Council of Trent

10 Key excerpts on "Council of Trent"

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  Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible

  • Richard J. Blackwell(Author)
  • 1991(Publication Date)
  • University of Notre Dame Press

    (Publisher)

  The primary goal was to restore the unity of Christendom. However, an extraordinarily complex series of religious, political, diplomatic, and military disputes among various European states, with each other and with the popes of the time, postponed the opening of a council for a quarter of a century. 1 As these years passed, the potential for reunification became less and less viable. As a result when the Council of Trent finally did take place (1545–63), the focus had shifted to the goals of clarifying Catholic dogma and reforming the discipline, training, and life-style of the clergy. The eighteen years of the council were interrupted by two lengthy adjournments, first of four years (1547–51), and then of ten years (1552–62). These delays not only further decreased the likelihood of reunification but saw increasing distrust and open hostility between the Catholic and Protestant camps. For the present purposes it is important to emphasize that matters of natural philosophy, or of what we would now call the natural sciences, in no way were of concern in the debates at the council. At best they were mentioned only casually, if at all. The primary thrust of the council can be seen in a brief list of the central topics of decision: the books of Scripture and the role of tradition in the Church, original sin, justification and divine grace, each of the seven sacraments, indulgences, the mass, the education, morals, and preaching duties of the clergy, the jurisdiction and obligation of residence for bishops. These matters clearly centered on doctrinal and disciplinary issues in the life of the Church. However, the decisions arrived at on Scripture and tradition, originally made in response to the challenges of Luther and the other reformers, would later become related to the new ideas introduced by Copernicus

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  The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality

  • Arthur Holder(Author)
  • 2011(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  During the 1530s the Roman Catholic Church began to mobilize against the now serious threat posed by the Protestant Reformation. Pope and curia began to respond to cries within the church and challenges outside it, and at last, in 1545, the first session of the Council of Trent began. Its three sessions (December 1545–March 1547, May 1551–April 1552, and January 1562–December 1563) were interrupted by plague and by war, but its accomplishments were to last, with few revisions, until Vatican II. Trent reaffirmed not only the efficacy of faith informed by love and that grace is not coerced by works, but also an optimistic idea of human nature that allowed for freedom, and therefore cooperation, with God’s always prevenient grace. God’s action is always primary and the Christian’s cooperation is secondary, a response to God. Trent provided for far-reaching reforms that included seminaries for the training of priests and requirements that bishops live in their dioceses and assume their proper duties overseeing the teaching of doctrine and the administration of the sacraments. Wary of further divisive movements, Rome centralized the work and oversight of the church as much as possible. It developed catechisms and other modes of educating the laity. The post-Tridentine church replaced purely local saints with a calendar of saints for the universal church. Canonization of saints became the prerogative of Rome, which drew up lists of universal feasts, replacing local feast days. While the Council of Trent and acts such as these strengthened the Roman Catholic Church, it also formalized structures that became less and less pliant and able to respond to changes in the fast-moving European political and cultural worlds.

  Throughout the sixteenth century, there arose new orders dedicated to the education of clergy and of laity, such as the Ursulines (1544) for women and the Jesuits (1540) for men. But, like the third orders of the medieval mendicant orders, these new orders created ways to draw laity into their spiritual life and activities, primarily through confraternities and sodalities. The strongest of these were the Marian sodalities that were gathered by Pope Gregory XIII under the headship of the Superior General of the Jesuits. The rule for these sodalities required members to pray daily, attend daily mass, confess weekly, and receive communion at least once a month. They were also to dedicate themselves to the works of mercy such as care for the sick and imprisoned, teaching catechism, and assisting the poor. While priests were assigned as directors, officers within confraternities were elected by their members. Networks of confraternity members spread across Europe and began to affect not only the charitable and religious life of the towns, but their political life as well. Priests of the new and older orders found themselves busy with spiritual direction as the pious life of the faithful grew more robust and more lay people engaged in meditation and contemplation.

