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Another agency in the Counter Reformation was the great Church Council
summoned by Pope Paul III. The council met at Trent, on the borders of
Germany and Italy. It continued, with intermissions, for nearly twenty
years. The Protestants, though invited to participate, did not attend, and
hence nothing could be done to bring them back within the Roman Catholic
fold. This was the last general council of the Church for over three
hundred years. [22]
WORK OF THE COUNCIL
The Council of Trent made no essential changes in the Roman Catholic
doctrines, which remained as St. Thomas Aquinas [23] and other theologians
had set them forth in the Middle Ages. In opposition to the Protestant
view, it declared that the tradition of the Church possessed equal
authority with the Bible. It reaffirmed the supremacy of the pope over
Christendom. The council also passed important decrees forbidding the sale
of ecclesiastical offices and requiring bishops and other prelates to
attend strictly to their duties. Since the Council of Trent the Roman
Church has been distinctly a religious organization, instead of both a
secular and religious body, as was the Church in the Middle Ages. [24]
THE INDEX
The council, before adjourning, authorized the pope to draw up a list, or
Index, of works which Roman Catholics might not read. This action did not
form an innovation. The Church from an early day had condemned and
destroyed heretical writings. However, the invention of printing, by
giving greater currency to new and dangerous ideas, increased the
necessity for the regulation of thought. The "Index of Prohibited Books"
still exists, and additions to the list are made from time to time. It was
matched by the strict censorship of printing long maintained in Protestant
countries.
THE INQUISITION
Still another agency of the Counter Reformation consisted of the
Inquisition. This was a system of church courts for the discovery and
punishment of heretics. Such courts had been set up in the Middle Ages,
for instance, to suppress the Albigensian heresy. After the Council of
Trent they redoubled their activity, especially in Italy, the Netherlands,
and Spain.
INFLUENCE OF THE INQUISITION
The Inquisition probably contributed to the disappearance of Protestantism
in Italy. In the Netherlands, where it worked with great severity, it only
aroused exasperation and hatred and helped to provoke a successful revolt
of the Dutch people. The Spaniards, on the other hand, approved of the
methods of the Inquisition and welcomed its extermination of Moors and
Jews, as well as Protestant heretics. The Spanish Inquisition was not
abolished till the nineteenth century.
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