Skip to content

Course 12 · Lesson 6.4

The Council of Trent and Catholic reform

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 12 outline

Module 1: The Apostolic Fathers and the Early Apologists

  1. Who the Apostolic Fathers were: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the Didache
  2. Church order, worship and martyrdom in the second century
  3. Why Christians wrote apologies: charges, persecution and public defense
  4. Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Module 2: Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen

  1. Irenaeus against the Gnostics: the rule of faith and apostolic succession
  2. Tertullian and the beginnings of Latin theology
  3. Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation
  4. Heresy and orthodoxy: the scholarly debate about early diversity

Module 3: Creeds and Councils: Nicaea to Chalcedon

  1. From baptismal confession to creed
  2. Arius, the Council of Nicaea (325) and Athanasius
  3. The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)
  4. Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): one Christ, two natures
  5. The seven councils and how the churches receive them

Module 4: Augustine, Chrysostom and the Desert

  1. Augustine: life, conversion and the Confessions
  2. Augustine on grace, the Pelagian controversy and the City of God
  3. John Chrysostom: preacher, pastor and critic of wealth
  4. The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Anthony, Macarius and Amma Syncletica

Module 5: The Medieval Church and Scholasticism

  1. The medieval setting: monasteries, cathedral schools and universities
  2. Anselm and the method of scholasticism
  3. Thomas Aquinas: life and the structure of the Summa Theologiae
  4. Aquinas on faith, reason, nature and grace
  5. East and West: the growing divide and the schism of 1054

Module 6: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

  1. Luther and the question of justification
  2. Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition
  3. The Radical Reformation and the English Reformation
  4. The Council of Trent and Catholic reform
  5. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant readings of the Reformation

Module 7: Modern Theology and Tracing a Doctrine

  1. The Enlightenment and its challenges to inherited doctrine
  2. Schleiermacher, liberal theology and Karl Barth
  3. Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements
  4. How to trace a doctrine: development, change and corruption

All courses

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 6.4

What you will learn

  • Describe when and why the Council of Trent met and what its three periods were.
  • Summarize its main doctrinal decrees on Scripture and tradition, justification and the sacraments.
  • Explain its reforms of clergy and bishops and the work of new orders such as the Jesuits.
  • Explain why historians debate whether to call this period Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform.

The big idea

The Council of Trent (1545 to 1563) was the Catholic Church’s formal answer to the Protestant Reformation. It restated Catholic teaching on Scripture and tradition, justification, the sacraments and the Mass, and it reformed the training and duties of clergy. Alongside it, new religious orders, mystics and missionaries renewed Catholic life. Historians debate whether this period is best called the Counter-Reformation, stressing the response to Protestants, or Catholic Reform, stressing a renewal that was already under way.

Key terms

Council of Trent
The ecumenical council of the Catholic Church that met in the northern Italian city of Trent in three periods between 1545 and 1563.
Counter-Reformation
A traditional name for the Catholic response to Protestantism. Many historians prefer Catholic Reform or Catholic Renewal, and some use both.
Transubstantiation
The Catholic teaching that in the Eucharist the substance of bread and wine is changed into the substance of Christ’s body and blood, while the appearances remain.
Vulgate
The Latin translation of the Bible, mostly by Jerome in the late fourth century, which Trent declared authentic for use in the Church.
Seminary
A school established to train candidates for the priesthood. Trent ordered each diocese to have one.
Jesuits
The Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola and approved in 1540, known for education, missions and obedience to the pope.
Roman Catechism
A catechism for parish priests, issued in 1566 by order of Trent, which set out the teaching of the council.

Background

Many Catholics had called for a general council long before Luther. After years of delay, partly caused by politics and war, Pope Paul III opened the council at Trent in December 1545. It met in three periods: 1545 to 1547, 1551 to 1552 and 1562 to 1563. Protestants were invited but did not take a full part, and the council’s decisions were framed without them. It closed in December 1563 under Pope Pius IV. The attendance was modest, mostly Italian and Spanish bishops, though French and German bishops took part in the last period.

