ABSTRACT
A traditional view of the reinvigoration of Catholicism that got under way from the 1540s onwards is that at that juncture the Church was shaken by the impact of the Protestant Reformation out of apparently almost total torpor to rid itself of chronic abuses: the phrase ‘Counter-Reformation’ sums up a view of a defensive, as well as aggressive, and somewhat delayed, reaction to Protestantism, without whose challenge the Catholic Church could hardly have revived itself out of its own depleted moral and spiritual resources. Attention is often drawn to the scandalous state of the Renaissance papacy under such popes as Alexander VI and Julius II in the decades preceding Luther’s protest against the Catholic Church, originating in 1517. In 1438 the Council, transferred to Florence under the control of Eugenius IV, made provisions for the worship and rites of the Church, focusing on the Sacraments.
