Council of Trent

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Council of Trent
Council of Trent, painting in the Museo del Palazzo del Buonconsiglio, Trento
Date	13 December 1545 – 4 December 1563
Accepted by	Catholic Church
Previous council	Fifth Council of the Lateran (1512–1517)
Next council	First Vatican Council (1869–1870)
Convoked by	Paul III
President	Paul III Julius III Pius IV
Attendance	about 255 during the final sessions
Topics	Protestantism Counter-Reformation
Documents and statements	Seventeen dogmatic decrees covering then-disputed aspects of Catholic religion
Chronological list of ecumenical councils

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Faith, or The Church Triumphant (1665), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
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Part of a series on the
Ecumenical councils of the Catholic Church
Renaissance depiction of the Council of Trent
4th–5th centuries
Nicaea I (325) Constantinople I (381) Ephesus (431) Chalcedon (451)
6th–9th centuries
Constantinople II (553) Constantinople III (680–681) Nicaea II (797) Constantinople IV (869–870)
12th–14th centuries
Lateran I (1123) Lateran II (1139) Lateran III (1179) Lateran IV (1215) Lyon I (1245) Lyon II (1274) Vienne (1311–12)
15th–16th centuries
Constance (1414–18) Basel–Ferrara–Florence (1431–42) Lateran V (1512–17) Trent (1545–63)
19th–20th centuries
Vatican I (1869–70) Vatican II (1962–65)
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The Council of Trent (Latin: Concilium Tridentinum), held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy, was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church.^[1] Prompted by the Protestant Reformation at the time, it has been described as the embodiment of the Counter-Reformation.^[2][3]

The Council issued key statements and clarifications of the Church's doctrine and teachings, including scripture, the biblical canon, sacred tradition, original sin, justification, salvation, the sacraments, the Mass, and the veneration of saints^[4] and also issued condemnations of what it defined to be heresies committed by proponents of Protestantism. The consequences of the Council were also significant with regard to the Church's liturgy and censorship.

The Council met for twenty-five sessions between 13 December 1545 and 4 December 1563.^[5] Pope Paul III, who convoked the Council, oversaw the first eight sessions (1545–47), while the twelfth to sixteenth sessions (1551–52) were overseen by Pope Julius III and the seventeenth to twenty-fifth sessions (1562–63) by Pope Pius IV. More than three hundred years passed until the next ecumenical council, the First Vatican Council, was convened in 1869.