The Council of Trent set in motion the standardisation of the Roman liturgy, and the books appeared in sequence: the Breviary in 1568, the Missal in 1570, the Pontifical for bishops in 1596, and at last, in 1614, the Rituale Romanum for the ordinary priest, drawing heavily on the influential manual prepared a decade earlier by Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santori.
Unlike its siblings, the Rituale was commended rather than imposed; local rituals with venerable customs continued alongside it, gradually conforming to the Roman model. Its contents map a priest's sacramental day. Titles cover baptism of infants and adults with its questions, exsufflations and anointings; the sacrament of penance; the Eucharist carried to the sick; extreme unction and the commendation of the departing soul; the funeral rites with the Libera me and In paradisum; matrimony; and the churching of women. Around the sacraments stands the great collection of blessings, of homes, ships, fields, wells, bread, salt, candles, animals, printing presses in later editions, each with its versicles and collect, the church's conviction that no creature is too ordinary to be signed toward God. Rubrics regulate everything, and appendices supply the processions, the litanies of the saints, and forms for recording baptisms and marriages in the parish registers the book also mandates, a quiet foundation of European demography.