The Baroque period was in some senses the beginning of modern Western scientific and intellectual culture-the early budding of the Enlightenment. In the light of a new scientific and historical consciousness, it saw the rise of deism and the critique of traditional forms of Christianity. Secular values and institutions were openly or surreptitiously replacing the structures of traditional Christian society. At the same time, there was also a trend of religious renewal and the reaffirmation of tradition. In Roman Catholicism, the Patristic, medieval, and Tridentine paradigms were subsumed into a powerful Counter-Reformation spirituality, propagated not only in books, treatises, and sermons, but also in music and in the works of what was arguably the last period of great sacred art. It inspired masters like Bernini, Reni, Rubens, Velázquez, Zurbarán, and Van Dyck. In the Protestant traditions, the Reformation movement found affective expression in new forms of music produced by Monteve . CLICK HERE TO START DOWNLOAD