, and bishop of Parma, holding the latter two positions until his election as Pope in 1534. In the early years of his episcopacy, he fathered five children.

Butler’s Lives goes on to say, “The spectacle shocked and distressed Cajetan, and in 1523 he went back to Rome to confer with his friends … They agreed that little could be done otherwise than by reviving in the clergy the spirit and zeal of those holy pastors who first planted the faith; and to put them in mind what this spirit ought to be, and what it obliges them to, a plan was formed for instituting an order of regular clergy upon the model of lives of the Apostles.” The name “Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence” refers to the fact that, in imitation of the poverty of the Apostles, whose spirit they hoped to revive in the Church, they neither begged like the mendicants, nor accepted permanent endowments like the monks, but lived on whatever might be offered to them spontaneously by the faithful.

At the time of the Sack of Rome, the Theatines numbered only twelve members; their Roman house was almost destroyed in the sack, and Cajetan himself was cruelly treated by soldiers who hoped to extort money from him, assuming (as well they might) that a cleric in Rome must be rather wealthy. The community was forced to flee to Venice. After serving for a time as superior, Cajetan was sent to Verona, where he and his confreres worked in support of a reform-minded bishop against the fierce opposition of both the clergy and laity. He then went to Naples, where he spent the rest of his life, and where the reforming principles promoted by his order bore greater and longer-lasting fruit. The Breviary lessons for his feast day note that “more than once he detected and put to flight the evils and subterfuges of heresies.” This refers to his successful opposition in Naples to three heretics (two of them apostate friars) who had been corrupting the faith of the people.

The high altar of San Paolo Maggiore, the Theatine church of Naples. The order did not unlearn the important lesson imparted to the Church by earlier Orders like the Cistercians and Franciscans, that the poverty of religious is not practiced by impoverishing the house of God.

The altar of the crypt, containing the Saint’s relics.

What would a man like Cajetan have thought when a man with a past like that of Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope in 1534, taking the name Paul III? What would he have thought of the fact that within a month of his election, the new Pope had appointed his 14-year-old grandson, also called Alessandro, as his own successor in the see of Parma, raising him to the cardinalate shortly thereafter? Was he perhaps tempted to despair on learning that another papal grandson, Guido, was raised to the cardinalate alongside his cousin? Or did he sigh with relief, thinking that Guido, at the ripe age of 16, was at least more experienced in ecclesiastical affairs, since he had been a bishop since shortly before his tenth birthday?

And yet, almost from the moment of his ascent to the Chair of Peter, Paul III showed himself the first Pope to actively and effectively work to oppose the Reformation, not only as a challenge to the Faith, but as a problem of internal reform. In 1540, he formally recognized the Society of Jesus, the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation, and despite political difficulties of every sort imaginable, began the Council of Trent in 1545. Among the many cardinals he made in his twelve consistories is numbered yet another of his grandsons, but also Gian Pietro Carafa, who was as ardent a reformer as Pope as he had been as a religious priest and then bishop, and a good many other worthy men. One of his two English cardinals, St John Fisher, died as a martyr for his opposition to England’s new pastoral approach to adultery. The other, Reginald Pole, was for the same reason very nearly murdered in a park outside Rome by men in the pay of his kinsman, King Henry VIII.

In The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, Mons. Philip Hughes wrote that “It fell to (Card. Pole) to write the opening address of the legates to the council--a frank admission that it was clerical sin mainly that had brought religion to this pass, and a passionate plea for sincerity in the deliberations. One who was present has recorded that as the secretary of the council read the speech, the bishops instinctively turned to look at Pole, recognising from its tone and content who was its actual author. Paul III could have given no clearer sign of his own sincerity than (this) in the direction of the longed-for council.”

In 1500, no one could possibly have guessed that a man like Alessandro Farnese, who was so thoroughly the product of the vices then rampant in the Church, would play such an important part in the events that would lead to the extirpation of those vices, and the lasting fruits of the Counter-Reformation. History is thoroughly unpredictable, and there is no reason for us to despair that the seeds of the future reformation of which the Church stands in such dire need may not be budding even now.

