My LORD’s BibleWhat Is the Council of Trent?
While Protestant reformers were narrowing their Old Testament to the Hebrew canon, the Catholic Church convened a council that did the opposite: it closed the question by declaring the wider list permanently, formally canonical.
A council forced by the Reformation
By the 1540s, Martin Luther's challenge had split Western Christianity for two decades, and the Catholic Church's response had been slow and uneven. Pope Paul III finally convened a general council at Trent, a city in northern Italy, in 1545. Interrupted twice by war, plague, and politics, it met across three separate periods spanning eighteen years, closing only in 1563 under a different pope.
What it settled about the Bible
Trent's fourth session, in 1546, took direct aim at one of the Reformation's central claims: that only the Hebrew canon's books were truly scripture. The council responded by formally declaring the Apocrypha — the books the Septuagint had carried and Western Bibles had used for a thousand years — canonical scripture on equal footing with the rest of the Old Testament, with one notable exception: 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras (called by other names in different numbering systems), and the Prayer of Manasses were left off the canonical list and printed only as an appendix to the Vulgate.
What else the council decided
Trent went far beyond the canon question. It declared the Latin Vulgate the church's authoritative biblical text, defined the doctrine of justification against Luther's teaching that faith alone — without accompanying good works — saves a person, affirmed all seven sacraments, reasserted the doctrine of purgatory and the veneration of saints and relics, and addressed real, widely acknowledged abuses, the sale of indulgences chief among them, that had helped trigger the Reformation in the first place.
A passage central to the justification debate the council was addressing:
James 2:14-17
Read in full chapter →14What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
15If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food,
See also: 1 John 3:18, Proverbs 3:27
16And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?
See also: Proverbs 3:27-28, 1 John 3:16-18
17Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
See also: Matthew 7:24, James 2:26
Why it still matters
Trent is why the Catholic Bible's Old Testament has more books than the Protestant one, and why those extra books are dogmatically settled for Catholics in a way they had never formally been before. It marks the moment two branches of Western Christianity, already divided in practice for a generation, became divided by explicit, opposing doctrinal decree about scripture's own contents.
Common questions
- What did the Council of Trent decide about the Bible?
- It formally declared the Apocrypha — Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1–2 Maccabees, plus additions to Esther and Daniel — canonical scripture, and named the Latin Vulgate as the church's authoritative text.
- When did the Council of Trent take place?
- 1545 to 1563, meeting across three separate periods rather than continuously, under three different popes.
- Why was the Council of Trent called?
- As the Catholic Church's formal response to the Protestant Reformation, addressing both doctrine (justification, the sacraments) and acknowledged abuses like the sale of indulgences.
- Is the Apocrypha the same in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles?
- Close, but not identical. Trent's list is the Catholic deuterocanon. The Eastern Orthodox canon includes everything Trent affirmed plus additional books, such as 3 Maccabees and Psalm 151, that Trent left out.