oints, indeed, where the opinion of the members was divided,
the words of the decrees were ambiguous, but as against the Protestants
they were distinct and so comprehensive as rather to supersede than to
supplement earlier standards.

Nor should the moral impulse of the council be underestimated,
ridiculed though it was by its opponents as if expressed in the maxim,
"si non caste, tamen caute." Sweeping decrees for urgent reforms were
passed, and above all a machinery set up to carry on the good work. In
providing for a catechism, for authoritative editions of the Vulgate,
breviary and other standard works, in regulating moot points, in
striking at lax discipline, the council did a lasting service to
Catholicism and perhaps to the world. Not the least of the practical
reforms was the provision for the opening of seminaries to train the
diocesan clergy. The first measure looking to this was passed in 1546;
Cardinal Pole at once began to act upon it, and a decree of the third
session [Sidenote: 1563] ordered that each diocese should have such a
school for the education of priests. The Roman seminary, opened two
years later, [Sidenote: 1565] was a model for subsequent foundations.

SECTION 4. THE COMPANY OF JESUS

If the Counter-reformation was in part a pure reaction to medievalism it
was in part also a religious revival. If this was stimulated by the
Protestant {397} example, it was also the outcome of the rising tide of
Catholic pietism in the fifteenth century. Still more was it the answer
to a demand on the part of the church for an instrument with which to
combat the dangers of heresy and to conquer spiritually the new worlds of
heathenism.

Great crises in the church have frequently produced new revivals of
monasticism. From Benedict to Bernard, from Bernard to Francis and
Dominic, from the friars to the Jesuits, there is an evolution in the
adaptation of the monastic life to the needs of Latin Christianity.
Several new orders, [Sidenote: New monastic orders] all with more or less
in common, started in the first half of the sixteenth century. Under Leo
X there assembled at Rome a number of men united by the wish to renew
their spiritual lives by religious exercises. From this Oratory of
Divine Love, as it was called, under the inspiration of Gaetano di Tiene
and John Peter Caraffa, arose the order of Theatines, [Sidenote: 1524] a
body of devoted priests, dressing not in a special garb but in ordinary