Fourth Lateran Council

11 Key excerpts on "Fourth Lateran Council"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Church

  A Theological and Historical Account

  • Gerald Bray(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Baker Academic

    (Publisher)

  5 The Crisis of the Imperial Church The Crisis of Authority

  When Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) summoned what was to become the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, he and his church were at the height of their power and influence. The council turned out to be the last of the great reforming synods that had met over the previous century in the Lateran, the papal palace in Rome, in order to establish ground rules for administering the vast international network that the Roman church had become. The First Lateran Council had assembled in 1123, after a gap of some 250 years, and legislated against what it saw as the chief abuses of its time. These were the sale of church offices (known as “simony”),1 the cohabitation of priests with women, and the interference of laypeople in the business of the church. The agenda was clear: the church had to put its house in order and create as much distance as it could between its internal affairs and the people to whom it ministered. The Second Lateran Council in 1139 reinforced the previous one by going into greater detail regarding particular abuses, but it also took note of heretics who denied or perverted the sacraments and called on the secular rulers of Europe to stamp them out.2 The Third Lateran Council was held in 1179 and was mainly concerned with correcting abuses in the election of bishops and other clergy, in addition to the problems that had surfaced earlier but had still not been resolved satisfactorily.

  It was the Fourth Lateran Council, however, that was to make the most far-reaching changes and have the longest-lasting impact on the church. As we would expect from Innocent III, it launched a broadside attack on heresies, which were now seen to be a major danger to the church. The neo-Manichaean Albigensians (or Cathars) in the south of France were denounced, and a Crusade was subsequently organized to suppress them, which it did with the help of the French king. The mystic prophet Joachim da Fiore (d. 1202), whose writings were to exercise great influence on later generations who were inspired by his predictions of the coming reign of the antichrist, were also condemned.3 Peter Lombard’s Sentences were cited for the first time as the chief authority for the church’s doctrine, and after that his work became the standard textbook for theological students across the Western church. Other matters covered included the regulation of confession to a priest, which was strengthened by the imposition of what is known as “the seal of the confessional,” that is to say, the obligation imposed on the priest not to reveal anything confessed to him, even if it was a crime against the law.4 The council also legislated against clandestine marriages by insisting that public notice should be given on at least three occasions beforehand. This created what is known today as the reading of the “banns,” a practice still found in some Anglican and Presbyterian churches.5

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Ages of Faith

  Popular Religion in Late Medieval England and Western Europe

  • Norman Tanner(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  HAPTER 3

  Pastoral Care: The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215

  The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 opens a unique window onto pastoral care in the Middle Ages.1 Summoned by Pope Innocent III and meeting in the Lateran basilica in Rome during the month of November 1215, the assembly of several hundred bishops and other prelates from all over western Christendom enacted in its 71 decrees the most impressive and influential legislation of all medieval councils.

  Regarding the preparation for the council, the balance between papal input and that of other contributors is difficult to weigh precisely. Most of the decrees appear to have been drafted by Pope Innocent and the Roman Curia before the beginning of the council, so the task of the latter was largely to rubber-stamp the prepared legislation. More detailed information about possible amendments introduced by individuals is hard to come by, on account of lack of evidence about the council’s proceedings. On the other hand, the decrees were not invented out of nothing. Several of them are traceable to decrees of earlier councils, and in the letters sent out in April 1213 to announce the forthcoming council, bishops were invited to suggest topics for the council. In the next two and a half years, moreover, many local councils were held in preparation, at the Pope’s express wish, and it seems likely that these local councils had some influence upon the decrees that were drafted for Lateran IV. In short, while the principal impetus for the decrees came from the Pope and the Roman Curia, they certainly reflect a wider constituency within the Church.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Feast of Corpus Christi

