Catholic Christianity in Global Context

OVERVIEW

There was a Catholic Reformation as well as a Protestant one. Catholic reform and renewal are usually symbolised by the Council of Trent, held in northern Italy in the middle of the sixteenth century, but there was a global dimension to the movement as well. As travellers and traders started to venture out of Europe, they came into contact with people who held very different views of the world and its origins. This presented missionaries with exciting opportunities for 'conversion', but it also posed serious questions for Christians, especially when the beliefs they found seemed to contradict the Bible. This week, we consider how encounters between European Catholic Christians and non-Christian 'others' took place, and how both sides were affected by the experience.

The seminar focuses on one such encounter. The king of Kongo, Nzinga-a-Nkuwu, was baptized as a Catholic in 1491. Catholicism persists in West Africa to this day. But how deeply rooted was Catholicism in Kongo in the early modern period? And how did it relate to established beliefs in the kingdom? We look at an older secondary source that grappled with these questions. This is a good example of the kind of classic article that you will review in the first assignment, due in week 8 of term 1. This seminar serves as a kind of dress-rehearsal for the assignment.

ESSENTIAL READING

Thornton, John. 'The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750.' The Journal of African History (1984)

Gerritsen, Anne, Kevin Gould, and Peter Marshall. ‘The Long Reformation: Catholic.' In Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World, 1500-1800: An Introduction to Early Modern History, 4th edn. (2022), pp. 124-134.

SEMINAR TASKS

• read the assignment brief on this page
• check that you understand the list of questions in bullet-points on that page
• answer those questions with respect to Thornton's article in the essential reading for this week
• find one more recent scholarly article or chapter that helps you to answer the last question, about the strengths and weaknesses of Thornton's article

GENERAL QUESTIONS

• In what ways and to what extent was the Catholic Reformation a global phenomenon?
• Why was a global mission important for European Catholics?
• How and why did some non-Europeans become Christians?

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RECOMMENDED READING

Alberts, Tara, ‘Catholic Missions to Asia’, in Alexandra Bamji et al. (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation(2013) (ebook), ch. 7

Bireley, Robert,The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (1999) (ebook), ch. 7: 'Evangelization Beyond Europe', pp. 147-74

Ditchfield, Simon, ‘Catholic Reformation and Renewal’, in Peter Marshall (ed.),The Oxford Illustrated History of the Reformation (Oxford, 2015), 152-85 [pagination varies in the ebook: 177-210]

Gerritsen, Anne, Kevin Gould and Peter Marshall, ‘The long Reformation – Catholic’, in Beat Kümin (ed.), The European World (3^rded, 2018), 124-34

Hsia, Ronald Chia-po, Matteo Ricci and the Catholic Mission to China, 1583-1610: A Short History with Documents. 2016, p. 1-40.

Hsia, Ronald Po. Chia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770 (1998), chs 11 and 12

FURTHER READING

Alberts, Tara, Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700(2013), esp chs. 1, 4, 5, 7

Bamji, Alexandra, et al. (eds), The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation (2013) (ebook), esp. chs 1, 8, 9, 23

Bauer, Stefan, The Invention of Papal History: Onofrio Panvinio between Renaissance and Catholic Reform (2020) (ebook)

Bauer, Stefan, The Art of Disagreeing Badly: Religious Dispute in Early Modern Europe (I-II) (online exhibitions)

Bauer, Stefan (ed.), The Uses of History in Religious Controversies from Erasmus to Baronio, special issue of Renaissance Studies, 35 (2021) no. 1

Bireley, R., The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450-1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (1999) (ebook)

Bossy, John, ‘The Counter Reformation and the people of Catholic Europe’, Past and Present, 47 (1970)

Clossey, Luke, Salvation and globalization in the early Jesuit missions (Cambridge, 2008)

Cooper, Michael. They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543-1640. Ann Arbor (MI: The University of Michigan, Center for Japanese studies, 1996)

Cooper, Michael. Japanese Mission to Europe, 1582-1590: The Journey of Four Samurai Boys Through Portugal, Spain and Italy (Folkestone, 2005).

DuBois, Thomas David, Religion and the making of modern east Asia (Cambridge, 2011).

Gregerson, L. and Juster, S. (eds.), Empires of God: Religious Encounters in the Early Modern Atlantic (Philadelphia, 2011).

Hsia, R. Po. Chia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540-1770(1998) (digital scan of ch. 1 ‘The Council of Trent’ available here)

Laven, Mary. Mission to China: Matteo Ricci and the Jesuit Encounter with the East (London, 2012)

Lindenfeld, David. World Christianity and World Indigenous Experience: A Global History, 1500 - 2000 (Cambridge, 2021)

Luebke, David M. (ed.), The Counter-Reformation: Essential Readings (1999), esp. chs. 1, 4.

MacCormack, S., ‘Gods, demons, and idols in the Andes,’ Journal of the History of Ideas,67 (2006), 623–47.

Miola, R., Early Modern Catholicism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (2007) (ebook)

Mullett, M., The Catholic Reformation (1999) (ebook), esp. chs 2, 3, 5, 6

Reichle, Natasha, M A. J. Üçerler, Theodore N. Foss, and Mark S. Mir. China at the Center: Ricci and Verbiest World Maps (2016)

Spence, J.D., The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York, 1985).

Sweet, James H., Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441-1770 (Chapel Hill, 2003), pp. 87-119.

Thornton, J., ‘The Development of an African Catholic Church in the Kingdom of Kongo, 1491–1750‘,The Journal of African History, 25 (1984), 147–67.

Thornton, J., 'Afro-Christian Syncretism in the Kingdom of Kongo', The Journal of African History, 54 (2013), 53-77.

Yu Liu. ‘The True Pioneer of the Jesuit China Mission: Michele Ruggieri’, History of Religions, 50/4 (2001): 362-383.