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  Church, Religion and Society in Early Modern Italy

  • Christopher Black(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  19 2 The Council of Trent and Bases for Continuing Reform The Council of Trent, operating in three separate periods (1545–47, 1550–51 and 1562–63), was one of the major Councils of the Church, but historically one of the most significant attempts to produce a body of legislation. It was and is important, whether one criticises or praises it for what it did or did not do. It has been heavily attacked on all sides. For some, a general council of the Church was inaugurated to attempt reconciliation between ‘Protestants’ and the Roman Catholic Church. It certainly concluded in general as an affirmation of the most conservative theological doctrines, intransigent against doubters, and with norms for ensuring that such views and practices prevailed in its aftermath. Protestants might have deemed it irrele-vant as well as a betrayal, but they had to take cognisance of it as it guided the Roman Catholic opponents’ behaviour against them, and philo-Protestants within the Catholic areas. Catholics have diversely criticised the legislation for being too weak or too authoritarian. Background and Criticisms Much criticism past and present has been unrealistic and counter-factual. My main concern here is with the Council’s decrees as foun-dations or guides for continuing re-formation of the institutional church, with what it taught and believed, how Catholics at all social levels might subsequently behave. The conclusion of the Council in December 1563 (too hurriedly, from the unrealised fear that the 19 Pope would imminently die, rendering all the decisions null), and the ratification, printing and circulation of the decrees at least in Italy by June 1564 did mark a crucial stage in a longer process of reform-ing church and society. Irrespective of the merits or defects of what went into print, the church and its supporters had norms as a basis for reform; or as means to stop change.

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  Learning from the Past

  Essays on Reception, Catholicity, and Dialogue in Honour of Anthony N. S. Lane

  • Jon Balserak, Richard Snoddy(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  The Protestant Image of the Council of Trent 87 the Council of Trent – which he suggests is a mini-history of the Church of Rome 48 – because this council has become so decisive for Catholic doctrine and its relation to the Reformation. Cunningham can only see the council as an act of Rome against the newly resurrected truth of God. The council was completely dominated by the Roman Curia, which succeeded in implementing its decrees with cunning and deceit. Most participants were ‘just the creatures and hired agents of the Pope’. 49 The large majority of the council’s participants were Italians and so it never was a universal council. Some of them were even made bishops overnight so that they could participate at all. Cunningham confirmed that the views of Luther were portrayed very inaccurately and had been compiled only from select individual publications and statements of the Reformer, and yet Trent was still responsible for the condemnation of the gospel of grace as this message had been rediscovered by Luther. Cunningham is positive that there is not as much Pelagianism in the decrees of Trent as in the writings of Luther’s first Roman opponents, but still enough ‘to charge the Church of Rome with perverting the gospel of the grace of God, and subverting the scriptural method of salvation’. 50 This picture of Trent as a council that purposefully opposed the revealed will of God, 51 coming to a head in the idea that the pope is the Antichrist, has been part of the tradition of Puritanism and much of Orthodox Calvinism to the present day. For example – and an important one at that – is the eighty-page presentation of the council by Reinhold Seeberg, a German Protestant, in the last part of his well-known and widely used textbook The History of Dogma . 52 Seeberg called the clear rejection of Protestantism the main goal of the council and this is the same judgement Seeberg makes on the efforts to reform the church.

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  Catholic Reformation and the Council of Trent

  History or Historiographical Myth?

  • Massimo Firpo(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Viella Libreria Editrice

    (Publisher)

  II The “Tridentine Paradigm” Between the 16 th and 17 th Centuries 3. Church Reform and Council Decrees 1. “Streams”: Catholic Reformation before Trent The autonomous historical origins of Catholic Reformation were laboriously traced by Jedin in facts, events and personages that were not always invoked appropriately and that sometimes tended more to contradict than confirm his underlying theses. It is pointless, for example, to mention the Devotio moderna or Thomas à Kempis, both too vague and distant in time, as well as distant from Rome, and much better considered as antecedents of Erasmus’ (or even a protestant) religious spirit than that of Trent. It serves still less to recall distinguished 15 th - century bishops such as St Antonino Pierozzi in Florence (1446-1459) or Pietro Barozzi in Padua (1471-1507) to identify the precursors of Council reforms, as it is fairly obvious that in the Church’s long history there was no shortage of bishops who dispatched their pastoral duties in exemplary fashion. Paolo Cortesi’s De cardinalatu (1510) had no effect, despite being praised by many, nor were there any equivalents in Italy for the large-scale project of the Complutensian Bible, promoted by Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros at Alcalá de Henares or the multilingual edition of the Psalterium quincuplex by Jacques Lefèbvre d’Étaples. As for the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17), we know it originated mainly from the political need to control the schismatic tendencies of France and the so- called conciliabolum pisanum, even though Egidio da Viterbo pronounced there his famous words on the need to “reform men through religion and not religion through men”. 1 Certainly, the exhortations to no longer defer the long-hoped-for renewal in capite et in membris got short shrift from the bellicose Pope Julius II, forever involved in wars to drive out the “barbarians” from Italy, to the point of displaying 1.

