The Council of Trent (1545-1563) is the nineteenth of the twenty-one ecumenical councils and one of the most influential ones. It was convoked by Paul III (Sessions 1-8, 1545-1547) and continued under Julius III (Sessions 12-16, 1551-1552) and Pius IV (Sessions 17-25, 1562-1563). It addressed Protestant doctrines and prescribed a series of important ecclesial reforms. In its doctrinal decrees, it specified the canon of Scripture and clarified the nature of original sin, justification, and the sacraments.
In this interview, Nelson H. Minnich discusses the Council of Trent.
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The Council of Trent began less than thirty years after the close of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517), which decreed various measures of ecclesial reform. Why was another council needed so soon after Lateran V? There are a number of reasons. Not only were the issues raised at Trent different from those of Lateran V, but the implementation of Lateran V’s decrees of reform had been delayed.
Lateran V ended in 1517. However, it was only in 1520 that its decrees were printed and sent out to the metropolitans to be distributed throughout Christendom. The enforcement of the decrees was left to the local ordinaries.
By 1520, new issues had arisen. In 1517, Martin Luther had posted his 95 Theses. Now justification by faith alone was the hot topic. However, it was not clear what the Catholic teaching on justification was.
Ultimately, therefore, a new council was needed to resolve these questions.
Were the Catholic princes of Europe keen to have the council, indifferent to the prospect, or hostile to it? There was a lot of politics involved in the convocation of the Council of Trent. In Germany, several princes sided with Luther against both Rome and the young reigning emperor, Charles V.
Many feared Charles V. He seemed to have too much power and to pose a threat to the other kingdoms.
The elector princes of the German lands did not want the centralisation of authority that was going on in Spain, France, and England. They wanted to keep their own power. So, it was to their advantage that the emperor had difficulty imposing Catholicism.
The king of France especially feared Charles V and felt surrounded by him. To his west was Spain, where Charles was king. To his east were what we call the Netherlands, where Charles was the Duke of Burgundy. Charles V also controlled the Kingdom of Naples, which was claimed by both the king of Spain and the king of France. He was the overlord of Milan, which the king of France also claimed. So, the king of France was eager to diminish Charles’s power. A council that would resolve the conflicts in Germany was not to his advantage. He wanted Charles V to be weighed down with all the problems in Germany.
Hence, it was a strange situation. Various rulers were hostile to the Council of Trent. The king of France was hostile to it. In England, the schismatic Henry VIII did not want the Council of Trent to resolve doctrinal issues. The Scandinavians, who had gone Lutheran, did not want it.
Only Charles V of Spain, and his ally Portugal, wanted it.
Interestingly, even one of his allies, the papacy, was not keen on calling a council. If a council succeeded, it would increase the power of Charles V. The popes were afraid to death that, should Charles V dominate Italy, they would simply become his chaplain. They too opposed the Council of Trent.
In addition, the previous council, Lateran V, had been a bad experience for them. That council had been held in Rome, where, supposedly, the pope was in full control. Everything should have gone smoothly. That was not the case. Even in Rome, the bishops were rebellious. They had demanded that papal power be cut back, and their jurisdictional authority restored. It was extremely difficult for Leo X to control Lateran V. He was only able to close it by a difference of three votes. The popes, therefore, saw councils as very dangerous affairs that always seemed intent upon cutting back papal power. They were not eager to call a council.
Why was the council held not at Rome but in the Tyrolese town of Trent, then part of the Holy Roman Empire? The location of the council was a very difficult and much debated issue.
Rome wanted a council that it could control. Hence, it preferred that it be held in Italy.
The Germans objected that the Protestants would not get a fair hearing because a council held in Italy would be under the control of the Pope. Luther and the German diets wanted what they called a free Christian council in German lands. The theory was that the solution should be found in the lands where the problem arose. But where in German lands?
The emperor and the popes played the following game. They tried to hold the council in an Italian city that was in imperial lands. In 1538, Paul III tried to call the council to meet in the imperial fiefdom of Mantua. He could claim that, though an Italian city, it was German. It was within the Holy Roman Empire. That plan fell through. The Marquis of Mantua could not provide security and the pope had to move the council.
They decided to hold it in Vicenza, in neutral Venetian territory. Only five bishops showed up. That was a disaster and would not work. So, they needed to find a place in German lands. Moreover, the French wanted an easily accessible location. For that reason, many suggested holding the council in a city on the Rhine. However, the popes were not in favour of that idea, after their bad experience at Basel, which was on the Rhine.
Trent was the solution they came up with. It was an unusual location. It was in Italy. However, it was only eighty miles south of the Imperial residence in Innsbruck, across the Brenner Pass.
It was also a bilingual city. Most residents spoke Italian, but a good portion were German speakers. Five miles to the north, everyone spoke German.
Furthermore, it was within the Holy Roman Empire. The ruler was a prince bishop. He was the both the temporal and spiritual ruler. He was also a member of the German Diet.
At the same time, Trent was in Italy. The pope could expect that many Italian bishops would attend.
Trent, therefore, seemed to be the location that would satisfy everyone. It was the compromise they came up with.
Did the council start out with a clear agenda or did it work it out along the way? Traditionally, councils deal with three elements. They try to define the faith, remove abuses, and encourage peace among Christian princes or defend Christendom with a crusade. Those three objectives were stated in the decree of the convocation.
