ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the part played by popes in the implementation of the Tridentine measures in the second half of the sixteenth century and then turn to review the work of bishops in renewing the religious life of their dioceses, culminating in the activity of Carlo Borromeo at Milan. In contrast with Pius IV’s laxity, Pius brought with him to the papacy, as Eugenius IV had in the previous century, the moral style acquired in a strict religious order. An area of policy in which Borromeo and Pius were agreed was that of shared determination to enforce the decrees and reforms of Trent. It might be argued that, whatever their doctrinal validity, especially in defending Catholicism from Protestant allegations of Catholic Mariolatry and hagiolatry, such excisions in the Missal of Pius V amounted to a loss of liturgical richness and, particularly, of regional and local flavour in the celebration of Mass.
