Chapter 10: I - IV Lateran
The Middle Ages have become increasingly important in the eyes of more recent historians. There had been a time when some men tended to almost write them out of history, for they were supposedly centuries of ignorance and superstition, and nothing more. We have come to realize, however, the close relationship they bear to an understanding of the culture and civilization of the Western world today.
We might divide the entire period into three sections. The early period began at least with the time of Charlemagne (800) if not before; the high point was reached in the thirteenth century; and a period of decline set in from the end of that century until the fall of Constantinople and the rise of Humanism and the Renaissance in the fifteenth century.
During these ages we meet the first General Councils held in the West, and the first Councils convoked both formally and materially by the Roman pontiffs themselves. The story of the Church during these years is very much a tale of the struggle on the part of the spiritual to overcome the worldly. The Church had to free itself from the interference of the temporal rulers, both in the East and the West; it had to fight for the rights which belonged to it as a spiritual organization, the Body of Christ Himself.
On the other hand, this same Church had to struggle against the sinfulness of its own members. The Church is a group of people, joined to Christ in the work of saving mankind. But those people, no less than those not yet joined to this Body of Christ, bear the weakness of Adam. Fallen nature is not destroyed by grace, but perfected. There always remains, therefore, the danger of man's rejection of grace, and the reappearance of his all too weak humanity.
When we consider the Councils of the Middle Ages, then, we must look frequently at these two problems: the struggle against temporal rulers who would draw the Church away from its spiritual purpose, and the effort to overcome the sinfulness of her weak members, both high and low. Thus the first Councils of the Middle Ages, and the first of the West, were largely Councils of reform - reform aimed at a very high level, that of the bishops and the clergy. They were held in Rome at the mother church of Christianity, the Pope's own church as bishop of Rome, St. John Lateran. Hence they are known as the Lateran Councils.
There has always been a danger in the Church of having men attach themselves to individuals within the Church rather than to the Church itself. Even today there are cases of people who join the Church because of the striking personality of one priest, and of others who leave it because of the harshness or sinfulness of another. Neither of these are valid reasons for joining or leaving the Church, for one is to believe in Christ. Nothing that any Catholic - priest or laymen, bishop or even pope - may do can destroy the Church which Christ established. It seems that God wanted to emphasize this in the evils He permitted within His Church; they were singled out for special notice during these centuries.
The history of the Councils of the Middle Ages is much of a confirmation of this truth. Had the Church of Christ rested upon the strength of men alone, their human weakness would long ago have sent it toppling to the ground. From a purely human standpoint, there was nothing that could have happened to ruin the Church that did not actually take place. Yet the Church survived because it is sustained not by men but by God.
It is important to realize this in order to understand the problems of the Middle Ages. This was not the only time, of course, when this lesson was taught. Earlier, in the third century, the followers of Cyprian had been led into error by holding that a man who did not have faith could not baptize validly. This really implied that the faith came from the man and not from God; but the Church teaches that the man is simply the instrument. The same thing would be implied at the time of the Protestant Revolt, when it was held that a priest in the state of mortal sin could not administer a life-giving sacrament, implying again that the grace came from the instrument himself instead of from God. It was not actually an overspiritualized approach to the Church that led the Protestants of the sixteenth century into error. It came, rather, from a too human notion of that Church. They tended to identify the spiritual powers of the Church too closely with the weakness of the men who act as God's instruments. As a result, they even went further than they themselves had intended at first, and instead of purifying the human instruments, they ended up by rejecting the visible nature of Christ's Church on earth.
There were four General Councils held at the Lateran in rather quick succession - four in about 90 years: 1123, 1139, 1179, 1215. They were all remarkably similar in character, and were concerned primarily with Church reform. The first three were held during the Lenten season; the fourth in November. They accomplished their tasks with a small number of public sessions, with private meetings taking place in between. They also reflect a typical difference between the Eastern and the Western mind. The earlier Councils in the East were primarily concerned with dogmatic problems, the doctrine of faith; they discussed disciplinary problems, but as a more secondary concern. The four Lateran Councils, however, dealt primarily with canonical and juridical questions; doctrinal problems play a secondary role in the over-all picture. This difference in approach was brought on, of course, by the nature of the problems they faced, but it is also indicative of the Roman mind which tends naturally to a more legal point of view.
