The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

37^ HISTORY OF THE POPES.
however, were removed, many reforms were carried out at
once in many districts, and in others more slowly. Many
excellent bishops, some of them saints, as Charles Borromeo
of Milan (died 1584), Alessandro SauH of Aleria in Corsica
(died 1592), Turibio of Lima (died 1606), and Francis de Sales
(died 1622) sought to realize the ideal of a bishop sketched
by the Council of Trent. The provincial and diocesan synods,
which had always proved so important for the renewal of the
religious spirit, were revived later, especially in France. The
Council acquired inestimable merit by its raising of the status
of the secular priesthood. If this body, in modern times,
occupies a far more important and influential position by the
side of the regular clergy than it did in the middle ages, this
must be attributed for the most part, to the better training
which they received as the result of the decrees of the Council
of Trent.
To sum up, it is difficult to estimate too highly the import-
ance of the Council of Trent, especially for the interior development
of the Church, It laid the foundations of a true reform,
and fixed Catholic doctrine on broad and systematic lines.
It is at once a boundary line and a landmark, at which opposing
spirits must separate, and it inaugurates a new epoch in the
history of the Catholic Church.