counter-reformation
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.49 in modern English
25
Scrabble Score
18
Letters
6
Syllables
11
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Ranke [Leopold von Ranke] also popularized the term "Counter-Reformation." He initially used this term in the plural (Gegenreformationen, Counter-Reformations). Roman Catholic historians took umbrage because this implied — and frequently stated — the historical and theological priority of the Protestant Reformation to which Catholicism then reacted. "The expression seemed to interpret the recovery of the Catholic Church merely as a counteraction to the schism and seemed to imply the use of force in religious matters" (Iserloh et al. 1986: 431). The Catholic scholar John Bossy (1985:91) would just as soon drop the term Reformation altogether because "it goes along too easily with the notion that a bad form of Christianity was being replaced by a good one." Indeed, earlier Roman Catholic historians generally used the term "religious schism" (Glaubensspaltung) rather than Reformation to designate this period. In short, terms are not always innocent of values and problems. Yet without terms and periodizations it would be impossible to provide a coherent drama of complex changes."
- "The Counter-Reformation was originally the creation of modern historians. The negative view, adopted by nineteenth-century German, and essentially Protestant, scholars, of those developments in Western Christendom which were opposed to the sixteenth-century Reformation, was characterized by the term ‘anti-Reformation’."
Etymology
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *ḱe? Proto-Indo-European *ḱóm Proto-Italic *kom Proto-Italic *kom- Proto-Indo-European *-teros Proto-Italic *-teros Proto-Italic *komterosder. Proto-Italic *komterād Latin contrāder. Old French contre- Anglo-Norman countre-bor. Middle English counter- English counter- English Reformation English Counter-Reformation From counter- + Reformation.