English 233: Introduction to Western Humanities - Baroque & Enlightenment

The "Tridentine Creed"

from the bull Injunction Nobis, promulgated by Pope Pius IV,

November 1564

I profess that true God is offered in the Mass, a proper, propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, and that in the Holy Eucharist there are truly and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and the divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and that conversion is made of the whole substance of bread into his body and of the whole substance of wine into his blood, which conversion the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. I also confess that the whole and entire Christ and the true sacrament is taken under the one species along.

I hold unswervingly that there is a purgatory and that the souls there detained are helped by the intercessions of the faithful. Likewise also that the Saints who reign with Christ are to be venerated and invoked; that they offer prayers to God for us and that their relics are to be venerated ....  I affirm that the power of indulgences has been left by Christ in the Church, and that their use is very salutary for Christian people.

I recognize the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church as the Mother and Mistress of all churches; and I vow and swear true obedience to the Roman Pontiff, successor of Blessed Peter, Chief of the Apostles, and representative of Jesus Christ.

• [Translated in Martin D.W. Jones, The Counter Reformation:  Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 70.]

  Go to the Home Page of the course.

  Suggestions, comments and questions are welcome.  Please send them to lyman@ksu.edu .

      Translation by Martin .D.W. Jones included under fair use.  All rights reserved to the translator and Cambridge University Press.

      This page last updated 02 September 1999.