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Fourth Lateran Council
Convened by Pope Innocent III at the Lateran Palace in Rome in November 1215, this was the twelfth ecumenical council and one of the most important c…
Timeline
- 1215Lateran Palace · RomePope Innocent III presided over the opening at the Lateran Palace, with some four hundred bishops, eight hundred abbots and numerous lower clergy and lay representatives attending, the largest of any medieval ecumenical council.
- 1215Lateran Palace · RomeThe council deliberated and approved the confession of faith, explicitly defining the doctrine of transubstantiation; it required the faithful to confess and receive communion at least once a year; it condemned heresies such as the Albigensians and ordered bishops to oversee church affairs and clerical life.
- 1215Lateran Palace · RomeThe council closed, promulgating the Constitutiones Concilii Lateranensis IV containing seventy decrees, again calling for a crusade, restricting the expansion of new religious orders and regulating the status of Jews and Muslims in Christian society.
Sources
- Concilium Lateranense IV (1215) — Innocentius III (1778)
- Innocent III: Leader of Europe 1198–1216 — Christopher R. Cheney (1976)