ABSTRACT
The spread of Catholicism to Africa occurred mostly under the auspices of the Portuguese, who were highly ambitious from the late fifteenth century onwards: the lands they aimed to control also included Brazil, Southern Asia, the East Indies and the Far East. The Catholic Church was deeply troubled by the extent of Protestant successes in the first half of the sixteenth century. Whether this Catholic revival was a direct response to protestant expansion or instead the culmination of centuries of internal reform is often debated. The nineteenth-century German Lutheran historian, Leopold von Ranke, popularized the influential expression 'Counter-Reformation' to express the supposedly negative and reactionary character of Catholic policy in these years. The influence of Trent on the fortunes of Catholicism, however, would be profound. The style and substance of Catholicism would remain Tridentine until the Second Vatican Council of the mid-twentieth century.
