Case Study 3: The Council of Trent
DECREE ON REFORMATION.
CHAPTER I. Cardinals and all Prelates of the churches shall be content with modest furniture and a frugal table: they shall not enrich their relatives or domestics out of the property of the Church.
It is to be wished, that those who undertake the office of a bishop should understand what their portion is; and comprehend that they are called, not to their own convenience, not to riches or luxury, but to labours and cares for the glory of God. For it is not to be doubted, that the rest of the faithful also will be more easily excited to religion and innocence, if they shall see those who are set over them, not fixing their thoughts on the things of this world, but on the salvation of souls, and on their heavenly country.
Wherefore the holy Synod, being minded that these things are of the greatest importance towards restoring ecclesiastical discipline, admonishes all bishops, that, often meditating thereon, they show themselves conformable to their office, by their actual deeds, and the actions of their lives; which is a kind of perpetual sermon; but above all that they so order their whole conversation, as that others may thence be able to derive examples of frugality, modesty, continency, and of that holy humility which so much recommends us to God. Wherefore, after the example of our fathers in the Council of Carthage, It not only orders that bishops be content with modest furniture, and a frugal table and diet, but that they also give heed that in the rest of their manner of living, and in their whole house, there be nothing seen that is alien from this holy institution, and which does not manifest simplicity, zeal towards God, and a contempt of vanities. Also, It wholly forbids them to strive to enrich their own kindred or domestics out of the revenues of the church: seeing that even the canons of the Apostles forbid them to give to their kindred the property of the church, which belongs to God; but if their kindred be poor, let them distribute to them thereof as poor, but not misapply, or waste, it for their sakes : yea, the holy Synod, with the utmost earnestness, admonishes them completely to lay aside all this human and carnal affection towards brothers, nephews and kindred, which is the seed-plot of many evils in the church. And what has been said of bishops, the same is not only to be observed by all who hold ecclesiastical benefices, whether Secular or Regular, each according to the nature of his rank, but the Synod decrees that it also regards the cardinals of the holy Roman Church ; for whereas, upon their advice to the most holy Roman Pontiff, the administration of the universal Church depends, it would seem to be a shame, if they did not at the same time shine so pre-eminent in virtue and in the discipline of their lives, as deservedly to draw upon themselves the eyes of all men.
CHAPTER II.
By whom individually the Decrees of the Council are to be solemnly received; and by whom a profession of faith is to be made.
The calamitousness of the times, and the malignity of the increasing heresies demand, that nothing be left undone which may seem in any wise capable of tending to the edification of the people, and to the defence of the Catholic faith. Wherefore the holy Synod enjoins on patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, and all others, who, of right or custom, ought to be present at the provincial Council, that, in the very first provincial Synod that shall be held after the close of this Council, they publicly receive all and singular the things that have been defined and ordained by this holy Synod; as also that they promise and profess true obedience to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff; and at the same time publicly express their detestation of and anathematize all the heresies that have been condemned by the sacred canons and general councils, and especially by this same Synod. And henceforth, all those who shall be promoted to be patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops, shall strictly observe the same in the first provincial Synod at which they shall be present. And should any one of all the aforesaid refuse, which God forbid, the bishops of the same province shall be bound, under pain of the divine indignation, at once to give notice thereof to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff, and shall meanwhile abstain from communion with that person. And all others, who now hold, or shall hereafter hold, ecclesiastical benefices, and whose duty it is to be present at the diocesan Synod, shall do and observe the same, as above set down, on the very first occasion that the synod shall be held, otherwise they shall be punished according to the form of the sacred canons. Moreover, all those to whom belong the charge, visitation, and reformation of universities and of (places of) general studies, shall diligently take care that the canons and decrees of this holy Synod be, by the said universities, wholly received; and that the masters, doctors, and others, in the said universities, interpret and teach those things which are of Catholic faith, in conformity therewith; and that at the beginning of each year they bind themselves by solemn oath to this procedure. And also if there be any other things that need correction and reformation in the universities aforesaid, they shall be reformed and regulated by those whom it regards, for the advancement of religion and of ecclesiastical discipline. But as regards those universities which are immediately under the protection of the Sovereign Pontiff, and are subject to his visitation, his Blessedness will take care that they be, by his delegates, wholesomely visited and reformed in the manner aforesaid, and as shall seem to him most advantageous.
