5.2: The Inquisition and the Council of Trent

Pope Paul III (r. 1534 – 1549) launched the "hardline" movement of the Catholic Reformation. In 1536, a report concluded that there were numerous abuses within the Church that had to be corrected (e.g. the lack of education of the clergy, the practice of earning incomes from parishes that bishops never visited, etc.), but there was no budging on doctrine. In other words, the essential beliefs and practices of the Church were judged to be entirely correct and Luther (and soon, Calvin) was judged to be entirely wrong.

In 1542, Paul III approved the creation of a permanent branch of the Church devoted to holding Protestantism in check: the Holy Office. Also known as the Inquisition, the organization existed to search out signs of heresy, including Protestantism, in areas under Catholic control. It had the right to subject people to interrogation, torture, and in extreme cases, execution. Inquisitions had been around since the Middle Ages - the first one was in 1184 and targeted a heretical movement in southern France - but they had always been short-term responses to heresy. Under Paul III, the Inquisition became a permanent part of the Church.

Subsequent popes focused on re-emphasizing orthodoxy and combating heresy. Paul IV (r. 1555 – 1559) created the “Index” of forbidden books that would go on to form the basis of royal censorship in all Catholic countries for the next two centuries. He also enforced the stance that the Bible was not to be translated into vernacular languages but had to remain in Latin. This action rejected the Protestant practice of translating the Bible into everyday language for Christians to read and interpret themselves. According to Catholic belief, the Bible had to remain in Latin because only trained priests had the knowledge and authority to interpret it for laypeople. Laypeople, left to their own devices, would simply get the Bible’s message wrong and endanger their souls in the process.

Paul III, Paul IV, and Pius IV oversaw an ongoing series of meetings, the Council of Trent, that took place periodically between 1545 – 1563. There, the selling of indulgences, the importance of good works in salvation, the spiritual necessity of the sacraments, etc. were debated. Although initially organized to reconcile, at least in part, with Protestantism, the Council reaffirmed almost all of the controversial parts of church doctrine and disputed articles of faith. The major exception was that the cardinals and bishops banned the sale of indulgences in the future. (The Church still issued them, but they were no longer simply sold for cash). Emperor Charles V had earnestly hoped that the Church would give ground on some of the doctrinal issues and thereby win back Protestants in his lands. He even tried to prevent Pope Paul IV from taking office because the latter was so intransigent.

Figure 8.2.1: A depiction of the Council of Trent (in the background) painted in 1588, when wars between Protestants and Catholics were raging.

The Council of Trent did propose one monumental change to the Church. Henceforth, priests would be formally trained for the job. Soon, the Church organized and funded seminaries, colleges with the express purpose of training new priests. All priests would acquire a strong scholastic and humanistic education, fluency in Latin, and a deep understanding of the Bible and the writings of major Christian thinkers. While abuses of power and moral laxness were not entirely eliminated from the Church, priests were now supposed to be experts in Christian theology.