  • Barbara R. Walters, Vincent Corrigan, Peter T. Ricketts(Authors)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  217 In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council took a decisive stand. It pro- claimed the primacy of the pope, called for annual confession of sins, and mandated participation in communion. It established a definitive formulation of the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist in the vaguely defined doctrine of tran- substantiation. 218 The creation of new religious orders was forbidden; thereafter, per- sons wishing to embrace the apostolic life as monks or nuns had to do so under one of the approved rules, and new houses had to be incorporated by charter with one of the existing associations. 219 Canon 3 of the Fourth Lateran Council decreed that heretics be excommunicated and handed over to secular authorities, who were ordered to confis- cate their property and execute punishment as they saw fit. 220 In 1227, Gregory IX, op- ponent of Frederick II and successor to Innocent III, began to delegate the work of the Inquisition to the Dominicans and Franciscans who, as professional theologians, were deemed qualified to identify heresies. 221 THE COMMUNITY OF WOMEN The rising power and vulnerability of women in the context of the medieval city received initial recognition through the work of Herbert Grundmann, who in 1935 published his classic volume on religious movements in the High Medieval period. His analysis of women in the ascetic movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries inspired many subsequent and even more penetrating assessments of medieval gendering and religious power. Both Bynum and Oliver acknowledge his importance and influence on their work, as do later scholars working within this framework. 222 A number of themes 216 Grundmann, Religious Movements. 217 Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages; Schluchter, Paradoxes of Modernity, 212–13. 218 Gary Macy, Treasures from the Storehouse: Medieval Religion and the Eucharist (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgi- cal Press, 1999), 81.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  A History of the Church in the Middle Ages

  • F Donald Logan(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The 70 canons (or decrees), approved by the Fourth Lateran Council, were not debated in council but were presented by the pope. Not a word was changed, not a canon challenged, not an issue debated: the decrees of the council were the work of the pope and his curia. Apart from the first two decrees, which dealt with dogmatic matters, the decrees of the council concerned the practical life of the church. These decrees were to affect the way Christians lived their Christian lives for centuries to come. The most enduring and penetrating actions of the Fourth Lateran Council had nothing to do with crusades or dogmatic niceties but with the pastoral concerns of the church.

  A summary of the most significant decrees can only serve to suggest the pastoral dimensions of the council’s work. Central to any attempt to elevate the quality of the Christian life as lived by individual Christians in the hamlets, villages and towns of western Europe was the quality of the clergy charged with the care of souls, which one decree called ‘the art of arts’. It is ‘better to have a few good priests (paucos bonos ) than many bad priests (multos malos )’. Bishops either personally or through others should instruct candidates for the priesthood as to how they should perform the sacred rites and sacraments. But more, extending an enactment of the Third Lateran Council (1179), it was decreed that each cathedral should have a master of grammar who will instruct the clergy and poor scholars gratis, and in metropolitan churches there should also be a master of theology, who will teach priests and others ‘in the sacred page’ and who will especially instruct them in those things which pertain to the

  Map 13 Representatives at the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

  care of souls. Not quite a modern seminary, itself a creature of the sixteenth century, yet the arrangements provided for the training of the clergy in something more than the mere performance of rituals. More than Mass priests, they were expected to be pastors of souls. The council defined their behaviour in explicit terms:

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  The Canons of the Third Lateran Council of 1179

