Trent and Beyond

Michela Catto, Adriano Prosperi

"For centuries, the Council of Trent has been studied as a fundamental episode in European history wherein doctrinal and institutional unity was lost. Although the Council decrees nowhere refer to the contexts of the peoples met by Christopher Columbus, nor to the Cathay regions rediscovered by missionaries, nor to their religions, their superstitions or their political systems, the Council was nonetheless a global event. The Roman Church, which lost doctrinal control of the considerable part of Europe captured by different forms of Protestantism, imposed itself upon its followers through the application of conciliar decrees. Freed of its exclusively European perspective it opened up to cultures of the rest of the world. The customs and traditions thus encountered, the relationships with political authorities, possibilities for the construction of a new Christianity offered by New...