Fourth Lateran Council

Background

The Lateran Councils were councils held at the Lateran Basilica in Rome. Three were held in the twelfth century, and the council of 1215 was the fourth. It met under Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216), whose pontificate is regarded as the high point of the medieval papacy.

The Western Church faced several challenges at the time:

• The Cathars (Albigensians) were spreading in southern France. They taught a dualism holding that the spiritual and material worlds arose from different sources. In 1209 the Albigensian Crusade was launched against them.
• The capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 had severely damaged relations with the Eastern Church.
• Restoring clerical discipline and recovering the Holy Land were also pressing concerns.

Innocent III announced the convocation of the council in 1213.

Proceedings

The council opened in November 1215 and held three sessions through November 30. More than a thousand clergy attended, including some four hundred bishops along with abbots and others, and envoys of secular rulers are also reported to have been present. The seventy-one canons (articles of church law), prepared in advance by the papal party, were reportedly approved without extensive debate.

The principal provisions were as follows:

• Canon 1 (Confession of Faith): It confesses that the triune God created all things, visible and invisible, from nothing. It rejects dualism by stating that the devil was originally created good but became evil of his own accord. It teaches that in the Eucharist the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ while their outward appearance remains, using the term "transubstantiation" (transsubstantiatio). It also contains the statement that there is no salvation outside the Church.
• Canons 2 and 3: These condemned the Trinitarian views advanced by Joachim of Fiore. They also established procedures for dealing with heresy and required the cooperation of secular authorities.
• Canon 21: It required every believer who had reached the age of discretion to confess at least once a year to his or her own parish priest and to receive Communion at Easter time.
• Other provisions: The council narrowed the degrees of kinship within which marriage was prohibited and forbade clandestine marriages. It barred clergy from taking part in trial by ordeal. It required Jews and Muslims to wear distinctive dress, and it resolved to undertake a new crusade.

Results and Influence

The term transubstantiation appeared in a conciliar document for the first time at this council, and the doctrine was later reaffirmed by the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. The requirement of annual confession greatly influenced the devotional life of the laity and the training of priests in the late Middle Ages. Some scholars hold that the withdrawal of clergy from trial by ordeal contributed to the decline of that practice in Europe. On the other hand, the dress regulations for Jews and the provisions for punishing heretics have been criticized for later providing a basis for discrimination and the Inquisition.

Assessment

The Catholic Church counts this council as the twelfth ecumenical council. The Orthodox Church does not recognize it and has objected to provisions that presuppose the supremacy of the Latin Church after 1204.

Because Protestantism places the authority of councils beneath Scripture, Protestants evaluate the council's decisions individually.

• Transubstantiation: During the Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin criticized the doctrine of transubstantiation. Chapter 29 of the Westminster Confession of Faith and Article 28 of the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles likewise reject it. Lutherans confess the real presence of Christ but do not hold to transubstantiation. Reformed churches, Baptists, and others each have their own understanding; these views are discussed in detail in Eucharistic controversy.
• Obligatory confession: Rather than obligatory confession before a priest, Protestants emphasize confessing sins directly to God (1 John 1:9).
• Creation from nothing: Protestants generally share this confession, citing biblical passages such as Hebrews 11:3.