Counter-Reformation (Catholic Reformation) in Europe Ignatius Loyola (1490–1556) Loyola, a Basque from a family of minor nobility, was converted after being seriously wounded while serving in the army of the king of Spain After preliminary studies in Spain, he went to the University of Paris, where he assembled a group of like-minded young men, nine of whom took religious vows along with him in 1534 The group put themselves under obedience to the pope, and their rule was approved in 1540 gaining mometum for reform The program of institutional reform gained momentum in the 1530s Paul III, pope from 1534 to 1549, made a number of the leading reformers cardinals, increasing their influence within the church In 1536, he commissioned a group of these same men to study the problems confronting the church Their report, the Consilium de emendanda ecclesiae, presented in 1537, advised reform of the papal curia, better discipline for bishops, and reform of the religious orders This was the agenda for a coming General Council, for which not only church reformers, but likewise many secular rulers, in particular the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, had been calling for some time Convocation of a council, however, was impeded by the continuing war between the emperor and the king of France The council was finally convened at Trent in 1545 Protestants were invited to send observers, but none attended The French likewise stayed away from the early sessions of the council, both because of its location in Imperial territory and because of suspicion that it would take measures that would interfere with the French king’s attempts to control the church in France The council’s doctrinal decrees reaffirmed traditional teaching in areas challenged by Protestants, such as the doctrine of free will and the sacraments The disciplinary decrees of the council strengthened the authority of bishops over the clergy in their dioceses, at the same time demanding that bishops and other holders of pastoral responsibilities personally reside in their jurisdictions The council mandated the foundation of seminaries in every diocese for the training of priests, an innovation that was perhaps the most influential in the formation of the early modern Catholic Church The council also recognized the importance of the new medium of print by establishing the Index of Forbidden Books and providing that all works dealing with religious questions be approved beforehand by the local bishop The publication of the first index was the work of Pope Paul IV, whose reign was marked by an intensification of the efforts to stamp out heresy in Italy While he himself was a reformer, he had suspected many 93 Counter-Reformation figures of excessive sympathy with Protestantism, some of whom had to appear before Inquisition tribunals council of trent The institutional reforms mandated by the Council of Trent were put into action only gradually Pius IV set up a Congregation for the Council in 1563 to supervise its implementation; this was the first of the Roman congregations that became the central administration of the Catholic Church His successor, Pius V (reigned 1566–72), issued the Roman Catechism, a summary of Catholic teaching, and a revision of the Roman Missal that imposed a uniform standard for the liturgy of the Roman Rite Beyond Rome, the application of the Council of Trent, which proceeded gradually, nation by nation and diocese by diocese, depended on both the local bishops and the cooperation of secular rulers The council was applied relatively quickly in Spain and in parts of Italy Cardinal Charles Borromeo (1538–84), archbishop of Milan and nephew of Pope Pius IV, set the pattern for many of these reforms He established a seminary and enacted other provisions of the council in the administration of the diocese He brought the Ursulines and other new orders to Milan, and encouraged the work of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, which had been founded in 1536 for the purpose of the religious education of children and included both clergy and laypersons His efforts extended beyond his diocese throughout northern Italy and Switzerland By the end of the Council of Trent, the Jesuit order had gained numerous vocations and considerable influence Several Jesuit theologians participated in the council The Jesuits had begun the first overseas missionary work in America, Africa, and particularly East Asia; Saint Francis Xavier (1509–52), one of Ignatius Loyola’s original companions, traveled to Goa in 1542 and spent the rest of his life evangelizing in India, the East Indies, and Japan, dying as he was preparing to enter China The Jesuits were also active within Europe, establishing schools and preaching to the public In their schools, they combined humanist and Scholastic methods, aiming at attracting the ablest boys and those from the most influential social groups In many areas where substantial portions of the population had been converted to Protestantism, such as Austria and Bohemia, Jesuit education was one of the means by which these areas were returned to Catholicism by the first part of the 17th century Jesuit preachers like Peter Canisius