The Second Vatican Council did not create a new Church. It did, however, seek to bring about a new social form of the Church that would once again be in harmony with the demands of the times. For the Council Fathers, the decisive political innovation since the Council of Trent (1545–1563) lay in the fact that the nature of the state had changed. The absolutist state, through which the king and the nobility also dominated society, gave way to the secular constitutional state as a result of the Enlightenment and democratisation. This is characterised by the fact that it no longer claims to rule over the entirety of society. It is no longer a Societas perfecta (“perfect society”).