Council of Trent

The Council of Trent (Italian: Trento) was an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church held in discontinuous sessions between 1545 and 1563 in response to the Protestant Reformation. The Council should have been held in Vicenza (20 miles west of Venice), but the aristocratic family that promoted the event was considered to be too fond of the Emperor, so the council was moved to Trent.

Occasion, sessions, and attendance

In reply to the Papal bull Exsurge Domine of Pope Leo X (1520), Martin Luther had burned the document and appealed to a general council. In 1522, German diets joined in the appeal, and Charles V seconded and pressed it as a means of reunifying the Church and settling the controversy started by the Reformation. Pope Clement VII (1523-1534) was vehemently against the idea of a council, agreeing with Francis I of France. After the deliverances of Pope Pius II in his bull Execrabilis (1460) and his reply to the University of Cologne (1463), setting aside the theory of the supremacy of general councils laid down by the Council of Constance, it was the papal policy to avoid councils.

Related Topics:
Papal bull - Exsurge Domine - Pope Leo X - Martin Luther - Charles V - Reformation - Pope Clement VII - 1523 - 1534 - Francis I of France - Pope Pius II - Council of Constance

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Pope Paul III, seeing that the Protestant Reformation was no longer a few preachers, but that various princes had joined in the new ideas, desired a council, but when he proposed the idea to his cardinals, it was unanimously voted against. Nonetheless, he sent nuncios throughout Europe to propose the idea. France and most of the German Protestants refused the invitation. Unable, however, to resist the urgency of Charles V, the pope, after proposing Mantua as the place of meeting, convened the council as exclusively Roman at Trent (at that time a free city of the Holy Roman Empire under a prince-bishop), on Dec. 13, 1545; it was transferred to Bologna in Mar., 1547 from fear of the plague; indefinitely prorogued, Sept. 17, 1549; reopened at Trent, May 1, 1551, by Pope Julius III; broken up by the sudden victory of Elector Maurice of Saxony over the Emperor Charles V., and his march into Tyrol, Apr. 28, 1552; and recalled by Pope Pius IV for the last time, Jan. 18, 1562, when it continued to its final adjournment, Dec. 4, 1563. It closed with "Anathema to all heretics, anathema, anathema."

Related Topics:
Pope Paul III - Protestant Reformation - Holy Roman Empire - Pope Julius III - Pope Pius IV - Anathema

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The history of the council is divided into three distinct periods; from 1545 to 1549, from 1551 to 1552, and from 1562 to 1563. The last was the most important. The number of attending members in the three periods varied considerably. It increased toward the close, but never reached the number of the first ecumenical council at Nicaea, (which had 318 members), nor of the last of the Vatican (which numbered 764). The decrees were signed by 255 members, including four papal legates, two cardinals, three patriarchs, twenty-five archbishops, 168 bishops, two-thirds of them being Italians. Lists of the signers are added to the best editions of the decrees. England was represented by Reginald Cardinal Pole, Richard Pate, bishop of Worcester, and after 1562 by Thomas Goldwell, bishop of St. Asaph; Ireland by three bishops, and Germany at no time by more than eight. 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.

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