TRENT, COUNCIL OF. 



669 



instructed by the legates, was sufficient to give a 

 turn to the council according to the will of the 

 pope, who had formed at Rome a particular assem- 

 bly of cardinals to consult upon the affairs of the 

 council. Add to this the vigorous, proud, and do- 

 mineering spirit of the cardinal Del Monte, entirely 

 devoted to his master ; his daily, nay, hourly, cor- 

 respondence with him by means of an uninterrupted 

 line of couriers, which brought to him, according to 

 the changing resolutions of the pope, public and 

 private directions for every aspect of affairs, and 

 many other arrangements by which the Roman po- 

 licy was able to influence the assembled prelates 

 according to circumstances. Hence even the Italian 

 bishops were heard to complain, that the council 

 was not a free one. Princes and people expected 

 from this union of holy men the abolition of abuses 

 which had been long complained of, and an im- 

 provement of the church in its head and members, 

 which would obviate the objections of the Pro- 

 testants, and induce them to return to the bosom 

 of the Catholic church. The imperial envoys 

 openly urged that this should be the chief object of 

 their labours, yet, in the second and third sessions, 

 January 7 and February 4, 1546, nothing was done 

 except the reading of rules for the regulation of 

 the fathers while at Trent, ox exhortations to ex- 

 tirpate heretics, and of the Nicene creed. From 

 the fourth to the eighth of April, when five arch- 

 bishops and forty-eight bishops were already as- 

 sembled, two decrees were enacted, in which the 

 reception of the Apocrypha into the canon of the 

 Holy Scriptures was taken for granted ; tradition 

 was declared of equal authority with the Bible: the 

 Latin translation of the Bible, known by the name 

 of Vulgate, was received as authentic; and the 

 church was declared the only legitimate interpreter 

 of them. From these, as well as from the decrees 

 of the fifth, sixth, and seventh sessions, June 17, 



1546, January 13, and March 3, 1547, on the doc- 

 trines of original sin, justification, and the seven 

 sacraments, till then riot confirmed by a statute of 

 the church, it was evident that the pope and his 

 legates had the intention of placing Catholicism in 

 pointed contrast with the doctrines of Protestantism. 

 To each of these decrees, several canons, that is, 

 anathemas against those who dissented from them, 

 were added. In order to pay some attention to 

 the wishes of the nation, strenuously supported by 

 the emperor, the legates added some decrees, for 

 the purpose of reformation, to those intended merely 

 for the settlement of doctrines. The duties of 

 preachers, and the administration of the inferior 

 offices, from the bishops downwards, were more 

 suitably arranged, without, however, radically at- 

 tacking the prevailing abuses. Even by these half 

 measures, the legates feared they had yielded too 

 much ; and as the violent contentions between the 

 prelates and the clergy of various orders, the bold 

 assertions and proposals of the imperial envoys and 

 German bishops, made the course of the delibera- 

 tions continually more doubtful, and a speedy va- 

 cancy of the papal chair was anticipated, the legates 

 made use of the false rumour of a pestilence in 

 Trent, and, in accordance with a power long since 

 received from Rome, in the 8th session, March 1 1, 



1547, resolved upon transferring the assembly to Bo- 

 logna, which was immediately followed by the depar- 

 ture of the Italian fathers. The solemn protestations 

 of the emperor against this measure compelled 18 

 bishops, from his states, together with the bishop 

 of Trent, cardinal Madruzzi, to remain in that city, 



whilst the legates, with six archbishops, thirty-two 

 bishops, and four generals of religious orders, con- 

 tented themselves, at Bologna, in the ninth and 

 tenth sessions, April 21 and June 2, with publish- 

 ing repeated decrees of adjournment, without de- 

 ciding further upon the subject of the council. The 

 nominal council at Trent, in the meantime, held 

 no session ; and as the emperor firmly refused to 

 consider the assembly at Bologna as a council, and 

 as the bishops departed, one after another, the pope 

 at length declared, in a bull of Sept. 17, 1549, the 

 council adjourned. After his death, the cardinal 

 Del Monte, Feb. 8, 1550, ascended the papal chair, 

 under the name of Julius III., and formally an- 

 nounced, at the desire of the emperor, the reassem- 

 bling of the council of Trent in that very year. His 

 legate, the cardinal Marcellus Crescentius, a man of 

 a passionate temper, came with two nuncios to Trent, 

 and opened the council, May 1, 1551, with the llth 

 session. This second period commenced with little 

 splendour, on account of the small number of prelates 

 present ; and even when the influence of the em- 

 peror had brought together the German archbishops, 

 besides many Spanish, Italian and German bishops, 

 in all sixty-four prelates, yet, on account of the de- 

 ficiency of theologians, only the subjects of future 

 deliberations could be decided upon in the twelfth 

 session, September 5, 1551. France kept back its 

 bishops, as in the first period of the council, and 

 presented, in this session, protestations against the 

 continuation of it, by its envoy, James Amyot, on 

 account of the then existing political contentions 

 between king Henry and the pope. Nevertheless, 

 the fathers proceeded in their work. The Jesuits 

 Lainez and Salmeron, who had been sent as papal 

 theologians, had a decisive influence upon the de- 

 crees, which now, laying aside scholastic differences, 

 were briefly and precisely drawn up respecting the 

 Lord's supper, penance, and extreme unction, and 

 were published, the first with eleven canons, in 

 the thirteenth session, October 11, the two last, 

 with nineteen canons, in the fourteenth session, 

 November 15. They added to this two decrees of 

 reformation on the jurisdiction of the bishops, in 

 which the limits of the episcopal authority, and ths 

 causes admitting of appeal to the pope, were deter- 

 mined, encroachments in foreign dioceses, and abuses 

 in exercising the rights of patronage, and in the 

 dress of the clergy, were prohibited ; and the privi- 

 leged ecclesiastical bodies, universities, monasteries, 

 hospitals, &c., were exempted from the jurisdiction 

 of the bishops. The canons, connected with the 

 dogmatic decrees, contained only sentences in con- 

 demnation of the opinions of Luther and Zwingli ; 

 and yet the pope had invited the Protestants, by 

 several nuncios, to take part in this act of the coun- 

 cil, as the emperor insisted on their admission. 

 Some envoys of the Protestant powers appeared, 

 indeed, at Trent ; those of Brandenburg in order to 

 obtain from the pope the confirmation of prince 

 Frederic in the archbishopric of Magdeburg, those 

 of Wtirtemberg, and deputies from the cities of 

 Upper Germany, to please the emperor, and perhaps 

 also at the instigation of the elector, Maurice, 

 whose own envoy arrived there January 7, 1552, 

 and obtained an audience January 24, in a general 

 assembly. To his extreme vexation, the cardinal 

 legate was obliged to consent, that the Protestant 

 theologians also should le heard, and provided with 

 safe conducts. In order to cut off every possibility 

 of an agreement with the Protestants, he had com- 

 posed a decree on the consecration of priests, en- 



