Did the Council of Trent produce a liturgical reform? The case of the Roman Missal

The standard evaluation of the Council of Trent, which is basically due to Hubert Jedin's detailed historical investigations, is that it was above all a reform council. It not only responded to the protestant Reformation but also took proper initiatives to reform the life of the official Roman Catholic Church. With respect to the liturgy, however, it is legitimate to raise the question whether the Council of Trent produced a genuine liturgical reform. This article proposes to answer this question in a very nuanced way. On the one hand, there is no doubt that Trent had an immense impact on the self-organization of the Church and thus also on the worshiping life of the faithful. On the other hand, it didn't actually deal so much with the liturgy qua liturgy. The council was primarily interested in 'right thinking' about the sacraments but may be said to have looked down upon litur gy as a source or motor for reform. Rather, liturgical changes were the consequence of decisions made on the basis of theological, canonical, or ecclesial considerations. Because the liturgy in general is too broad a phenomenon to be covered in one article, the present text is limited to the Roman Missal. It is argued that a close study of this particular liturgical book corroborates most of the general assumptions about Trent's supposed liturgical reform. Trent itself had left it up to the pope to publish an authorized version of the missal; it didn't differ that much from previous versions; and it was the offspring of a certain devotional and spiritual mentality. What makes the 1570 Roman Missal stand out among similar documents is neither its content nor its form, but the fact that this was henceforth the only permitted version to celebrate the Eucharist. After all, the said Roman Missal may have been more the fruit of a modern approach aiming at efficiency than a sign of deep concern for liturgical renewal