what was the council of trent

The Council of Trent was the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trent (or Trento), now in northern Italy. It was convened by Pope Paul III in response to the Protestant Reformation and aimed to address the issues raised by the Protestants. The council made sweeping reforms and laid down dogma clarifying nearly all doctrines contested by the Protestants. The primary purpose of the council was to condemn and refute the beliefs of the Protestants, such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, and also to make the set of beliefs in Catholicism even clearer. The council affirmed the doctrine of purgatory and damned anyone who claimed that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be paid after the grace of justification has been received. The decisions, decrees, and canons of the Council of Trent became the blueprint for the Catholic Counter-Reformation, which reestablished the Churchs authority through clear rules, regulations, and definitions of what it meant to be Catholic. The council was a key part of the Counter-Reformation and played a vital role in revitalizing the Roman Catholic Church in many parts of Europe.