1758 Catholic Council of Trent Anti Protestant Reformation Vatican Padua ed
The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento (Trent) and Bologna, northern Italy, was one of the Catholic Church's most important ecumenical councils. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation. Four hundred years later, when Pope John XXIII initiated preparations for the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), he affirmed the decrees it had issued: "What was, still is."
Main author: Council of Trent
Title: Sacrosanctum Concilium Tridentinum : Cum Citationibus ex utroque Testamento, Iuris Pontificii Constitutionibus, aliisque S. Rom. Eccl. Conciliis ; nec non indices totius operis locupletissimi.
Published: Patavii, 1758.
Language: Latin
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Publisher: Patavii, 1758.
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The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento (Trent) and Bologna, northern Italy, was one of the Catholic Church's most important ecumenical councils. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation.[1] Four hundred years later, when Pope John XXIII initiated preparations for the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II), he affirmed the decrees it had issued: "What was, still is."[2]
As well as decrees,[3] the Council issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by Protestantism and, in response to them, key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings. These addressed a wide range of subjects, including scripture, the Biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, justification, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass and the veneration of saints.[4] The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563, all in Trento (then the capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Trent in the Holy Roman Empire), apart from the ninth to eleventh sessions held in Bologna during 1547.[5] Pope Paul III, who convoked the Council, presided over these and the first eight sessions (1545–47), while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions (1551–52) were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions (1559–63) by Pope Pius IV.
The consequences of the Council were also significant as regards the Church's liturgy and practices. During its deliberations, the Council made the Vulgate the official example of the Biblical canon and commissioned the creation of a standard version, although this was not achieved until the 1590s.[1] In 1565, however, a year or so after the Council finished its work, Pius IV issued the Tridentine Creed (after Triudentum, Trento's Latin name) and his successor Pius V then issued the Roman Catechism and revisions of the Breviary and Missal in, respectively, 1566, 1568 and 1570. These, in turn, led to the establishment of the Tridentine Mass, which remained the Church's primary form of the Mass for the next four hundred years.
More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council (Vatican I), was convened.
Contents [hide]
1 Background
1.1 Obstacles and events before the Council
1.2 A general, free council in Germany
2 Occasion, sessions, and attendance
3 Objectives and overall results
4 Canons and decrees
5 Publication of documents
6 List of decrees
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links
Background[edit]
Obstacles and events before the Council[edit]
Pope Paul III, convener of the Council of Trent.
On 15 March 1517, the Fifth Council of the Lateran closed its activities with a number of reform proposals (on the selection of bishops, taxation, censorship and preaching) but not on the major problems that confronted the Church in Germany and other parts of Europe. A few months later, on 31 October 1517, Martin Luther issued his 95 Theses in Wittenberg.
A general, free council in Germany[edit]
Luther's position on ecumenical councils shifted over time,[6] but in 1520 he appealed to the German princes to oppose the papal Church, if necessary with a council in Germany,[7] open and free of the Papacy. After the Pope condemned in Exsurge Domine fifty-two of Luther's theses as heresy, German opinion considered a council the best method to reconcile existing differences. German Catholics, diminished in number, hoped for a council to clarify matters.[8]
It took a generation for the council to materialise, partly because of papal reluctance, given that a Lutheran demand was the exclusion of the papacy from the Council, and partly because of ongoing political rivalries between France and Germany and the Turkish dangers in the Mediterranean.[8] Under Pope Clement VII (1523–34), troops of the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Papal Rome in 1527, "raping, killing, burning, stealing, the like had not been seen since the Vandals". Saint Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel were used for horses.[9] This, together with the Pontiff's ambivalence between France and Germany, led to his hesitation. Charles V strongly favoured a council, but needed the support of King Francis I of France, who attacked him militarily. Francis I generally opposed a general council due to partial support of the Protestant cause within France, and in 1533 he further complicated matters when suggesting a general council to include both Catholic and Protestant rulers of Europe that would devise a compromise between the two theological systems. This proposal met the opposition of the Pope for it gave recognition to Protestants and also elevated the secular Princes of Europe above the clergy on church matters. Faced with a Turkish attack, Charles held the support of the Protestant German rulers, all of whom delayed the opening of the Council of Trent.[10]
Occasion, sessions, and attendance[edit]
The Council, depicted by Pasquale Cati (Cati da Iesi)
In reply to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X (1520), Martin Luther burned the document and appealed for a general council. In 1522 German diets joined in the appeal, with Charles V seconding and pressing for a council as a means of reunifying the Church and settling the Reformation controversies. Pope Clement VII (1523–34) was vehemently against the idea of a council, agreeing with Francis I of France. After Pope Pius II, in his bull Execrabilis (1460) and his reply to the University of Cologne (1463), set aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance.
