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 OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT 279

It also overruled the Gallican demand that the Council be considered superior to the Pope. Thus it was a parliament which decreed the abolition of the parliamentary idea, and professed allegiance to an absolute monarchical authority. Decisive, wise reforms, which cut deep into the life of the Church and of society, envisaged ecclesiastical administration of the cult and cultural activities; but the right to ex- pound these decrees was given to the Pope. It was with deep emo- tions that the Fathers parted company during December, 1563. Soon thereafter the Pope codified the dogmatic decisions contained in the Tridentine Creed and gave a new expression to the projected Index, which remained in force until the close of the nineteenth century. When Pius died in the arms of Saint Charles Borromeo, his sister's son, a Pope of the new era passed away who, according to Ranke, had voluntarily broken with the tradition that the hierarchical order was antagonistic to the secular order. Even so, however, the natural ten- sion between these powers did not cease to exist. . . clericis laicos.

The Council had ended by restoring to the Papacy its full power. But this was also a challenge to the Popes to carry out the program of renewal. And they performed their duty in preserving or winning back for the Church (which remained essentially what it had always been) the spiritual dominion which is proof against changing times. This is the import of the Counter-reformation policy of the Papacy, The antagonists were now the autonomous state, autonomous science, autonomous piety, all of which were related to and also embraced by the spirit of heresy which dominated the new era. One must understand how profound this antagonism was if one would evaluate the work of the Papacy during the rime to come. The dogma of the Church is binding in its entirety because all the parts are related organically to the whole. Movement and evolution in dogma are only the development of a perfection posited at the very beginning, only the historical expli- cation of a reality which transcends history and is eternally implicit. Thus Dante saw it in Paradise, when he fastened his gaze upon the Everlasting Light:

'In its depths I saw all things contained, By love as in one single book restrained What in the world far-scattered pages are.**

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