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The Council of Trent and Vernacular Bible Reading in the Early Modern Catholic Church
Wim François (KU Leuven – Catholic University of Leuven)
As a point of departure for this paper, we take two dates that appear at first sight to be a simple
reversal of numbers: 1546 and 1564. Both dates, however, symbolically reflect the changed attitude
of the Catholic Church with regard to Bible reading in the vernacular. In April 1546, during its fourth
session, the Council of Trent pronounced no judgment on the permissibility of Bible translations in
the vernacular, despite the efforts of both proponents and adversaries of such reading to have their
point of view endorsed. As a consequence, the Council tacitly respected the prevailing customs of
the local churches, which in some cases (Germany, the Low Countries, Italy) continued to tolerate
vernacular Bible reading.
In the following decade however, the Roman Catholic Church tended toward a more
rigorous attitude culminating in pope Paul IV’s 1559 stipulation that no edition of the Bible in the
vernacular, nor any edition of the New Testament, should, in any way whatsoever, be printed,
purchased, read or held in possession, without the written permission of the Holy Office of the
Roman Inquisition. The austerity of the stipulation made its application impossible and a
moderation was introduced which culminated in the Index of Trent (1564). The fourth of the socalled ten regulae of the Index determined that the local bishop or his inquisitor, after having
received the advice of the (parish) priest or confessor, had the ultimate authority to issue permission
to pious people to read the Bible in the vernacular. Before a Bible translation was printed, it
required, as with other books, the written permission of the bishop or the qualified book censor.
In the aftermath of the promulgation of the Index of Trent, a tussle arose between the
Congregation of the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition and the Congregation of the Index,
established in 1571, regarding the permissibility of Bible reading in the vernacular, whereby the
former defended a Rome-centered restrictive approach (the ‘1559 model’), and the latter was
prepared to grant the right of discretion to the local bishops (the ‘1564 model’). The proponents of a
restrictive approach managed to push through their position, which found its consecration in the
Index of Clement VIII of 1596, and led to the de facto banishment of vernacular Bibles from the
religious life of the South-European Catholics, whereas the confessionnally mixed countries in
Northern and Central Europe were able to negotiate a relaxation of the strict rules.
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