IV C. L. — This was the twelfth ecumenical council, convoked by Innocent III in April 1213 and opened in the basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano on 11 November 1215; two further public sessions followed, on 20 and 30 November. There was a great attendance: more than 400 bishops and 800 abbots and priors, representatives of the German emperor and of the Latin emperor of Constantinople, of the kings of France, England, Hungary, Jerusalem, Cyprus, and Aragon, and of many Lombard communes, at the express invitation of the Pope; there were few Latin bishops from the East and no Greeks. The acts concerning the work of the C. are lacking; only its 70 Capitula have survived.
A careful comparison of these with the directives and ideas of Innocent III during the preceding seventeen years of his pontificate shows that they were largely his personal work, even though at certain points he yielded to the requests of the bishops. For the first time the canons were promulgated in the Pope’s name. The purpose of the C., expressed by Innocent in his solemn opening address, was the organization of a new Crusade and the reform of the Church. The first canons are doctrinal: a profession of faith against the errors of the Cathari and Waldensians, condemnation of the book by Gioacchino da Fiore against Pietro Lombardo on the Trinity, and legislation against heretics. Numerous canons concern the moral reform of the clergy, ecclesiastical discipline, and the administration of the Sacraments, corresponding to the concern Innocent III had shown in these matters. Can. 10 recommends that bishops establish permanent preachers in cathedrals and conventual churches; the following canon establishes in every diocese
a teacher of grammar and a theologian to instruct priests; can. 27 prescribes that bishops instruct candidates for the priesthood. Other canons regulate episcopal elections, the assignment of benefices, the procedure of ecclesiastical trials, the administration of churches, and tithes. Cann. 12–13 concern religious Orders, prescribing provincial Chapters every three years and prohibiting the establishment of new Orders; the canon responded to the bishops’ desire to limit the contemporary tendency toward new forms of religious life, and was not directed against the institutions of s. Francesco and s. Domenico, which were approved shortly afterward.
The religious and moral life of the people received impetus and discipline from the IV C. L.: can. 8 established the obligation for the faithful of both sexes, once they had reached the age of reason, to make an annual Confession and to receive Communion at least at Easter (until then, Communion three times a year had been recommended); other canons regulated Marriage, restricting impediments arising from affinity and consanguinity and prohibiting clandestine marriages; one canon recommended that physicians concern themselves also with the spiritual health of their patients; can. 41 established that no prescription, whether canonical or civil, had validity unless accompanied by good faith; can. 67 prohibited usury, for which the Jews were blamed, and against whom the C. enacted restrictive measures. Can. 9 is of particular interest; although it concerned the Eastern countries in itself, it established that when faithful of different languages or rites were found in the same city or diocese, the bishops were to provide suitable priests for the Divine Offices and the administration of the Sacraments in their respective languages or rites.
The extensive legislation of the IV C. L. was the most important before the Council of Trent and had the merit of adapting the Church of the thirteenth century to the needs of the time; it strengthened the authority of the Holy See without increasing its centralization. In addition to the 70 canons, the C. issued a decree to prepare the new Crusade planned for 1217: Innocent III devoted the greatest care to it, conscious that the Crusade was a task of the Church, in which all Christendom had to participate; a general peace of four years was decreed throughout all countries, and the clergy who did not participate in the expedition were subjected to a triennial twentieth tax on all their possessions. Political and jurisdictional questions were also treated at the C.; the most important was the dispute over the possessions of the Count of Toulouse, Raimondo VI, following the Albigensian Crusade.
V C. L. (1512–17). — To deprive the Council of Pisa, organized by King Luigi XII of France with the support of schismatic cardinals, of all force, Pope Giulio II convoked a general Council at the Lateran on 18 July 1511, with the bull Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae. This fifth C. L. represents the final attempt at a papal reform of the Church before the Protestant schism. At the opening, which took place on 10 May 1512 and was attended by 15 cardinals and 79 bishops, the Augustinian general, Egidio Canisio di Viterbo, delivered that celebrated address on the need for reform of the Church, which culminated in the sentence: «Homines per sacra immutari fas est, non sacra per homines».