A sixteenth century image of one of the sessions of the Council of Trent, from the Tyrol region (now part of northern Italy) which includes Trent. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

St Cajetan’s ministry in Rome, and that of his order, was certainly important, but never very large, and would be overshadowed by that of his near contemporary St Ignatius, the founder of what would become a vastly larger and more widespread order of Clerks Regular, and by St Philip Neri and the Oratory in the following generation. He belonged to the generation of good men who suffered through evil days, trusting that the evils they deplored, but could oppose only partially or not at all, would come to an end in God’s time and by His grace. Though they knew not the day nor the hour, their good example laid the groundwork for the sweeping and highly effective reforms of the Counter-Reformation. Therefore, if the corruption, heresy, and obstinate refusal of reform which we read about from the days of St Cajetan seem depressingly familiar, let us take encouragement from his example. Let us each do what we can so that future generations remember the Catholics of these days as those who laid the groundwork for the next Catholic Reformation.

St Peter the Fiery

The city of Florence today celebrates the feast of a native son named Peter (1020 ca. – 1089), as does the Vallombrosian order of Benedictine monks to which he belonged. He is traditionally said to have belonged to one of the city’s most prominent families, the Aldobrandini, but there is much uncertainty about this. (This is the family of Pope Clement VIII, who reigned from 1592-1605, and for whom the Clementine Vulgate is named.) The Roman martyrology states that St Peter has the nickname “Fiery (igneus), because he passed through fire unharmed”, while strangely giving no further explanation of the very impressive and well-documented miracle by which he earned it.

A portrait of St Peter, made in 1585 in the sacristy of the church of St Bartholomew in the Ripoli area of Florence. This church became the city’s second Vallombrosian monastery in 1187. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons by Sailko, CC BY 3.0. All other images in this article are by the same author, and reproduced under the same Creative Commons license.)  

The Vallumbrosians were founded in 1039 by another Florentine, St John Gualbert (995-1073), as part of the great reform movement then sweeping through the Church. One of the most serious problems of that era was the widespread practice of simony, which brought many unworthy or negligent shepherds to ecclesiastical office, both high and low. St John’s congregation were leaders of the opposition to simony, especially among monks, and had great success in reforming Benedictine abbeys by populating them with their own members, and turfing out simoniac abbots.

In 1062, another Peter, surnamed “Mezzabarba – half-beard”, a native of Pavia in Lombardy, became archbishop of Florence, but five years later, he was accused of acquiring this position by simony. He denied the charges vehemently, and had the support of many of the ruling nobles, but the citizenry, by now very much imbued with the spirit of reform, demanded that he proved his innocence in a trial by ordeal. It was therefore determined that since the Vallumbrosians were among his leading accusers, one of them would walk through two huge pyres set very close to each other.

Peter Aldobrandini was chosen by the abbot of the order’s Florentine house as their representative. On the day appointed for the ordeal, he celebrated Mass in a public square, with a very large crowd in attendance, then removed his chasuble, and offered a prayer to God to bear witness to His detestation of simony by protecting him as he passed through the flames. Then, making the sign of the Cross, and picking up a crucifix, he walked through the fire completely unharmed. An eyewitness account, preserved in a letter sent by the Florentines to Pope Alexander II (another of that age’s great reformers, the predecessor of St Gregory VII), states that the flames filled Peter’s alb, but not even the smallest of his hairs was singed. This was immediately accepted as validation of the accusation against Mezzabarba, who was soon deposed from his see by Pope Alexander. (Later, having repented of his sins, he ended his days as a Vallumbrosian monk.)

The ordeal of St Peter the Fiery, represented on the doors of a cabinet in the Vallombrian monastery of St Michael the Archangel in Passignano, where St John died in 1073. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

Peter Aldobrandini became an abbot, but was then summoned to Rome by Gregory VII, who made him cardinal-bishop of Albano, one of the seven suburbicarian sees. He died on this day in 1089, after serving as papal legate in Italy, France and Germany.

