Lateran Councils

LATERANENSI CONCILI. - The First Lateran Council. - It is the Ninth Ecumenical Council (the First in the West), held on 18-27 (28) March 1123, by Callistus II (v.), almost as a ratification of the Concordat of Worms (23 Sept. 1122), with which the Investiture Controversy (v.) had been concluded. Numerous bishops and abbots gathered there, and 22 disciplinary canons were promulgated, to provide for the unity and peace of the Church after the struggles of the preceding decades and the schism of the antipope Burdino (Gregory VIII, v.), whose acts and ordinances were annulled (cann. 5, 22).

The Second Council condemned any form of simony (cann. 1, 22) and of concubinage on the part of ecclesiastics (cann. 7, 21), and rejected any interference of laymen in the appointment of bishops (cann. 3, 22); to these was reserved exclusively the right of choosing the sacred ministers for the care of souls and for the administration of ecclesiastical benefices (cann. 4, 6, 18), with the absolute exclusion of laymen, however religious and powerful (cann. 4, 8, 9, 22). Other canons regulated the relations between the secular clergy and monks (cann. 18), between clergy and bishop, who was forbidden to incardinate priests excommunicated by their own Ordinary (cann. 1, 2). Still others provided for the observance of the Truce of God (cann. 13), of inheritances (cann. 14), for the defense of pilgrims (cann. 17), for the condemnation of usurers or forgers (cann. 16), of marriages between blood relatives (cann. 17), and for encouraging the crusade and sacred pilgrimages (cann. 12, 13). There were no dogmatic definitions.

Vito Zollini

SECOND LATERAN COUNCIL

It is the tenth ecumenical council, celebrated by Innocent II (v.) in Apr. 1139, after the death of the antipope Anacletus II (v.). Between 500 and 1000 bishops gathered there. The Pope, particularly severe with the partisans of the schism, excommunicated Roger II of Sicily and deposed Card. Peter of Pisa, although the latter, through the work of St. Bernard, had repented. But besides the schism, the Church was troubled by heresy. The C. therefore condemned the sacramental errors of Peter of Bruys (v.) and of Henry, called of Cluny (v. ENRICO ERETTICO) regarding the Baptism of children, the Eucharist, Orders and Matrimony.

To anyone who had not repented, delivery to the secular arm was imposed: this is the first mention of the inquisition. For Arnold of Brescia (v.), who had not yet declared himself against the Church's right of property, interdiction from preaching and condemnation to exile were decreed, for having stirred up Brescia against the bishop. The other conciliar provisions, condensed into 30 canons (for the most part contained in the Decretum of Gratian) substantially repeated the decisions of the previous C. L. and of those of Clermont (1130) and of Reims (1131). Accordingly, the sanctions were renewed against simoniacs (cann. 2, 24), against the concubinous clergy, whose sons were forbidden to rise to the priesthood (cann. 6, 7, 8, 21, 26, 27), against lay investitures (can. 25), against laymen who appropriated and administered ecclesiastical goods (cann. 10), whose inheritability was forbidden (can. 16). The clergy was forbidden the practice of law and of medicine (can. 9) and in its favor the privilegium canonis was affirmed (can. 15). The sanctions protecting the good of society were then renewed. It is uncertain whether provisions were taken for the election of the Roman pontiff, reserving it to the cardinals without the vote of the clergy and the Roman people.

The spirit of the Gregorian reform continues, albeit with reduced results, given the capture of the Pope by Roger II and the proclamation of the Roman Republic prepared by Arnold of Brescia.

Vito Zollini

THIRD LATERAN COUNCIL

It is the eleventh ecumenical council, held on 5-19 March 1179 by Alexander III (v.) at the conclusion of the struggle against Frederick Barbarossa (v.). More than four hundred bishops took part; all the nations of Europe were represented, as well as the dioceses of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem; the representative of the schismatic Church of the East was also present, but without any result. The most important decisions were the juridical-disciplinary ones (Pope Alexander III [Rolando Bandinelli] was one of the greatest canonists of the era).

