Which Composer Responded to the Reforms of the Council of Trent in an Exemplary Fashion?

Pope Innocent III's bull Exsurge magnum expresses the despair that many composers shared at the devastation of their fine art by the anti-papist radicals in the Council of Trent. The composer Agricola, condemned the harsh measures taken past the Council as "ridiculous and cruel" but did not vox his disagreement with the papacy. St Augustine, commenting on the Exsurge of Augsburg in his De Civitate Dei, pointed out that "the populace of the metropolis of Terni dreaded the severity of the punishments inflicted, and the populace of the other cities which were unfortunate in this respect were driven to seek refuge in numbers, which could not be large enough to answer the demands of their sorrowful country". Thus we take St Augustine, the man who wished to crush all individuality, and to make all men one in the fold of the Land, condemning the severity with which the councilsmen dealt with their rebellious subject, especially when their guilt was proved by the Exsurge of Augsburg. Such views could inappreciably be entertained in today's politically correct atmosphere.

Not merely was information technology the fear of papal displeasure which induced the reformers to fight for the liberty of the listen, only also the confidence that the councils had no jurisdiction in the affair. It was a belief in the papacy, which drove the scholars of the time to grade the institutions of higher learning which they found and then beneficial to their cause. The Pope of today is the modern equivalent of the religious leaders of the past. Those who believe that the Pope reacts to the slightest force per unit area are either completely mistaken or are trying to rewrite history.

Theologa Donatus relates the story of i Don Baptista, a devout Catholic and follower of St. Augustine, writing to a council of Toledo near the teaching of his religion to the masses in a state of pagrina. When pressed on what he meant by "involuntary servitude" he insisted that it included both the forced celibacy of the popes and the mass-produced, mindless, soul-less, entertain-the-races, give-and-take-painting, bullheaded-as-fool pop music of the late medieval period. And how he delighted in his answer! No less a defender of the faith than Martin Luther pointed out long ago, "If there exist any among us who has non seen the most beautiful things that art can give to the vision, let him come well-nigh a cathedral and ask the painter whether there is anything in it which may non exist beautiful".

And and then it comes to pass that the reformers of the sixteenth century were non actually interested in which composer did the side by side best word-painting, or that composer wrote the nearly beautiful music. They were only interested in which one was most truthful in his religious convictions. And that'southward just the mode it was in those times. The true measure of a homo being is his ability to experience the truth about whatever he is doing. The real mensurate of a true Catholic is his power to experience the truth about whatsoever he is doing in his life.

So which composer responded to the reforms of the council of Trent in an exemplary fashion?

I think one of the almost hitting responses always recorded was that of Don Marquis de La Menou's "Parolin". In this work, which was published after 1503, La Menou depicts the Roman Catholic Church bureaucracy, together with the Pope himself, engaging in corrupt beliefs. Equally with the preceding all-time describes the situation in which we find ourselves today, Don Marquis de La Menou is right about the extent of this degeneration.

But what about the other works which, in the preceding part of this article, we saw equally beingness typical of the sixteenth century Protestant reformation? Stendhal's" Werdneck", composed between 1590 and 1594, is ane such work, as is Bach's "Feucelle", which was written around the same fourth dimension. The language of these pieces is highly dislocated, and even while the ideas expressed are highly familiar, and which in all probability would have been present at the fourth dimension of the Reformation, such confusion does non undermine their significance for agreement the subsequently consequences of that event. For example, Stendhal'due south description of the way the Cosmic Church building bureaucracy abused the power of the mass media, and manipulated common people to believe in truths opposite to those constitute in the reformed Bible is an important part of what has come to be chosen "postmodernism".