Liège in the Reformation:
A City without Protestants?
"The city of Liège is a maiden entirely virgin." With these words Etienne Rausin, a jurisconsult and burgomaster of Liège, in the presence of the city Council, defended his city before the Apostolic Nuncio in 1634.1 No heresy had been able to touch or sully this daughter of the Roman Church, although she lived so close to dangerous seducers in the Calvinist lands of the Netherlands and northwestern Germany. The nuncio had no reason to fear; Liège would remain a bulwark against Dutch advances in the Meuse valley.
Liège is unusual in the degree to which it was unaffected by Protestantism. Liège never had an organized Protestant movement, or one that posed any threat to the established Church order. In the most recent survey of Liège history, Etienne Hélin notes this attachment to the Catholic Church and offers in passing three possible explanations: military force, successful persecution, and inertia.2 This paper is intended to suggest some other possibilities.
No doubt Catholicism in Liège benefited from the military power of the Habsburg government in the Netherlands, with which—especially during the years surrounding mid-century—the prince-bishops of Liège were allied. However, Liège was officially neutral and Habsburg military intervention in the principality was generally minor and had little relevance to local affairs. In the absence of a local movement in favor of Protestantism, the only serious threat, the attack of William of Orange in 1568, appears simply a strategic matter relating to outside powers. Had the rebels taken control of Liège, they would still have found themselves ruling a very Catholic city.3
Persecution and inertia are more appealing explanations. Yet I contend that persecution was minimal, at least with respect to the city of Liège itself compared to other cities. Nor can we justly speak of "inertia" if that term implies religious indifference. These explanations, however, inspire us to look in two directions: first, at the involvement of Liège in the Protestant Reformation; and second, at Catholic life in Liège in the sixteenth century.
Liège and the Protestant Reformation
Was there any Protestantism to repress? Neither the archives nor any of the Catholic Liégeois chronicles record more than a handful of prosecutions. Crespin's Protestant martyrology records four deaths in Liège: Thomas Wathelet and Jean de Namur in 1562, and two Calvinists from Flanders apprehended en route from the camp of William of Orange in 1568. These are the only accounts from Liège in that voluminous work, and none of the victims were inhabitants of the city itself. Crespin does state that Liège was "steeped in the blood of several martyrs" in earlier years, but does not provide any details.4
The prince-bishop Erard de la Marck (1505-38), although Erasmus had suspected he might favor Luther, was in fact one of the early leaders of the opposition to him.5 It was to Liège that Jerome Aleander, who had been Erard's chancellor, came to introduce the bull Exsurge Domine in the Empire; Erard himself promulgated the Empire's first anti-Lutheran edict. The first effects of the firm stand of the prince-bishop came at first in the outlying parts of the diocese and principality. In fact, before 1530, no one was punished for heresy in the city of Liège.6
The prospect of new laws designed to combat heresy, which might strengthen the bishop's princely prerogatives, provoked opposition among the guilds of Liège. The Estates of the principality, led by the city of Liège, resisted the application of the Edict of Worms until 1527, since they claimed it violated the privileges of citizenship. Their protests, however, betray no sympathy for the proscribed doctrines. The resistance of the guilds to this and to other efforts of Erard centered on the insistence that citizens of Liège could only be judged "par loi et franchise," that is, by the échevins of Liège and the city Council. The articles of their protestation against a proposed edict of 1532 demand that heretics be tried by their proper judges, that they not be kept in prison before trial, and that false accusers of heresy suffer the same fate as heretics. One point on which the guilds especially insisted was that the goods of convicted heretics should not be confiscated, but should go to their innocent relatives.7 The guilds' attitude, reflected in the reply to Erard of 1532 or the surviving resolutions of individual guilds, does not at all favor Protestantism.8
The prince and the city arrived at a compromise in 1533. A new edict provided that Lutherans and other heretics should be punished "par loi et franchise."9 This edict also proclaimed the banishment of eight Lutherans, together with the exceptional confiscation of their goods by the city. The same day, nineteen more publicly abjured heresy, followed by seventeen a week later.10 There was only one more banishment, probably the following year, accompanied by confiscation of goods, this time involving seven persons. Later in 1533 the ecclesiastical court handed over jurisdiction over lay persons in heresy cases to the civil court, retaining jurisdiction only over clergy and religious.11 Before this, the ecclesiastical court had dealt with only one case involving citizens, in 1532, when it assigned penances to two men and two women who had renounced heresy.12
Thereafter, all prosecutions of citizens for heresy followed "loi et franchise." There were very few for the city of Liège, mostly in 1534-36, although the sources are vague and contradictory as to how many actually were punished, or whether they were in fact were inhabitants of Liège. The cases from the city itself usually ended in banishment. Most of the executions were of Anabaptists, and concern the Dutch-speaking portions of the principality.13
The attitude of the city of Liège is apparent in the events surrounding the execution of Thomas Wathelet de Becco in 1562.14 He came from the Marquisate of Franchimont, a part of the principality to the southeast of the capital, where Protestantism was more prevalent than in Liège itself. His father and his brother, however, were citizens of Liège, members of the smiths' guild. Thomas was arrested in 1558 and held in prison for four years, first in the ecclesiastical prison, while the inquisitors examined him as to his beliefs, and then in the civil prison. Not being himself a citizen of Liège, he was tried only by the échevins not by the city Council.
