Council of Trent
- When
- 1545–1563 AD
- Where
- Trent
- Kind
- Council
Rome's answer to the Reformation: it defined justification, the sacraments and the canon, and reformed clerical discipline.
Trent sat in three widely separated periods over eighteen years and did two things at once. It defined Catholic teaching against the Reformation — on scripture and tradition together, on justification as involving a real change in the person and not only a verdict, on the seven sacraments, and on the canon including the deuterocanon — with the deliberate effect that the disputed questions could no longer be left open. And it reformed the institution: seminaries in every diocese, bishops required to reside, preaching required, and the abuses over indulgences that had started the whole argument abolished. The shape it gave Catholicism lasted until the Second Vatican Council four centuries later.
Bodies it bears on
Party to it
Who stands here
- Ignatius of Loyola
1491–1556
The Society he founded became the instrument of its reforms
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.