The Council of Trent and Bases for Continuing Reform

Abstract

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 irrelevant 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.