In Portugal and in the Swiss Catholic cantons the decrees were received
without hesitation, as also by the Seigniory of Venice, whose
representatives at Trent had rarely departed from an attitude of studied
moderation, and who now merely safeguarded the rights of the republic.
True to the part recently played by him, the Cardinal of Lorraine, on
his own responsibility, subscribed to the decrees in the name of the
King of France. But the Parliament of Paris was on the alert, and on his
return home the Cardinal had to withdraw in disgrace to Rheims. Neither
the doctrinal decrees of the council nor the disciplinary, which in part
clashed with the customs of the kingdom and the privileges of the
Gallican Church, were ever published in France. The ambassador of Spain,
whose King and prelates had so consistently held out against the closing
of the council, refused his signature till he had received express
instructions. Yet as it was Spain which had hoped and toiled for the
achievement at the council of solid results, so it was here that the
decrees fell on the most grateful soil, when, after considerable
deliberation and delay, their publication at last took place,
accompanied by stringent safeguards as to the rights of the King and the
usages of his subjects (1565). The same course was adopted in the
Italian and Flemish dependencies of the Spanish monarchy.
The disciplinary decrees of the council, on the whole, fell short in
completeness of the doctrinal. But while they consistently maintained
the papal authority and confirmed its formal pretensions, the episcopal
authority, too, was strengthened by them, not only as against the
monastic orders, but in its own moral foundations. More than this, the
whole priesthood, from the Pope downward, benefited by the warnings
that had been administered, by the sacrifices that had been made, and by
the reforms that had been agreed upon. The Church became more united,
less worldly, and more dependent on herself. These results outlasted the
movement known as the Counter-reformation, and should be ignored by no
candid mind.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] Pole became archbishop of Canterbury (1556) and chief adviser to
Queen Mary, under whom he was largely responsible for the persecution of
English Protestants.
[55] The Farnese were an illustrious Italian family. Alessandro Farnese
was Pope Paul III.
[56] Count Carlo Borromeo, Italian cardinal, Archbishop of Milan, was
one of the most noted of the ecclesiastical reformers. He was canonized
in 1610.
PROTESTANT STRUGGLE AGAINST CHARLES V
THE SMALKALDIC WAR
A.D. 1546
EDWARD ARMSTRONG
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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