Spain and the Council of Trent

Trent, like many of its predecessors, was not an “easy” Council. Alongside disruptive political, personality, and procedural obstacles there were bitter, substantive disputes over what the actual “meat” of its labors must be and in what kind of language its decisions should be expressed. Although it was already at the First Session (1545-1547) that the crucial determination to deal with both doctrine and reform together was taken, and that the supporters of Scholasticism and Humanism established their twin, indispensable rights to participate in accomplishing this work, there were constant clashes over exactly what this would entail throughout the Second (1551-1552) and especially the Third (1562-1563) Sessions. 

Spaniards were central to every aspect of these developments. Educators from Salamanca like the Dominicans Domingo de Soto (1494-1560) and Melchior Cano (1509-1560) were at times present and very vocal. So were Spanish members of the new Society of Jesus, most importantly Alfonso Salmerón (1515-1585) and Diego Lainez (1512-1565), the new order’s second General. Learned diplomats such as Diego Hurtado de Mendoza (1503-1575) played their role also. Reforming bishops like Diego de Alaba y Esquivel of Astorgas, Avila, and then Cordoba (d. 1562), Bishop Martin Perez de Ayala (1504-1566) of Gaudix, Segovia, and then Valencia, and, most importantly, Pedro Guerrero Logroño Mendoza of Granada (1501-1576), president of the Spanish delegation in 1551-1552 and 1562-1563, were crucial to the proceedings. One physically absent but very clear “presence” was St. Juan of Avila (1499- 1569), the “Apostle of Andalusia,” whose reform memorials, to be discussed below, were to be pressed by Guerrero with great vigor.

Reforming Spanish bishops, educators, and preachers, were very much aware of the problems afflicting the Universal Church in general, and the Papal Court in particular, for decades before the opening of the Council. When the First Session opened, Spanish delegates were immediately to encounter a great deal of “push back” from the zelanti, Roman Curia and curial-minded bishops, Italians for the most part, who considered themselves to be the sole stalwart defenders of Catholic “tradition”. Spaniards argued that these “spoilers” confused what were deeply rooted, abusive, “customary” opinions and practices with Sacred Tradition as such. Catholics critical of existing abuses were, in their minds, at the very least, the kind of deluded, destructive zealots that centuries of bureaucratic papal prudence and pragmatism had sought to tame. At worst, they were themselves the true problem of the day, unnecessarily aggravating a Protestant tempest-in-a-teapot that could be quelled through the tried laws and methods of practical professionals.

Guerrero, who had been so eager to cooperate with his fellow Council Fathers at the Second Session that one of the papal legates said that nothing useful could have ben accomplished without him, had nevertheless come away disillusioned by the obstructionism he had encountered there. When he left to head the Spanish Delegation once again at the Third Session in 1561, he was a much more angry man, attacked by the Italians as being “harder and more obstinate than a rock”. (Coleman, p. 145). Bishop Gonzalez de Mendoza of Salamanca claimed “the Italians hate Guerrero so much that upon hearing that he wants one thing, they do the contrary” (Ibid., p. 66). 

Juan of Avila was deeply on Guerrero’s mind at the Third Session. The Apostle of Andalusia, whom the Archbishop had wanted to take part in Trent as a peritus, did not attend, but did write two “Memorials”, one for the Second Session in 1551 entitled “Reform of the Ecclesiastical State”, and another for the Third in 1561 labeled “Causes and Remedies of Heresies” to aid the Spanish Delegation in its work. A third document in 1563 called “Treatise on the Priesthood” completed his thoughts on the subject of reform. Guerrero took his writings, and their intimate connection of reform and doctrine, seriously to heart.

St. Juan of Avila’s ultimate goal was the conversion and transformation of all men in Christ, and this required the labor of priests who were “surgeons of souls” who could deal in a nuanced manner with a myriad of different spiritual illnesses. Hence, his deep concern for the training of the necessary surgeon-priests---the shock troops for the entire Christian project. That training, first of all, demanded the holiness of the priest himself. No amount of zeal for reform legislation could compensate for the lack of priests---whose chief pastoral tool was the Eucharist, and whose sacral touching of the God-Man whom he distributed to his flock transformed his consecrated existence---who did not pursue the path of self-perfection as their chief personal goal. 

