he prohibition of the
use of the vulgar tongue, and the sanction of masses for the dead.
Other {395} decrees amended the marriage laws, and enjoined the
preparation of an Index of prohibited books, of a catechism and of
standard editions of missal and breviary.

[Sidenote: Subjection to papacy]

How completely the council in its last estate was subdued to the will
of the pope is shown by its request that the decrees should all be
confirmed by him. This was done by Pius IV in the bull Benedictus
Deus. [Sidenote: January 26, 1564] Pius also caused to be prepared a
symbol known as the Tridentine Profession of Faith which was made
binding on all priests. Save that it was slightly enlarged in 1877 by
the pronouncement on Papal Infallibility, it stands to the present day.

[Sidenote: Reception of decrees]

The complete triumph of the papal claims was offset by the cool
reception which the decrees received in Catholic Europe. Only the
Italian states, Poland, Portugal and Savoy unreservedly recognized the
authority of all of them. Philip II, bigot as he was, preferred to
make his own rules for his clergy and recognized the laws of Trent with
the proviso "saving the royal rights." France sanctioned only the
dogmatic, not the practical decrees. The emperor never officially
recognized the work of the council at all. Nor were the governments
the only recalcitrants. According to Sarpi the body of German
Catholics paid no attention to the prescribed reforms and the council
was openly mocked in France as claiming an authority superior to that
of the apostles.

To Father Paul Sarpi, indeed, the most intelligent observer of the next
generation, the council seemed to have been a failure if not a fraud.
Its history he calls an Iliad of woes. The professed objects of the
council, healing the schism and asserting the episcopal power he thinks
frustrated, for the schism was made irreconciliable and the church
reduced to servitude.

But the judgment of posterity has reversed that of {396} the great
historian, [Sidenote: Constructive work] at least as far as the value
of the work done at Trent to the cause of Catholicism is concerned. If
the church shut out the Protestants and recognized her limited domain,
she at least took appropriate measures to establish her rule over what
was left. Her power was now collected; her dogma was unified and made
consistent as opposed to the mutually diverse Protestant creeds. In
several p