ABSTRACT
The occupants of the papal throne in the years from 1564 to 1789 inclusive were all in one, simple sense post-Tridentine popes. While the absence of any further General Council certainly marked this period, those popes headed a Church which was equally certainly post-Conciliar. That this was true in more than a negative or purely chronological sense was effectively ensured by the action of Pius IV, pope at the termination of the Council of Trent, in fulfilment of the Council’s own final wishes. His confirmation and promulga tion of the Conciliar decrees, before 1564 was over, followed the creation of a commission of cardinals and Curialists to review the Conciliar decrees. The application of the decrees thus became an exercise of papal, no longer solely or directly an expression of Conciliar, authority.