Just before Thomas's execution, the prince-bishop Robert de Berghes issued a new edict designed to prevent the infiltration of Protestants into the city and the principality. This edict included no provision not previously accepted in Liégeois law, and insisted that all citizens should be tried by "loi et franchise" as in the days of Erard de la Marck. Nevertheless, the guilds of Liège protested that this edict was null and void, and that it should not be permitted to interfere with their rights as citizens. The guilds protested not because of any provision of the edict itself, but probably because it was issued solely on the authority of the prince-bishop without the approval of the burgomasters and city Council.15 The afternoon of the very day that the guilds rendered their protest, eleven members of the smiths' guild presented themselves before the échevins to record their disagreement with their own guild, saying that they were good Catholics, and desired to see all heretics punished according to the canons of the Church. Among the eleven was Wathelet le Maréchal, brother of Thomas Wathelet.16
In his study of these events, Fernand Lemaire draws the unpleasant conclusion that Wathelet joined the other smiths in order to have his brother put to death so that he could lay hands on the inheritance.17 Be that as it may, the other ten did not have brothers on trial for heresy. Their protest is remarkable, considering the long tradition of attachment by citizens of Liège to their privileges. In breaking with their own guild, they publicly proclaimed their willingness to condone a possible violation of their political independence for the sake of the Catholic faith. The guilds' original protest, moreover, had no effect and was not pursued. A rescript of the Emperor Ferdinand confirmed Robert's edict, and the execution of Thomas Wathelet went ahead without public opposition.18
A couple of other examples from the Southern Low Countries serve as a contrast to the situation in Liège. In Tournai, a total of 294 persons were prosecuted for heresy from 1524 to 1565. Of these, 45 were executed and 230 imprisoned.19 Not all of these defendants were from Tournai itself or even from the Tournaisis, but public Lutheran preaching and a community of followers of Luther's doctrines existed at Tournai before 1530.20
Lille saw fewer executions than Tournai, although lacunae in the records prevent us from attempting to estimate the total number of prosecutions. However, there certainly was an underground reformed church in Lille, one that Crespin placed in the "first rank" of secret churches.21 However, Alain Lottin insists that on the eve of the iconoclastic crisis of 1566, "the placards were rigorously applied, the Calvinists had no minister, and Catholicism was still solid."22 This city of "solid" Catholicism still avoided iconoclasm in 1566 only by the forcible restraint of its native iconoclasts. After its early submission to Philip II in 1579, hundreds of Calvinists were sent into exile, while others remained behind, including many who adopted the Nicodemist approach.23 Bishop Vendeville reported to the pope in 1590, "No doubt, however, many remain infected with heresy but less fervent" who lived externally as Catholics.24
The prosecution of heresy in Liège produced more exiles than martyrs, although nowhere near the hundreds cited for Lille. Many of the early exiles went to Strasbourg and Geneva, including the family of Idelette de Bure, who married John Calvin in Geneva in 1540. This family includes Lambert junior who was banished in 1532, and Lambert senior, probably his father, who abjured the same year.25 Later émigrés went to the northern Low Countries, like the ironmaster Louis de Geer, who left Liège first for Dordrecht in Holland, and finally settled in Sweden.
