Tuesday 26 January 2021

benedictus deus

Overseen by three successive popes between the years 1545 and 1563, the nineteenth ecumenical council of Trent (Concilium Tridentinum), called in response to the popularity of the Protestant Movement, and seeking to define the difference between the two sects and establish the rules that Catholics were to follow was ratified on this day in 1564 by Pius IV—with the thrust of the decrees and definitions forbidding Catholics, under pain of ex-communication, unauthorised interpretation. Judgment and enforcement was the reserve of the pontiff alone and shortly afterward the Index liborum prohibtorum was published specifying which books were banned as heretical.