lified by St Vincent de Paul and St Louise de Marillac, especially characterized the French experience. Considerable attention was given there, as it was in Italy, to popular missions among the peasantry. Meanwhile, St Francis of Sales, bishop of Geneva, published his Introduction to the Devout Life (1608), among the most popular of all works of Christian spirituality.
             The spirituality of the Counter-Reformation was activist, directed towards the evangelization of the newly explored territories in the Far East and in North and South America. A similar enthusiasm developed for the establishment of confessional schools, where the Jesuits took the lead. Despite the emphasis on activism, however, the Counter-Reformation era in Spain produced two of Christianity's greatest mystics-St Teresa of Ávila and St John of the Cross.
             Reformation, great 16th-century religious revolution in the Christian Church, which ended
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