ent. Meanwhile,
owing to the continued progress of the Protestants, Paul and
Charles came to an agreement that another summons should be
issued. A few prelates were gathered at Trent in 1542, but,
owing to the Emperor's war with France and the Turks, the
Pope next year dispersed them.

Finally a papal bull summoned all the bishops of Christendom
to Trent for March 15, 1545. The Pope showed much sagacity
in calling this council at the moment when Charles and his
inveterate enemy, Francis I, were concerting the suppression
of the Protestants.

On December 13, 1545, three legates appointed by the Pope held their
public entry into Trent, and the council was formally opened. Paul III's
continued desire to conciliate the Emperor was shown by his adherence to
Trent as the locality of the council, when the legates again urged the
choice of a town on Italian soil. Yet the very Bishop of Trent, Cardinal
Madruccio, was a prince of the Empire, and by descent attached to the
house of Austria, whose interests he consistently represented during the
first series of sessions. The papal legates, with whose control over the
council the Emperor at the outset showed no intention of interfering,
typified the different elements in the ecclesiastical policy of Paul
III. The presiding legate, Cardinal del Monte--afterward Pope Julius
III--while notable neither for religious zeal nor for wise self-control,
was a thoroughgoing supporter of the interests of the Curia. Cardinal
Cervino, afterward Pope Marcellus II, a prelate of blameless life, was
animated by those ideas of ecclesiastical reform of which Pope Paul had
encouraged the open expression; but he was more especially eager for the
extirpation of heresy, and not over-scrupulous in the choice of means
for reaching his ends. Lastly, Cardinal Pole's[54] presence at Trent, in
which some have seen a mere papal ruse, must have surrounded the early
proceedings of the council with a hopeful glamour in the eyes of those
who, like himself, expected from it the reunion as well as the
reinvigoration of Western Christendom.

Nothing, as had probably been foreseen at Rome, could have better
facilitated the immediate establishment of the ascendency in the council
of the papal policy than the composition of its opening meeting. Of the
thirty-four ecclesiastics present, only five were Spanish and two French
bishops, and no German bishop had crossed the