St Peter Being Made a Cardinal, 1750-55 ca., by Giovanni Battista Cipriani. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

In 1057, Pope Stephen IX had given the same title, in the see of Ostia, to another great reformer of the era, St Peter Damian, as a sign of papal approbation of the ongoing movement to free the Church from the many evils that beset it. It therefore fell to the latter to crown Alexander II in 1061, the clearest possible indicator that the papacy, which had wallowed in corruption and moral squalor for decades, had turned the corner very sharply indeed. As I have explained before, this was a development that no one could have reasonably hoped for two decades earlier, when the throne of Peter was occupied by the infamous Benedict IX, over whose career we draw a veil, as the sons of Noah drew a veil over their father’s nakedness. I make bold to say that these are lessons well worth remembering by those of our own day who long for authentic reform within the Church.

The Vallumbrosian church of Florence, San Salvi (about 1¾ miles east of the cathedral), which they took over in the mid-11th century, under St John’s leadership, stood well outside the city walls in the middle of an open field. At the beginning of the 16th century, a sculptor from the nearby city of Pistoia, Benedetto Grazzini (usually known as “Benedetto da Rovezzano”, after the Florentine neighborhood where he lived) was commissioned to make a new monumental tomb in the church for the order’s founder; it was completed in 1515. Unfortunately, in 1529-30, while Florence was under siege by the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (many of them from the newly protestantized parts of Germany), the unprotected church and monastery were sacked, and the monument very badly damaged. Several pieces of it survive, including a long narrative relief that shows the episode of St Peter the Fiery. They are now displayed in the convent building next to the church, which has long been a museum. (All following images from this page of Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Peter_Igneus)

St Peter celebrates Mass before the ordeal begins.

Continue Reading this Article. . .

A Saint to Remember in Evil Days

When I first published this article in 2018, I introduced it by saying that “In the last few weeks, Catholics have been very forcibly reminded of the serious problems of doctrinal and moral corruption that run rampant in the Church.” The more things change... But in these last few weeks, the Church has suffered yet another terrible blow to Her unity and peace, and to the necessary cause of reform, with the issuance of Traditionis Custodes. I do not intend to address these matters here, since they are being more than adequately dealt with elsewhere. However, today is the feast of a Saint whose life provides us with a good example of what to do when the Church is in dark times.

The Vision of St Cajetan, by Michelangelo Buonocore, 1733. While praying in the Chapel of the Crib at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome on Christmas Eve, the Saint beheld the Virgin Mary, who then passed the Baby Jesus to him to hold; he is frequently represented this way in art.

St Cajetan was one of the founders of the Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, the very first order of Clerks Regular. They are usually referred to as the Theatines, since one of the other founders, Gian Pietro Caraffa, was bishop of the city of Chieti, “Theate” in Latin, in the Abruzzo region; he would later be elected Pope with the name Paul IV (1555-59). Cajetan himself was born to a noble family of Vicenza in the Venetian Republic, but spent much of his life in Rome. After studying theology and both civil and canon law, he came to the capital of Christendom in 1506, convinced that he was called to do some great work there. He was ordained a priest in 1516, and was actively involved in the foundation or revival of several small confraternities, both in Rome itself and northern Italy, through which zealous and devout Christians, clergy and laity, were able to keep the true spirit of their faith alive.

The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints describes the state of the Church in his time as “not less than shocking. The general corruption weakened the Church before the assaults of Protestantism and provided an apparent excuse for that revolt, and the decay of religion with its accompaniment of moral wickedness was not checked by the clergy, many of whom, high and low, secular and regular were themselves sunk in iniquity and indifference. (my emphasis) The Church was ‘sick in head and members’.”

To elaborate on this solely in reference to Rome: St Cajetan was ordained in the reign of Pope Leo X. Bad historians, who abound in every age, have in some respects unfairly tarnished the reputation of the two Medici Popes of the early 16th century, Leo (1513-21) and his cousin Clement VII (1523-34), along with that of their entire family. Nevertheless, Leo presided over one of great abject failures among the ecumenical councils, Lateran V (1512-17), which was called in part to deal with serious abuses that had become almost omnipresent in the Church, and did absolutely nothing to correct them. (The agenda of the Council of Trent is to no small degree that of Lateran V, done properly.) The failure of Lateran V did much to encourage the Protestant revolt, which could credibly point to the two highest authorities in the Church, the Pope and the ecumenical council, as evidence that things had gone badly wrong within it. Clement VII would then steer Rome into one of its greatest political catastrophes, the infamous Sack of 1527.