However, once the council met, the cardinal legates decided that achieving peace was not an objective that the council should address. It would waste too much time. They left that to the pope. Hence, the council agenda came down to two items: faith and reform.
Now, the papacy was very keen to define the Catholic faith so that the faithful would know where the Protestants had gone wrong. The emperor, however, was not keen on that at all. He felt that it would close the door to any reconciliation with the Protestants. Rather, he was in favour of reform, thinking that, once the Church had been reformed, the Protestant anger at it would diminish. The council had to decide how to resolve this tension between the papal and the imperial agendas; between decrees of doctrine and those of reform.
The compromise they reached was to handle both simultaneously. Whenever they defined a doctrine, at the same time they would reform any related abuses. Hence, in each session there is a doctrinal decree followed by a corresponding decree of reform.
“The Holy Spirit must have ensured that the council succeeded because there was always some crisis going on."
During the council, were there any crises that threatened to derail it? It was a series of crises that never seemed to stop. It was The Perils of Pauline. Arthur Dickens claimed that it was a miracle that the council ever succeeded. At every turn, it was on a verge of collapsing. The Holy Spirit must have ensured that the council succeeded because there was always some crisis going on.
For example, as soon as the council first assembled, there was the question of how the various issues would be discussed. The bishops wanted to discuss it by themselves. However, they had brought advisors, periti, to the council and the pope sent his own experts. The bishops wanted to exclude the periti from the any discussions.
The cardinals who were there, including the two cardinal legates, convinced them that this would not work and was unbecoming (indecens). They pointed out that, unlike the periti, most of the bishops were not experts in theology or canon law. Without the assistance of the periti, they argued, the bishops would be unable to discuss the issues adequately and come up with good solutions to them. The legates decided, therefore, that the theologians and the canonists would participate in the discussions.
They started off by dividing the bishops—at the beginning of the council only thirty-five bishops were present—into three groups, with a cardinal in charge of each one. Each group met to discuss the issues. However, as the cardinal legates wrote back to Rome, this procedure proved to be a disaster. The bishops hated it. You can imagine what happened. A theological discussion came up. The bishops gave their opinion. However, they were not experts in theology. Whenever the theologian chimed in and pointed out how wrong their views were, the bishops were disgruntled. This was turning into a disaster. The cardinal legates had to come up with a solution.
The solution they came up with was a teach-in. They separated the bishops from the experts in theology and canon law. Whenever an issue came up, they had “particular congregations.” They brought the issue before the theologians and the canonists, who would discuss it among themselves. The bishops sat in and listened as the periti debated the issue. This was a teach-in. This was how they brought the bishops up to speed on these theological issues. Whenever the bishops felt they understood all the matters involved and were prepared to discuss it themselves, they dismissed the theologians and canonists.
That was the first crisis and its resolution. There followed a whole series of other problems.
Some bishops wanted the council to decree that it represented the universal Church. This formula had been used in the councils of the previous century as a way of declaring that the council is supreme, receives its authority directly from God, and that everyone, including the pope, must obey it. As you can imagine, the papal legates were not at all happy with this formula and did not want to include it in the decrees. They wanted the decrees to be issued with the apostolic legates presiding, thereby signifying that the agenda of the council is in the hands of the papal representatives. Ultimately, the authority of the council comes from the pope, not directly from God. This was another crisis that the legates confronted.
Another still regarded the question of justification. To achieve reconciliation with the Protestants, some theologians proposed the theory of double justification. They thought that it could bring together the traditional Catholic conception and the Lutheran view of imputed justice. According to this theory, we receive sanctifying grace (inherent justice) and are then covered over with the merits of Christ (imputed justice).
When this theory was brought up for discussion, various theologians denounced it. They argued that it does not make any sense. The Christian who has been justified with the reception of sanctifying grace, already shares in divine life. There is no need for that person’s sins to be covered over with the merits of Christ.
The Augustinians favoured double justification, while the more Thomistic group objected that the theory was unnecessary and confusing. They battled out this issue among themselves. It was resolved, of course, in favour of the Thomistic position.
Another crisis arose with the Italians. They did not like being in Trent. It was cold in the winter. The winds and snow came down from the Alps. As Trent was in the Adige Valley, it was also an unpleasantly hot and close during the summer. Moreover, there was the constant fear that the Lutheran armies could come through the Bremner Pass and attack the council. For these reasons, the Italians were eager to move the council out of Trent and always looking for an occasion to do so. Moreover, the Papal Legates were on their side.
The occasion arose when there was a suspected outbreak of typhus. The cardinal legates used this as a reason for moving the council to Bologna, in the Papal States, but not in German lands. The Imperial representatives objected that the council needed to be in German lands.
As a result, the move to Bologna created a schism. The imperial and Spanish bishops stayed in Trent, while the Italians moved down to Bologna. In a sense, two councils were going on, one in Trent and the other in Bologna. This created a huge crisis. The pope was afraid that, in addition to the schism between Catholics and Lutherans, there would be a schism within the Catholic fold between the imperials and the Italians.
The pope, therefore, told those assembled in Bologna that they could discuss the theological issues but not issue any decrees.
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