And what was Catholicism called before the Reformation? Was it just the Christian church?
I am reading a fictional autobiography of Henry VIII and am curious.
Thanks.
The Catholic Encyclopedia has a long and learned article on this, from which I extract the following:
"The word Catholic (katholikos from katholou – throughout the whole, i.e., universal) occurs in the Greek classics, e.g., in Aristotle and Polybius, and was freely used by the earlier Christian writers in what we may call its primitive and non-ecclesiastical sense. Thus we meet such phrases as the “the catholic resurrection” (Justin Martyr), “the catholic goodness of God” (Tertullian), “the four catholic winds” (Irenaeus), where we should now speak of “the general resurrection”, “the absolute or universal goodness of God”, “the four principal winds”, etc. The word seems in this usage to be opposed to merikos (partial) or idios (particular), and one familiar example of this conception still survives in the ancient phrase “Catholic Epistles” as applied to those of St. Peter, St. Jude, etc., which were so called as being addressed not to particular local communities, but to the Church at large.
The combination “the Catholic Church” (he katholike ekklesia) is found for the first time in the letter of St. Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, written about the year 110. The words run: “Wheresoever the bishop shall appear, there let the people be, even as where Jesus may be, there is the universal [katholike] Church.” However, in view of the context, some difference of opinion prevails as to the precise connotation of the italicized word, and Kattenbusch, the Protestant professor of theology at Giessen, is prepared to interpret this earliest appearance of the phrase in the sense of mia mone, the “one and only” Church [Das apostolische Symbolum (1900), II, 922]. From this time forward the technical signification of the word Catholic meets us with increasing frequency both East and West, until by the beginning of the fourth century it seems to have almost entirely supplanted the primitive and more general meaning."
The Church of England, for instance, still describes itself as a catholic church, in the universal sense of the word,
The Church has always called itself catholic, apostolic, and orthodox, meaning, more or less, universal, descended from and following in the teachings of the Twelve Apostles, and possessed of right doctrine, respectively. Cf. the Nicene Creed “I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic church…”
The use of the term to designate the Church of Rome (not a slam but a distinguishing term, Catholics!) is that that term was the common self-referent in Reformation times, distinguishing the church that had been in all (i.e., all western and central European) countries and still was present in most of them from the various national churches that were springing up. That church was “universal” and therefore “catholic.” After the 11th century rift between the Eastern and Western Churches, the East adopted the term Orthodox for themselves, to distinguish themselves from the unorthodox splinter churches that survived from early heresies (some of which survive today).
And of course, it gets interesting in the Protestant denominations that use the Nicene creed. As Polycarp says, the creed uses the word catholic in the sense of universal. I don’t know how many denominations use the Nicene creed–it’s the Lutheran Book of Worship as a normal option for a service, and they might actually recommend the use of either the Nicene creed or the Apostles’ creed depending on the season. I don’t have a copy of the LBW on hand, so I can’t check. I’ve always taken it as a statement that, despite the differences, the really important bits are still universal. At least as used today.
Does the Nicene creed originate from the Council of Nicea? And if so, which one?
It derives from the First Council of Nicea in 325, as approved at the First Council of Constantinople in 381.