From the beginning of that brisk October, when 2,540 out of 2,908 eligible cardinals, patriarchs, bishops, and abbots arrived in Rome, it was apparent Vatican II would be a council unlike any other. The sheer weight of numbers showed that. There had been only 600 to 700 fathers at the First Vatican Council, which proclaimed the infallibility of the pope in 1869–70. At the eighteen-year-long Council of Trent, which condemned the Protestant Reformation, only about 200 members voted on the decrees.