Pope Paul III (1534–49), seeing that the Protestant Reformation was no longer confined to a few preachers, but had won over various princes, particularly in Germany, to its ideas, desired a council. Yet when he proposed the idea to his cardinals, it was almost unanimously opposed. Nonetheless, he sent nuncios throughout Europe to propose the idea. Paul III issued a decree for a general council to be held in Mantua, Italy, to begin on 23 May 1537. Martin Luther wrote the Smalcald Articles in preparation for the general council. The Smalcald Articles were designed to sharply define where the Lutherans could and could not compromise.The council was ordered by the Emperor and Pope Paul III to convene in Mantua on 23 May 1537. It failed to convene after another war broke out between France and Charles V, resulting in a non-attendance of French prelates. Protestants, just defeated by Charles V, refused to attend as well. Financial difficulties in Mantua led the Pope in the autumn of 1537 to move the council to Vicenza, where participation was poor. The Council was postponed indefinitely on 21 May 1539. Pope Paul III then initiated several internal Church reforms while Emperor Charles V convened a meeting with Protestants in Regensburg, seat of the German diet, to reconcile differences. Unity failed between Catholic and Protestant representatives "because of different concepts of Church and justification".[11]
However, the council was delayed until 1545 and, as it happened, convened right before Luther's death. Unable, however, to resist the urging of Charles V, the pope, after proposing Mantua as the place of meeting, convened the council at Trento (at that time a free city of the Holy Roman Empire under a prince-bishop), on 13 December 1545; the Pope's decision to transfer it to Bologna in March, 1547 on the pretext of avoiding a plague[1] failed to take effect and the Council was indefinitely prorogued on 17 September 1549. None of the three popes reigning over the duration of the council ever attended, which had been a condition of Charles V. Papal legates were appointed to represent the Papacy.[12]
Reopened at Trento on 1 May 1551 by convocation of Pope Julius III (1550–5), it was broken up by the sudden victory of Maurice, Elector of Saxony over the Emperor Charles V and his march into surrounding state of Tirol on 28 April 1552.[13] There was no hope of reassembling the council while the very anti-Protestant Paul IV was Pope.[1] The council was reconvened by Pope Pius IV (1559–65) for the last time, meeting from 18 January 1562, and continued until its final adjournment on 4 December 1563. It closed with a series of ritual acclamations honouring the reigning Pope, the Popes who had convoked the Council, the emperor and the kings who had supported it, the papal legates, the cardinals, the ambassadors present, and the bishops, followed by acclamations of acceptance of the faith of the Council and its decrees, and of anathema for all heretics.[14]
The history of the council is thus divided into three distinct periods: 1545–49, 1551–52 and 1562–63. During the second period, the Protestants present asked for renewed discussion on points already defined and for bishops to be released from their oaths of allegiance to the Pope. When the last period began, all hope of conciliating the Protestants was gone and the Jesuits had become a strong force.[1]
The number of attending members in the three periods varied considerably. The council was small to begin with, opening with only about 30 bishops.[15] It increased toward the close, but never reached the number of the First Council of Nicaea (which had 318 members) nor of the First Vatican Council (which numbered 744). The decrees were signed in 1563 by 255 members, the highest attendance of the whole council,[16] including four papal legates, two cardinals, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, and 168 bishops, two-thirds of whom were Italians. The Italian and Spanish prelates were vastly preponderant in power and numbers. At the passage of the most important decrees, not more than sixty prelates were present.
The French monarchy boycotted the entire council until the last minute; a delegation led by Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine finally arrived in November 1562. The first outbreak of the French Wars of Religion had been earlier in the year, and the French had experience of a significant and powerful Protestant minority, iconoclasm and tensions leading to violence in a way the Italians and Iberians did not. Among other influences, the last minute inclusion of a decree on sacred images was a French initiative, and the text, never discussed on the floor of the council or referred to council theologians, was based on a French draft.