Each of these better-known cases reveals some of the complexity of whatever Protestantism might have existed in Liège. Lambert de Bure junior was apparently an Anabaptist, as were Idelette and her first husband Jean Stordeur, later converted by Calvin in Geneva.26 De Geer, who is reported living in Dordrecht as a Calvinist in 1602, had been a sufficiently practicing Catholic to endow a beguinage in Liège in 1593.27
By the second half of the century, heresy in Liège owed a great deal to contact with the organized Calvinist communities of the Netherlands. The surviving records of the provost of Liège, whose archidiaconal responsibilities included regular investigation of irregularities in the parishes of the city, include several indications persons suspected of doctrinal irregularities. Some 53 persons in Saint-Servais, one of the larger parishes of Liège, are listed at least once as being suspected of some sort of religious dissidence between 1571 and 1593; some were outsiders visiting the city, and others are recorded as conforming at least as far as to take communion at Easter.28
In March, 1571, in the parish of Saint-Martin-en-Ile, the vicar and churchwardens reported that in the house of Johan Lagace (who by the way had not been regularly coming to church), Symon "de Tribus Gradibus" had said in the presence of witnesses, "I am a Calvinist and I want to die a Calvinist" ("Je suys Calvin et je veulx mourir Calvin"). He had added that the Franciscan preacher at Saint-Martin-en-Ile had cited passages from Scripture that neither he nor his wife could find in their Bibles.29 This Symon is very likely the son of Simon Damerier or de Trois Gres, a confraternity member and parish stalwart, whose 1574 will includes a most un-Calvinist collection of saints and angels.30 There is no evidence that any of the reported dissidents either in Saint-Servais or Saint-Martin-en-Ile was ever prosecuted for heresy.
Nor is there any evidence that these cases of dissent were part of an organized Calvinist or other Protestant church. Only in the cases of Adam Mulkea or Mulckeau, connected to the Calvinist church of Limburg, and Marie de Goer, dame de Betho, a noble exile from the Habsburg Netherlands who frequented Calvinist services in Maastricht, do we see mention of any formal Protestant activity.31
There is much yet to be learned about the influence of the Protestant Reformation in Liège, but the general outlines are clear. The bishop, city authorities, and guilds took a firm line resisting heresy, but very few citizens of the city were punished. Heretical words and practices were denounced, but often tolerated. Protestantism had no public existence in Liège and never threatened the city's fidelity to the Roman church. Hélin notes that by the early seventeenth century, toleration in practice, at least for the many foreign merchants and travelers passing through the city, was the rule. Those who came from Protestant towns of Germany and Holland, it is recorded, could speak freely on religious topics in the inns of Liège.32 The business of Liège, was, after all, business. Guarding their precious neutrality, even in the war between Spain and the Dutch rebels, its merchants sold arms to both sides and carried on a profitable commerce with Holland.
Catholic Life in Liège
If Protestantism appealed to very few in Liège, it may be because, as Hélin implies, the Liégeois of the sixteenth century cared little for religion. Indifference could, moreover, be the mother of the tolerance evident in Liège by the end of the sixteenth century. It would, however, little accord with the strong sense of Catholic identity manifested by Rausin in 1634 or by the guildsmen involved in the Wathelet case seventy years earlier. If the Liégeois were indifferent to religion, why did they found and endow chantries or join confraternities, as they so frequently did? In many wills from both the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, beside the conventional formulas invoking God, the Virgin Mary, and the saints, one frequently finds the protestation that the testator is dying a loyal Catholic. Some wills show the effect of a more extensive spiritual teaching, as this 1519 will, made by the merchant Johan Dary and his wife, who look forward to death
Thinking of the salvation of our poor souls, created in the image and likeness of God their creator, and of the holy undivided Trinity, redeemed so preciously from eternal death and damnation by the painful, bitter, and agonizing Passion of Jesus Christ, Son of God, and endowed with the gifts and graces of the blessed Holy Spirit.33
Perhaps there were those who did not care about the salvation of their "poor souls," but those who did found an adequate answer in the sacraments, prayers, and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church.
In a recent essay, R. Po-chia Hsia has called attention to the "neglect of Catholic cities" in German Reformation historiography. The general approach, both in Germany and elsewhere, has been to focus on the repression of local Protestant movements, rather than looking "at the city and Counter-Reformation in a more positive light," as he himself has done in Münster.34 Such an approach is necessary in Liège, since so little repression was required. Another discussion of Catholic loyalty is Barbara Diefendorf's study of Paris, where "religious unity—personally felt and publicly displayed—was not just an ideal but a vital condition for individual and public salvation."35 Here Diefendorf describes the staunch Catholicism of Paris, nourished and manifested by preaching and processions, assuming a militant character, and culminating in the events of St. Bartholomew's Day. This loyalty was defined in part in militant opposition to a perceived Protestant threat. But for Liège, Protestantism was neither a credible threat nor a serious temptation. To the question, "Why was there no Reformation in Liège?" one might well reply, "Why should there have been one?" But certain expectations are engrained in our picture of the religious life of Western Europe in the sixteenth century. If Liège is exceptional, we simply must ask why.
