The Council of Trent defended matrimony as a sacrament, reaffirming traditional Catholic teachings, butalso putting an end to future clandestinemarriages by imposing conditions for the marriage contract to be valid, assuring the free consent of the spouses, making it public, bringing the rite under the control of the clergy, and keeping an official record of the ceremony. It forbade divorce while not condemning the practices of the Orthodox.

The chapter on sacraments in general and baptism and confirmation in particular, follows the formulation of the decree of the seventh session, from the list of heretical propositions idenifying their authors and meanings, to the conciliar discussions of them, to the draft decrees, and their final wording. It points to misunderstanidngs and polemical stances that ecumenical dialogue can help to bridge.

In the late medieval and early modern period, pastoral care was mostly provided outside of the parochial setting, through organizations like confraternities and under the spiritual guidance of mendicant clergy. The Council of Trent did not seek to change what constituted pastoral care, but rather to center devotion in the parish, return control to the secular clergy, and standardize the pastoral care available to all Catholics.

The introductory chapter surveys the events that led to the convocation of the Council of Trent and summarizes what was accomplished at each of its twenty-five sessions. It also recounts how its was formally approved, its decrees published, their interpretation and implementation entrusted to the Congregation of the Council, and its legislation promulgated by provincial councils. How the council has been remembered by historians and its records made available is also traced.

The council both followed precedents and created new ways of managing its affairs. It abandoned the “nations” and deputation structures of Konstanz and Basel in favor of classes, particular congregations of “minor theologians,” and congregations of prelate-theologians and of prelate-canonists, while retaining the general congregatons andformal sessions. Papal legates, whose powers increased with time, determined the agenda and presided over the proceedings. An effort is made to determine the numbers and nationalities of the participants for each of the three periods. The reasons for the failed participation of Protestants and Eastern Christians are explored.

The essay chronicles the Protestant objections to images and the Catholic response in the decree “On the invocation, veneration, and relics, of salnts, and on sacred images” of the Council of Trent. Paintings created as ecclesiastical decoration in the wake of the decree in Italy and in the Netherlands are examined.

In the first decades of the sixteenth century, humanists such as Erasmus and the Reformers such as Luther and Calvin subjected to a fierce critique the doctrine and practices of sacramental confession. The sacrament of penance and the hearing of confessions were scheduled for debate in each of the three periods of the council: during the first period in the context of the discussions on justiification and indulgences and in the draft canons on purgatory that were not promulgated; in the second period where the traditional teaching and related practices were affirmed in the doctrinal decree on the most holy sacraments of penance and extreme unction approved at that time; and in the third period where the rushed closure of the council prevented a deeper investigation, resting with a merely jurisdictional treatment of the topic.

The printed difusion of the conciliar decrees had a dogmatic character that assured the circulation of the teaching of the Roman Church, approved by the council and promulated by the pontiff, on the basis of which were updated the penitential summas and manuals of the confessors inherited and revised in the last centuries of the Middle Ages and now revised again.

In the pastoral practice after Trent, the effort to establish a control over the observance of the ecclesiastical precept of an annual confession with its registration in an appropriate book failed. Instead, a new ecclesiastical furnishing, the confessional box, appeared that assured at thesame time the making public and the secrecy of the administration of the sacrament.

This contribution focuses upon the Fourth Session of the Council (1546), discussing the important issue of scripture and tradition(s), the definition of the biblical canon, the authenticity of the Vulgate, next to the question of the interpretation and diffusion of scriptural books. The subsequent, humanist-minded Fifth Session continued dealing with scriptural matters, and decreed lectureships on the scriptures being established in institutions for the education of the clergy, as a precondition for a qualitative Bible-based preaching.

Most of the schools of theology present at the Council of Trent arose after the middle of the thirteenth century and late medieval theology attributed a certain theological authority to these schools. This chapter examines the way in which these schools contributed positively to the development of the council’s doctrinal decrees where there was consensus among them. While the council fathers generally avoided favoring one Catholic school of theology over another, there were occasions when the view of a particular school was rejected. This chapter also examines some of the various schools at Trent, such as Scotism and Thomism, and their prominent members.

The Tridentine Decree on the religious life reflected long-standing ecclesial disaffection and aspirations for reform. The product of a lively conciliar debate, it was neither innovative nor theologically sophisticated but narrowly disciplinary. In the aftermath of the Council, several of its prescriptions concerning male religious went unheeded.