Folio. [12], 881 [i.e. 879]pp, [17]. Contemporary blind-ruled sprinkled calf. Rubbed, marked, and scored, wear to head of spine, corners exposed. Pastedowns sprung, without free-endpapers.

The second edition of ecclesiastical lawyer and college head Nathanael Brent's (1573/4-1652) translation of Pietro Soaue Polano's Historia del Concilio tridentino (1619), first published in 1620.

The Council of Trent (1545-63), the most significant post-Reformation ecumenical Church council. Provoked by the doctrinal onslaught of Lutheran, Calvinist, Zwinglian and various other forms of national Protestantism, the Council decided upon a host of reforms aimed at bolstering the Roman Catholic faith. As well as formalising and defending wealth practices considered heretical by northern Protestants, and sanctioning the founding of several bodies of the Counter Reformation, the Council's delegated to the Pope an unprecedented degree of power. A standardised Catechism (1565), revised Breviary (1568) and perhaps most importantly a standardised Roman Missal (1570) were issued in consequence at the behest of Pius V, with Pope Clement VIII overseeing the issue of a revised and officially sanctioned Vulgate Bible in 1592.