  Their Origins and Reception

  • Danica Summerlin(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 HISTORICAL SURVEY In the summer of 1178, Pope Alexander III sent out a series of letters designed to bring the prelates and clergy of Latin Christendom together. As he wrote in his letter of summons, clergy were to ‘come to Rome for the first Sunday of the coming Lent’ in order to correct abuses and introduce statutes ‘following the custom of the ancient fathers’. 1 Alexander made no formal mention of a council in his letter, but as a direct result of those summons around three hundred bishops and an unknown but presumably large number of other clerics gathered in Rome, discussing issues of import and issuing, in the process, twenty- seven decrees. After the Counter-Reformation, Alexander’s council came to be classed as the third of a series of ecumenical councils held in the Basilica of Constantine, also known as the Lateran Basilica, in Rome, exalted in the Roman Catholic Church for their overarching authority. Held up as an example of peace and unity by commentators both medieval and modern, what has become known as the Third Lateran Council, or Lateran III, was also the final act in a hundred-year period rich in councils. 2 These councils were grandiose occasions, designed to express authority as well as to reform the Church and its morals. The anonymous eyewitness to Innocent III’s 1215 gathering described the number of clerics and languages present in a manner reminiscent of 1 Corinthians: ‘Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard’; awe is seeded throughout his narrative. 3 Although the surviving narratives from 1179 are 1 WH – : JL 13070, 13097–9; plus PUF n.F., 5, 256, pp. 361–3, from where this text is taken. 2 At least fifty papal councils were held between the election of Gregory VII in 1073 and 1179. G. Gresser, Die Synoden und Konzilien in der Zeit des Reformpapsttums in Deutschland und Italien von Leo IX.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Council of Bourges, 1225

  A Documentary History

  • Richard Kay(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  SECTION FIVE

  MONASTIC PROVINCIAL CHAPTERS

  Document 45INNOCENT III ESTABLISHESMONASTIC CHAPTERS-GENERAL AND VISITORSFourth Lateran Council, 1215

   

  Innocent III crowned his energetic years of administration with the greatest of the reforming councils of the medieval Latin Church. 1 The public sessions of the council, held in the Lateran basilica during November 1215, did not deliberate over the reform of the Church, however.2 The seventy canons, for which the Fourth Lateran Council is chiefly remembered, were prepared secretly, recited in public session, and approved as read.3 How they were prepared remains something of a mystery.

  As was common in medieval conciliar legislation, the Lateran statutes were cast in the form of authoritative prescriptions made by the council’s head and approved by its members. 4 The enacting clause leaves no doubt that the voice of authority is that of Innocent alone, speaking with the plural of majesty: “sicut olim aperte distinximus et nunc sacri approbation concilii confirmamus …” (c. 8). Thus it is not surprising that contemporary copies of the canons frequently bear a title in which the Lateran legislation is credited to Innocent alone. 5 Certainly the pope was ultimately responsible for the decrees he ordained in the council; doubtless, too, they were drafted by his curia; but the council also had its role to play, albeit a supporting one.

  Assembled in public session, the council expressed its collective approval of the proposed legislation, as such phrases in the canons as “sacro approbante concilio” (c. 47) testify. This, however, was a solemn, ceremonial formality which invited neither debate nor dissent. More important but less known are the legislative procedures by which the statutes were formulated. That they were the product of the council and not merely imposed upon it appears from the rubricella prefixed to the Lateran decrees in Innocent’s own register: “Sequuntur multe ordinationes per diversa capitula facte et ordinate in dicto concilio … ”6 No doubt the pope took counsel in some way with the assembled prelates, although the mechanics of the process are now obscure. In the summons to Lateran IV, the bishops were instructed to ascertain what reforms were needed and to bring their recommendations in writing to the council. 7 Innocent, too, had his proposals on which the prelates were consulted, for in at least one instance an unfavorable response caused him to abandon a reform he had desired. 8

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Power and Faith

  Politics and Religion in Western Europe from the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century

  • Richard Huscroft(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  These were councils attended by clergy from all parts of Christendom, and their pronouncements (‘canons’ or ‘decrees’) were considered to be binding on all Christians. The term ‘general council’ (concilium generale in Latin) was first used to describe the council held by Calixtus II at Reims in 1119. After this it was used to designate Calixtus’s First Lateran Council (1123), Innocent II’s councils at Reims (1131) and Pisa (1135) and his Second Lateran Council (1139), Eugenius III’s council at Reims (1148) and Alexander III’s Third Lateran Council (1179). The holding of a general council was a demonstration of the pope’s universal authority and an assertive reminder that the power of the papacy transcended whatever political problems a particular pope might be having at the time a general council was held. And it was through the decrees of these councils that the popes expanded and honed their jurisdictional rights and continued to develop their ideology of papal supremacy. During the twelfth century, that ideology expanded to encompass new powers over the holding of tournaments and the conduct of warfare: the use of catapults and crossbows against Christians was banned at the Second Lateran Council, as was arson as a method of waging war. The pope’s role as the protector of all Christians against heresy was also brought more into focus as challenges to religious orthodoxy began to surface: the councils of Reims in 1148 and Tours in 1163 condemned the heretics reportedly dwelling in Gascony and Provence, whilst the Third Lateran Council named them as ‘Cathars’. At the same time, the popes were attempting to tighten their control over holy wars and crusades. These could be launched against heretics within Christendom or pagans outside it

