Files of the Council of Trent
The opening of the Vatican archives under Pope Leo XIII (1881 or 1883) set another major project in motion alongside the German nunciature files. Father Heinrich Denifle OP, sub-archivist at the Vatican Secret Archives, recommended to the Görres Society in 1893 to publish the records of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This proposal was accepted. Like the edition of the nunciature files, it was part of the effort of the historical section of the Görres Society to contrast the dominant Protestant historiography of the Reformation with a Catholic account from the perspective of authentic Roman archival sources.
Here too, the Görres Society as a whole, but in a special way the RIGG, was responsible for organising the exploitation of the archives on the spot. The result was the centennial work of the Trent Edition.
The 19-volume edition appeared under the title Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, actorum, epistularum, tractatuum nova collectio, edidit Societas Goerresiana (Freiburg 1901-2001).
Sebastian Merkle, Umberto Mazzone, Theobald Freudenberger, Stephan Ehses, Alois Postina, Vinzenz Schweitzer, Gottfried Buschbell, Joachim Birkner, Hubert Jedin and most recently Klaus Ganzer participated as editors. The edition of the files has now been completed. The most important researcher of the Council of Trent was Hubert Jedin, who worked at the Campo Santo Teutonico from 1939 to 1943 (cf. H. Jedin, Lebensbericht, Mainz 1988, 3rd ed., 102-115).
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