As far as the Bible is concerned, the canon was indeed never decreed by anyone, including the Council of Trent, but was determined by a consensus of the churches during the first three centuries. The Synod of Carthage pronounced , so far as I know, the first official list. But it is uncertain how many collections of New Testament books existed, and how many copies of individual works were available. Books were much more plentiful in the Roman world than most people think, and not as expensive as they would be in medieval times. But a "Bible" is actually a library and this it would be available only to a pious layman who was wealthy/ a rather large congregation. From the start, the ordinary Christian would be a hearer of the Word, not a reader, and the Lector would be an officer of the Church, and a kind of librarian. The Jewish Scripture were, undoubtedly, available from the beginning, and the Christian Scriptures were only gradually made part of the worship service. We have no idea how quickly they were brought into general circulation, although I am of the school that holds that this would be sooner rather than later. The Canon was developed from the books that " everyone" used in the liturgy, but when that happened is hard to know. It is "the work of the Spirit," but does not that also mean in accordance with the Tradition--as handed down from generation to generation? And degrees of the Church are affirmations of what has always been believed, not inventions. The canon has spelled out at Trent was a reaction to the efforts by Luther and other "reformers" to reform the Canon. and publish it so as to support their opinions.
>The canon has spelled out at Trent was a reaction to the efforts by Luther and other “reformers” to reform the Canon. and publish it so as to support their opinions.<
It was not until Trent that the present canon of Rome was “infallibly defined”, and rather than Luther and other “reformers” reforming the Canon, the Protestants did nothing new when they rejected the apocrypha as authoritative Scripture, as the apocrypha was not accepted by the Jews nor was it included in such early lists as that of Melito (AD 170, and minus Esther) and the Muratorian Canon. Notable authorities had rejected the deuterocanonical books, from Athanasius, (ca. 367) to Jerome ((ca. 394; though he stated the books can be used “ecclesiastically” and sometime quoted from some) to Josephus and others.
While the canons of Hippo and Carthage sanctioned these extra books, and had been given ecumenical authority, their approval is evidenced as being not specific but general, as they also sanctioned different canons. (http://www.christiantruth.com/Apocrypha3.html)
Different canons were sanctioned by the Council in Trullo (Quinisext Council) in 692 and the seventh Ecumenical Council (787), and the Polyglot Bible (1514) of Cardinal Ximenes separated the Apocrypha from the canon of the Old Testament, and which soon received papal sanction.
Jerome’s requirement for canonicity was that a book must have universal acceptance, and the sanction of Jewish antiquity, and enable edification and the “confirmation of the doctrine of the Church”.
Disagreement existed within Roman Catholicism even in Luther’s time, as even Roman Catholic Cardinal and theologian Cajetan, who, paradoxically, drafted a declaration of dogma on the subject of indulgences for Pope Leo X in order to help condemn Luther as a heretic, (as there was no an official teaching on indulgences, or official doctrine as to the effect of the indulgence upon Purgatory when Luther posted the 95 Theses), stated,
Cardinal Cajetan stating,
“Here we close our commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest (that is, Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees) are counted by St. Jerome out of the canonical books, and are placed amongst the apocrypha, along with Wisdom and Ecciesiasticus, as is plain from the Protogus Galeatus. Nor be thou disturbed, like a raw scholar, if thou shouldest find anywhere, either in the sacred councils or the sacred doctors, these books reckoned as canonical. For the words as well of councils as of doctors are to be reduced to the correction of Jerome.” Cardinal Cajetan, “Commentary on all the Authentic Historical Books of the Old Testament,” Bruce Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (New York: Oxford, 1957), p. 180.)