Review Articles

Richard L. DeMolen, ed. , Religious Orders of the Catholic Re formation, In Honor of John C. Olin on his Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 1994). 288 pp.

Richard DeMolen, editor of Religious Orders of the Catholic Reformation, has prepared a fitting tribute to John C. Olin. More than a traditional Festschrift might, this work has a clear thematic coherence that honors Professor Olin's outstanding work in the history of Catholic reform even as it provides a useful summary of the state of the field. DeMolen has assembled an impressive list of scholars, including Jodi Bilinkoff, Elisabeth Gleason, Paul Grendler, John O'Malley, and others, each of whom has provided a concise, engaging intro- duction to the history of a religious order close to her or his field of research. Although the work is clearly a collection of essays rather than a monograph, the similar structure of the essays permits the reader to note comparisons and consider Catholic reform and Counter-Reformation through the lens of the new religious orders of the period. Part of DeMolen's success as editor rests in establishing the general prin- ciples that guide each of the nine essays which make up the bulk of the work. In response to the request of the editor, each author addresses to some degree "the spirituality of the founder(s) as well as ... the specific apostolate of their order" (xi). Each essay also pays close attention to institutional developments in the orders into the seventeenth century and usually later. Especially useful are the endnotes and the brief bibliographic essay which concludes each chapter. The bibliographic essays are real gems, providing an historiographic overview useful both to beginning students in the field of Catholic reform and to more senior scholars curious about some of the lesser known orders of the Catholic Reformation. The extensive endnotes often include additional bib- liographic and historiographic information, and occasionally provide lengthy quotations from sources which are unpublished or difficult to obtain. At the close of his preface, DeMolen notes that religious orders of the six- teenth century were linked in their refutation of Protestantism, and states that "[i]t is the unity of their purpose rather than individual differences which should be kept in mind when reading the following collection of essays" (xviii). Indeed, there is more than the challenge of Protestantism which unites these orders, and this collection is successful in presenting (albeit implicitly) those moments of unity and distinction that make up Catholic reform among the

[118 ] 119 clergy and laity. In a close reading, many themes emerge from this volume, but there are four worth considering here: first, the place of education in Cath- olic reform; second, the role of women in the church; third, the relationship between the clergy and laity; and fourth, conflicting ideas about leadership, hierarchy, and decentralization in religious orders before and after Trent. Education has long been associated with the Counter-Reformation, in large part because of the early involvement of the Jesuits in education, as John O'Malley, S. J., notes in his excellent summary of his work on the Society of Jesus. Using humanist models of educational training (the modus parisiensis), the Jesuits quickly took up education as an important part of their ministry (150). By the death of founder Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuits already ran thirty- three schools, and a close partnership with lay confraternities allowed them to expand their system of "colleges" rapidly ( 149). Yet the Society of Jesus was only one order of many that emphasized the importance of education in spir- itualizing the Christian practices of the laity. The Piarists, as Paul Grendler notes in his outstanding essay, were dedicated exclusively to spiritual and in- tellectual instruction. From the first efforts of their founder, jos6 de Calasanz, to find someone to teach poor boys in Rome, the Poor Clerks Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools (as the Piarists were officially known) had found resistance to an education which seemed to threaten boundaries of rank and class (253). Unlike the Jesuits, the Piarists focused their efforts on young children, who often had had no previous education, and on the poor, who usu- ally could not afford an education but took advantage of the Piarists' free schools. When this clerical order taught both Latin and the vernacular, blur- ring boundaries between Latin-educated elites and the rest of the population, church officials and local leaders complained (268). Male orders were not alone in their interest in education; the Ursulines, led by Angela Merici, were equally zealous about education as part of a "vocation of active Christian ser- vice," although Carlo Borromeo sharply curtailed their activity, as Charmarie Blaisdell notes (100). The transformation of the Ursuline order after the Council of Trent raises a second theme which emerges from this volume: the role of women in the Catholic church during the era of Catholic reform and the Counter- Reformation. The history of the Ursulines after the Council of Trent can be taken as typical of women's orders: enclosure and an accompanying restriction of mission and service. The Visitandines of the Visitation of Holy Mary (founded by Francis de Sales and Jeanne de Chantal) and even the contem- plative Discalced Carmelites of Teresa of Avila were also challenged and their mission restricted after early innovations and successes. Yet several essays