Early Modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W O'Malley, SJ

Ashley Thomson is a full librarian at Laurentian University and co-editor or co-author of nine books, most recently Margaret Atwood: A Reference Guide, 1988-2005.

For years, most students defined the history of the Roman Catholic
Church between roughly 1500 and 1700 as the “Counter-Reformation.”
Others, in recognition of the scope and success of the indigenous
movements for reform within 16th-century Roman Catholicism labeled it
the “Catholic Reformation.” In recent years, thanks to the
scholarship of John W. O’Malley, S.J., who over the course of a long
career has exposed the rich and complex reality of the period, it has
become known as “Early Modern Catholicism.”

This book is a tribute to O’Malley’s scholarly influence, as well
as evidence of his thesis. It consists of 16 short and accessible
papers, ranging in subject matter from the predictable (“The Last Two
Councils of the Catholic Reformation: The Influence of Lateran V on
Trent,” “The Papacy in the Age of Reform, 1513–1644”) to the
unexpected (“Seeing the Place: The Virgin Mary in a Chinese Lady’s
Inner Chamber,” “The Jesuits and the Non-Spanish Contribution to
South American Colonial Architecture”). One of the book’s
contributors is Nicholas Terpstra, the award-winning author of Lay
Confraternities and Civic Religion in Renaissance Bologna.

Virtually every essay begins with some acknowledgment of the author’s
debt to O’Malley, and most continue with further reflections on the
bibliography of the field before proceeding to discuss the topic at
hand. Some of the papers are illustrated, and all conclude with an
extensive set of notes. This outstanding work of scholarship can only
reinforce O’Malley’s already considerable impact on the field of
Early Modern Catholic studies.