At the end, there was a series of drumbeats - and great exhaustion among the Council Fathers. With breathtaking speed for the Catholic Church, they had passed weighty resolutions and ground-breaking documents in the "hot autumn" of 1965.
Their new orientations were intended to change the face of the Church - and open wide the windows to the world, just as Pope John XXIII, who died soon after the opening, had wished.
60 years ago, on 8 December 1965, the Second Vatican Council came to an end.
The grand closing ceremony in sunny St Peter's Square made a "very theatrical" impression on the sober Cardinal Josef Frings from Cologne; in any case, he said, "the whole thing had a southern feel".
And his young theological adviser Joseph Ratzinger, whose star rose brightly at the Council, also found the large-scale Catholic rally "a little overloaded and external".
The previous day was quite different, as the later Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his 1966 memoirs of the Council - when in the last working session "the breath of history could be felt as hardly ever before":
Pope Paul VI and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Athenagoras, had agreed to lift the mutual curse that the envoys of their predecessors had pronounced against each other in 1054 in a joint declaration.
The rapturous applause that accompanied the symbolic greeting of peace between the Pope and the legate of Constantinople in St Peter's Basilica was only muted, according to Ratzinger, "by the emotion that no participant in that historic moment was able to escape".
Out of the wagon castle
The grand gesture of 7 December 1965, flanked by the adoption of several central Council documents, was a worthy conclusion to the "aggiornamento", the "updating" of the Church's proclamation according to the requirements of the times, called for by John XXIII.
The 2,500 or so Council Fathers gradually found their way back to the problems of people in the modern age, groping their way through thousands of pages of documents, drafts and amendments, out of the wagon castle in which the Church and the papacy had entrenched themselves since the French Revolution in one-sided negative condemnations of the outside world.
Of course, such a reorientation was not without internal resistance.
Soon after the announcement of the Council, a fierce struggle broke out behind the scenes between the "preservers" and the "progressives", with northern Europeans such as Cardinals Suenens, Frings, Lienart and Alfrink standing out in particular.
The fact that the reform efforts were not primarily driven by the ecclesiastical political "left", but actually arose from the "mainstream" of the Council majority, is proven not least by the peasant son John XXIII himself, whose deeply conservative theological convictions no one can seriously doubt.
Liturgical renewal
The first Council for almost a century adopted 16 fundamental documents, but no dogma. It was a reform council, not a doctrinal council, and it led to far-reaching changes, such as a liturgical renewal at the expense of the Latin language.
The Council Fathers strengthened the self-confidence of the local bishops vis-à-vis Rome, but also of the laity vis-à-vis the bishops.
There was a new awareness of the universal church, and Rome opened up ecumenically and interreligiously without precedent.
The Council turned counsellors and bishops into heroes, stars of 20th century theology: Schillebeeckx, Bea, Küng, König, Congar, Rahner, Ratzinger.
The "keepers", on the other hand, were labelled bogeymen, such as the head of the Vatican's religious authority, Alfredo Ottaviani.
However, "the Germans", who were among the driving forces behind the reform at the Council, became increasingly concerned about being harnessed to the cart of the ecclesiastical left - especially as ever more far-reaching reform wishes were already being expressed from home.
The sometimes fierce disputes between the two poles continued until the last day of the Council - and continue to this day in parishes and parish halls.
Both currents invoke the "spirit of the Council" - a consequence of the Council Fathers' need to make major compromises even on key formulations in the face of the flood of documents to be processed.
New beginnings and uncertainty
The euphoria of the Council was followed by a new beginning, but also a time of uncertainty.
Experimentation in worship that often overshot the mark and the veritable iconoclasm of church furnishings and liturgical art treasures drove many Catholics into the arms of traditionalists, such as the"Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X", which rejected central resolutions of the Council and ultimately chose the path to schism.
The "revolution of 1968", which was traumatic for many, reinforced their opinion that the Church had become too much of a slave to the zeitgeist.
Incidentally, this is a theory that many commentators also use as a model for interpreting Pope Benedict XVI's (2005-2013) concession to the Pius Brothers: the young, pioneering Council theologian Ratzinger, frightened by the excesses of the new ecclesiastical freedom and the student revolts, later turned his back on the "world" and turned to the defence of tradition.
More well-meaning people, on the other hand, emphasise that Benedict XVI stood firmly by the Council, which he himself helped to shape - although not always in favour of the liberal interpretation of the Council in the Western world.
Half a century until implementation
Some now even consider a Third Vatican Council to be necessary - and with his worldwide synodal process, Pope Francis, who died in the spring, probably also wanted to initiate a comparable dynamic.
However, it was the most important council historian of the 20th century, Hubert Jedin (1900-1980), who summarised the essence of his research: Every council has had to wait at least half a century until its implementation.
However, this has now been achieved.