A recent welcome example of the "positive" approach Hsia has called for is Marc Forster's study of the Bishopric of Speyer. In the villages ruled by the Bishop of Speyer, Forster sees a strong Catholic identity developing in the presence of a very traditional type of Catholicism.36 The relation of the process of religious renewal in Speyer to the official process of Tridentine Counter-Reformation (or at least the Counter-Reformation as traditionally understood by historians) was complex. While many have seen a process of acculturation forcing change on a resistant popular religion, in Speyer, "the relationship between the reforming Church and the Catholic people was characterized by compromise and cooperation as much as by conflict and resistance."37 Forster points to lay participation in the government of local (in this case rural village) churches as one of the conditions that encouraged Catholic loyalty in the bishopric of Speyer. Because the local Church authorities (bishop and chapter) could not or did not wish to interfere with local lay control, they avoided the tensions that existed in, for example, Münster.38 Here the parallels with Liège may be most evident.
The Protestant Reformation has long been associated with the middle class, but recent studies have seen a more specific pattern in which social groups, in most places, were attracted by Protestantism. These could be described in a number of ways. Heinz Schilling, in his studies of the Protestant Reformation in north German cities, contends that the Reformation was supported by those members of the commune below the level of the élite who controlled the city council, and was part of a movement to wrest control of the religious and social life of the city from the patricians and territorial princes.39 He theorizes that there was a "natural affinity for the sola fide principle" at this level of society,40 roughly the same people Thomas Brady calls "the lowest social stratum of the ruling class."41 Robert Scribner contends that the city élite of Cologne enforced Catholic orthodoxy in part to maintain control in the face of the kind of political movement linked to the Reformation that Schilling and Brady describe.42
These analyses specifically deal with the German situation and focus on the Reformation as a political movement; but studies beyond Germany have confirmed that the social distribution of Reformation ideas followed a fairly consistent pattern. Artisans in more skilled trades, those demanding more education and individual initiative, tended to be more attracted to religious dissent in French cities like Lyon and Rouen.43 John Martin has found a similar distribution in Venice; he argues that "élite artisans" were attracted to Reformation ideas out of frustration with a hardening of social boundaries between themselves and the nobility and a desire to preserve their traditional access to sacred space and a "public and inclusive religion."44
What were people of this sort doing in Liège? True to form, we find that the few identifiable Protestants, such as those who abjured or went into exile in the 1530s, included persons from just this level of society. A number are goldsmiths or voiriers (glaziers or glass-painters): artistic trades gaining importance in Liège. Some are brewers, who in sixteenth-century Liège were often engaged in investment and money-lending as well as producing the city's favorite beverage. Thirty years later, the suspects listed by Halkin included four persons associated with learned professions, three metalworkers, three cabinetmakers, a printer, a goldsmith, a tailor, and a voirier.45
The overwhelming majority of their neighbors and fellow guild members remained loyal to the Catholic Church. They were, however, by no means passive or inert. In fact, their activity may suggest motives for ignoring or rejecting the appeal of Protestantism. The sphere of religious activity for these élite artisans and professionals was the parish; during the period when the Protestant activity is appearing elsewhere, their activities leave few traces beyond this local world. Thus what follows is based on a close examination of one parish, Saint-Martin-en-Ile, one of the larger parishes in Liège with a population of perhaps 1500 in the early sixteenth century.
In his account of the Reformation in Lemgo, Schilling points to a generational change among the urban élite. The fathers who rejected the Reformation in the face of pressure from the new doctrines were replaced after 1530 by their sons who adopted the new religion and brought their city into the Protestant camp.46 In Liège, I have detected a similar generational change in the adoption of new forms of piety at the parish level. In Saint-Martin-en-Ile, one of the largest parishes in Liège, the generation who between 1515 and 1530 took their places as leaders of the parish and members of its confraternities, used their new positions to alter the public religious life of their parish and neighborhood.
