John O'Malley sets a clear goal for this very readable book: to provide an introduction to the Council of Trent (1545–1563), and to furnish a “framework” (12) for understanding it. Both the long struggle to convoke a council, and what happened when it finally met at Trent, as well as what did not happen over that eighteen year period, are the focus of this study, suitable for use with undergraduate students as well as with more advanced students. Though O'Malley briefly mentions the abundance of recent studies of reception and implementation of Trent, he devotes relatively little attention to this important aspect of the Council.
One thing O'Malley does very well indeed is make the essential content and arguments of the massive study of Trent by Hubert Jedin—published in German over fifty years ago and only partly translated—available to an English-language readership. For this reason alone, the book is well worth purchasing, and its price is actually quite modest for a significant, hardcover book. Jedin worked within a tradition of institutional history, one focused on popes, bishops, monarchs, and also on religious orders. It is an approach that revealed much about the Church's past, but also one that ignored or occluded much else. Few laypersons, other than heads of state, got any attention from this vantage point.
O'Malley devotes much attention to what Trent did and did not do, and to its successes and failures. He points out the narrowness of the “Eurocentric” (274) orientation of the Council, and he is not hesitant to point out the Council's silences on issues of enormous import for the Catholic Church in the 1500s and beyond, especially missions to the Americas, Asia, and most of the non-European world. Trent thought of women religious as cloistered nuns only, and thus considered reform of women religious to mean getting them to respect strict enclosure. On marriage Trent required witnesses for a valid marriage, and insisted on the free consent of the spouses. Though Trent articulated qualifications for a candidate for episcopal appointment, it left in place a situation in which most bishops were nominated by monarchs or elected by cathedral chapters. As for the papacy, O'Malley makes clear the credit due to Pope Paul III (r. 1534–1549) who at long last was successful in convoking a council; it was also Paul III who succeeded in steering it away from any condemnations by name of reformers such as Martin Luther (thus making Trent somewhat less problematic than it might otherwise be for later ecumenical dialogue). In the documents it produced, Trent actually had little to say about the papacy, despite relentless Protestant criticism, because Catholic theologians, bishops, and monarchs could not agree on the extent of papal authority in governance of the Church or as final arbiter of doctrine. Though Trent asked Pope Pius IV (r. 1559–1565) for his approval of all of the Council's documents, an approval which he gave, the relationship between a pope and a council remained a sensitive, unresolved matter. And regardless of claims made in later centuries, the Council did not mandate Mass in Latin only.
Of the periods of the Council (1545–1547, 1551–1552, and 1562–1563), the final one was by far the best attended and the most international, in part because French bishops previously absent were now present. They were concerned not so much with Martin Luther's influence as with John Calvin's, and especially with outbreak of civil war in France, and with Calvinist iconoclasm and attacks (verbal and other) on the Mass and the Eucharist that went well beyond anything the relatively conservative Luther had ever pursued. O'Malley argues persuasively that Trent's decisions in 1562–1563 were heavily influenced by the French delegation and earlier (failed) efforts at the colloquy of Poissy to reach some agreement between French Calvinists and Catholics.
Many historians emphasize the great significance of Trent for Catholic beliefs and practices, for some four hundred years after its 1563 conclusion all the way to the eve of Vatican II. Leaving the long-term consequences of the Council to other scholars, O'Malley highlights rather how the Council faced almost endless difficulties, from opposition by various heads of state, to war, to reluctance of non-Italian bishops to attend, to shortage of lodging in the rather small town of Trent, with its excessive cold or heat, to fear of and actual outbreaks of contagious, life-threatening diseases. The Council “lurched from major crisis to major crisis” (248), including the great difficulty of the Council Fathers coming to something like unanimous agreement on hotly debated issues, above all that of the nature of the obligation of bishops to reside in their dioceses. O'Malley shows clearly how on this and other controversial matters, it was Giovanni Morone, chief legate of Pius IV, who deftly steered Trent to its conclusion.
While O'Malley points out that in the way of proceeding adopted at Trent, “theologians played . . . an indispensable role . . . and were fully integrated into the council's functioning” (85), he does not dwell on the theological issues that were under discussion. Thus largely missing from this book is close examination of the theological substance of the debates at Trent, and of the theological options taken in the canons and decrees ultimately adopted. Yet this lacuna should in no way impede one from reading and profiting from this book, one that makes what could seem opaque or inaccessible topics lucid, accessible, and engaging. A brief, but very useful index also adds to the value of this work.
