A great debate took place on Jan. 18th, which revealed to the Legate that probably the majority of the delegates did not favour his proposed course of procedure. Madruzzo, the eloquent Prince Bishop of Trent, and a Cardinal, made a long speech, in which he asserted that the Council should not rashly take for granted that the Lutherans were irreconcilable. They ought to acknowledge frankly that the corrupt morals of the mediæval clergy had done much to cause dissatisfaction and to justify revolt. Let them therefore assume that these evils for which the Church was responsible had produced the schism. Let them invite the Protestants to come among them as brethren. Let them show to those men, who had no doubt erred in doctrine, that the Catholic Church was sincerely anxious to reform the abounding evils in life and morals, and, with this fraternal bond between them, let them reason amicably together about the doctrinal differences which now separated them. The eloquent and large-minded Cardinal condensed the recommendations in his speech in one sentence: “Cum corrupti mores ecclesiasticorum dederint occasionem Lutheranis confingendi falsa dogmata, sublata causa, facilius tolletur effectus; subdens optimum fore, si protestantes ipsos amicabiliter et fraterne literis invitaremus, ut ipsi quoque ad synodum venirent, et se etiam reformari paterentur.”[701] We are told that this speech raised great enthusiasm among the delegates, and that the Legates had some difficulty in preventing its proposal from being universally accepted. At the most they were able to prevent any definite conclusion being come to about the procedure at the close of the sitting. Cervini saw that he could not get his way adopted. He agreed that proposals for reform and for the codification of doctrine should be discussed simultaneously, his knowledge of theological nature telling him that if he once got so many divines engaged in doctrinal discussions two things would surely follow: their eagerness would make them neglect everything else, and their polemical instincts would carry them beyond the point where a conciliation of the Protestants required them to come to a halt. So it happened. The Council found itself committed to a codification and definition of Catholic doctrine. The suggestion of the Bishop of Feltre (Thomas Campeggio) was adopted, that the discussion of doctrines and the proposals for reform should be discussed by two separate Commissions, whose reports should come before the Synod alternately. The Legates obtained a large majority for this course, and the protest of Madruzzo was unavailing.
The decision to attack the question of reform was very unacceptable to the Pope. He went so far as to ask the Legates to get it rescinded; but that was impossible, and he had to content himself with the assurances of Cervini that no real harm would come of it.
This important question being settled, the Council decided upon the details of procedure. The whole Synod was divided into three divisions or Commissions, to each of which allotted work was given. Each question was first of all to be prepared for the section by theologians and canonists, then discussed in the special Commission to which it had been entrusted. If approved there, it was to be brought before a general Congregation of the whole Synod for discussion. If it passed this scrutiny, it was to be promulgated in a solemn session of the Council.
§ 3. Restatement of Doctrines.
It ought to be said, before describing the doctrinal labours of the Council, that the work done at Trent was not to give Conciliar sanction to the whole mass of mediæval doctrinal tradition. There was a thorough revision of doctrinal positions in which a great deal of theology which had been current during the later Middle Ages was verbally rejected, and the rejection was most apparent in that Scotist theology which had been popular before the Reformation, and which had been most strongly attacked by Luther. The Scotist theology, with its theological scepticism, was largely repudiated in name at least—whether its spirit was banished is another question which has to be discussed later. A great many influences unknown during the later Middle Ages pressed consciously and unconsciously upon the divines assembled at Trent and coloured their dogmatic work. Although the avowed intention of the theologians there was to defeat both Humanism and the Reformation, they could not avoid being influenced by both movements. Humanism had led many of them to study the earlier Church Fathers, and they could not escape Augustine in doing so. They were led to him by many paths. The Dominican theologians had begun, quite independently of the Reformation, to study the great theologian of their Order, and Thomas had led them back to Augustine. The Reformation had laid stress on the doctrines of sin, of justification, and of predestination, and had therefore awakened a new interest in them and consequently in Augustine. The New Thomism, with Augustinianism behind it, was a feature of the times, and was the strongest influence at work among the theologians who assembled at Trent. It could not fail to make their doctrinal results take a very different form from the theology which Luther was taught by John Nathin in the Erfurt convent. Christian Mysticism, too, had its revival, especially in Spain and in Italy, and among some of the reconstructed monastic orders. If it had small influence on the doctrines, it worked for a more spiritual conception of the Church. What has been called Curialism, the theory of the omnipotence of the Pope in all things connected with the Church’s life, practice, and beliefs, was also a potent factor with some of the assembled fathers. But above all things the theologians who met at Trent were influenced by the thought and fact of the Lutheran Reformation. This is apparent in the order in which they discussed theological questions, in the subjects they selected and in those they omitted. All these things help us to understand how the theology of the Council of Trent was something peculiar, something by itself, and different both from what may be vaguely called mediæval theology and from that of the modern Church of Rome.[702]
The Council, in its third session, laid the basis of its doctrinal work by reaffirming the Niceo-Constantinopolitan Creed with the filioque clause added, and significantly called it: Symbolum fidei quo sancta ecclesia Romana utitur. This done, it was ready to proceed with the codification and definition of doctrines.
On the 18th of April 1546, the Commission which had to do with the preparation of the subject reported, and the Council proceeded to discuss the sources of theological knowledge or the Rule of Faith. The influence of the Reformation is clearly seen not merely in the priority assigned to this subject, but also in the statement that the “purity of the Gospel” is involved in the decision come to. The opposition to Protestantism was made emphatic by the Council declaring these four things:
It accepted as canonical all the books contained in the Alexandrine Canon (the Septuagint), and therefore the Apocrypha of the Old Testament, and did so heedless of the fact that the editor of the Vulgate (afterwards pronounced authoritative), Jerome, had thought very little of the Apocrypha. The Reformers, in their desire to go back to the earliest and purest sources, had pronounced in favour of the Hebrew Canon; the Council, in spite of Jerome, accepted the common mediæval tradition.
It declared that in addition to the books of Holy Scripture, it “receives with an equal feeling of piety and reverence the traditions, whether relating to faith or to morals, dictated either orally by Christ or by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in continuous succession within the Catholic Church.”[703] The practical effect of this declaration, something entirely novel, was to assert that there was within the Church an infallibly correct mode of interpreting Scripture, and to give the ecclesiastical authorities (whoever they might be) the means of warding off any Protestant attack based upon Holy Scripture alone. The Council were careful to avoid stating who were the guardians of this dogmatic tradition, but in the end it led by easily traced steps to the declaration of Pope Pius IX.: Io sono la tradizione, and placed a decision of a Pope speaking ex cathedra on a level with the Word of God.
It proclaimed that the Vulgate version contained the authoritative text of Holy Scripture. This was also new, and, moreover, in violent opposition to the best usages of the mediæval Church. It cast aside as worse than useless the whole scholarship of the Renaissance both within and outside of the mediæval Church, and, on pretence of consecrating a text of Holy Scripture, reduced it to the state of a mummy, lifeless and unfruitful.[704]