The most active parish confraternity, the Confrérie de Notre Dame et du Saint Sacrement, included within it most of the leaders of the parish, men who, while most were not noble nor did any hold the highest offices in the city or its principality, did often hold minor offices and own urban property. During the crucial period of transition, the association came to comprise more educated businessmen and professionals, as well as goldsmiths and voiriers. They also shifted the activities of their confraternity from the traditional funerals to more public activities, including having a choir from the neighboring collegiate church of St. Paul sing the Salve Regina service every Saturday night.47
Many of the same men helped found a new confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament shortly before 1535 that enrolled members from St. Martin and two neighboring parishes, including the members of religious houses of men and women as well as lay persons.48 This confraternity was much larger than any that had previously existed in any of the parishes involved, and sponsored am annual procession through the neighborhood in honor of the Sacrament, featuring "histoires et jeux de personnages."49 The place of the new association in the life of the parish was such that the older and wealthier confraternity itself sponsored a float in the procession.
Although these developments precede the Council of Trent, they share some of the characteristics of Counter-Reformation piety. Generally the Counter-Reformation is associated with state activity or with new religious orders; in this case neither the state nor, apparently, any religious order or clerical institution was behind this development. Rather it was a local lay initiative, directed by lay burghers of the kind who in other cities might have been the first adherents of the Protestant Reformation.
The lay leaders just mentioned were active not only in confraternities but also in the parish structure itself. Here Liège may offer a contrast with other cities. Within the walls of Liège in the sixteenth century there were no fewer than 25 parishes. For most of these parishes the rectorate was held by an institution (usually one of the collegiate churches) that had founded the parish, and who appointed a vicar to provided the cure of souls. In addition to the rector or vicar, each parish had two churchwardens (mambours) elected, in many cases, by the householders of the parish. In parishes of sufficient size, these churchwardens, with the rector or vicar, appointed the chaplains who celebrated the various anniversary masses and, if the rector or vicar were an absentee, replaced him.50 In the parish of Saint-Martin-en-Ile, the churchwardens always voted before the vicar, so that his vote counted only in case of a tie. Not surprisingly, the chaplains were often members of local families, in one case, the son of a churchwarden.51
At another Liège parish, St. John the Baptist, took lay participation a step farther. Here the collation of the rectorate itself had fallen into the hands of the householders of the parish. It should be no surprise that the Tridentine reformers, led by the nuncio Albergati, found that the system led to abuses and undertook to change it. They did not, however, change the principle of lay control; they simply made sure that it rested in the hands of more substantial and presumably more responsible parishioners.52
Both the density of parishes in Liège and the degree of local lay control may well have encouraged loyalty to the Catholic Church. Numerous small parishes allowed greater participation and promoted a sense of community. Here Liège, with 25 parishes for about 15,000 inhabitants, contrasts strikingly with other towns.53 Lyon, a far larger city with between 60,000 and 70,000 inhabitants in 1550, had only 12 parishes;54 Lille, growing from 20,000 to about 40,000 in the first half of the sixteenth century, had only five.55 Münster had 4 parishes for 8,000-10,000 inhabitants.56 Haarlem57 and Colmar58 each formed only one parish, as did many imperial cities of southwest Germany like Ulm, where the whole city of 12,000 shared one parish church.59 A comparable case to Liège might be the Catholic imperial city of Weil der Stadt, also a single parish, but with only 1500 inhabitants, about the same as Saint-Martin-en-Ile,60 or Paris, which also had a dense parish network.61
Not only did the institution of churchwardenship exist in Liège as a meaningful institution; the churchwardens were chosen, not by the city government as in many German cities,62 but by the burghers of the parish. The very social group that in so many cases used the Protestant Reformation to seize control of their own religious lives and institutions were already in control in Liège.
For the Liégeois of the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church was their church; the clergy were also no strangers. After Gerard de Scagier, a chaplain at Saint-Martin-en-Ile, died, his father Baldwin, churchwarden of the parish, noted in his registers the bequest to the parish of vestments that had belonged to "Messire Gerar nostre fis que Dieu pardon."63 For many in Liège, a member of the city's famous clergy was "our son." Even the cathedral chapter of St. Lambert, co-sovereign and First Estate of the principality, included not only the scions of the nobility from within and outside the principality. Many of the canons owed their positions to a university degree (about half from 1581 to 1789), including most of those born in the city of Liège itself.64 While only the wealthiest patricians could aspire to place their sons in the cathedral chapter, there were seven other collegiate churches, many of whose clergy were kinsmen and neighbors of the Liège bourgeoisie.