Furthermore, a prayerful, communal, fraternal spirit among priests must be cultivated, to serve as a most powerful stimulus to aiming at perfection. Creating this life-long brotherly spirit was something that must itself be stimulated by having those training to become priests first live together before their ordination. Good positive theologian that he was, Juan cited the ancient examples of St. Jerome and St. Ambrose, who founded communities for the training of the clergy, the former telling a young man wanting to become a priest to live in a monastery in such a way that you may deserve to become a cleric. If we acted as they did, Juan insisted, within a few years, there would be a different kind of priest and people than there are now.

Bishops, as the servants of their clergy, had the central responsibility in this labor. Avila took it for granted that bishops entering into their dioceses understood that they, too, had to make a general examination of conscience to assure that their primary personal commitment as prelates was to the pursuit of holiness and that they rejected all venal motivation. He told the bishops that they must stop discussing reform, since there had already been plenty of dialogue. There was no need either for making new regulations demanding a serious clergy in their diocese. Assuring a holy clergy was the task before them, and this, in the long run, could only be achieved through the establishment of seminaries.

Bishops had to be aware that the cause of the ruin of the clergy had been the entrance of worldly people into its ranks; men who had no knowledge of the grandeur of the state they are undertaking and whose hearts were on fire merely with earthly ambitions. To this end, Juan recommended painstaking selection of the candidates. No one must be allowed to enter the seminary who did so due to property concerns. Hence, the widespread late medieval definition of the life of the priest with primary reference to economic questions---what kind of benefice or “living” he would possess---rather than his spiritual vocation had to be condemned, root and branch. The Christian people pay dearly when a candidate for the priesthood enters into this path in response not to God's call, but to the call of money and an easy life. Such priests will unworthily touch the Body of the Lord, to the harm of all the members of the Mystical Body.

All seminarians, operating in a communal, fraternal, atmosphere of prayer were “vessels” which had to filled to capacity for a task in which the intellect would play its role throughout their lifetime; so that, growing with age, goodness, and learning, the priest may speak with authority and, without danger, may exercise his high office. They were, after all, learning what it was that St. Gregory the Great called the art of arts, the care of souls. Ignorance of doctrine was a tool of the devil, and all seminarians becoming parish priests must be formed doctrinally through knowledge of Scripture and speculative studies. They also were to study “grammar” for at least four or five years, so that they would have the rhetorical skills needed to transmit what they have learned. And they needed to study practical conscience problems so as to address the diversity of diseases that the soul doctor had to handle.

Archbishop Guerrero believed that given the Papacy’s abusive treatment of diocesan resources as curial property questions, Juan of Avila’s reform proposals required that abuses perpetrated by the Holy See had directly to be addressed as well. This meant raising the connection of things pastoral and doctrinal once more, this time with respect to basic ecclesiology: namely, the very nature of the Episcopacy, its God-given responsibilities, and its relationship with the Papacy. Interestingly enough, these concerns were in many respects the same as the very first suggestions for reform coming from the Consilium de emendanda Ecclesia of 1537, commissioned by Pope Paul III, which was highly critical of papal curial practices, identifying them as the central cause of corruption and the Protestant Revolt. 

Guerrero told King Philip that the key to moving onto this serious matter required wresting control over the conciliar agenda from the pope and the papal legates and putting it into the hands of the council bishops themselves. Philip nearly convinced Rome to allow Guerrero’s deeply desired right of proposal, but Cardinal Giovanni Morone (1509-1580), the chief papal legate, blocked it, horrified that such permission, rather than speeding up business, would guarantee further years of tedious and ultimately fruitless debate. Nevertheless, Pius did allow the delegates to meet unofficially among themselves to make reform proposals that the pope and the papal legates then themselves considered, reworked, and presented for the deliberation of all. 