First among all was the one concerning the election of the Roman pontiff, reserved to the college of cardinals, without the Roman clergy and people or the emperor having any part in it. For the election to be valid, two-thirds of the cardinals' votes were required, and excommunication was imposed on electors who proceeded otherwise; thus the way was barred to new schisms. The conditions of age, birth and cultural preparation for the election of bishops were established (can. 3); ordination sine titulo was forbidden (can. 5), as was the cumulatio beneficiorum (can. 13, 14), whose collation was devolved to the higher authority if, within the due time, it had not been conferred by those to whom it belonged (cann. 3, 8, 17); the diversion of ecclesiastical property to profane uses was prohibited (can. 15). No less important were the dogmatic canons: the doctrines and excesses of the Cathars (v.), the Patarines (v.) and the Albigensians (v.) were condemned, and against them a crusade was proclaimed: the first example of a crusade within the Church itself. To the Waldensians (v.), given their ignorance, preaching was forbidden, but for the moment they were not condemned. A body of provisions of a public-social character concluded the series of conciliar canons. Peculiar to this C. are the sanctions against the Jews and Saracens who held Christian slaves (can. 26), and against Christians who lent a hand to the piracy of the Saracens (can. 24). Provisions were also issued in favor of lepers (can. 23) and for the erection of free schools alongside cathedrals and monasteries (can. 18).

It was the complete success of the Gregorian reform, the crowning of the long struggle against civil power, from which the Church definitively freed itself; one may add that it was then that the reversal of positions was prepared; indeed, the era was not far off in which the pope would become the true arbiter of the destinies of Europe.

Vito Zolini

FOURTH LATERAN COUNCIL

It is the twelfth ecumenical council, convoked by Innocent III in April 1213, and opened in the basilica of St. John Lateran on 11 November 1215: two further public sessions followed, on 20 and 30 November. There was a great attendance of more than 400 bishops and 800 abbots and priors, representatives of the emperor of Germany and of the Latin emperor of Constantinople, of the kings of France, England, Hungary, Jerusalem, Cyprus, Aragon, and of many Lombard communes, by express invitation of the Pope; few Latin bishops from the East and no Greek ones. The acts on the work of the C. are missing; only its 70 Capitula have survived.

A careful comparison of these with the directives and ideas of Innocent III during the preceding 17 years of his pontificate demonstrates that for the most part they were his personal work, even if at some points he yielded to the requests of the bishops. For the first time the canons were promulgated in the name of the Pope. The purpose of the C., made manifest by Innocent in the 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 Cathars and the Waldensians, a condemnation of the book of Joachim of Fiore against Peter Lombard on the Trinity, legislation against heretics. Numerous are the canons for the moral reform of the clergy, ecclesiastical discipline, the administration of the Sacraments, corresponding to the concerns that Innocent III had had in these matters. Can. 10 recommends that bishops institute permanent preachers in cathedrals and conventual churches; the next establishes in every diocese a master of grammar and a theologian to teach the priests; the 27th prescribes that bishops instruct candidates for the priesthood. Other canons regulate episcopal elections, the conferral of benefices, the procedure of ecclesiastical trials, the administration of churches, tithes. Cann. 12-13 concern the religious Orders, prescribing provincial Chapters every three years, and forbidding the institution of new Orders; the canon responds to the bishops' desire to limit the tendency of the time toward new forms of religious life, it does not aim at the institutions of St. Francis and St. Dominic, approved shortly afterwards.

The religious and moral life of the people received impulse and discipline from the IV C. L.: in can. 8 the obligation was established for the faithful of both sexes of annual Confession, upon reaching the age of reason, and of Communion at least at Easter (until then Communion three times a year was recommended); other canons regulate Matrimony, restricting the impediments of affinity and consanguinity, forbidding clandestine marriages; one canon recommends that physicians concern themselves also with the spiritual health of their patients; can. 41 establishes that no prescription, whether canonical or civil, has any validity if it is not accompanied by good faith; can. 67 forbids usury, which is blamed on the Jews, against whom the C. issued restrictive measures. Interesting is can. 9, in itself concerning the Eastern countries, which establishes that when faithful of a different language or rite are found in the same city or diocese, the bishops must provide suitable priests for the divine Offices and the administration of the Sacraments in the respective different languages or rites.

The vast 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 13th century to the needs of the time; it strengthened the authority of the Holy See, without aggravating its centralization. Besides the 70 canons, the C. issued a decree to prepare the new Crusade planned for 1217: Innocent III devoted the greatest care to it, with the awareness that the Crusade was a task of the Church, in which all Christendom had to participate; a general peace of 4 years was decreed in all countries, and the twentieth triennial tax on all its goods was imposed on the clergy that did not participate in the expedition. At the C. political and jurisdictional questions were also treated; the most important was the dispute over the goods of the count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, after the crusade of the Albigensians.

