Alps. Nor had any secular
power except the Emperor and King Ferdinand sent their ambassadors. The
business machinery of the council, which the legates lost no time in
getting into order, was altogether in favor of their influence as
managers. Learned doctors, without being, as in former councils, allowed
to take part in the debates, prepared the work of the three committees
or congregations, who in their turn brought it up for discussion to the
general congregations.

The sessions in which the decrees thus prepared were actually passed
had a purely formal character, but before they were successively held
opportunity enough was given for manipulation and delay. The voting in
the council was by heads, instead of by nations, as at Constance and
Basel; and care was taken to refresh by occasional additions the working
majority of Italian bishops, mostly, in comparison with the
"ultramontane" prelates, holders of petty sees. Some of these are even
stated to have bound themselves by a sworn engagement to uphold the
interests of the holy see, though by no means all of the Italian bishops
were servile Curialists; witness those of Chioggia and of Fiesole. The
council in its second session (January 7, 1546) waived the form of title
by which previous councils had implicitly declared their representative
authority paramount. On the other hand, it boded well for the cause of
reform that, by an early resolution, virtually all abbots and members of
the monastic orders except five generals were excluded.

Clearly, episcopal interest was resolved upon asserting itself. So long,
however, as the German bishops were detained in their dioceses by the
duty of repressing heresy there, while the great body of the French were
kept away by the vigilant jealousy of their government, the episcopal
interest and the episcopal principle were mainly represented in the
council by the Spanish prelates, the loyal subjects of Charles. Their
leader was Pacheco, Cardinal of Jaen. With him came eminent theological
professors, who in the early period of the council at least were without
rivals--Dominico de Soto, whom Queen Mary afterward placed in Peter
Martyr's chair at Oxford, and Bartolomeo Carranza, afterward primate of
all Spain and for many years a prisoner of the Inquisition. Through the
Emperor's ambassador, the accomplished and indefatigable but not
invariably discreet Mendoza, the Spanish bishops were carefully apprised
of the wishes of their sovere