Trent: What Happened at the Council - Hardcover

O'Malley, John W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674066979 ISBN 13: 9780674066977

Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press, 2013

Synopsis

The Council of Trent (1545–1563), the Catholic Church’s attempt to put its house in order in response to the Protestant Reformation, has long been praised and blamed for things it never did. Now, in this first full one-volume history in modern times, John W. O’Malley brings to life the volatile issues that pushed several Holy Roman emperors, kings and queens of France, and five popes―and all of Europe with them―repeatedly to the brink of disaster.

During the council’s eighteen years, war and threat of war among the key players, as well as the Ottoman Turks’ onslaught against Christendom, turned the council into a perilous enterprise. Its leaders declined to make a pronouncement on war against infidels, but Trent’s most glaring and ironic silence was on the authority of the papacy itself. The popes, who reigned as Italian monarchs while serving as pastors, did everything in their power to keep papal reform out of the council’s hands―and their power was considerable. O’Malley shows how the council pursued its contentious parallel agenda of reforming the Church while simultaneously asserting Catholic doctrine.

Like What Happened at Vatican II, O’Malley’s Trent: What Happened at the Council strips mythology from historical truth while providing a clear, concise, and fascinating account of a pivotal episode in Church history. In celebration of the 450th anniversary of the council’s closing, it sets the record straight about the much misunderstood failures and achievements of this critical moment in European history.

About this title

About the Author

John W. O’Malley is University Professor in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University and the author of many books, including Four Cultures of the West, Trent, Vatican I, What Happened at Vatican II, and The First Jesuits (all from Harvard); The First Jesuits has been translated into twelve languages. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a recipient of the Harvard Centennial Medal as well as Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Society for Italian Historical Studies, the Renaissance Society of America, and the American Catholic Historical Association. O’Malley is a member of the Society of Jesus and a Roman Catholic priest.

Review

“John O’Malley is the doyen of historians of the Catholic reformation... His new history of Trent sets out to bring the cold light of historical scrutiny to bear on the legends that surround the council itself and its achievements. There is, astonishingly, no modern study of the Council of Trent in English...[so] O’Malley’s lively one-volume survey is to be welcomed on that score alone. But his scrupulously researched and balanced book is also an intervention in fraught and sometimes acrimonious controversies within the modern Roman Catholic Church... His concern is to deconstruct the myth of Trent and ‘Tridentinism’ as a timeless encapsulation of the unchanging continuities of a Catholicism immune to history. Trent, in his view, was no monolith but a straggling historical event, stretched out over two decades and often at the mercy of the European politics that had delayed its convening until all realistic hope of a reconciliation with Protestantism had passed.”―Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books

“The decrees of Trent would define the Catholic Church for the next four and a half centuries. Understanding what happened at the Council has never been easy, so John O’Malley is to be congratulated for providing this detailed and elegant account of one of the era’s most important and puzzling events... The astonishing thing is that it has taken so long for a scholar to write an excellent short account of this most crucial of events.”―Jonathan Wright, Times Literary Supplement

“Trent: What Happened at the Council is written with the clarity and learning one expects of a Jesuit scholar. Its introduction and epilogue are especially cogent expositions of the basic accomplishments of Trent... The bulk of the book, however, comes across as both fascinating and somewhat disillusioning, as we observe the constant tug of earthly powers in the formulation of spiritual doctrine. There are no angelic doctors, as Thomas Aquinas was called, among the council’s deeply savvy leaders. The dark ascendancy of party politics must, I suspect, be counted one further consequence of Original Sin.”―Michael Dirda, Washington Post

“John O’Malley has done it again. In 2008, he published his splendid What Happened at Vatican II, the best one-volume history of the Second Vatican Council, at least in English. In producing the best one-volume history of the Council of Trent (1545–63), he has rendered equal service to the history of Catholicism... O’Malley’s new history of Trent will be just as influential as his history of Vatican II... Readers of What Happened at Vatican II will enjoy this new conciliar history... In exposing the myths about and elucidating the realities of Trent, O’Malley reconstructs a dramatic event in the history of Catholicism... Anyone interested in the development of the Church’s modern history can now readily engage O’Malley as a guide to what happened not only at Vatican II but also at the Council of Trent.”―Hilmar Pabel, The Tablet

“[O’Malley] has written what is, amazingly, the first one-volume, scholarly narrative history of the council in English... This is a history that is engaged and committed as well as being critical―sometimes searingly so... It is important to remember what actually happened at the council. And that is why this little book, this readable masterpiece of compression, is going to be so indispensable.”―Alec Ryrie, Times Higher Education

“The very considerable achievement of John O’Malley, an immensely learned American Jesuit and academic, is twofold: he strips away these accumulated layers of myth to provide a balanced and convincing account of the Council in its proper historical context; and, more impressively still, he manages to conjure a compelling narrative out of potentially dry-as-dust procedural deliberations and abstruse doctrinal formulations. What emerges most strongly from this account is the sheer unlikeliness of the Council ever having been convened in 1545, and the yet more unlikely circumstance of its successful conclusion 18 years later... O’Malley’s beautifully crafted short account gives readers as much as most of them will need to know about the course and conduct of the Council, while somehow managing to fit in sensitive evaluations of key achievements (the decree on justification and the reform of marriage law) and lively pen portraits of unlikely heroes, such as the can-do papal legate Giovanni Morone, and Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, the debonair aristocrat who was also a serious-minded reformer. The abiding impression is of a more rounded, nuanced and less monolithic Catholicism than the brisk syllable ‘Trent’ usually manages to convey.”―Peter Marshall, Literary Review

“[A] superb new history of the Council of Trent... Thanks to John O’Malley, a veteran Jesuit historian of the Counter-Reformation, we now have a beautifully clear and honest reappraisal of the tangled story of Trent, in all its complexity, paradox, achievement and lost opportunity. It is the first time that English-speaking readers have had this privilege, for all other accounts of Trent have been either too short, or too long for non-specialists... The great impression left by this excellent book is that Trent settled much less than people think.”―Diarmaid MacCulloch, London Review of Books

“Every historian of early modern Christianity that I know would agree: in 1993 John O’Malley, S.J., put us all in his debt with the publication of The First Jesuits. This year he moves us deeper into the red with his new book Trent: What Happened at the Council... It is quite simply the most engaging book on the council that I have read.”―Denis R. Janz, America

“O’Malley gives a shrewdly judged amount of the quotidian details of [the bishops’] debates, the background machinations and theological context, yet never overburdens us with arcane details or allows his account to resemble corporate minutes. Nor does he resile from the inevitable conclusion: the timorous participants, overawed by theological pedantry and fear of papal sanctions, squibbed almost every moral or reform challenge that confronted them during the 18 years of the council’s intermittent activities. The cost to Christendom was enormous... [An] engrossing history.”―John Carmody, The Australian

“Provides a concise yet no less scholarly overview of the ups and downs of this frequently name-checked Council... Trent: What Happened at the Council is written with comfortable, accessible authority and really is a vital and intriguing overview of a Council that still casts such an influence some 450 years later.”―David Gibson, The Catholic Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0674066979
• ISBN 13: 9780674066977
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352