Trento and the Council: the Church facing magic and astrology

For eighteen years, intermittently, a small Alpine city was the centre of the Catholic world. Between 1545 and 1563 Trento hosted the Council that would define the Church's response to the Protestant Reformation and reshape European religious life for centuries. Less well known is the fact that the decisions taken in those years also had profound consequences for the fate of the occult arts, astrology and Renaissance magic, which until then had been cultivated even in learned and courtly circles.

A city between two worlds

Trento was chosen as the venue because it lay within imperial territory but in an Italian-speaking area, halfway between Rome and the Germanic world. The city was ruled by a prince-bishop, and at the time of the Council this office was held by Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, a skilful mediator between papacy and empire. The sessions were held mainly in the cathedral of San Vigilio and in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

According to tradition, the conciliar decrees were proclaimed before a large wooden crucifix now kept in a chapel of the cathedral, which is therefore known as the Crucifix of the Council. The Council took place in three distinct periods, interrupted by suspensions due to epidemics, wars and political tensions, and was solemnly concluded in December 1563.

The Index and the forbidden sciences

One of the fruits of the Tridentine climate was the Index of Forbidden Books promulgated in 1564 by Pope Pius IV, prepared by a commission set up within the Council. The Index was preceded by general rules, and one of them banned books of geomancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, necromancy and judicial astrology, that is, the kind that claimed to foretell future events and human actions with certainty.

Astronomical observations and applications considered natural remained permitted, such as those useful to agriculture, navigation and the medicine of the time. The distinction reflected an ancient debate on human freedom: if the stars determined every action, theology argued, man would no longer be responsible for his own choices. In 1586 the bull Coeli et terrae of Pope Sixtus V reaffirmed and tightened these condemnations.

The Cycle of the Months at the Buonconsiglio

To understand how deeply astrological thought was rooted in earlier culture, one need only climb to the Castello del Buonconsiglio, residence of the prince-bishops. In the Torre Aquila is preserved the Cycle of the Months, frescoed around 1400 for the prince-bishop George of Liechtenstein. The frescoes depict the passing of the year through the activities of nobles and peasants, under the symbolic guidance of the sky.

The cycle bears witness to a worldview in which human time was marked by celestial movements, and in which the agricultural and courtly calendars were set in harmony with the cosmos. It is a sensibility that the Council did not erase, but framed within stricter limits, separating what was considered lawful from what appeared to be superstition or forbidden practice.

Trento thus tells of a crucial passage in European cultural history. In its churches and palaces one can read the transition from a Renaissance that looked to the stars with curiosity and trust to an age in which the Church sought to draw clear boundaries between science, faith and the occult arts. Knowing this passage helps us understand why many esoteric traditions later lived on the margins or in secret.