Author Description

A history of Catholicism from the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in the eighteenth century, this accessible study of Catholicism offers the first synthesis of the vast scholarship on Catholic renewal in Europe and on Catholic missions in the non-European world. Professor Hsia discusses the doctrinal and ecclesiastical renewal after Trent and the progress of Catholic reconquest in various lands. He also analyses the social composition of the Tridentine clergy and the papal curia and explores the making of early modern sainthood and the enclosure of religious women. Encompassing art and architecture, Hsia attempts to understand Catholic renewal as a vast historical development that shaped European civilization between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and at the same time explores its expansion and encounter with non-Christian civilizations in America, Africa, and Asia.