Shady Business during the Tridentine Proceedings on Justification: Seripando's Eyewitness Account

 

Recently, I have done some research on the history of the Council of Trent, and some comprehensive materials that describe the progress of that council, and particularly the overarching control that the Papal Legates and the Roman Curia had on its decisions. I thought I might transcribe here a full section from the diary of the council made by Cardinal Seripando, known for being a defender of imputed righteousness and duplex justitia, contrary to many other Tridentine members. 

It is to be observed, that in the history of how the decree on justification was drafted at Trent, Seripando was granted the privilege of composing several distinct drafts of it; but each time, the rest of the members so changed and deformed it, that it was utterly unrecognizable from what it originally was intended to say. Seripando himself describes this all in his diary of the proceedings: “On September 23 the second decree was read; although some things in it had been taken from the decree composed by me, nevertheless it was so deformed that I neither recognized nor approved it. I often showed privately to the Father of Santa Croce that neither the matter in many places, nor the form, nor the wording, nor the style of the decree pleased me. I also explained to him everything I had noted in the decree in my own hand. He always most kindly gave thanks and asked me to reform it. To the Bishop of Aquino, who asked why that decree had not been proposed which he had privately shown him, he replied that by the counsels of many it had been so changed that it had become a patchwork and was not recognized by its first author; now it was being reduced again into a better form by that same author. On October 25, when the decree had been marked with criticisms by many from the whole synod and other criticisms had also been brought from the city of Rome, I was summoned by the Father of Santa Croce, who asked me to reform the decree according to those criticisms which seemed worthy to me, and to respond to the others, explaining why they should not be followed. Since this was a task of great labor, that I might bear it more easily, he wished me to have as copyist Angelo Massarelli, secretary of the Council. I accepted the burden. The secretary came to me every day early in the morning, and after examining all the criticisms—which were very numerous—I reformed the decree according to the greater part of them and wrote responses to those criticisms which should not be followed. I completed this from that day until November 4. On November 5 the decree was read in the general congregation so deformed both in matter and in form that, although the greater part was mine, I did not recognize it. In it especially this displeased me: that the final clause, in which I had agreed with the Father of Santa Croce to establish the justice of Christ so that it would not be utterly rejected and transformed into human inventions, appeared so distorted and corrupted that that pure justice—which no one dared openly to deny—seemed oppressed by bad counsels and submerged among the shoals of human devices. But evil counsel will be worst for the counselor. There is in my possession a note in the secretary’s hand asking what I ought to write on that matter in the final chapter of the decree, by command of the Father of Santa Croce. From that pious and holy proposal the Father somehow allowed himself to be drawn away by the counsels of others. But the Lord will judge. After the congregation the Father of Santa Croce sent the secretary of the Council to me, asking me to take in good part that change and variation of matters, which had not been made so much by his own judgment—since he preferred ours—but because he had had to yield to Giovanni Maria del Monte. To him I replied that I would always take in the better part whatever was done by their counsel and will, and that I had undertaken so many labors for no other reason than obedience and service, which I owed to them.” (Concilium Tridentinum: Diariorum, actorum, epistolarum, tractatuum nova collectio, ed. Gӧrres-Gesellschaft [Freiburg, 1901-1930], II:429-430)

The man mentioned at the end, Cardinal del Monte, was one of the papal legates. According to Seripando in this entry, it was his influence which drove the force of the council's decree on justification, and the changes that went against Seripando's original intent.