On December 13, 1545, three legates appointed by the Pope held their public entry into Trent, and the council was formally opened. Paul III's continued desire to conciliate the Emperor was shown by his adherence to Trent as the locality of the council, when the legates again urged the choice of a town on Italian soil. Yet the very Bishop of Trent, Cardinal Madruccio, was a prince of the Empire, and by descent attached to the house of Austria, whose interests he consistently represented during the first series of sessions. The papal legates, with whose control over the council the Emperor at the outset showed no intention of interfering, typified the different elements in the ecclesiastical policy of Paul III. The presiding legate, Cardinal del Monte--afterward Pope Julius III--while notable neither for religious zeal nor for wise self-control, was a thoroughgoing supporter of the interests of the Curia. Cardinal Cervino, afterward Pope Marcellus II, a prelate of blameless life, was animated by those ideas of ecclesiastical reform of which Pope Paul had encouraged the open expression; but he was more especially eager for the extirpation of heresy, and not over-scrupulous in the choice of means for reaching his ends. Lastly, Cardinal Pole's[54] presence at Trent, in which some have seen a mere papal ruse, must have surrounded the early proceedings of the council with a hopeful glamour in the eyes of those who, like himself, expected from it the reunion as well as the reinvigoration of Western Christendom. Nothing, as had probably been foreseen at Rome, could have better facilitated the immediate establishment of the ascendency in the council of the papal policy than the composition of its opening meeting. Of the thirty-four ecclesiastics present, only five were Spanish and two French bishops, and no German bishop had crossed the Alps. Nor had any secular power except the Emperor and King Ferdinand sent their ambassadors. The business machinery of the council, which the legates lost no time in getting into order, was altogether in favor of their influence as managers. Learned doctors, without being, as in former councils, allowed to take part in the debates, prepared the work of the three committees or congregations, who in their turn brought it up for discussion to the general congregations.