The Council of Trent, 25th Session, December 4, 1563
COMMENTARY
In October 2011, a workshop on the subject of Catholic Identity Formation during the Sixteenth Century was held at Radboud University in the Netherlands. Particular noteworthy was the scholarly consensus that, taken as a whole, the pre-Tredentine Catholic world was far removed from the worldly and decadent picture presented by the majority of the Reformers. Interest in biblical and vernacular texts was evident far beyond the heartland of the Reformation and suggests that many lay Catholics were equally concerned with developing an understanding of the Bible. Catholic homiletics, meanwhile, revealed a depth and intensity that would lead some preachers to be unfairly accused of Lutheran tendencies. This was most evident, as David Coleman has shown, in the case of San Juan de Avila, whose work underpinned both the educational reforms of the Council of Trent and the missionary work of that most paradigmatic of the religious orders of the Counter Reformation, the Society of Jesus. “Avila's program,” writes Coleman, “was aimed aggressively at the consciences of his students, penitents, and advisees. The clergyman's most important function was to produce within the heart and mind of each member of his flock a responsive conscience shaped by Christian notions of virtue.” (Coleman, 20) While Avila can certainly be understood as following in the footsteps of earlier church reformers, his approach clearly owed much to Christian Humanists like Erasmus (whose works he commended) and sometimes reflected concerns expressed by Protestant critics of Catholic church order. The pluralism of the early sixteenth century is in stark contrast with the way in which the deliberations of the Council of Trent (extending from 1545 to 1563) came to be interpreted in the Roman Catholic world for the next 400 years. As Giuseppe Alberigo puts it:
[P]ost-Tridentine Catholicism gradually took on a uniformity that nobody would have dared to think possible in the acute phase of the Protestant schism . . . The corpus of Tridentine decisions regulated the new ecclesiastical system that the end of the medieval status quo and the growth of new social needs had made necessary. These decisions were granted so much authority that basic elements of the new system were judged positive or negative on the basis of how closely they conformed to the Council's decrees. (Alberigo, 27)
The calling of a general council by Pope Paul III in 1545 reflected not merely the ecclesiastical concerns of the papacy, but the political struggles of the Emperor Charles V both with the German Protestant princes and with an increasingly hostile Catholic France. The choice of Trent, a German Prince-Bishopric with an Italian majority on the fringes of the Holy Roman Empire, was a compromise reflecting both the emperor’s preeminent concern to effect a reconciliation with his Lutheran subjects and the papacy’s determination to avoid meeting at a location such as Basle or Constance too much associated with fifteenth century conciliarism. Moreover, French commitment to the reform process would not be fully secured until the 1560s, when the expansion of Calvinism in France came to be seen as an existential threat. Thus Paul III and his successors were conscious that Trent had not only to respond to the doctrinal challenge posed by Protestantism but to define a sphere of authority in relation to secular Catholic rulers (a sphere largely forfeited by the time of Trent in the case of the English Church).
The papacy’s failure to summon a general council during the 1530s enabled Luther to continue to advocate for it (and thus retain the support of the German nobility) even after he had ceased to subscribe to the principle of the inerrancy of councils). By the time of his death on the eve of Trent, it was clear that the battle for Germany was already a lost cause and the concern was now with the situation in Italy, marked by the so-called Luteranismo inspired by Peter Vermigli in Lucca and the loss of the vicar general of the Capuchins to Protestantism. Another striking example was that of Juan Morillo, an Aragonese theologian in the household of the English Cardinal Reginald Pole, who attended early sessions of the Council only to flee to Frankfurt in the 1550s, where he became an elder in the Reformed Church.
Protestant representatives were present only at the 1551-52 session of the Council (under safe conduct) but no prominent theologian attended, the absence of Philip Melancthon being particularly regretted. The Council nevertheless strove to engage with Protestant doctrines, particularly those of Luther, though often in the form of “catalogues” of heresies rather than the writings as a whole, and it was Protestant teaching (rather than individuals) that was censured, unlike the earlier condemnations of Hus and Wycliffe by the Council of Constance. Nor was such censure confined to Protestant error, for Canon 1 of the Sixth Session explicitly rebuked the semi-Pelagian tendencies of the late medieval era by declaring If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema. Furthermore, on various undecided theological questions, including the certainty of salvation and communion in both species, Trent left open the possibility of a diversity of viewpoints. Those of the Reformers who, unlike Luther, lived to witness the Council deliberations did not deny the positive nature of certain of its pronouncements, and Calvin even conceded a limited function for apostolic tradition. At the same time, Trent’s explicit rejection of sola scriptura could not but make it unacceptable to the sensibilities of Geneva:
At Trent, [Calvin] believed a group of ignorant bishops had arrogated to themselves an authority above the Word on the pretext that they were guided by the Holy Spirit. At the Fourth Session these men had even allowed themselves to tamper with the authority of the Bible. They had given that dubious entity ‘tradition’ a place alongside the Scriptures; they had decreed the erroneous Vulgate to be infallible; finally, they had set themselves above the Scriptures and proclaimed it their sole right to interpret it. (Casteel, 105)
Even more damaging was the Tredentine interpretation of the doctrine of justification in which, as Casteel puts it, dependence upon a “whole ecclesiastical machinery” (Penance, Good Works, Confession and Absolution) served to transform the sinner into a righteous man, a far cry from Calvin’s view of salvation as grounded solely in Christ. (Casteel, 112-113) This is not to say that many Catholic bishops were oblivious to the shortcomings of biblical studies in the late medieval period. During the fourth and fifth sessions of the Council, indeed, there were calls for greater priority to be given to the biblical lectureships first recommended by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Based in the various European cathedrals and occupied by preeminent scholars, such lectureships constituted a significant source of instruction for parochial clergy. Although ultimately unsuccessful, proposals for the development of a methodus (or study manual) and a new catechism grounded in Holy Scripture suggested that the bishops’ concerns extended to the laity as well as the clergy.