The council had two aims: to define Catholic doctrine against Protestant teaching and to reform abuses, such as bishops who did not live in their dioceses and priests who were poorly trained. The decrees were later confirmed by the pope and applied across much of Catholic Europe, though some governments accepted them slowly.

The council did not appear in a vacuum. Reform movements such as those of Spanish Cardinal Ximenes and Italian groups like the Oratory of Divine Love existed earlier, and some historians argue that Trent gathered and extended reforms already under way.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Scripture and tradition

In 1546, the council taught that the Gospel is contained in written books and unwritten traditions that came from Christ or the apostles, and it listed the books of the Old and New Testaments, including those that Protestants set aside as apocryphal. It declared the Latin Vulgate authentic for public readings and disputations, which did not forbid the study of the original languages. Theologians still debate whether Trent meant two sources of revelation or one source with two ways of passing it on. The Second Vatican Council later described Scripture and tradition as flowing from a single divine source.

Step 2: Original sin and justification

The decrees on original sin (1546) and justification (1547) were among the most carefully drawn. As described in the previous lesson, Trent taught that justification begins by God’s grace, is received through faith and includes a renewal of the soul. It rejected the idea that one could be justified by works without grace, and also the idea of justification by faith understood as mere confidence. It taught that the justified can grow in righteousness and fall by serious sin. Many Protestants believe that Trent rejected the gospel, while many Catholics say that it taught what Luther was asking for in different words.

Step 3: The sacraments and the Mass

Trent defined that there are seven sacraments: baptism, confirmation, the Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, orders and marriage. It affirmed that they confer grace by the act performed, provided the recipient does not put up an obstacle, and it defended the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist with the term transubstantiation. It also taught that the Mass is a true sacrifice, in which the one sacrifice of Calvary is made present, not repeated. It defended purgatory, prayers for the dead, the veneration of saints and the proper use of images, while condemning abuses in the sale of indulgences.

These teachings were the main points of conflict with Protestants. The council also permitted communion in one kind, the bread alone, for the laity, while allowing exceptions, a decision later reversed in practice after Vatican II.

Step 4: Reform of clergy and church life

The reform decrees required bishops to live in their dioceses, to preach and to visit their parishes. They required each diocese to found a seminary for priests, which transformed clerical training. They restricted the holding of several church offices at once and set standards for the conduct of clergy. A Roman Catechism for parish priests came out in 1566, a revised Breviary in 1568 and the Roman Missal in 1570, which gave the Mass a standard form for most of the Latin church.

The practical effect was slow but real. It took decades for the decrees to reach parishes, and the quality of local clergy rose gradually.

Step 5: New energies and difficult sides

The age produced new orders and saints. Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuits, whose schools and missions spread across Europe, Asia and the Americas. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross renewed the Carmelites and wrote classics of mystical prayer. Charles Borromeo, archbishop of Milan, became a model of the reforming bishop. Catholic missionaries traveled widely, with complicated relations to colonial power that historians study closely.

The period also had harsher features: the Roman Inquisition, founded in 1542, the Index of Forbidden Books, and wars of religion in which Catholics and Protestants killed each other. Historians debate how far to see these as essential to Catholic Reform or as products of an age of conflict common to all sides.

  1. Why might a church define its teaching more sharply after a challenge?
  2. What is the difference between one source with two channels and two sources?
  3. What would it take for Catholics and Protestants to read Trent’s decree on justification together?
  4. How important is training for the clergy in the life of a church?
  5. Is Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reform the better name? What does each emphasize?
  6. How should the harsher features of the period be remembered?

Examples

A seminary in a diocese

Before Trent, a candidate for the priesthood might learn by serving an older priest, with little formal study. After Trent, bishops opened seminaries where candidates lived together, studied and prayed. Over generations, the education of priests improved.

A bishop in residence

Some sixteenth century bishops held several dioceses and visited none. Trent required residence, preaching and visitation. Carlo Borromeo, who walked his diocese of Milan, was a model of what that looked like.

