Episcopal Leadership

Abstract

The success and failure of post-Tridentine reform, as guided by that Council, was heavily dependant on the power and influence of bishops. The Council itself has been judged the most episcopal Church Council.¹ Bishops had dominated the formal council procedures and decision-making, whatever theologians did behind the scenes. One of the last major battles had been over the rights of Bishops. The insistence on the residence of bishops, to be absent for no more than six months, which had first occasioned strong debate in 1546–47, was ratified. G. Alberigo celebrated episcopal residency, with activity for the salvation of souls (salus animarum) as the Council’s practical ecclesiology.² The spirit of St Augustine as Bishop as well as theologian inspired the ideology of reform. Therefore, bishops were expected to lead reform campaigns, as organisers and preachers inspiring clergy and laity below them. In practice episcopal leadership proved very variable. Various models of episcopal leadership existed, from the autocratic to the liberal and consultative. Many bishops scarcely approached a model — through incompetence, indifference, conflicting career needs and powerlessness against rival jurisdictions. A.D. Wright once argued that one of the great failures of the Council was its assertion of episcopal authority, which was then accompanied by ‘insufficiently stringent reform of princely privileges’, and a failure to curtail the princely nomination of bishops (though this was more significant outside Italy).³