During the Counter-Reformation, there was, to some degree, a reaction against the secularization of the art of music in Italy, Spain and the southern (Catholic) portion of Germany.
On occasion, existing madrigals were merely fitted with a religious text, usually in Latin, without any other change (such adaptations are called "contrafacta").
However, some of the madrigali spirituali reached heights of expressive and emotional intensity at least equal to that of the finest madrigalists in their secular compositions.
Some famous examples of madrigali spirituali include Lassus's sublimely beautiful Lagrime di San Pietro (Munich, 1595); Guillaume Dufay's Vergine bella, (ca.
1470) setting a poem in praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Petrarch; Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's First Book of Madrigals (1581), also setting Marian poems by Petrarch; Carlo Gesualdo's Tenebrae Responsories (1611); and the huge collection by Giovanni Francesco Anerio, Teatro armonico spirituale (Rome, 1619).