It was because of this concession that Avila’s reform memorials were made known to the Council Fathers. When they were finally brought before the Council for deliberation in July of 1563, the major doctrinal statements that Guerrero also put forward regarding the God-given character and responsibilities of the Episcopacy were strongly opposed by the zelanti. To complicate matters still further, although the French, led by Louis Cardinal de Guise (1527-1578), supported major aspects of this Avila-Guerrero inspired program, his delegation’s own approach emphasized a different doctrinal vision regarding the Episcopacy that almost no one among the Spanish could ever approve. 

French delegates at Trent did not accept the validity of the Council of Florence, with its powerful defense of papal prerogatives, and looked instead to the teachings of the Councils of Constance and Basel, which affirmed the superiority of such synods, weakened the ability of the Holy See to guide individual churches, and thus gave support to the rights of bishops and local concerns which in France were referred to as “Gallican liberties”. A Church organized under such guidelines, they argued, followed the ancient Christian model, which was held out by the French as an object of imitation for all problems of teaching and reform. 

Papalist bishops wished to have Trent confirm the Florentine decrees dealing with papal authority that the French opposed. Their Spanish colleagues rejected what they considered to be a fanciful French divinization of an ancient Church whose actual character they felt to be still a subject more of speculation than of real knowledge. Still, while accepting the decrees of Florence, they did insist upon the more precise definition of the dignity of the episcopal state as such. Thus, however much they might admit that the individual bishop owed his jurisdiction to Rome and obedience to papal doctrinal leadership, they maintained that the bishop’s role as a direct successor to the Apostles placed him under divine obligation to reside in his diocese and carry out God-given—not papally given—responsibilities. A conscientious bishop had a sacred duty to oppose the widespread awarding of dioceses to people who worked in Rome and never actually administered their sees, and the granting of so many exemptions to individuals and religious orders that governance by a resident bishop became frustrating and almost impossible. Achieving these goals demanded a conciliar reform of the papal court itself.

The zelanti insisted that basing residence on a divine command to bishops recognized as receiving their power as Successors to the Apostles directly from God would violate the scriptural teaching of Matthew 16:18-19; that it would “hurt the pope,” making papal governance of the Church utterly impossible. But for Guerrero and his fellow Spaniards, opposition to the basing of episcopal authority and residence on divine law was itself unequivocally heretical. Once again, they believed that only reason for this position was enslavement to a corrupt and untraditional vision of the clerical life as primarily a property rather than a vocational matter; a vision dangerous to the eternal salvation of both the priest and his flock.

Ecclesiology proved to be so productive of division that Cardinal Morone and a group of leaders of the various nations at the Council concluded that the only way to deal with the matter and achieve some measure of reform was to abandon a direct treatment of this doctrinal issue. Still, with the Gallican approach successfully circumvented, a good deal of the Spanish ecclesiological position entered indirectly into the impressive reform decrees passed in the last sittings the Council in the latter part of 1563. 

Council Fathers did, indeed, lay down certain reform guidelines for the papal court itself. The authority of the bishop in the governance of his diocese and the call for his residence therein were significantly strengthened, regardless of what false and supposedly immutable curial “traditions” dictated, even without any specific reference to this as a result of his God-given responsibility as a Successor to the Apostles. Further detailed reform was to be elaborated at the local level after the Council’s end, while the presence of papal legates at provincial synods seemed to guarantee continued guidance from an internationally minded Papacy.

Trent ended with many other compromises of this kind, especially regarding the crucial relationship both of Grace and Free Will as well as that of Church and State. Missionary matters had been entirely untouched. Numerous problems were left to afflict and limit the whole of the nevertheless very impressive “Catholic Reformation” that the Council helped greatly to promote. Spanish bishops and theologians active at its three sessions were very much aware that this was the case…as it had been the case with every other Sacred Synod of the past. They could return home conscious of having at least tried to do their duty, and hopeful that the command to establish in each diocese an Avila-inspired seminary for the proper training of intelligent, holy, and pastorally-awakened priests might allow for the confronting of unsettled and unasked questions when they inevitably raised their head anew.