In the first installment of this series, I noted that, along with the standardization effected by the adoption of the Ordo Missae according to the Roman curia, the variety of liturgical uses for dioceses and religious orders continued in the later medieval period. Calls for greater liturgical unification were heard already before the Protestant Reformation. For instance, in 1513, two hermits of Camaldoli, Paolo Giustiniani and Pietro Quirini, made an appeal to Pope Leo X for Church reform, which included the plea for a unified celebration of the Mass and other rites.¹

As the eminent Church historian Hubert Jedin has shown, at the Council of Trent there was a strong desire for a unified missal and breviary among bishops from Portugal, Italy, and Spain.² Ferdinand I, the successor of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor, sent a list of reform proposals (libellus reformationis), completed on May 20, 1562, to the assembly, in which he asked for the revision of liturgical books and the removal of apocryphal elements, as well as the permission to sing psalms and hymns in German. The emperor’s intervention is significant in that it signals the failure of attempts to reform the liturgy on a local and regional level. Thus, the matter was handed over to the initiative of the general council.

A contrasting voice came from the French representatives at Trent, who in January 1563 presented their libellus reformationis, which included the demand for more extensive use of the vernacular in the Mass and in the administration of the sacraments, but said nothing about a reform of missal or breviary. The French bishops wanted to keep the oversight over liturgical books for themselves rather than relinquish it to the council, let alone to the pope.

Debate on Liturgical Reform

The conciliar debates on the doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass were accompanied by a discussion of concrete steps towards liturgical reform. At a general congregation of the council on July 20, 1562, a commission was instituted to study this question. On August 8, 1562, this commission produced a dossier on liturgical issues, the contents of which can be divided into three broad categories:³

First, there were doctrinal observations. For example, the question was raised whether it was appropriate to refer to the unconsecrated elements of bread and wine as immaculata hostia (“spotless victim”) and calix salutaris (“chalice of salvation”) in the offertory prayers. Likewise, the fittingness of making the sign of the cross over the consecrated species after the words of institution in the Canon of the Mass was proposed for discussion.

Second, some comments reflected the new historical consciousness of Renaissance Humanists, who promoted a return ad fontes, that is, “to the sources” (biblical and patristic) of the Christian faith. There was a call to remove from liturgical books apocryphal material that was clearly not historical. Moreover, priority should be given to the traditional order of the Roman liturgy over forms of private devotion and personal piety, especially in votive Masses. The ideal of the norma patrum (“norm of the fathers”) would later be enshrined in the bull promulgating the Missale Romanum of 1570.

Third, there were denunciations of liturgical malpractice: priests exhibiting signs of greed, a lack of preparation, carelessness in liturgical functions, or disregard for rubrics. Such grievances can be seen as part of the general critique of the state of the clergy and the appeals for renewal, which were widely shared at the time by reformers both Protestant and Catholic. There can be no doubt that such abuses really existed, but it is hard to say how pervasive they really were. Any reformer is inclined to make the picture of the present situation as bleak as possible. Rhetorical emphasis, if not exaggeration, is often used as a tool to advance one’s own reforming agenda.

In late August 1562, the dossier on liturgical reforms was condensed to a brief compendium, which retained the demand for a unified missal and clearly stated the need for standardized rubrics; it also claimed the project of reforming the missal for the agenda of the council itself, so that the local ordinaries would then have a secure foundation for their own particular reform measures.⁴ However, even this shorter text did not make it to the council floor, as there was a concern that focusing on specific aspects of the problem would provoke objections from some fathers, delay the current session, or even threaten its successful conclusion. There was a strong desire for the widest possible consensus, and hence on September 17, 1562, the Doctrine and Canons on the Sacrifice of the Mass was followed by a brief Decree Concerning the Things to be Observed, and to be Avoided, in the Celebration of Mass. The decree warns priests against avarice, idolatry, irreverence, and superstition in matters of divine worship; addresses liturgical abuses in a generic sense; and instructs local ordinaries to exercise oversight and to correct errors—but the document does not mention an actual revision of liturgical books.⁵

The question of liturgical language was debated with remarkable depth, and arguments adduced by Protestant Reformers were taken seriously.⁶ The Decree on the Sacrifice of the Mass contains a carefully worded doctrinal exposition on the subject, stating that it did not seem expedient to the council fathers that the Holy Mass should generally be celebrated in the vernacular. However, they recognized the value of liturgical texts for the instruction of the faithful in a language that was intelligible to them. Therefore, pastors and those entrusted with the care of souls should preach frequently about what is read at Mass, especially on Sundays and feast days. Moreover, canon nine of the same decree declares anathema anyone who says that only the vernacular language must be used in the celebration of Mass; again, the subtle wording of this conciliar text is to be noted.⁷

Papal Responsibility

A new impetus for reform was given when, after the death of the Cardinal legates Ercole Gonzaga and Girolamo Seripando in March 1563, Cardinals Giovanni Morone and Bernardo Navagero were appointed in their stead. The discussion on liturgical books continued over the summer, and in October 1563, Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, on a visit to Rome, arranged for the sending of a manuscript of the Gregorian sacramentary tradition from the Vatican Library to Trent. The Cardinal of Lorraine was not an official legate at the council, but was treated as such by Cardinal Morone, in order to ensure his support for Morone’s energetic reform program. The arrival of the manuscript was a tangible symbol of the desire to prune and revise the existing missal in light of the ancient Roman tradition.⁸ It is very difficult to trace the progress of the conciliar deliberations at this point because of a lack of sources. The prevailing view among the council fathers seems to have been that they were not in a position to undertake the revision of liturgical books themselves.

