The Council of Trent

Paul III summoned a general council to Trent in a bull of 22 May 1542, after earlier summonses to Mantua and Vicenza had come to nothing; he chose Trent, he says, because the Germans wished for it (Council of Trent Bull of indiction (22 May 1542)). The council opened on 13 December 1545 (Council of Trent Session 1).

The fourth session, on 8 April 1546, declares that the truth and discipline of the Gospel are contained “in the written books, and the unwritten traditions” that have come down from the apostles, and that the council receives both “with an equal affection of piety, and reverence”. It lists the books of the Bible, among them Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch and the two books of Maccabees, and anathematizes anyone who does not receive them, entire with all their parts, as sacred and canonical, as they are contained in the old Latin Vulgate, and who knowingly despises the traditions (Council of Trent Session 4, decree concerning the canonical Scriptures). A Protestant position is stated in the Articles of the Church of England: the church reads these books “for example of life and instruction of manners” but does not apply them to establish any doctrine (Thirty-Nine Articles VI).

The sixth session, on 13 January 1547, issued the decree on justification. In adults, it says, justification begins from God’s prevenient grace, without any merits on their part; they are disposed to it by freely assenting to that grace and cooperating with it, and cannot move themselves towards justice by their own free will without it (Council of Trent Session 6, chapter 5). Justification itself “is not remission of sins merely, but also the sanctification and renewal of the inward man”. Christ merited it by his passion, baptism is its instrument, and its one formal cause is the justice of God by which he makes us just, so that “we are not only reputed, but are truly called, and are, just” (Council of Trent Session 6, chapter 7). We are said to be justified by faith because faith is “the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all Justification”, and freely because nothing that goes before justification, whether faith or works, merits the grace of it (Council of Trent Session 6, chapter 8). The canons condemn the statement that a person can be justified by his own works without grace, and equally the statements that the sinner is justified by faith alone, “in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate” towards obtaining the grace of justification and that he need not be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, or by the sole imputation of Christ’s justice or the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and charity poured into the heart (Council of Trent Session 6, canons 1, 9 and 11).

The council moved to Bologna in March 1547 because of disease at Trent (Council of Trent Session 8) and resumed at Trent on 1 May 1551 (Council of Trent Session 11). In this second period it granted a safe-conduct to the German Protestants, who had asked to be heard (Council of Trent Session 13, decree on the safe-conduct). In April 1552 it suspended itself because of war in Germany, in a decree which recalls that it had been restored at the instance of the emperor Charles V (Council of Trent Session 16). It met again under Pius IV from 18 January 1562 (Council of Trent Session 17). Among its later decrees, one orders every cathedral church to maintain a college in which boys are trained for the priesthood (Council of Trent Session 23, decree on reformation, chapter 18), and the last uphold purgatory, the invocation of saints, images and indulgences, while ordering that “all evil gains” from indulgences be abolished (Council of Trent Session 25, decrees on purgatory, on saints and images, and on indulgences).

The council closed on 4 December 1563 and asked the pope to confirm its decrees (Council of Trent Session 25, on the close of the council). Pius IV did so on 26 January 1564 (Council of Trent Confirmation of the council, 26 January 1564). The profession of faith he issued later that year binds those who swear it to all that Trent defined, and by name to its teaching on original sin and justification (Tridentine Profession of Faith V, XI). The Joint Declaration of Lutherans and Catholics confirmed in 1999 says that the Lutheran teaching presented in it does not fall under Trent’s condemnations (Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification 41); see Lutherans and Catholics Agree on Justification.