Ambitions Realized and Thwarted (1150-1250) - The Church in the World - The Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

5 important questions on Ambitions Realized and Thwarted (1150-1250) - The Church in the World - The Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

What did Innocent intend with the Fourth Lateran Council? What did it mark?

  • A council was the traditional place to declare Church law, and that is what Innocent intented to do when he convened the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.
  • It marked the high point in papal power. Presided over by the pope himself, it produced a comprehensive set of canons to reform both clergy and laity and to protect them from the perceived threats of outsiders. 

How was the important role of the priest further reinforced?

  • The important role of the priest was further reinforced by the provision that, along with yearly confession, all Christians were to take Communion - that is, receive the Eucharist.
  • Already decades before 1215, a newly rigorous formulation of this miracle declared that Christ's body and blood were truly present in the bread and wine on the altar. 

How did the Fourth Lateran Council adopt the idea of real presence?

  • The Fourth Lateran Council not only adopted this idea of "real presence" as Church doctrine but also explained it by using a technical term coined by twelfth-century scholars.
  • The bread and wine were "transubstantiated": although the Eucharist continued to look like bread and wine after its consecration during the Mass, the bread had become the actual body and the wine the true blood of Christ.
  • Only the priest could celebrate this mystery (the transformation of ordinary bread and wine into the flesh of Christ) through which God's grace was transmitted to the faithful.  
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What did the council pronounce on the sacrament of marriage?

  • The council also pronounced on the sacrament of marriage, giving bishops jurisdiction over marital disputes and ordering priests to uncover any evidence that might impede an upcoming marriage.
  • There were many such impediments: people were not allowed to marry their cousins, nor anyone related to them by god-parentage, nor anyone related to them through a former marriage.
  • Furthermore, forbidding secret marriages, the council decreed that any children so conceived were henceforth to be considered illegitimate - unable to inherit property from their parents or to become priests.

How did Fourth Lateran Council treat people who weren't Christian?

  • It turned against all others. "We excommunicate every heresy that arises, condemning all heretics to be handed over to the secular rulers to be punished," reads one law.
  • Another, concerned with preventing Christians from having sex with Jews and Muslims, declares that Jews and Muslims "shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress."

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