A standard Mass

In 1570, Pope Pius V issued the Roman Missal, which was to be used throughout the Latin church, except where a rite had been in use for over two hundred years. For centuries, this form was the Mass most Western Catholics knew.

Different perspectives

Catholic

The Catholic Church counts Trent as an ecumenical council whose doctrinal decrees are binding and whose reforms renewed the church. Since Vatican II, Catholic theologians have reread Trent in its historical setting and have stressed its aim of defending grace and the sacraments, not of attacking persons.

Protestant

Protestant confessions rejected parts of Trent, and Martin Chemnitz, a Lutheran, wrote a long Examination of the council. Reformed and Lutheran churches object to its teaching on merit, the Mass as sacrifice and the authority of tradition. Modern ecumenical dialogues have shown more agreement on justification than the sixteenth century debates suggested.

Orthodox

Orthodox theologians view Trent as a Western council with which they have no part. They find some of its decisions, such as on purgatory and the Filioque, foreign, and they often see its legal framing of grace as typical of the West, though they share some of its concerns.

Scholarly views

Historians such as John O’Malley have argued for using Catholic Reform, Early Modern Catholicism or similar labels, in order to include both response and renewal. Others keep Counter-Reformation for the polemical and political aspects. They also discuss how far Trent’s decrees changed local practice.

Why it matters

Trent shaped Catholic life for four centuries, and to some degree still does, in its seminaries, catechisms and sacramental teaching. It also fixed the points of dispute that Protestants and Catholics have argued about since. A student who reads Trent in its own words, as the course invites, will find a more careful text than its reputation suggests.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Trent taught that people earn salvation by works.

Correction: It taught that justification begins with God’s grace and cannot be merited beforehand. It also taught that good works done in grace are meritorious in a sense that it said was itself a gift.

Misunderstanding: Trent banned Bible reading by lay people.

Correction: Trent did not issue such a ban. Some local rules restricted vernacular Bibles, and the Index later did. The council’s decree asked for preaching and instruction from Scripture.

Misunderstanding: The Counter-Reformation was only a reaction.

Correction: Many reforms, orders and mystics began before or independently of the Protestant challenge, and historians use the term Catholic Reform to mark that.

Misunderstanding: Trent was a gathering of the whole Christian world.

Correction: Protestants did not take part in a meaningful way, Orthodox churches were absent, and attendance was mostly Italian and Spanish.

Knowledge check

When did Trent meet, and why?

Trent met in three periods between 1545 and 1563, called by Pope Paul III. It aimed to define Catholic doctrine in response to Protestant teachings and to reform abuses among clergy. Protestants did not take part in a meaningful way, and its decrees were applied gradually across Catholic Europe.

What did Trent say about the sacraments and the Mass?

It defined seven sacraments that confer grace, taught the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist with the term transubstantiation, and taught that the Mass is a true sacrifice in which the one sacrifice of Calvary is made present. It also defended purgatory, prayers for the dead and the veneration of saints.

What were the main reforms for clergy?

Bishops were required to reside in their dioceses, preach and visit parishes. Each diocese was to have a seminary for training priests. Holding multiple offices was restricted. The Roman Catechism, a revised Breviary and the Roman Missal gave priests common texts.

Why do historians debate the term Counter-Reformation?

The term suggests that Catholic change was mainly a reaction to Protestants. Many historians point to reforms, orders and mystics that began earlier, and prefer Catholic Reform or similar labels, while others keep Counter-Reformation for the polemical and political aspects of the age.

Think it through

  1. What does it mean for a church to say what it believes in response to criticism?
  2. Why might better training of clergy affect a church more than a new definition?
  3. How do you respond to the idea that many reforms began before the Reformation?
  4. How would a Protestant and a Catholic read the same paragraph of Trent differently?

Independent assignment

Reading Trent in its own words

Read the opening chapters of the Decree on Justification (Session 6) in the library. In your notebook, summarize each of the first six chapters in one sentence, then write 200 words on where you think a Lutheran would agree and disagree. Aim for 350 to 500 words.

Further study