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  Trust in an Age of Arrogance

  • Allison(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Wipf and Stock

    (Publisher)

  7

  Roman Catholicism and the Council of Trent

  “I confess to almighty God . . . that I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word and deed by my fault, my fault, my very grievous fault.” —Roman Catholic Mass

  R eform of the church in the sixteenth century was by no means an exclusive concern of Protestants. The need for moral, educational, and administrative reform was everywhere acknowledged. The calling and intermittent meeting of the Council of Trent from 1545 to 1563 is a complex story but considerable needed reform was accomplished in training clergy, discipline, renewal of spiritual life, and administration. However, our focus will be on the 5th Session, which dealt with original sin (1546) and the 6th Session, which dealt with justification (1547).

  No tradition (or generation of believers) is without the need to hear our Lord’s warning concerning the self-righteous yeast of the Pharisees. The decrees of the Council of Trent about sin and justification are to Pharisaism as cigarettes are to cancer. Some issues at these two sessions evoked special criticism from Anglicans and Protestants and dismay among many Catholics as well. Among the latter were Cardinal Seripando, head of the Augustinian order, and Reginald Pole, later the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Mary. Pole was so distressed by the decisions at the 6th Session concerning justification that he left the Council in a state of depression from which it took him many months to recover.1

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  Iustitia Dei

  A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification

  • Alister E. McGrath(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  PART IV Catholicism The Council of Trent on Justification The Catholic church was not well prepared to meet the challenge posed by the rise of the evangelical factions within Germany and elsewhere during the 1520s. It was confronted with a new and only partly under- stood threat, which was perhaps too easily understood in terms of the revival of older and more familiar challenges – such as the Hussite movement in Bohemia. Early anti-Lutheran polemic tended to fasten upon points of dispute which were not central to Luther’s reforming programme – such as Luther’s views on the papacy, indulgences or the sacraments 1 – while failing to deal with questions such as the concept of servum arbitrium or the nature of justifying righteousness, which Luther considered to be central. Indeed, at one point Luther singled out Erasmus alone as having identified the real theological issues involved in his protest. 2 Although there are some notable exceptions, such as Tommaso de Vio Cajetan’s De fide et operibus (1532), relatively few works dealing with the doctrine of justification were published by Catholic writers in the period 1520–45. 3 A survey of such works suggests that neither the doctrinal specifics of the Lutheran doctrine of justification nor its wider appeal were fully grasped by the early opponents of the Reformation, although the rise of polemical theology in the 1530s served to clarify points of importance. The convening of the Council of Trent was a landmark event. 4 It represented both a response to what was increasingly becoming seen as a significant threat to the church from evangelical groups which now lay outside its domain, and to an internal need for reform of structures and morals, as well as a more effective and coherent presentation of Catholic 1 A good example is Henry VIII’s critique of Luther’s sacramental theology, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum (1521). See Ryrie, The Gospel and Henry VIII, 173. 2 See WA 18.786.26–8.

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  Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant Dialogue

