Das Konzil von Trient und die katholische Konfessionskultur (1563–2013). Wissenschaftliches Symposium aus Anlass des 450. Jahrestages des Abschlusses des Konzils von Trient, Freiburg i. Br. 18.–21. September 2013 ed. by Peter Walter and Günther Wassilowsky (review)

This volume assembles over twenty contributions by German, Italian, Belgian, and Dutch historians to a conference held in 2013 in Freiburg im Breisgau in commemoration of the 450th anniversary of the closure of the Council of Trent. It investigates Trent as a "theological event" (part II) and as a lieu de mémoire (part I). It explores the latter before it gets down to the former, thus highlighting how different understandings of the event have always depended on the viewpoint and intention of the beholder. The emphasis and novelty of the volume lies in its attention to the changing significance of the council for ecclesiology, liturgy, theology, and pastoral care within a long-term process that shaped a new Catholic confessional culture over the past four centuries.

In many ways the volume itself may be seen as an expression of (German) Catholic culture as it stands today. It includes the homily by the archbishop of Freiburg, Robert Zollitsch, (pp. 31–36) that opened the conference in 2013, an essay by the president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Cardinal Kurt Koch (pp. 37–49) on Trent's importance for the current ecumenical dialogue, as well as a fully-fledged scholastic disputatio (pp. 487–518) between the eminent historians and antagonists Wolfgang Reinhard and Peter Hersche over the latter's concept of "Baroque Catholicism," which, as Hersche contends, was essentially anti-modern and has since in spats and intervals reversed anything that might have been modern about the allegedly austere Tridentine spirit. Hersche's fiddly periodization, attributing something "frühaufklärerisches" to the humanist-inspired Catholic reform movement, which, as he posits, by 1600 was smothered by the delaying and reactionary "anti-aufklärerisch" Baroque so that proper, modernizing reform only came about with the Catholic Enlightenment ca 1750 soon to be superseded again by Neo-Baroque in the nineteenth century (pp. 500–501), does not really convince this reader.

A while ago John O'Malley asked "what happened at the Council"; this volume shows that sometimes what happened was just as important as what was "remembered" to have happened. As Günther Wassilowski states in his masterful introduction (pp. 1–29), it is probably quite telling that Protestant confessional culture has relied on narratives of mythical founding individuals, whereas Catholicism has largely worked with a more collective, i.e., conciliar "event myth." Nonetheless, the reception of Trent, the theme of the fourth part of the volume, also depended on individual actors, and in particular on the two poles that marked Trent as an event—the papacy as a succession of popes, and the bishops.

Maria Teresa Fattori thus shows how Benedict XIV almost two centuries after the convocation of the Council still engaged with the Tridentine heritage in his De Synodo diocesana (pp. 417–59). He found a major source of inspiration in Carlo Borromeo, who emerges across many of the contributions as one of the most fertile figures to project and on which to project the alleged true meaning of Trent. Borromeo operated not only as an individual to condense the "Tridentine myth" for successive generations; the man himself and his networks, as Julia Zunckel (pp. 391–416) explores, also actively and consciously shaped the ways in which Trent was transmitted and received across the Alps, in the Swiss Cantons, and amongst some of his correspondents in the Holy Roman Empire. This rich volume allows the reader to follow how the willingness or need to remember Trent varied over time, also because the Catholic Church remained a broad church, in...