Council of Trent: Session XVII, Decree For Celebrating The Council

DECREE FOR CELEBRATING THE COUNCIL

Doth it please you, unto the praise and glory of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, for the increase and exaltation of the faith, and of the Christian religion, that the sacred, ocecumenical, and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Ghost, be, all manner of suspension removed, celebrated from this day-being the eighteenth of the month of January, in the year MDLXII from our Lord's Nativity, consecrated to the chair of Blessed Peter-according to the form and tenour of the letter of our most holy Lord, the Sovereign Pontiff, Pius IV.; and that, due order being observed, those things be treated of therein, which, the Legates and Presidents proposing, shall to the said holy Synod appear suitable and proper, for assuaging the calamities of these times, appeasing controversies concerning religion, restraining deceitful tongues, correcting the abuses of depraved manners, and for procuring for the Church a true and Christian peace? They answered: It pleaseth us.

Translation: J. Waterworth, The Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent (1848), Hanover Historical Texts Project transcription (1995).