  • Anthony N. S. Lane(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  Where the canons relate to the teaching of the chapters this will be indicated in footnotes. The canons will also be considered in the chapter on key issues, under the issue to which they relate. The council fathers were especially interested in opposing Luther, Melanchthon and the Augsburg Confession and paid very little attention to the Reformed theologians at this stage. 90 But how well did they know the views of their opponents? This is an important question as the council condemned not the persons of the Reformers but only their teaching -contrary to the practice of some earlier councils. 91 There is good evidence that the council fathers relied mainly on second-or third-hand compilations of quotations from the Reformers. These were mostly drawn from the years to 1526 and reflected some views that were later rejected or modified. 92 If the views rejected at Trent do not in fact accurately represent the mature teaching of the Reformation this at least poses the question of whether the Tridentine condemnations actually touch the Protestant doctrine. The purpose of the council in general, and of this decree in particular, was to define Catholic theology in opposition to Protestantism, not to decide between legitimate schools of Catholic theology. 93 Thus in places there will be a vagueness in the language with this specific intent, as with the statements on the certitude of grace. 90 Jedin, History of the Council of Trent, 2.307. 91 Jedin, The Council of Trent and Reunion', yf. 92 T. Freudenberger, 'Zur Beniitzung des reformatorischen Schrifttums im Konzil von Trient' in Batimer (ed.), Von Konstanz nach Trient, 577-601; V. Pfniir, 'Zur Verurteilung der reformatorischen Rechtfertigungslehre auf dem Konzil von Trient', Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 8 (1976) 407-28; Iserloh, 'Luther and the Council of Trent', 164-7. Cf. H. Jedin, 'Das Konzil von Trient und der Protestantismus', Catholica 3 (1934) 137-56. 93 Jedin, 'The Council of Trent and Reunion', 8-10.

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  The Catholic Reformation

  • Michael Mullett(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The papacy was also to provide leadership of the Council once it was assembled through its legates who were, in the first sessions, Cardinals Giovanni Maria Ciocchi del Monte (1487–1555), Marcello Cervini (1501–55) and Reginald Pole. No sooner had the Council gathered, however, than, Christmas intervening, it resolved on its adjournment to 7 January 1546. Upon its resumption, the Council was immediately confronted with the issue of the order of its business, whether doctrinal definition would precede reform of abuses or vice-versa. Pressure for a restatement of traditional doctrine, to be derived principally from the medieval councils and theologians, would run counter to the Habsburgs’ desire to avoid stirring up further doctrinal discord with the Lutherans in Germany and to Charles V’s wish that the Council deal with non-controversial practical reforms, especially in areas of abuse that had boosted Lutheranism’s popularity. In the event, a proposal from Bishop Tommaso Campeggio (c. 1482–1564) that reform and doctrine be taken in alternation, was adopted. The programme of reform was along a familiar track of desiderata for restoring the Church to what was seen as an earlier, purer condition. The agenda of doctrine would be largely a matter of focus on issues that Luther had raised – Scripture, justification and grace, and the Sacraments. 17 Before proceeding further, the Council fathers committed themselves in the Decree Concerning the Manner of Living during the Council, of January 1547, to a frugal, pious and sober way of life at Trent, recalling to us similar resolutions at Pisa in 1511, and anticipating Trent’s delineation of the ideal and scriptural manner of life of a bishop. At the same time, a resolution denounced ‘all false vain and obstinate disputations’, though in point of fact debates in the Council were sometimes to be heated and even violent, because of the vehemence of opposing schools of doctrine present

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  The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church

  • Gerard Mannion, Lewis S. Mudge, Gerard Mannion, Lewis S. Mudge(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In these kind of circumstances, however, the limitations of Trent’s decrees became startlingly evident. Theoretically, the Catholic church’s reliance on scripture and tradition responded to theological questions, whether posed by Protestants or Jansenists, and the Tridentine decrees offered the most recent exposition of key doctrines and the disciplinary rules that expressed them. Catholic theologians now defined ‘catholicity’ to ward off not only the external subversion of Protestant heresies but also to prevent, once more, the fragmentation of the Catholic church from within. But the delegates at Trent had not intended to offer a composite description of church doctrines. Rather, they responded to specific doctrinal and disciplinary criticisms made by Protestants, and their decrees were most penetrating in compiling doctrinal and disciplinary rules to ensure regularity of belief, worship and government.

  One key example of this is evident in the consequences of placing bishops at the centre of the Tridentine reform programme. This was done partially in reaction to dismissal of the office in some Protestant churches, but Trent also codified teaching and recommendations that had circulated in the church for centuries when it ordered bishops to instigate disciplinary renewal in their dioceses through annual diocesan synods, the introduction of seminaries and regular preaching. However, these practical instructions of ‘administative episcopalism’ were not accompanied by a complete theology of episcopacy, a fact that is particularly obvious in the decree on episcopal residence issued in 1646 and that on sacramental order in 1662–3.16 In these, the Council, despite the warnings of several delegates, dodged the question of whether bishops held their jurisdiction immediately or directly from God, or indirectly, by mediation, from the pope. In fact, the papacy and its supporters (zelanti

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