The moment
Renewal was already stirring inside Catholicism, with new religious orders founded from the 1520s and the Jesuits approved in 1540, before the council met at Trent. In 25 sessions between 1545 and 1563 it defined doctrine against Protestant teaching, reformed the clergy and ordered every diocese to found a seminary, shaping Catholicism for four centuries.
People: Pope Paul III, Charles Borromeo, Teresa of Ávila