One illustration of this connection is the case of an agent of the Counter-Reformation—the inquisitor and auxiliary bishop Grégoire Sylvius.65 Sylvius was born in the Ile district of Liège, where his parents were active members of the parish of Saint-Martin-en-Ile and where he retained family ties.66 Grégoire joined the Dominicans of Liège in 1519 (whose convent was in the same neighborhood), and studied first at Bourges and then at Louvain, where he took a doctorate in theology in 1538. By 1543 he was prior of his home convent.67 The prince-bishop Corneille de Berghes (1538-44) made him inquisitor and Bishop George of Austria (1544-57) sent him to the Council of Trent as his representative in 1552. He returned from the Council a bishop, and served as auxiliary of Liège from 1552 until his death in 1578.68
As a son of the parish and a member of the nearby Dominican convent, Sylvius retained a connection with Saint-Martin-en-Ile. Well-known as a preacher, he probably preached in the parish as well as elsewhere. He joined the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament along with many other members of his convent in 1541,69 and continued even after he became bishop in 1552.70 He is probably the "docteur des prescheurs" who was honored at the banquets of the Confrérie de Notre-Dame in 1547 and 1548.71 One day he prayed, ate, and drank with brewers and glaziers; another day with cardinals and bishops: he is in his person a link between Saint-Martin-en-Ile and the great age of Church reform.
With Sylvius we pass into the more recognizable territory of the Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits, who arrived in Liège in 1566 and established a school in 1582, exercised an influence on the culture of at least the burgher élite.72 The decrees of the Council of Trent began to take effect in the diocese after 1580 under Ernest of Bavaria, and subsequently under the nuncios of Cologne, who backed their reforms with legatine powers.73 The Counter-Reformation was more than an institutional reform, indeed more than a movement for social discipline. In L'Europe des dévots, Louis Châtellier gives a picture of the expansion of Counter-Reformation piety through the confraternities or sodalities organized by the Jesuits beginning in the 1560s.74 These organizations encouraged frequent confession and communion and carefully regulated exercises of piety affecting all aspects of the member's life. While Châtellier rightly gives credit to the Jesuits for leading and organizing these confraternities, we should not neglect another aspect of the Counter-Reformation that Châtellier's work clearly reveals: that the Counter-Reformation was an active lay renewal movement. At least a segment of Catholic society in the sixteenth century was eager for this sort of change, sought it out, and supported it with material resources and recruits for both its confraternities and clerical vocations.
While many authors have noted that lay and clerical élites cooperated in the implementation of the Counter-Reformation as well as of Protestant confessionalization in the late sixteenth century, the leading role is always given to "reforming" clergy for Catholic developments, while the Protestant Reformation is characterized as a lay revolt against clerical control and privilege. However, the earliest Protestant movement depended upon preachers—mostly clergy—to spread the new doctrines, even when the decision to accept or reject the Reformation as a movement depended on lay governing authorities. In the same way, while clergy, especially in the new religious orders, are the most visible agents of the Catholic Reformation, the laity are not merely passive followers. After all, the decision by Ignatius Loyola to found the Society of Jesus was a religious choice made by a layman; and the Counter-Reformation orders would not have thrived without laymen eager to join them.
This paper is intended only as a preliminary sketch intended to raise questions that may stimulate new directions for research. First of all, more detailed work is needed on the experience of Liège in the Reformation period. Who were the handful of Liège Protestants, and what was the response of their neighbors to their dissent? How did the movement of reform and the coming of the Counter-Reformation affect the religious life of the people in this most Catholic of cities?
Secondly, this paper directs our attention to the need for studies of parish life before, during, and after the Reformation. The parish, after all, was the church institution nearest the average Christian in the Middle Ages. The requirement of Paschal confession and communion in the parish, while the Council of Trent reiterated it, was legislated over four hundred years earlier. Parishes, parish confraternities, and churchwardenship need more study, part of the program suggested by John Van Engen of studies of local religious life "that was neither learned nor extraordinary nor a vehicle of protest."75 Is the size of parishes and the structure of parish government a factor in the introduction and growth of Protestant ideas? How did the Counter-Reformation, in practice, affect parish life?
Finally, what was the role of the laity in Catholic reform, both before and after the Council of Trent? Too often, I believe, we are quick to assume that pre-Tridentine Catholic reform was automatically crypto-Protestant, and view the protestations of loyalty to Rome by leading reformers as either insincere or compromising. But the case of Liège suggests that the lay élites might be taking new steps themselves within the framework of Catholic doctrine and ecclesiastical structure—if only they were allowed to do so. The flowering of the Counter-Reformation in Liège begins late in the century with the founding of hospitals and the influx of students to the Jesuit school; but the fathers and grandfathers of that generation had not been simply waiting. They had been working, however quietly, to make their Church express their own love of God and neighbor.