Writing the History of the Council of Trent

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Stefan Bauer

Published:

2022

Soon after Paolo Sarpi's Historia del Concilio Tridentino (History of the Council of Trent) was published in London in 1619, it spread through Europe like wildfire.Sarpi (1552Sarpi ( -1623) ) was the first author to offer a comprehensive historical description and interpretation of the Council of Trent, which had convened between 1545 and 1563.1 With this council, the Catholic Church shaped its Counter-Reformation identity; so crucial was it to the development of the Church that the centuries following it have often been labelled 'Tridentine' .2However, Sarpi presented his history of the council as an unmasking of papal intrigue.He accused the papacy of using the council to its own advantage.The popes, he said, had never wanted to convene the council in the first place.When convening it could no longer be avoided due to external pressure, they used it to strengthen their own power.What had originally been a movement that was hostile and threatening to the papacy was thus cleverly turned into an instrument favourable to it.Original ideas of reform, infused with the spirit of the Gospels and Christian antiquity, were cynically choked off or quietly strangled, Sarpi explained.Why was the first history of the Council of Trent published so late, more than fifty years after its closure?This was primarily due to a lack of available documentary sources, partly because contemporary historians did not immediately recognise the secular importance of the event, and partly because it b…

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