Trent, Council of

Trent, Council of (1545–63). A council of Roman Catholic bishops and superiors of religious orders, reckoned by that church to be the 19th ecumenical council. It was convoked only after pressure from the Emperor Charles V, who hoped for reconciliation between Catholics and Protestants in his German dominions. It met in three sessions at Triento in N. Italy, 1545–9, 1551–2, and 1562–3. Protestant representatives attended only the second of these sessions, with no lasting effect. The fathers of the council rejected Protestant sacramental theory and Luther's doctrine of consubstantiation, in the latter case endorsing the theory of transubstantiation. Among the ecclesiastical reforms there was an attempt to abolish pluralism, an insistence that bishops must reside in their sees, a provision of better education for, and closer control over, the clergy, and a reform of the Roman curia. It also reasserted the traditional teaching on a number of issues such as indulgences, the existence of purgatory, and the veneration of saints. It was, perhaps, the single most significant element in the Counter-Reformation.