has been on all sides acknowledged, was
necessarily in the first instance dependent on the reception given to
them by the several Catholic powers. The representatives of the Emperor
at once signed the whole of the decrees of the council, though only on
behalf of his hereditary dominions; and he had his promised reward when,
a few months afterward (April), the German bishops were, under certain
restrictions, empowered to accord the cup in the eucharist to the
laity. But neither the Empire through its diet, nor Hungary, ever
accepted the Tridentine decrees, though several of the Catholic estates
of the Empire, both spiritual and temporal, individually accepted them
with modifications. The example of Ferdinand was followed by several
other powers; but in Poland the diet, to which the decrees were twice
(1564 and 1578) presented as having been accepted by King Sigismund
Augustus, refused to accord its own acceptance, maintaining that the
Polish Church, as such, had never been represented at the council.

In Portugal and in the Swiss Catholic cantons the decrees were received
without hesitation, as also by the Seigniory of Venice, whose
representatives at Trent had rarely departed from an attitude of studied
moderation, and who now merely safeguarded the rights of the republic.
True to the part recently played by him, the Cardinal of Lorraine, on
his own responsibility, subscribed to the decrees in the name of the
King of France. But the Parliament of Paris was on the alert, and on his
return home the Cardinal had to withdraw in disgrace to Rheims. Neither
the doctrinal decrees of the council nor the disciplinary, which in part
clashed with the customs of the kingdom and the privileges of the
Gallican Church, were ever published in France. The ambassador of Spain,
whose King and prelates had so consistently held out against the closing
of the council, refused his signature till he had received express
instructions. Yet as it was Spain which had hoped and toiled for the
achievement at the council of solid results, so it was here that the
decrees fell on the most grateful soil, when, after considerable
deliberation and delay, their publication at last took place,
accompanied by stringent safeguards as to the rights of the King and the
usages of his subjects (1565). The same course was adopted in the
Italian and Flemish dependencies of the Spanish monarchy.

The disciplinary decrees of the council, on the whole, fell short in