preach; and the whole discipline of the Church was improved. The practical reform, however, that was most far-reaching in its results was probably the establishment of seminaries for the education of the clergy in each diocese. This measure provided the Church with an adequate supply of trained men for its service, and removed the reproach which had formerly rested on the clerical state. At the same time it made the clergy a body more distinct from the laity than they had ever been before. It narrowed the interests of the clergy, and made them to a considerable extent the blind instruments of their superiors. Together with the system of celibacy, it separated the clergy from the ordinary social life of the people, and accentuated the division between the Church and the modern world.
The Council left to the Papacy the right of interpreting its decrees; and Pius IV hastened to enunciate this principle in the Bull Benedictus Deus (January 26, 1564), which confirmed its proceedings. No prelate was to publish any gloss upon the decrees of the Council or venture to interpret them without papal authorisation. In 1588 Sixtus V set up a special Congregation of the Council of Trent, to supervise the carrying out of its decisions. Meanwhile the Papacy anxiously endeavoured to persuade the Catholic Powers to accept in their entirety the decrees of the Council; but with the decrees on doctrine governments did not concern themselves. They were accepted throughout the Catholic Church, but with the decrees on discipline it was different. Even in the modified form which they received after the protests of the ambassadors, they infringed many ancient rights of the secular power in various countries, rights which it was not likely would be easily abandoned. In the end the decrees on discipline were only accepted in their entirety by the Emperor Ferdinand for his hereditary dominions, by Portugal, and by the King of Poland. France and the Empire never accepted them, while Spain and Venice received them with a reservation of their own rights which had practically the same effect. There were limits beyond which no modern State could allow the papal claims to go.
The tasks which the Council had left to the Pope were actively taken in hand. The Breviary and the Missal were revised, and a new edition of the Corpus Juris Canonici was published. A purification of Church music was begun. A commission of eight Cardinals was appointed on August 2, 1564; and in Palestrina a genius arose who became the founder of modern Church music. His famous Missa di Papa Mar-cello, performed before the commission on April 28, 1565, subordinated the music to the words, and substituted a dignified and masterly simplicity for the florid and decadent style which had hitherto characterised ecclesiastical music in Rome. The most important task left to the Papacy was however the preparation of an Index of Prohibited Books. So early as 1479 Sixtus IV had empowered the University of Cologne to inflict penalties on printers, purchasers, and readers of heretical books.
