Council of Trent: a web of crises and decrees on the footsteps of an Ecclesia semper reformanda

Abstract

This article looks for scanning the History of the Council of Trent (1545-1563) emphatically in what concerns to the antecedents that went through its path and culminate in it. Under the key of an “Ecclesia semper reformanda” we look for understanding the internal reformations in the Church of that age not as private diligences to the Council's motion, as if the Council was the great awakener of a monolithic Church to the needs of an intrareformation, but, despite this, aiming the history of the Council, often, in that time of crisis in Latin Church, at that context of the rise and expansion of Protestantism, it's possible to see, in Church's breast, a wish of ecclesiastical, pastoral and dogmatic reformation, renovation and updating that, ulteriorly, was already largely disseminated in practices and discussions of the Church even before the very Council. Indeed, we have discovered a movement of internal and previous reformation that converged to Trent and greatly influenced it, so we say that almost there was nothing new in the Council, any pastoral or dogmatic guideline exclusive and genuinely tridentine. Trent's just the apex, the vertex, so to speak, the crown of intrareformist movement within the Church as we shall show in our research, drawing Council's history from long before, unveiling what came previously about the discussions and directions taken.