Council of Trent
The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent, in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church. Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the "most impressive embodiment of the ideals of the Counter-Reformation." It was the last time a Catholic ecumenical council was organized outside the city of Rome, and the second time a council was convened in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Council issued key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, justification, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, and the veneration of saints and also issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism. The consequences of the council were also significant with regard to the Church's liturgy and censorship.
The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563. Pope Paul III, who convoked the council, oversaw the first eight sessions, while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions by Pope Pius IV. More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869.
Background information
Obstacles and events before the Council's problem area
On 15 March 1517, the Fifth Council of the Lateran closed its activities with a number of reform proposals but not on the new 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
Luther's position on ecumenical councils shifted over time, but in 1520 he appealed to the German princes to oppose the papal Church at the time, if necessary with a council in Germany, 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.It took a generation for the council to materialise, partly due to papal fears over potentially renewing a schism over conciliarism; partly because Lutherans demanded the exclusion of the papacy from the council; partly because of ongoing political rivalries between France and the Holy Roman Empire; and partly due to the Turkish dangers in the Mediterranean. Under Pope Clement VII, mutinous troops, many of whom were Lutheran belonging to 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 stabling horses. Pope Clement, fearful of the potential for more violence, delayed calling the council.
Charles V strongly favored 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. Charles' younger brother Ferdinand of Austria, who ruled a huge swath of territory in central Europe, agreed in 1532 to the Nuremberg Religious Peace granting religious liberty to the Protestants, 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.
Occasion, sessions, and attendance
In the to-and-fro of medieval politics, Pope Pius II, in his bull Execrabilis and his reply to the University of Cologne, had set aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance, which had also called for frequent ecumenical councils every ten years to cope with the backlog of reform and heresies.Martin Luther had appealed for a general council, in response to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X. 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 was vehemently against the idea of a council, agreeing with Francis I of France.
Sessions
The history of the council is divided into three distinct periods: 1545–1549, 1551–1552 and 1562–1563.The number of attending members in the three periods varied considerably. The council was small to begin with, opening with only about 30 bishops. It increased toward the close, but never reached the number of the First Council of Nicaea nor of the First Vatican Council. The decrees were signed in 1563 by 255 members, the highest attendance of the whole council, 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. Although most Protestants did not attend, ambassadors and theologians of Brandenburg, Württemberg, and Strasbourg attended having been granted an improved safe conduct.
Pre-council
, seeing that the Protestant Reformation was no longer confined to a few preachers, but had won over various princes, especially 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 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 with Protestants and Cardinal Gasparo Contarini at the Diet of Regensburg, to reconcile differences. Mediating and conciliatory formulations were developed on certain topics. In particular, a two-part doctrine of justification was formulated that would later be rejected at Trent. Unity failed between Catholic and Protestant representatives "because of different concepts of Church and Justification".
First period
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 Trent, on 13 December 1545; the Pope's decision to transfer it to Bologna in March 1547 on the pretext of avoiding a plague 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.Second period
Reopened at Trent on 1 May 1551 by the convocation of Pope Julius III, it was broken up by the sudden victory of Maurice, Elector of Saxony over Emperor Charles V and his march into surrounding state of Tirol on 28 April 1552. There was no hope of reassembling the council while the very anti-Protestant Paul IV was Pope.During the second period, the Protestants present asked for a 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 intentions of conciliating the Protestants was gone and the Jesuits had become a strong force. This last period was begun especially as an attempt to prevent the formation of a general council including Protestants, as had been demanded by some in France.
Third period
The council was reconvened by Pope Pius IV for the last time, meeting from 18 January 1562 at Santa Maria Maggiore, 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.The French monarchy boycotted the entire council until the last minute when 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 occurred earlier in the year and the French Church, facing a significant and powerful Protestant minority in France, experienced iconoclasm violence regarding the use of sacred images. Such concerns were not primary in the Italian and Spanish Churches. 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.