The sessions from II (17 May 1512) to V (16 February 1513), held during the pontificate of Giulio II, were devoted above all to the condemnation of the Council of Pisa and the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. Only after the election of Leone X, in sess. VI (25 April 1513), was it decided to establish three commissions: one for general peace among the Christian princes, another for the reform of the Church, and a third for the preservation of the faith and the extinction of the schism. As for the reform deliberations, which Christendom awaited with great hopes, the Emperor Ferdinando the Catholic had already arranged for the bishops and theologians to prepare a series of proposals in the winter of 1511–12 and had provided the Spanish ambassadors to the Council with corresponding instructions. Through this he sought not only to safeguard Spain’s national interests in ecclesiastical affairs, but also called for a general reform of the Church and, in particular, for the exact observance of the Ius commune and for consideration, in the granting of benefices by the Roman Curia, of the spiritual needs of souls; he also requested the periodic convocation of general councils (every 10 or 15 years). But neither this Spanish reform program nor the more extensive memorandum drafted for Leone X by the two Camaldolese, Pietro Quirini and Paolo Giustiniani (published by G. B. Mittarelli-A. Costadoni, Annales Camaldulenses, IX, Venice 1773, pp. 612-719), was ever presented to the C. The five subcommissions into which the commission for the reform of the Church was divided on 26 October 1513 dealt principally with a reform of curial taxes, which was promulgated in the bull Pastoralis officii of 13 December 1513; in sess. VIII (19 December 1513), penalties were established for violators of this ordinance, and the doctrine of Pietro Pomponazzi and his disciples was also condemned, according to which the human soul is mortal (animam intellectualem mortalem esse aut unicam in cunctis hominibus).
The great reform bull, which was subsequently accepted in sess. IX, dealt, among other matters, with the reform of the cardinals, the preliminary investigations into bishops to be elected, religious instruction in schools, the accumulation of benefices, and the usurpation of ecclesiastical property by laypeople; it also prohibited the granting of convents in commendam, except to cardinals.
These reform decrees were completed in sess. X (in May 1515) with the decrees on the Monti di pietà and on the application of preventive censorship through the bishops; and in sess. XI (19 Dec. 1516) with a decree on preaching, which had been preceded by heated struggles arising from disagreements. A number of the bishops of the C. had taken a firm and resolute stand against the privileges of the mendicant Orders and had complained that exempt religious preached, heard confessions, and administered the Sacraments without the permission of the Ordinaries. They therefore demanded the restoration of episcopal jurisdiction over exempt religious, and particularly the right of visitation and correction. The mendicant Orders, on the other hand, defended their privileges through the generals of the Dominicans (Tommaso de Vio) and the Augustinians (Egidio di Viterbo) with such force that, while the exemptions of secular clerics were indeed restricted and limited, those of the exempt male Orders remained essentially intact. The bishops were granted only the right to visit convents where the religious were engaged in the care of souls, and to approve the preachers and confessors of the exempt Orders; even this was subject to many restrictive clauses.
Parallel to these acts of reform, an accommodation was reached in the conflict between the Pope and the King of France, which had been the cause of the convocation of the C. Luigi XII abandoned the Pisan Conciliabulum and recognized the C. L. on 26 Oct. 1513, promising to send French prelates. The schismatic cardinals, especially Carvajal and Sanseverino, submitted. But France did not participate in the Council, nor did Germany send representatives, although the emperor Massimiliano I had already recognized the C. L. at the end of 1512. The final step toward reconciliation between France and the Holy See was not taken within the C., but outside it, through the French Concordat concluded with Leone X by King Francesco I on 18 Aug. 1516, and approved by the C. in sess. XI (19 Dec. 1516). In sess. XII the C. was closed.
Although the V C. L. produced a series of salutary reform decrees, it did not bring about that ecclesiastical reform which was eagerly awaited by everyone and was profoundly necessary. Certainly, it was not wholly without beneficial effects, for example, in the reform of the religious Orders and in the examinations of candidates for Holy Orders. But most of those good and salutary decrees proved ineffective, because there was no serious intention of putting them into practice. Thus what the bishop of Burgos had foretold came to pass: «if the execution of the decrees is not ensured, we are wasting time and money». Only half a century later would the decrees of the Council of Trent truly renew the face of the Church, because the popes would commit themselves to their strict observance.
BIBLI: The Acts first printed by card. Antonio del Monte in 1521 and now in Mansi, XXXII, cols. 641-1002; cf. Hefele-Leclercq, VIII, I, pp. 339-73; 396-448; Pastor, III, II, pp. 820-40; IV, I, pp. 529-60; P. Imbert de la Tour, Les origines de la réforme, II, Melun 1946; E. Guglia, Studien zur Gesch. des fünften Laterankonzils, in Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akademie, phil.-hist. Klasse, 140, 10 (1939), and 152, 3 (1906). The Spanish proposals on reform: J. M. Doussinagou, Fernando el Católico y el Cisma de Pisa, Madrid 1946. On the definition of the immortality of the soul cf. C. Stange, Luther u. das V. Laterankonzil, Gütersloh 1928, and the response of A. Dencille, Die geradezer lücherliche Torheit der päpstl. Theologie, in Scholastik, 5 (1930), pp. 380-87; id., Die Absicht des V. Laterankonzils, 8 (1933), pp. 359-79. Effects of the reform: E. Pelliccia, La preparazione ed ammissione dei chierici ai SS. Ordini nella Roma del sec. XVI, Roma 1946, p. 82 ff. Hubert Jedin