Pope Leo X, with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici (left), the future Clement VII, and Luigi de’ Rossi, painted by Raphael in 1518-19.

Among those who participated in the conclaves that elected them was one Alessandro Farnese; his sister Giulia was the mistress of the infamous Pope Alexander VI Borgia, who made him a cardinal in 1493. In accordance with one of the common abuses that Lateran V notoriously failed to correct, Cardinal Farnese held several incompatible benefices at the same time, in order to draw the revenues attached to them. He was simultaneously first a Cardinal-Deacon, then a Cardinal-Bishop, while also administrator of a see in France, archpriest of the Lateran basilica in Rome, and bishop of Parma, holding the latter two positions until his election as Pope in 1534. In the early years of his episcopacy, he fathered five children.

Butler’s Lives goes on to say, “The spectacle shocked and distressed Cajetan, and in 1523 he went back to Rome to confer with his friends … They agreed that little could be done otherwise than by reviving in the clergy the spirit and zeal of those holy pastors who first planted the faith; and to put them in mind what this spirit ought to be, and what it obliges them to, a plan was formed for instituting an order of regular clergy upon the model of lives of the Apostles.” The name “Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence” refers to the fact that, in imitation of the poverty of the Apostles, whose spirit they hoped to revive in the Church, they neither begged like the mendicants, nor accepted permanent endowments like the monks, but lived on whatever might be offered to them spontaneously by the faithful.

At the time of the Sack of Rome, the Theatines numbered only twelve members; their Roman house was almost destroyed in the sack, and Cajetan himself was cruelly treated by soldiers who hoped to extort money from him, assuming (as well they might) that a cleric in Rome must be rather wealthy. The community was forced to flee to Venice. After serving for a time as superior, Cajetan was sent to Verona, where he and his confreres worked in support of a reform-minded bishop against the fierce opposition of both the clergy and laity. He then went to Naples, where he spent the rest of his life, and where the reforming principles promoted by his order bore greater and longer-lasting fruit. The Breviary lessons for his feast day note that “more than once he detected and put to flight the evils and subterfuges of heresies.” This refers to his successful opposition in Naples to three heretics (two of them apostate friars) who had been corrupting the faith of the people.

The high altar of San Paolo Maggiore, the Theatine church of Naples. The order did not unlearn the important lesson imparted to the Church by earlier Orders like the Cistercians and Franciscans, that the poverty of religious is not practiced by impoverishing the house of God.

The altar of the crypt, containing the Saint’s relics.

What would a man like Cajetan have thought when a man with a past like that of Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope in 1534, taking the name Paul III? What would he have thought of the fact that within a month of his election, the new Pope had appointed his 14-year-old grandson, also called Alessandro, as his own successor in the see of Parma, raising him to the cardinalate shortly thereafter? Was he perhaps tempted to despair on learning that another papal grandson, Guido, was raised to the cardinalate alongside his cousin? Or did he sigh with relief, thinking that Guido, at the ripe age of 16, was at least more experienced in ecclesiastical affairs, since he had been a bishop since shortly before his tenth birthday?

And yet, almost from the moment of his ascent to the Chair of Peter, Paul III showed himself the first Pope to actively and effectively work to oppose the Reformation, not only as a challenge to the Faith, but as a problem of internal reform. In 1540, he formally recognized the Society of Jesus, the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation, and despite political difficulties of every sort imaginable, began the Council of Trent in 1545. Among the many cardinals he made in his twelve consistories is numbered yet another of his grandsons, but also Gian Pietro Carafa, who was as ardent a reformer as Pope as he had been as a religious priest and then bishop, and a good many other worthy men. One of his two English cardinals, St John Fisher, died as a martyr for his opposition to England’s new pastoral approach to adultery. The other, Reginald Pole, was for the same reason very nearly murdered in a park outside Rome by men in the pay of his kinsman, King Henry VIII.

