Key Names, Words, and Phrases
Key Names, Words, and Phrases
In this chapter you have encountered the following terms, which will recur during the work. Ensure that you are familiar with them! Page references are provided to help you locate them quickly within the text. Terms marked with an asterisk (*) are discussed in more detail elsewhere in this work.
*Anabaptism, p. 41
Anglicanism, p. 42
*Calvinism, p. 41
Catholic Reformation, p. 42
confessionalization, p. 43
evangelical, p. 39
Lutheranism, p. 39
Methodism, p. 45
Orthodoxy, p. 43
Pietism, p. 45
*predestination, p. 50
Protestant, p. 39
Puritanism, p. 44
Reformed, p. 41
sola scriptura, p. 41
Part of the process of theological consolidation and renewal within Catholicism after the Council of Trent was the production of numerous works of systematic theology. These took a wide variety of forms. The form of loci or theological topics, originally introduced by the Protestant writer Melanchthon, proved attractive to many Catholic writers. The Spanish Dominican theologian Melchior Cano (1509–60) adopted this format, noting its advantages both as a convenient way of presenting Catholic teaching and also for systematically combating Protestant ideas. Cano's Theological Commonplaces was first published in 1563, three years after the author's death, and went into 26 editions: eight in Spain, nine in Italy, seven in Germany, and two in France. Numerous writers during the following century, such as Seraphimus Ractius (Razzi, died 1613) and Petrus de Lorca (died 1606), produced works using more or less the same format.
Most observers regard Catholic theology as being primarily concerned with refuting Protestantism at this time, and single out Robert Bellarmine for developing controversial theology to the point at which it virtually became a form of art. His most famous work is his Disputations Concerning the Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics of this Age, first published in 1586.