ABSTRACT
One of the things for which Carlo Borromeo, the saintly archbishop of Milan, is best known is the implementation in his ecclesiastical province of the decrees of the Council of Trent. He became the model Tridentine bishop and his synodal and conciliar legislation was copied throughout Catholic Europe. Some of Borromeo’s other decrees do not reference Lateran V, but may, nonetheless, have been influenced by it. Borromeo’s primary concern was to implement the decrees of the Council of Trent and thus bring about a reform of the Milanese church. But the Tridentine decrees did not provide measures for all situations. They said nothing about blasphemy, the penalties for priestly neglect of the obligation to pray the divine office, and the duty of teachers to provide religious instruction. The acta of the Milanese synods and councils implemented various decrees of Lateran V and helped to make them part of a program of church reform that spread to the rest of Church.