In The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, Mons. Philip Hughes wrote that “It fell to (Card. Pole) to write the opening address of the legates to the council--a frank admission that it was clerical sin mainly that had brought religion to this pass, and a passionate plea for sincerity in the deliberations. One who was present has recorded that as the secretary of the council read the speech, the bishops instinctively turned to look at Pole, recognising from its tone and content who was its actual author. Paul III could have given no clearer sign of his own sincerity than (this) in the direction of the longed-for council.”

In 1500, no one could possibly have guessed that a man like Alessandro Farnese, who was so thoroughly the product of the vices then rampant in the Church, would play such an important part in the events that would lead to the extirpation of those vices, and the lasting fruits of the Counter-Reformation. History is thoroughly unpredictable, and there is no reason for us to despair that the seeds of the future reformation of which the Church stands in such dire need may not be budding even now.

A sixteenth century image of one of the sessions of the Council of Trent, from the Tyrol region (now part of northern Italy) which includes Trent. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

St Cajetan’s ministry in Rome, and that of his order, was certainly important, but never very large, and would be overshadowed by that of his near contemporary St Ignatius, the founder of what would become a vastly larger and more widespread order of Clerks Regular, and by St Philip Neri and the Oratory in the following generation. He belonged to the generation of good men who suffered through evil days, trusting that the evils they deplored, but could oppose only partially or not at all, would come to an end in God’s time and by His grace. Though they knew not the day nor the hour, their good example laid the groundwork for the sweeping and highly effective reforms of the Counter-Reformation. Therefore, if the corruption, heresy, and obstinate refusal of reform which we read about from the days of St Cajetan seem depressingly familiar, let us take encouragement from his example. Let us each do what we can so that future generations remember the Catholics of these days as those who laid the groundwork for the next Catholic Reformation.

A Saint to Remember in Evil Days

In the last few weeks, Catholics have been very forcibly reminded of the serious problems of doctrinal and moral corruption that run rampant in the Church. I do not intend to address these issues here, since this is not the purpose of NLM, and they are being addressed quite amply elsewhere. However, today is the feast of a Saint whose life provides us with a good example of what to do when the Church is in dark times.

The Vision of St Cajetan, by Michelangelo Buonocore, 1733. While praying in the Chapel of the Crib at Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome on Christmas Eve, the Saint beheld the Virgin Mary, who then passed the Baby Jesus to him to hold; he is frequently represented this way in art.

St Cajetan was one of the founders of the Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence, the very first order of Clerks Regular. They are usually referred to as the Theatines, since one of the other founders, Gian Pietro Caraffa, was bishop of the city of Chieti, “Theate” in Latin, in the Abruzzo region; he would later be elected Pope with the name Paul IV (1555-59). Cajetan himself was born to a noble family of Vicenza in the Venetian Republic, but spent much of his life in Rome. After studying theology and both civil and canon law, he came to the capital of Christendom in 1506, convinced that he was called to do some great work there. He was ordained a priest in 1516, and was actively involved in the foundation or revival of several small confraternities, both in Rome itself and northern Italy, through which zealous and devout Christians, clergy and laity, were able to keep the true spirit of their faith alive.

The revised Butler’s Lives of the Saints describes the state of the Church in his time as “not less than shocking. The general corruption weakened the Church before the assaults of Protestantism and provided an apparent excuse for that revolt, and the decay of religion with its accompaniment of moral wickedness was not checked by the clergy, many of whom, high and low, secular and regular were themselves sunk in iniquity and indifference. (my emphasis) The Church was ‘sick in head and members’.”

