From the Council of Trent to “Tridentinism”

Abstract This chapter describes the emergence of the system called “Tridentinism” following the Council of Trent. The Council incorporated, redefined, and updated the norms of the previous centuries to such an extent that it became preferable to view these norms through the lens of the Council's decrees. The body of Tridentine decrees increasingly edged all previous sources out of ecclesiastical use. Thus, it became obligatory to refer to Trent for solutions to every problem that arose, doctrinal or institutional. As a result, post-Tridentine Catholicism gradually took on a uniformity that nobody would have dared to think possible during the acute phase of the Protestant schism. This “Tridentinism” even managed to penetrate, in important ways, certain parts of the Protestant world.