The Lateran Basilica had been the scene of ten or more local or Western synods that we know of. In 1122, Pope Callixtus II announced by way of a letter to the bishops and princes of the Christian world that he now intended to convoke a "General Council" at the Lateran in 1123. This Council was to be concerned with the great and diverse problems which faced the Church at that time.
In point of fact, the most noteworthy act of the Council was the reaffirmation of what is known as the "Concordat of Worms." Especially after the time of Charlemagne, there had developed a notion of the "bishop" that included two elements: he was both a religious pastor and a feudal lord. From this notion there arose the question as to whether the Pope or the Emperor had the right to confer on the bishop his authority in the temporal order. What made the problem especially difficult was the general conviction that the office of bishop was a unified thing; the bishop was simultaneously priest and temporal ruler.
The emperors argued that just as they confer all civil honors and benefices within their realm, so also they had the right to confer this civil honor on the bishop. But in practice it was difficult to see how the Emperor was not also bestowing the spiritual power; this was emphasized all the more by the fact that the Emperor or prince adopted the practice of giving the ring and the crosier. What was implied was that once the ruler had made his choice, the faithful were expected to applaud the move and the clergy were to proceed with the consecration. This easily led to serious confusion and to obvious abuses. If the Emperor had such absolute power, he was able to name almost anyone - fit or unfit - for the office of bishop, and others would have to go along with his decisions.
Already in the eleventh century, Pope Gregory VII (Hilde-brand) had fought for the spiritual independence of the Church in this regard; the popes who followed him continued the battle. Things finally came to a head in the dispute between Callixtus II and the emperor, Henry V. At a meeting held at Worms in September of 1122, a clear distinction was drawn between the spiritual power of a bishop and his temporal power. The spiritual power came from the Church only; the temporal ruler granted only the rights to the temporal rule now associated with the office.
Henry V accepted this position, and a compromise was made. The agreement most probably represented only a temporary provision insofar as Germany was concerned; what the Church had been striving for was granted fully in the territories outside of Germany. Thus, in Germany itself, the Emperor was to preside over the election of a new bishop, guaranteeing its complete freedom. He was then permitted to bestow the temporal power on the one so chosen by means of the scepter; he promised to give up forever the bestowal of the ring and crosier, the special signs of spiritual power. After this ceremony, the clergy would proceed to the consecration of the new bishop (or abbot).
Outside of Germany, however, the Emperor had no part at all in the elections; he could, moreover, bestow the temporal power by means of the scepter only after the Church had per formed the sacred rights of consecration. This was the ideal, of course, and it is what we are generally accustomed to thinking of today in regard to the election of bishops. Thus lay investiture, as this practice was called, came to an end.
What the I Lateran Council did above all was to confirm the Concordat of Worms. About 300 or more bishops, perhaps as many as 500, as well as many abbots, gathered at the Lateran Basilica on the Third Sunday of Lent in 1123 and set about this task. We have no records of what took place; we have only the canons issued by them. Two or three other sessions apparently took place after the opening session on March 18; the Council seems to have been finished by the end of March. There were also some twenty-two canons issued in regard to Church reform, similar to those repeated in the next Council.
In April of 1139, the II Council of the Lateran took place under Pope Innocent II. Again we know very little of the history of this gathering or of its proceedings; it seems that no one who took part in the Council left any record of it. The canons issued by the Council, however, give us an indication of the general problems it faced.
In all of these Councils there was a recurring problem of schism within the Western Church; it was only a faint hint at the great schism yet to come. In 1118, before the Emperor Henry V had signed the Concordat at Worms, he had attempted to set up an antipope, Gregory VIII (just as his predecessor, Henry IV, had tried to introduce the antipope, Clement III). Later on, when Pope Innocent II had been elected in 1130, a new dispute arose over his election; a number of other cardinals proceeded to elect the antipope, Anacletus II. This question, then, had to be treated at II Lateran, in 1139.
Pope Innocent II summoned a General Council to consider the general needs of the Church - the question of the antipope especially, but also the matter of reform, and the condemnation of heretical teachings. The Council was held in April of 1139. Possibly 500 or 600 bishops and abbots attended, along with many others; a total of about 1000.