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Guy Fawkes; Or, A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605

  • Thomas Lathbury(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Perlego

    (Publisher)

  By these councils all heretics are devoted to destruction. They proclaim principles exactly similar to those on which the conspirators acted;—in other words, the conspirators acted on the principles promulgated by these councils, as those of the church of Rome. On these principles did the jesuits justify the treason, and declare the traitors innocent.

  Attempts are made in modern times to prove that the canons alluded to are not binding on the church; but the hand of Providence has made the church of Rome set her seal to her own condemnation in this matter; for by the decrees of the council of Trent every papist is pledged to receive the decisions of all general councils[26] . The only question, therefore, to be decided is this, namely, whether these councils are regarded as general by the church of Rome. Respecting the third and fourth Lateran councils there never was any doubt; and the creed of Pope Pius IV., as well as the council of Trent, expressly enjoins the reception of the decrees of all general councils[27] . It is very remarkable, nay, I may say providential, that the Fourth Lateran Council is especially alluded to by the council of Trent. One of the decisions of this very council is specified and renewed by the Trent decrees. The church of Rome has declared, therefore, by her last council,—a council, too, by which all her doctrines were unalterably fixed,—that the Lateran council is to be received by all her members; and, as if to prevent all cavil on the subject, and also to prevent any Romanist from saying that this council was not a general one, and consequently not binding on the church, the council of Trent has expressly designated it a general council. And still further, as if to remove all doubt on the subject, the council of Trent has particularly specified one of the Lateran decrees, by quoting the first two words. The language of the council is remarkable: “All other decrees made by Julius the Third, as also the constitution of Pope Innocent the Third, in a general council, which commences Qualiter et Quando, which this holy synod renews, shall be observed by all[28] .” Two things are here to be noted. First, the council held under Innocent III. is expressly termed a general council; and this council was the Fourth Lateran

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - PDF

  Papal Reform and Canon Law in the 11th and 12th Centuries

  • Uta-Renata Blumenthal(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  1 and 5 as well as P. R. MCKEON, The Lateran Council of 1112, the “Heresy” of Lay Investiture, and the Excommunication of Henry V, in: Medievalia et Humanistica, 17 (1966) 3—12. 12 The privilege was formally condemned at the final session, see MGH Const. 1.572 and LP 2.370—371: P rivileg iu m illu d , qu od non est p rivileg iu m set vere d eb et d id p ra vileg iu m y p ro liberation e ca p tivo ru m et E cclesie a dom n o p a p a Paschali p e r vio len tia m H en rici régis ex to rtu m , nos om nes, in hoc sancto con cilio cum eodem d om n o p apa con gregato, canonica censura et eccle-siastica a u cto rita te, iu dicio sancti S piritu s dam p n a tu m et irritu m esse iudicam us a tqu e om nino cassamus, e t ne q u it a u cto rita tis e t effica cita tis h abeat pen itu s excom m unicam us. Ideo au tem da m p n a tu m est quia in eo p rivileg io con tin etu r qu od electus canonice a clero et p o p u lo a nem ine consecretur, nisi priu s a rege in vestia tu r , q u o d est con tra S p iritu m sanctum et canonicam in stitu tion em . 13 MCKEON, The Lateran Council of 1112, noted in passing that the polemics of 1111 — 1112 “furnished in prototype many ideas which would later find a place in the arguments of advocates of Conciliarism.” (p. 3) The study of B. TIERNEY, Foundations of the Conciliar Theory, Cambridge/Engl. 1955, begins with the analysis of relevant Decretist texts and does not refer to the synod of 1112. 14 Both recensions of the conciliar acta (recension 1 = MGH Const. 1, 571—572; recension 2 = LP 2, 370—371) contain no information for the first three days of the meeting. Recension 1 records only the final session, recension 2 includes in addition brief references to the two preceding sessions. 84 X O p p o sitio n to P ope Paschal II who acted as spokesmen for a dissatisfied group of cardinals who had gathered in Rome to protest against the privilege15.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  Available until 15 Nov |Learn more