As the excerpt from the Decree of Reformation cited above makes clear, the Church conceded that many of its clergy were overly preoccupied with the material benefits of the office and now demanded from all, beginning with the bishops themselves, a commitment “not to their own convenience, not to riches or luxury, but to labours and cares for the glory of God.” The question remained, however, as to the manner in which such reforms were to be implemented. Given that the Council had already assigned to the pope responsibility for such diverse instruments as the index of prohibited books and a new catechism, it is perhaps unsurprising that the papacy increasingly viewed with disfavour those bishops who sought to implement reforms according to their local pastoral context. The election of Sixtus V in 1585 marked a decisive move to subordinate bishops to Roman hierarchy and was accompanied by increased papal oversight of diocesan and provincial synods. However, the Counter Reformation Church was also not without opposition from the secular authorities, particularly in France, where Gallicanism had long asserted a peculiar independence of the French Church from papal authority (particularly papal taxes) and the right of the French Crown to nominate candidates to the episcopate (confirmed in the Concordat of Bologna in 1516).
The Church that emerged from the deliberations at Trent was one increasingly on the defensive. For all the willingness of the Council to grapple with the flaws that the schism of the Reformation had exposed, the seventeenth and eighteenth century papacy displayed a renewed determination to hold the line in a world in which religious authority was increasingly constrained. Perhaps the last word can be given to a scholar of another Council (Vatican II), whose deliberations constituted if not the repudiation of the Tridentine model, a very different mode of engagement with the world around it:
The Council [of Trent] felt compelled, therefore, to assert the unbroken and unchanged continuity of its teaching with the teaching of Christ and the apostles. Although Trent sometimes softened its language, as when it referred to the origins of indulgences and the practice of venerating saints, on questions of doctrine and sacramental practice it insisted, more forcefully than any previous council had, on the identity of the present with the apostolic age and on the unchanging nature of the intervening tradition. Thus the Council gave great impetus to the Catholic persuasion, which was taking on more considered shape in the sixteenth century, that the Church and its teaching sailed through the sea of history, buffeted by many storms but unchanged by the experience. (O’Malley, 305-306)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. Alberigo (2006), ‘From the Council of Trent to “Tridentinism”’ in Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella, eds., From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 19-38.
K. Bosch, P. Delcorno, A. Huijbers, A. More and B. (2012). ‘Strategies of Catholic Identity Formation c. 1510-1560 (Chronicle).’ Franciscan Studies 70: 323-336.
T. W. Casteel (1970). ‘Calvin and Trent: Calvin's Reaction to the Council of Trent in the Context of His Conciliar Thought.’ The Harvard Theological Review 63(1): 91-117.
D. Coleman (1995). ‘Moral Formation and Social Control in the Catholic Reformation: The Case of San Juan de Avila’ The Sixteenth Century Journal 26(1): 17-30.
K. M. Comerford (2005). ‘“The care of souls is a very grave burden for [the pastor]”: Professionalization of clergy in early modern Florence, Lucca and Arezzo.’ Nederlands archief voor kerkgeschiedeni/Dutch Review of Church History 85: 349-368.
T. I. Crimando, (1988). ‘Two French Views of the Council of Trent.’ The Sixteenth Century Journal 19(2): 169-186.
H. O. Evennett (1960). ‘The Council of Trent.’ Blackfriars 41(482): 198-206.
E. Iserloh (1983). ‘Luther and the Council of Trent.’ The Catholic Historical Review 69(4): 563-576.
A. G. Kinder (1976). ‘Juan Morillo – Catholic Theologian at Trent, Calvinist Elder at Frankfurt.’ Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 38(2): 345-350.
J. A. Komonchak (2006). ‘The Council of Trent at the Second Vatican Council’ in Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella, eds., From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 61-80.
J. W. O'Malley (2006). ‘Trent and Vatican II: Two Styles of Church’ in Raymond F. Bulman and Frederick J. Parrella, eds., From Trent to Vatican II: Historical and Theological Investigations. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 301-320.
L. B. Pascoe (1966). ‘The Council of Trent and Bible Study: Humanism and Scripture.’ The Catholic Historical Review 52(1): 18-38.