The antipope had already died in 1138; at this point his acts were declared to be void. In addition, those who had rallied about him were also punished; Innocent II was especially severe in this regard. The center of attention then passed on to the need for reform, particularly among the clergy. This entire period is marked by failings that were rooted out only with the greatest difficulty. As long as lay investiture continued, many men became bishops with the temporal power only in mind; they had no concern for the spiritual. They engaged in simony -the buying and selling of spiritual favors; they had no training for their priestly work; they disregarded clerical celibacy entirely. St. Bernard (who died in 1153) set out to preach against these manifold abuses in his time, and the Lateran Councils all set down laws intended to eradicate them.
Although the II Lateran Council was a great triumph for Innocent II, it failed to achieve all of the goals intended; it was one thing to make laws and quite another to enforce them among unwilling subjects. The Council was not greatly concerned with doctrinal questions, but it did denounce the teaching of Peter of Bruys who was preaching a form of Manichaean-ism (the basic tenet being that material things are evil in themselves). In the back of this there was the foreshadowing of the antisacrament and antipriest spirit that would come to full growth at the time of the Reformation. This was also detected in the condemnation of Arnold of Brescia. Although he would later become more extreme, still at this time he so emphasized the fact that the Church ought to possess no property that he invited the further conclusion that the Church is "not of this world" in any sense, and thus is really an "invisible body."
The III Lateran Council took place in March of 1179 under Pope Alexander III. This Pope had also been engaged in conflict with a temporal ruler - Frederick Barbarossa. This rather changeable character had been crowned emperor in 1155 by Pope Adrian IV, the only Englishman to have been pope. By 1158, however, he was involved in a dispute over the relationship of the Christian Emperor to the Pope, a dispute that reached a crisis with the death of Adrian in 1159. At that time, a schism threatened the Church, and two men were again contesting for the papal throne: Alexander III, and a man more favorable to Frederick, who called himself Victor IV.
Frederick attempted to solve this dispute by summoning a Council, after the manner of the Eastern emperors. Alexander III, however, refused to consent to such a Council. Nevertheless a small gathering was held at Pavia, and the antipope, Victor, was accepted officially by the Emperor. Nevertheless, the true pope, Alexander III, continued to gather more supporters; he eventually excommunicated the Emperor for his role in the pseudo-council. Frederick attacked Italy, however, and the Pope had to flee Borne.
The triumph of the Emperor continued until 1176 when finally the opposing forces conquered him at the battle of Legnano; in the following year he recognized Alexander as pope, kneeling before him to beg absolution. For the first time since he was elected pope - eighteen long years - Alexander III (one of the greatest personages of the Middle Ages) was free to settle down in Borne and attend to the works of the Church.
Alexander's first thought was a General Council to correct the 'evils that this bitter division had wrought. Thus in March of 1179 the III Lateran Council met to restore the discipline of the Church. We know little of its history. Somewhere between 300 and 600 bishops and abbots attended; there were three public sessions.
Once again, the acts of the antipopes were annulled; there had been three in all - two successors of Victor IV. Those who took part in the schism were reconciled after they recited an oath of loyalty to the legitimate Pope. In order to avoid a recurrence in the future, the regulations in regard to the papal election were made more precise, demanding a two-thirds majority of the votes; no mention was made of any approval by the Emperor nor of any role to be played by the people or the other members of the clergy.
The special concern of this Council, as with the other Lateran Councils, was the matter of reform. Some twenty-seven canons were issued, similar to those of the earlier gatherings, but more detailed. There had been an attempt to contact the Greek schismatics, but they reached no agreement at the Council. One of the canons spoke of the new heresies that had begun to crop up in parts of Europe -that of the Waldensians and that of the Albigensians. The IV Lateran Council, however, would have to deal with these in greater detail.
None of the earlier Councils had achieved the sweeping reforms that were needed and that many had desired, so that in 1213 Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) announced his intention of calling a fourth General Council at the Lateran. He sent out letters to all the bishops, princes, and heads of religious orders, setting the Council for November, 1215. He was most insistent that all attend, and pointed out in advance that an excuse such as the difficulty of travel would not be valid. Innocent succeeded. The IV Lateran Council was the greatest of the four -the crowning point of the thirteenth century (which, in turn, was the crowning point of the entire Middle Ages), To the people of Rome, it seemed as if the whole world had shown up. Over 400 bishops were there, including the patriarchs of Jerusalem and of Constantinople, and representatives of the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria; more than 800 abbots and priors attended, plus representatives of the civil powers.