  Medieval Europe

  • Chris Wickham(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER EIGHT The ambiguities of political reconstruction, 1150–1300

  When in 1093 King William II of England appointed a new archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm of Bec, he invested him as archbishop with the staff of office, as kings had traditionally done. Anselm soon fell out with William and left the country, arriving in Rome in 1098. Here, however, he discovered that, as we saw earlier, popes had been condemning lay investiture since 1078; so, when he returned to England after William’s death in 1100, he duly informed the new king Henry I that such rituals were invalid. This caused renewed trouble, and peace was made between king and archbishop only in 1107. Anselm was not much given to compromise – hence the trouble – but he was no provincial: he was Italian, he had been abbot of a major Norman monastery, and he was an innovative and respected theologian. That someone as connected as Anselm could have been unaware of one of the major elements of the conflict between popes and emperor tells us something about the lack of density in political communication in the years around 1100.1

  Contrast the Fourth Lateran Council, held in Rome a century later, in November 1215. This, the largest of medieval church councils, was called by Pope Innocent III in April 1213, and was attended by a huge number of bishops and abbots, over twelve hundred senior clerics from all Europe and even the east. The canons (decrees) of the council covered every angle of church practice as it had by then developed, including elections, the running of church courts, excommunication, judicial ordeal (the council prohibited it), heresy, attitudes to Jews, crusading, and – not least – the development of pastoral care and preaching. Subsequently, they were made available across the whole of Latin Europe, systematically, through the dissemination of the text of the council, and the expectation (partly realised) that bishops would instruct their own parish clergy about it. If these decrees did not result in instant ‘reform’ in most places, as historians point out, that is hardly surprising, although in the longer term many of them did have an effect. Nor were they wholly new, although they were newly ambitious in their aim for uniformity. But more important is that they became a new basis for current practice everywhere.2

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17)

  Their Legitimacy, Origins, Contents, and Implementation

  • Nelson H. Minnich(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  95 . If the legislation of the Council of Trent took a long time to be implemented, yet few Catholics denied the legitimacy of that council, so too the slow implementation of the Lateran decrees should not be used to deny its legitimacy.

  The reasons put forward to deny the legitimacy of Lateran V as a general council of the Church have been shown to be flawed. It was not composed almost exclusively of Italians who lacked both knowledge regarding what they were approving and the liberty to follow their consciences. Most of what they approved was not abrogated by non-observance. The debate should be over, the Fifth Lateran Council was a true general council of the Church.

  ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA TO II

  Page 178 fn. 41; 182 fn. 56; and 184 fn. 62: Archivio di Stato di Modena, Archivio segreto Estense, Cancelleria, Estero, Serie: Ambasciatori, agenti e corrispondenti all’Estero, Italia, Roma, busta 143-V, fol. 39r, letter of Beltramo Costabili, bishop of Adria, to Alfonso d’Este, duke of Ferrara, Rome, 17.III.1517 regarding the twelfth session of the Lateran Council: “ultra le ceremonie de la Missa cantanta, letanie, et altre oratione et il sermone, fu legiuto el mandato del Re de Scotia nel Reverendissimo Santi Quarto, et de altri signori di Alemania per la aprobatione del Concilio et per el prestare el consenso dove accadea.”

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book