The development of world history has led to an increase in studies on Tridentine Catholicism beyond Italy and Europe. Half of the collected essays in this book of proceedings of the 2013 conference at the Centro per le scienze religiose of the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trent explore the reception of the Council of Trent in non-European cultures and among the new Protestant churches. The other half examines more well-trodden paths in European studies on Trent: Catholic historiography on Trent, the role of the Jesuits at the council, and the implementation of Tridentine doctrine and the activity of the Inquisition in Italy.

The volume starts with the well-known questions posed by Paolo Sarpi at the beginning of Istoria del concilio tridentino (1619): How was it possible for a church weakened by divisions between Catholics and Protestants to emerge strengthened from Trent? How did a council convened to restore the authority of the bishops and reduce that of the pope end up reinforcing precisely papal authority over all the members of the church? A considerable number of the essays collected in this volume try to answer Sarpi's questions. The following are among the subjects examined in the essays: the victory of the papacy over the council that meant that council decrees were confirmed by the pope, who would then guarantee their implementation through the Congregation of the council and the vast network of nuncios; the importance of Christian doctrine established at Trent for governing and administering a world religion in widely differing contexts with varying degrees of authority; the role of mendicant orders in spreading Catholicism outside Europe and the intention that they would receive their mandate from the papacy via the Congregation de Propaganda Fide; the importance of Spanish and Portuguese colonizing processes for Tridentine Catholicism, with both ventures having right of royal patronage over the church.

The essays in the section “The Council and the Protestants” confirm the different Catholic and Protestant perceptions of the possibility of religious reunification by means of the council. While the various Protestant churches rejected the council practically from the first sessions, as the essays by Emidio Campi on Trent among the Protestant Reformers and Ian Hazzlett on Martin Bucer show, the Catholic world remained confident of religious reunification over the three stages of the council, as Matteo Al Kalak highlights in his study of three friars of the Dominican convent of Bologna who called for unification of the Catholic and Protestant Churches at Trent based on the experience at Regensburg and the work of Gasparo Contarini. One of the most original essays in this section is by Diego Pirillo, who examines an anthology of political texts prepared in Copenhagen in ca. 1595 by the Protestant Giacomo Castelvetro (son of Ludovico), based on accounts by Venetian ambassadors and conclave records. Using an analysis of the apostilles to one of the volumes in this collection—acquired on the initiative of Hans Baron by the Newberry Library in 1965—Pirillo examines the way in which Castelvetro tried to compose a secret history of the council and the failure of Protestant Reformation in Italy.

The nine studies on “Trent out of Europe” constitute a section of their own. There is an outstanding study by Giovanni Pizzorusso on the functioning of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide, set up by the pope in 1622 for the purpose of placing the mendicant orders who preached outside Europe under papal jurisdiction. Through an analysis of several cases, the author demonstrates how the Congregation, conceived in Catholic Europe, adapted to different realities and levels of jurisdiction. Equally interesting is the study by Giuseppe Marcocci on Jesuit resistance to the application of the Tridentine decrees because they were considered too abstract and unsuited to the sociocultural circumstances that they faced every day.

As is usual in conference proceedings, the essays in this volume present different types of analysis, ranging from case studies of authors, works, and specific episodes to analyses of problems within a time frame of one or two centuries. Most studies pose strong arguments and engage in relevant scholarly literature. The volume is an indispensable contribution to studies on the Council of Trent and, specifically, on this council's impact on later centuries.