In the back of his mind, Innocent had the hope of another crusade to free the Holy Land. The first such crusade had begun in 1096 under Pope Urban II; for the next 175 years these attempts were repeated off and on. In each instance, there were, of course, political as well as religious considerations; but in no case was the Holy Land set free from the rule of the Saracens. What benefits the Crusades did bring to Europe were more indirect: the increase in scientific knowledge, commerce, art, and the like, which came from contact with the Arab nations.
Despite the earlier failures, Innocent III still hoped for one more such crusade. Thus, when the Council opened on November 11, 1215, the Pope first spoke, and then the patriarch of Jerusalem addressed the gathering; he was to describe the difficulties in the Holy Land. When the Council had concluded, a decree calling for a crusade was issued December 14, 1215. But Innocent III died in July of 1216, and with him the plans died also. The notion of a crusade was no longer appealing.
Of greater importance were the decrees of the second and third sessions of the Council, November 20 and 30. The IV Lateran Council issued the most important disciplinary legislation of the Middle Ages; it would not be equaled until the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century. There were the usual canons concerning the reform of the clergy and the proper education of those to be ordained. The most famous canon, however, was that which prescribed at least annual confession and Communion for all the faithful.
The greatest decrees were concerned with doctrine. The discussions of the early Scholastics were bearing fruit, and IV Lateran helped prepare the way for the great work of Thomas Aquinas (who was born ten years after the Council). This Council was the logical outgrowth of the great interest in doctrinal questions that marked the reign of Innocent III; many such concerns found expression chiefly in the canons pertaining to the sacraments.
One heretical teaching was condemned by adopting the very words of Peter Lombard, who had died in 1160 and was still considered the theologian of the day. A certain Abbot Joachim represented the results of bad philosophy in the study of God. He had made use of the more abstract words of philosophy to discuss the Trinity, but failed to express the truth adequately. He really ended up by holding that the three divine Persons were not actually one God; they were "one" only in a vague sense of being more or less joined together. This was not, however, the faith of the Church, as IV Lateran was careful to point out in repeating as its own the doctrine of Peter Lombard.
On the other hand, it was not only philosophers who had fallen into error. The Albigensian heresy (named after the city of Albi in southern France) took its rise among the more fanatical groups of simple Christians who set out to seek perfection apart from the Church. They were, in reality, following the same error as the Manichaeans at the time of St. Augustine. The material world came from the evil spirit; nonmaterial things came from God. The penances they performed were dictated more by a false notion of the body: since it is material, the body is evil; marriage is evil as well. This fanaticism began to spread on all sides; it was a religion that led only to despair, frustration. St. Dominic had begun to preach against this error at the start of the reign of Innocent III, about 1200; IV Lateran now spelled out officially the precise error the Church was fighting. This was done in the first canon, the so-called Firmiter, which is a detailed statement of the true Catholic belief; it is surely the most valuable statement of the Council.
IV Lateran also had to concern itself with one other group, the Waldensians (named after Peter Waldo, who first became prominent about 1176). Peter Waldo was a rather devout layman, but one whose enthusiasm quickly led him to heresy. He and his followers - all laymen - felt called by God to preach, and they did so, even without the permission of the local bishops. Pope Alexander III had at once forbidden them to do this, but they continued. The movement then developed an anticlerical and anti-Church spirit; priests and bishops were no more important than the laymen. In fact, the only thing that mattered was living a true apostolic life. If a man did that, he could forgive sins as well as a priest, or even better than some priests, since they concluded that a priest in the state of sin could not absolve.
This was, again, a faint foretaste of the Protestant spirit of the sixteenth century, which identified the spiritual powers of the visible Church with the weakness of the men who act as God's instruments. These Waldensians had been opposed earlier, and the IV Lateran Council included in its work a number of decrees aimed against them and similar movements.
As had been the case in the past, the directives of the IV Lateran Council failed to achieve fully the goals envisioned. They did, however, set the pattern for the difficulties which still lay ahead. Actually, this ought not seem especially surprising. Christ Himself had promised difficulties for His Church, and had foretold that not only the wheat but also the weeds would flourish in this earthly body. The Church without spot is the Church of the future. It is not surprising, then, if the Church must continue to fight; such is its destiny. The Church did not fail really. Its only failure would have been a refusal to fight, and these Councils of the Lateran are lasting evidence of the continuing struggle of Christ's Church against the weakness of its members. In its present state, the Body of Christ is waging a warfare. It is still very much the Church militant.