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What was gained and achieved at the Council of Trent?

1) The principle that the pope was supreme in the Catholic Church. Only those reforms agreed to by the pope were passed.

2) The decisions of Trent were very conservative. They made no allowance for Christian Humanism or liberal Catholicism.

3) It greatly improved the quality of bishops and clergy to give a proper lead to the Catholic laity. "This emphasis was one of the characteristics of the Counter-Reformation." (Cowie)

4) There was a clearly defined Catholic doctrine.

5) There was a greater centralisation of government.

The decrees of Trent were confirmed by Pius IV in January 1564. 

"They armed the Church with the two chief weapons : doctrinal clarity and ecclesiastical discipline, with which it waged the war of the Counter-Reformation over the next two centuries." (E.N.Williams) 

The clear doctrine made agreement and unity with other Christians impossible.

"It presented a bold intellectual front to all outside its ranks" (Cowie)

The results of Trent were quickly accepted in Italy and the Catholic German states. They were only accepted by France in 1615 though the problems of the French Wars of Religion may well have hampered a more speedy acceptance. The decrees of Trent were accepted in Spain as long as they did not conflict with the rights of the crown. France and Spain continued with their right to pick their own bishops.

"The Council of Trent did mark a turning-point in the history of the Catholic Church…..it gave Catholics a certainty about their own beliefs and practices that had previously been lacking the Church’s foundations had been strengthened, to give a firm base on which the spiritual life of the Catholic world could be reconstructed." 

R Lockyer

 

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