page_title: History of the Catholic Church
section_title: Council of Trent
hierarchical_section_title: History of the Catholic Church / Renaissance and reforms / Council of Trent
caption_attribution_description: Stift Melk Deutsch: Stift Melk, 2004, Ansicht außen English: Melk Abbey
context_page_description: According to the Catholic tradition, the history of the Catholic Church begins with Jesus Christ and his teachings and the Catholic Church is a continuation of the early Christian community established by the Disciples of Jesus. The Church considers its bishops to be the successors to Jesus's apostles and the Church's leader, the Bishop of Rome, to be the sole successor to Saint Peter who ministered in Rome in the first century AD after his appointment by Jesus as head of the Church. By the end of the 2nd century, bishops began congregating in regional synods to resolve doctrinal and policy issues. Duffy claims that by the 3rd century, the church at Rome might even function as a court of appeal on doctrinal issues.
  Christianity spread throughout the early Roman Empire, with all persecutions due to conflicts with the pagan state religion. In 313, the persecutions were lessened by the Edict of Milan with the legalization of Christianity by the Emperor Constantine I.
context_section_description: Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, in his book The Reformation, A History noted that through all the slaughter of the Reformation era emerged the valuable concept of religious toleration and an improved Catholic Church which responded to doctrinal challenges and abuses highlighted by the Reformation at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). The council became the driving-force of the Counter-Reformation, and reaffirmed central Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation, and the requirement for love and hope as well as faith to attain salvation. It also reformed many other areas of importance to the Church, most importantly by improving the education of the clergy and consolidating the central jurisdiction of the Roman Curia. 
  The decades after the council saw an intellectual dispute between the Lutheran Martin Chemnitz and the Catholic Diogo de Payva de Andrada over whether certain statements matched the teachings of the Church Fathers and Scripture or not. The criticisms of the Reformation were among factors that sparked new religious orders including the Theatines, Barnabites and Jesuits, some of which became the great missionary orders of later years. Spiritual renewal and reform were inspired by many new saints like Teresa of Avila, Francis de Sales and Philip Neri whose writings spawned distinct schools of spirituality within the Church (Oratorians, Carmelites, Salesian), etc. Improvement to the education of the laity was another positive effect of the era, with a proliferation of secondary schools reinvigorating higher studies such as history, philosophy and theology. To popularize Counter-Reformation teachings, the Church encouraged the Baroque style in art, music and architecture. Baroque religious expression was stirring and emotional, created to stimulate religious fervor.
  Elsewhere, Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier introduced the Catholic Church in Japan, and by the end of the 16th century tens of thousands of Japanese adhered. Church growth came to a halt in 1597 under the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi who, in an effort to isolate the country from foreign influences, launched a severe persecution of Christians. Japanese were forbidden to leave the country and Europeans were forbidden to enter. Despite this, a minority Christian population survived into the 19th century when Japan opened more to outside influence, and they continue to the present day.
caption: Melk Abbey—adjoining Wachau Valley, Lower Austria—exemplifies the Baroque style.
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