Was the Canon Only Fixed at Trent?

A free cheat sheet from A Catholic Take — answering the claim that the Church had no agreed Bible before 1545.

The claim goes around every few months, and it went around again this summer: before the Council of Trent in 1545 there was no such thing as an agreed-upon Catholic Bible. It sounds devastating. It is also answered by a single document.

In 1442 — one hundred and four years before Trent — the ecumenical Council of Florence listed all seventy-three books by name in the bull Cantate Domino. And Florence was only repeating Rome in 382, Hippo in 393, Carthage in 397 and 419, Pope Innocent I in 405. Trent defined nothing new. It defended an eleven-hundred-year-old list because the Reformers had just thrown it out.

So I put the whole case on four pages: the decisive counterexample, a dated timeline of the earliest canon lists, the reasons the Church includes the deuterocanon, and where the New Testament leans on those books. Put your name in below and it is yours right now, free.

Cover of the free PDF study: Was the Canon Only Fixed at Trent? Councils, Fathers and the Deuterocanon

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Was the Canon Only Fixed at Trent?

Four pages answering the viral claim that the Catholic Church had no agreed canon of Scripture before 1545 — with the councils, the dates, and the sources laid out so you can check every one of them.

  • Florence, 1442: all 73 books listed by name, a century before Trent
  • A dated timeline of the earliest canon lists, from Marcion to Trent
  • Free and printable — yours the moment you sign up

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