The council was concluded prematurely on December 4, 1563, because of alarming news about the ill health of Pope Pius IV. In the final session, it was decided that several reform measures, which the council was not able to complete, should be left to the pope, among them the reform of the breviary and of the missal. The previous discussions served to establish two fundamental principles for this work: in the first place, the council fathers supported a unification of the Order of Mass and its rubrics; any celebration of Mass was meant to conform to this general standard. Secondly, there was a broad consensus that the Roman Rite should be pruned of more recent accretions, especially those containing apocryphal material, those reflecting private devotions, and those judged to be superstitious.

Sacred Music

The development of Renaissance culture gave some urgency to the perennial question of discerning criteria for music in the service of the sacred liturgy. Two main issues that had occupied local synods and individual bishops long before Trent emerged in the council’s deliberations: first, the integrity and intelligibility of the text set to music (which was also a general concern of musical humanists in the 16th century), and, second, the use of music from secular contexts in divine worship.⁹ A draft of the Decree Concerning the Things to be Observed, and to be Avoided, in the Celebration of Mass contained a canon that insisted on the comprehensibility of the texts sung at Mass, with a theological emphasis on the priority of the word.¹⁰ However, this text was not included in the final decree, which only offers a very short paragraph on the matter, calling for a clear distinction between sacred and secular music.¹¹

The matter of sacred music was taken up again in the council’s 24th session in 1563, when an attempt was made to ban polyphony from the liturgy, as some prelates, among them Giovanni Morone as Bishop of Modena, had already tried to do in the first half of the 16th century. Among those who strongly opposed such a proposal were Cardinal Otto Truchseß von Waldburg, Bishop of Augsburg, and even Emperor Ferdinand, who had been alerted to the debate at the council and intervened with a letter in August 1563.¹²

Historical scholarship has refuted the story that polyphony was saved when Pope Marcellus II, who reigned for less than a month in 1555, heard Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli, because Palestrina had no influence on the debates about musical reform at the council. As for the Missa Papae Marcelli, it is more likely to see in it a creative response to Trent’s reforming ideas on sacred music.¹³

In the end, the conciliar decrees said as little as possible on sacred music, but its discussion of sacred music gave a strong impulse to local synods and bishops who implemented the council’s program for the reform of ecclesiastical life and discipline. In the years after Trent, the concerns for the intelligibility of the text and for an exclusion of secular music from the liturgy were perceived as being according to the mind of the council. The practical solutions to these problems differed considerably from one place to the other, and this is reflected in the rich variety of polyphonic music at the time.

The next installment of this series will offer an overview of the liturgical reform implemented by the pope and his curia after the Council of Trent and consider especially the Missale Romanum of 1570.

• Click here to see all the published entries in this series.

_{Image Source: AB/Wikimedia Commons. Council of Trent, oil on canvas, around 1770.}

1. Stephen M. Beall has published a revised version of this text with an English translation, which is available at https://marquette.academia.edu/StephenBeall.
2. See Hubert Jedin, “Das Konzil von Trient und die Reform des Römischen Meßbuches,” in Liturgisches Leben 6 (1939), 30–66, at 37–45, and “Das Konzil von Trient und die Reform der liturgischen Bücher,” in Ephemerides Liturgicae 59 (1945), 5–38, at 28–30.
3. Council of Trent, Session XXII, Abusus, qui circa venerandum missae sacrificium evenire solent, partim a patribus deputatis animadversi, partim ex multorum praelatorum dictis et scriptis excerpti (August 8, 1562), in Concilium Tridentinum: Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum Nova Collectio, ed. Societas Goerresiana (Freiburg: Herder, 1901-), vol. VIII, 916–921.
4. Council of Trent, Session XXII, Compendium abusuum circa sacrificium missae (c. August 25, 1562), in Concilium Tridentinum, vol. VIII, 921–924.
5. Council of Trent, Session XXII, Decretum de observandis et evitandis in celebratione missarum (September 17, 1562), in Concilium Tridentinum, vol. VIII, 962–963.
6. See H. A. P. Schmidt. Liturgie et langue vulgaire: Le problème de la langue liturgique chez les premiers Réformateurs et au Concile de Trente, Analecta Gregoriana 53 (Rome: Apud Aedes Unversitatis Gregorianae, 1950), 81–198.
7. Council of Trent, Session XXII, Doctrina et canones de sanctissimo missae sacrificio, cap. 8 and can. 9, in Concilium Tridentinum, vol. VIII, 961 and 962.
8. See Amato Pietro Frutaz, “Contributo alla storia della riforma del Messale promulgato da san Pio V nel 1570,” in Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento: Atti del Convegno di storia della Chiesa in Italia (Bologna, 2-6 sett. 1958), Italia Sacra 2 (Padova; Editrice Antenore, 1960), 187–214, at 188–189.
9. See Craig A. Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” in Journal of the American Musicological Society 55 (2002), 1–37.
10. See Concilium Tridentinum, vol. VIII, 927, and Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” 9.
11. “Let them keep away from the churches compositions in which there is an intermingling of the lascivious or impure, whether by instrument or voice.” Concilium Tridentinum, vol. VIII, 963; English translation in Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” 11.
12. See Monson, “The Council of Trent Revisited,” 13–14.
13. This was suggested by Karl Gustav Fellerer and Moses Hadas, “Church Music and the Council of Trent,” in The Musical Quarterly 39 (1953), 576–594.