To elaborate on this solely in reference to Rome: St Cajetan was ordained in the reign of Pope Leo X. Bad historians, who abound in every age, have in some respects unfairly tarnished the reputation of the two Medici Popes of the early 16th century, Leo (1513-21) and his cousin Clement VII (1523-34), along with that of their entire family. Nevertheless, Leo presided over one of great abject failures among the ecumenical councils, Lateran V (1512-17), which was called in part to deal with serious abuses that had become almost omnipresent in the Church, and did absolutely nothing to correct them. (The agenda of the Council of Trent is to no small degree that of Lateran V, done properly.) The failure of Lateran V did much to encourage the Protestant revolt, which could credibly point to the two highest authorities in the Church, the Pope and the ecumenical council, as evidence that things had gone badly wrong within it. Clement VII would then steer Rome into one of its greatest political catastrophes, the infamous Sack of 1527.

Pope Leo X, with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici (left), the future Clement VII, and Luigi de’ Rossi, painted by Raphael in 1518-19.

Among those who participated in the conclaves that elected them was one Alessandro Farnese; his sister Giulia was the mistress of the infamous Pope Alexander VI Borgia, who made him a cardinal in 1493. In accordance with one of the common abuses that Lateran V notoriously failed to correct, Cardinal Farnese held several incompatible benefices at the same time, in order to draw the revenues attached to them. He was simultaneously first a Cardinal-Deacon, then a Cardinal-Bishop, while also administrator of a see in France, archpriest of the Lateran basilica in Rome, and bishop of Parma, holding the latter two positions until his election as Pope in 1534. In the early years of his episcopacy, he fathered five children.

Butler’s Lives goes on to say, “The spectacle shocked and distressed Cajetan, and in 1523 he went back to Rome to confer with his friends … They agreed that little could be done otherwise than by reviving in the clergy the spirit and zeal of those holy pastors who first planted the faith; and to put them in mind what this spirit ought to be, and what it obliges them to, a plan was formed for instituting an order of regular clergy upon the model of lives of the Apostles.” The name “Clerks Regular of the Divine Providence” refers to the fact that, in imitation of the poverty of the Apostles, whose spirit they hoped to revive in the Church, they neither begged like the mendicants, nor accepted permanent endowments like the monks, but lived on whatever might be offered to them spontaneously by the faithful.

At the time of the Sack of Rome, the Theatines numbered only twelve members; their Roman house was almost destroyed in the sack, and Cajetan himself was cruelly treated by soldiers who hoped to extort money from him, assuming (as well they might) that a cleric in Rome must be rather wealthy. The community was forced to flee to Venice. After serving for a time as superior, Cajetan was sent to Verona, where he and his confreres worked in support of a reform-minded bishop against the fierce opposition of both the clergy and laity. He then went to Naples, where he spent the rest of his life, and where the reforming principles promoted by his order bore greater and longer-lasting fruit. The Breviary lessons for his feast day note that “more than once he detected and put to flight the evils and subterfuges of heresies.” This refers to his successful opposition in Naples to three heretics (two of them apostate friars) who had been corrupting the faith of the people.

The high altar of San Paolo Maggiore, the Theatine church of Naples. The order did not unlearn the important lesson imparted to the Church by earlier Orders like the Cistercians and Franciscans, that the poverty of religious is not practiced by impoverishing the house of God.

The altar of the crypt, containing the Saint’s relics.

What would a man like Cajetan have thought when a man with a past like that of Alessandro Farnese was elected Pope in 1534, taking the name Paul III? What would he have thought of the fact that within a month of his election, the new Pope had appointed his 14-year-old grandson, also called Alessandro, as his own successor in the see of Parma, raising him to the cardinalate shortly thereafter? Was he perhaps tempted to despair on learning that another papal grandson, Guido, was raised to the cardinalate alongside his cousin? Or did he sigh with relief, thinking that Guido, at the ripe age of 16, was at least more experienced in ecclesiastical affairs, since he had been a bishop since shortly before his tenth birthday?

And yet, almost from the moment of his ascent to the Chair of Peter, Paul III showed himself the first Pope to actively and effectively work to oppose the Reformation, not only as a challenge to the Faith, but as a problem of internal reform. In 1540, he formally recognized the Society of Jesus, the shock troops of the Counter-Reformation, and despite political difficulties of every sort imaginable, began the Council of Trent in 1545. Among the many cardinals he made in his twelve consistories is numbered yet another of his grandsons, but also Gian Pietro Carafa, who was as ardent a reformer as Pope as he had been as a religious priest and then bishop, and a good many other worthy men. One of his two English cardinals, St John Fisher, died as a martyr for his opposition to England’s new pastoral approach to adultery. The other, Reginald Pole, was for the same reason very nearly murdered in a park outside Rome by men in the pay of his kinsman, King Henry VIII.