Michele Maccarone

FIFTH LATERAN COUNCIL

(1512-17) To deprive of all force the Conciliabulum of Pisa, organized by King Louis XII of France with the support of schismatic cardinals, Pope Julius II convoked on 18 July 1511, with the bull Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae, a general Council at the Lateran. This fifth C. L. represents the last attempt at papal reform of the Church before the Protestant schism. At the opening, which took place on 10 May 1512, and in which 15 cardinals and 79 bishops took part, the general of the Augustinians, Giles of Viterbo, delivered that famous discourse on the necessity of a reform of the Church, which culminated in the sentence: «Homines per sacra immutari fas est, non sacra per homines».

The sessions from the II (17 May 1512) to the V (16 February 1513), held still under the pontificate of Julius II, were dedicated first of all to the condemnation of the Conciliabulum of Pisa and of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. Only after the election of Leo X, in sess. VI (25 April 1513) was it decided to form three commissions, one for the general peace among the Christian princes, the other for the reform of the Church, the third for the preservation of the faith and the extinction of the schism. As for the deliberations of reform, awaited with great hopes by Christendom, the emperor Ferdinand the Catholic had already had prepared in the winter of 1511-12 by the bishops and theologians a series of proposals and had furnished the Spanish ambassadors to the Council with a related instruction. With this he sought not only to safeguard the national interests of Spain in the ecclesiastical field, but also demanded a general reform of the Church and in particular the exact observance of the Ius commune and that regard be had, in the conferral of benefices by the Roman Curia, for the spiritual needs of souls; and furthermore he requested the periodic assembly of general councils (every 10 or 15 years). But neither this Spanish program of reform, nor the broader memorial, sketched for Leo 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) were ever presented to the C. The five subcommissions, into which on 26 October 1513 the commission for the reform of the Church was divided, occupied itself principally with a reform of the curial taxes, which was promulgated in the bull Pastoralis officii, of 13 December 1513; in sess. VIII then (19 December 1513) penalties were established against the transgressors of this ordinance and furthermore the doctrine of Pietro Pomponazzi and his disciples was condemned, according to which the human soul is mortal (animam intellectualem mortalem esse aut unicam in cunctis hominibus).

The great bull of reform, which was then accepted in sess. IX, dealt among other things with the reform of the cardinals, the informative processes of bishops to be elected, religious instruction in schools, the accumulation of benefices and the usurpation of ecclesiastical goods by the laity; and it forbade the granting of convents in commendam, with the exception of cardinals.

These reform decrees were completed in session X (in May 1515) with the decrees on the Monti di pietà and on the application of preventive censorship through the bishops; and in session XI (19 Dec. 1516) with a decree on preaching, which had been preceded by fierce struggles arising from disagreements. A part of the bishops of the Council had taken a decided and resolute part against the privileges of the mendicant Orders and had complained that exempt religious preached, heard confessions, and administered the Sacraments without the license of the Ordinaries. They therefore demanded the restoration of episcopal jurisdiction over the exempt 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 of the Augustinians (Egidio of Viterbo) with such force that the exemptions of the secular clergy were indeed restricted and limited, but those of the exempt male Orders remained substantially intact. The bishops obtained only the right to visit the convents where the religious were engaged in the care of souls, and to approve the preachers and confessors of the exempt Orders; but this with many restrictive clauses.

Parallel to these acts of reform, there took place the settlement of the conflict between the Pope and the King of France, which had been the cause of the Council's convocation. Louis XII let the Pisan Conciliabulum drop and on 26 Oct. 1513 recognized the Fifth Lateran Council, promising to send French prelates. The schismatic cardinals, especially Carvajal and Sanseverino, submitted. But participation in the Council on the part of France did not take place, nor did the sending of prelates from Germany, where the emperor Maximilian I had already recognized the Fifth Lateran Council at the end of 1512. The final step toward the reconciliation of France with the Holy See was not taken in the Council, but outside it, through the French Concordat concluded with Leo X by King Francis I on 18 Aug. 1516, and approved by the Council in session XI (19 Dec. 1516). In session XII the Council was closed.

Although the Fifth Lateran Council brought a series of salutary reform decrees, it did not however bring about that ecclesiastical reform which was anxiously awaited by all and profoundly necessary. Certainly it did not remain entirely without favorable effects, for example, in the field of the reform of religious Orders and in the testing of candidates for holy Orders. But the majority of those good and salutary decrees were of no avail, because there was no serious will to put them into practice. Thus there came true what the bishop of Burgos had predicted: "if the execution of the decrees is not assured, we lose time and money." Only half a century later would the decrees of Trent truly be able to renew the face of the Church, because the popes would commit themselves to their strict observance.

Hubert Jedin