| #### 6. INNOCENT III AND THE REFORM OF CATHOLIC LIFE: THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF 1215 |

| #### #### Whatever the degree of their individual sanctity, learning, or political capacity, one idea, beyond all others, never ceased to inspire the activities of the popes from the time of the Council of Sutri onwards -- the idea so to purify the life of the members of the Church, that through them God's perfection should shine forth and the city of God be realised upon earth. That all Catholics should live the life of the Gospel, the life of the counsels and the life of the precepts, was the whole aim of the Church's institution; and all the struggles waged by popes with the powers of this world were, in the last analysis, designed for this end -- to remove the obstacles which hindered the Church's mission of regenerating souls to God. Not that princes, and their usurpations of spiritual jurisdiction and the like, were the only obstacles. The hindrances presented by human weakness, human wickedness and human folly in a myriad individual lives still remained. Here was the very field of the Church's mission. #### Finally the Church itself, considered as a means of regeneration, called for continual examination: more especially since, in these last two centuries, the Roman See had done so much to centralise administration. When the eleventh-century popes assumed the new role that made them the accredited initiators of every good work, they assumed a new responsibility for the vast world they directed, and for the good order of the machine through which they ruled. Their consciousness of their new responsibility is seen in the series of general councils which they begin to summon, one in every generation, and which are concerned primarily with the exposition of a standard of Catholic life, and with regulations designed to maintain that standard. The early [ ] general councils were called, all of them, to define special points of faith which had begun to be called in question. They met in the lands where the disputes had arisen, and they were called at the request of the contending parties. The period which saw this institution develop was that time when the West -- and Rome along with the West-passed through the frightful chaos of what it is convenient to call the Barbarian Invasions. These over, and Rome at last able to begin to organise her supremacy, a new type of general council appears, whose chief concern is the practice of religion, and it is summoned at Rome's initiative. There are six [ ] such councils in a hundred and fifty years and the greatest of them all is the one summoned by Innocent III in 1215 -- the Fourth Council of the Lateran. This was the greatest gathering of the whole Middle Ages, and through it, better perhaps than through any other event or institution, we can realise that extraordinary unity of medieval civilisation, the quality that made the medieval, for all the very real differences, really at home anywhere in Christendom and which, without destroying social and economic distinctions (and even their disadvantages), did so much ultimately to neutralise them. #### The council was called, by letters of April 4, 1213, to meet on November I, 1215. All the bishops were invited, the heads of the new centralised religious orders too (an innovation in procedure produced by this new feature of religious life), Cistercians, Premonstratensians, Hospitallers and Templars, temporal princes also (another innovation), representatives of republics, even of the innumerable tiny city-states. All the bishops were ordered to come, three or four alone from each province excepted. Chapters, whether of cathedrals or of collegiate churches, were to send delegates, and the exempted bishops were to do the same. Two main problems were to occupy the council’s attention, the question of the Holy Land and the question of the reform of Catholic life. Meanwhile a general enquiry was organised to provide particular matter for the discussions on reform. #### The council actually opened on November 11, 1215, with four hundred and twelve bishops present, eight hundred abbots and priors, and representatives of all the States. The number of bishops from Germany was very small. The war now raging between Otto IV and Frederick II, and the remains of the schism which had in some sees placed both a papal bishop and an imperial bishop, made it impossible for many bishops to leave their churches. #### There were three public sessions, the opening session on November 11, the second on November 20, and the final session on November 30. Before the first session, and between the other two, private meetings of one kind and another were held, at which the preparatory discussions took place which issued in the decrees ultimately promulgated at the final session. At the second public session there was a discussion on the claims of Frederick II to the empire as against the excommunicated Otto, and the council supported Innocent's action. There was also, apparently, a discussion on English affairs. The excommunication of the barons in rebellion against John was confirmed, and the council also assented to the pope's suspension of Cardinal Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, for his support of the rebels. At the final session there was a stormy discussion on the subject of the partition of the lands of Raymond VI of Toulouse, as to whether Simon de Montfort should be confirmed in his possession. The pope, here, was opposed to the council which would have recognised Simon. In the end, as has been related, Innocent was able to arrange a compromise. Finally, in this same session the seventy canons of the council [ ] were solemnly promulgated. #### The first canon is the famous profession of faith Firmiter, a statement of Catholic belief directed primarily against the Albigenses and the innumerable anti-sacerdotal sects of the day. It emphasises the creation of all things, spiritual and corporal alike, by the one sole God. The devils, too, are God's creation. That they are now evil is the effect of their own perversity. The reality of the Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son of God is affirmed once more, with a greater precision as to its mode. The sanctions of the future life for present conduct are explicitly set out. There is but a single Church