In The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, Mons. Philip Hughes wrote that “It fell to (Card. Pole) to write the opening address of the legates to the council--a frank admission that it was clerical sin mainly that had brought religion to this pass, and a passionate plea for sincerity in the deliberations. One who was present has recorded that as the secretary of the council read the speech, the bishops instinctively turned to look at Pole, recognising from its tone and content who was its actual author. Paul III could have given no clearer sign of his own sincerity than (this) in the direction of the longed-for council.”

A sixteenth century image of one of the sessions of the Council of Trent, from the Tyrol region (now part of northern Italy) which includes Trent. (Public domain image from Wikipedia.)

St Cajetan’s ministry in Rome, and that of his order, was certainly important, but never very large, and would be overshadowed by that of his near contemporary St Ignatius, the founder of what would become a vastly larger and more widespread order of Clerks Regular, and by St Philip Neri and the Oratory in the following generation. He belonged to the generation of good men who suffered through evil days, trusting that the evils they deplored, but could oppose only partially or not at all, would come to an end in God’s time and by His grace. Though they knew not the day nor the hour, their good example laid the groundwork for the sweeping and highly effective reforms of the Counter-Reformation. Therefore, if the corruption and heresy we read about from the days of St Cajetan seem depressingly familiar, let us take encouragement from his example. Let us each do what we can so that future generations remember the Catholics of these days as those who laid the groundwork for the next Catholic Reformation.

Lessons from the Council of Trent, 450 years after it closed

Yesterday marked the 450th anniversary of the close of the Council of Trent. This is the Council that launched the Catholic Counter-Reformation stimulating, for example, the foundation of new and successful religious orders, 'introducing' the Tridentine Mass and initiating a cultural change that saw the creation of a whole new artistic form, the baroque, that was, according to Pope Emeritus Benedict, the last authentically liturgical tradition of sacred art. This was so powerfully beautiful that it what started out in the early 1600s in Rome as painting for the liturgy, became the standard in both sacred and mundane art (such as landscape and portraiture) throughout Europe, in both Catholic and Protestant lands. The Dutch artists, such as Rembrandt, copied this style. Charles 1 of England, for example, brought Anthony Van Dyck (later Sir Anthony) over from mainland Europe so that he could have his own baroque painter. From this line came the tradition of great British portrait painting, with figures such as Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence. From this line came the tradition of landscape painting that gave rise to Constable, for example.

In this article, which appeared first in Catholic Exchange, Stephen Beale discuss the reasons why it was so successful at re-asserting the Faith and connecting with the wider culture. He also considers what lessons we can learn from this in regard to the situation we have today.

 He writes: 'Today marks the 450th anniversary of the end of the Council of Trent, which not only stood athwart the currents of the Protestant Reformation but even turned the tide of European history by launching the Catholic Counter-Reformation. The achievements of the Counter-Reformation are breathtaking: It gave rise to great religious orders like the Discalced Carmelites, the Capuchins, and the Jesuits, who, in turn launched the great missions to South America, Africa, China and Japan. It gave birth to great saints like St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Philip Neri, and St. Francis de Sales and inspired a new era of devotional fervor, as exemplified in books written by many of those saints, like The Spiritual Exercises and An Introduction to the Devout Life. And it created the form of Catholicism that withstood centuries of social strife and political turmoil, from the French Revolution to the emergence of communism, as Catholic author George Weigel has observed. Trent’s anniversary is an opportunity to not only celebrate such extraordinary success, but also to learn from it.' The rest of the article is here.

Below we have Guido Reni's Ecce Homo; Van Dyck's Entry into Jerusalem; Van Dyck's triple portrait of Charles 1; and then a 17th century landscape by Dutch artist Ruisdael's.