The Catholic Church's response to the Reformation is often called the Counter-Reformation, as if it were only a reaction. The story is larger. Calls for renewal inside the church long predated Luther. In Spain, Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros disciplined the clergy and founded a university at Alcalá before 1517, and in Italy small groups of clergy and laity, such as the Oratory of Divine Love, gathered for prayer and works of charity.
Naming the movement
Historians have argued about the name for decades. The German Catholic historian Hubert Jedin proposed in 1946 that both terms are needed: Catholic Reform for renewal from within, Counter-Reformation for the response to Protestantism. Many historians prefer "Catholic Reformation" because much Catholic renewal began before Luther and was not merely a reaction to him. The Jesuit historian John O'Malley suggested "early modern Catholicism," a still wider label covering missions, art and education as well as controversy.
A pope commissions a critique
Pope Paul III, elected in 1534, was himself a product of the Renaissance papacy and had fathered children before his ordination. Yet he named reforming cardinals, and in 1537 a commission appointed by Paul III reported that abuses by popes and clergy had caused much of the church's crisis. Its text leaked, was printed, and was mocked by Protestants. Paul III also approved the Society of Jesus in 1540 and in 1542 reorganized the Roman Inquisition to pursue heresy in Italy.
The Council of Trent
Emperor Charles V had long demanded a general council, and popes, wary of conciliarism, had delayed. The Council of Trent met in three periods between 1545 and 1563, in an Alpine town chosen as a compromise between papal Italy and the empire. Protestant envoys came to its middle period but would not take part on the council's terms. Trent did two kinds of work: it defined doctrine and it reformed discipline.
On doctrine, Trent declared that Scripture and the church's unwritten traditions should be received with equal reverence, and named the Latin Vulgate the authentic text for teaching. Its decree on justification, among the most carefully argued documents of the century, taught that justification begins with God's grace, which no one can merit, but rejected the view that it comes by faith alone. Instead, Trent held that the justified person freely cooperates with grace, so that faith works through love. The council reaffirmed all seven sacraments and the real presence of Christ in the mass through transubstantiation.
On discipline, Trent required bishops to live in their dioceses, to preach and to visit their parishes, and it abolished the office of the professional indulgence collectors who had caused such scandal. Perhaps its most lasting reform was ordering every diocese to set up a seminary to train its priests. A standard catechism in 1566 and a standard missal in 1570 followed. So did the Index of Prohibited Books, first issued by Pope Paul IV in 1559, which restricted what Catholics could read. Trent did not end debate within Catholicism, and some of its reforms took a century to enforce, since they depended on bishops and rulers willing to carry them out.
New orders
The Jesuits were founded by Ignatius of Loyola, a Basque soldier whose leg was shattered by a cannonball at Pamplona in 1521. During his recovery he read lives of Christ and the saints and turned his life to God. His Spiritual Exercises, a month-long program of guided prayer, remain in use. The Jesuits became famous above all as teachers, opening hundreds of colleges across Europe that charged no tuition and drew pupils from many backgrounds, and as missionaries: Francis Xavier preached in India and Japan, and Matteo Ricci reached China, adopted the dress of a Confucian scholar and studied its classics. Other orders reformed or appeared. Teresa of Ávila reformed the Carmelite order by founding convents of strict prayer and poverty, and her writings on prayer made her one of the great authors of the Spanish language. The Capuchins brought new energy to the Franciscan tradition, and the Ursulines pioneered the education of girls.
Worked example: Milan under Borromeo
Charles Borromeo took up residence as archbishop of Milan in 1565, and he actually lived there, which his predecessors had not done for decades. He held regular synods, founded seminaries, visited hundreds of parishes in person, and set up schools of Christian doctrine to teach children the catechism on Sundays. During the plague of 1576 to 1577 he stayed in the city, organized relief and walked barefoot in penitential processions. Protestants could point out that he also enforced strict conformity and supported the Inquisition. Catholics could point to a bishop doing exactly what reformers of every kind had demanded for two centuries. Both observations help explain why, by the early 1600s, Catholicism was regaining ground in Poland, Bavaria and Austria, through renewal as well as coercion.