for all believers. Outside of it no one can besaved; within it Jesus Christ Himself is priest and sacrifice, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the appearance of bread and wine, the bread being transsubstantiated [ ] into the body and the wine into the blood by the power of God; so that, to make perfect the mystery of unity, we may receive of His where He has taken of ours. No one can bring this sacrament into existence but the priests duly ordained by that power of the Church which Jesus Christ gave to the Apostles and their successors. Baptism, by whomsoever administered, if it is rightly administered in the Church's form, is profitable to salvation as much to little children as lo adults. Sins committed after baptism can be made good by sincere penance. Not only virgins and those who lead a life of continency, but the married also can attain eternal happiness, by true faith and a good life. #### Then follows a still more lengthy canon condemning the book of Joachim of Flora against Peter Lombard. The pope, in this canon, takes the unusual course of setting out Joachim's argument before proceeding to declare -- in a form that is even more unusual -- " We, however, with the approval of the Sacred Council, believe and confess with Peter Lombard" -- what the true teaching is. Joachim's theory is condemned; but the canon expressly declares that the condemnation is in no way to be taken as a condemnation of his foundation at Flora, which is a model of religious observance. Joachim, it is further noted, submitted all his writings to the apostolic see to be amended as the pope thought necessary, since, as he himself wrote, the Roman Church is the mother and teacher of all the faithful. This second canon concludes with a brief judgement on the pantheistic theories of Amaury de Bene, theories it describes as not so much heretical as insane. #### The council then turns to review the life of the Church, to denounce the weakness and the wickedness of its members, and to provide punishment for the obstinate. It begins with the clergy. #### Clerics living in sin are to be suspended, and, if they ignore the suspension, they are to be deposed. Bishops who allow such scandals to continue -- and especially if they allow it for the sake of money or some other advantage -- are also to lose their office for ever. Even more severely are clerics to be punished for sins of this kind in places where the discipline is such that they could, had they chosen, have married. [ ] Drunkenness is another bad habit There are clerics, and bishops among them, who sit up all night carousing; drinking competitions are not unknown; the next day's Matins finds them absent from choir. Other bishops hardly ever say Mass, and laugh at the idea of assisting at it. When they do assist they do little more than gossip with the laity and transact business. [ ] There is another type of ecclesiastic who delights in hunting and fowling. This is forbidden, no matter what his rank, and it is forbidden even to keep hunting dogs and birds. #### Canon 16 has a long list of things which the clerics must not do: civil employments, trade (especially if it is dishonest), miming, acting, frequenting taverns (absolutely forbidden save for the necessities of travelling), dicing and even looking on at games of chance. Clerics are to be soberly dressed. Their garments are to be of a moderate cut, neither too long nor too short, and fastened up to the neck. Red and green are colours definitely forbidden. Clerics are not to wear embroidered gloves nor shoes. They are not allowed to gild their spurs, bridles, saddles nor any part of the harness of their mounts. Nor are their bridles or belts to be ornamented with gold or silver. Bishops are to wear linen unless they are monks, in which case they are to keep the habit of the order to which they belong. Clerics are not to have any part in trials that involve the punishment of death, nor are they to look on at executions. They are forbidden all military employment. They are not to act as surgeons. They are not to bless ordeals. This last prohibition, since it removed the one thing that gave the ordeal its value, was the beginning of the end of that superstitious usage. #### That such abuses as those, for whose correction these laws are made, may not arise in the future, the council proceeds to legislate in the matter of clerical appointments. #### Sees are not to be left vacant. If the chapter concerned does not elect within three months, the right (and duty) of providing the new bishop passes to the metropolitan. [ ] If the chapter follow the method of election, a simple majority suffices. [ ] The unlawful interference of the secular power is provided against by a canon which decrees that whoever accepts election in such circumstances not only is not elected, but loses all right to be elected, to any post at all in the future. Those who elect him are also to lose both office and income for three years, and to lose all electoral rights [ ] The bishop, or abbot it may be, once elected, it falls to the metropolitan, or diocesan bishop, to confirm the election. He is to examine if the election has been made in due form and to examine if the elect be suitable. Should he confirm the choice of an unsuitable person -- especially one lacking in the requisite learning, or of evil life, or who is under the canonical age -- the confirmation is invalid, and he loses all rights in the matter of the next election, and is himself suspended until the pope absolves him. [ ] #### It is, once more, strictly forbidden to confer on the same person more than one benefice with cure of souls. The pope notes that the legislation of the previous council (the Third Lateran of 1179) about this scandal has had scarcely any effect, such is the impudence and greed of mankind. For the future, acceptance of the second office entails loss of the first. Whoever attempts to retain the first loses also the second. The patron of the first benefice is to make a new appointment, immediately its holder has accepted a second. The bishop's diligence in the observance of these salutary laws is not to be left to his own unaided conscience. At the annual provincial council there is to be an enquiry into all nominations to benefices since the bishops last met. Bishops who have made unsuitable appointments are to be admonished. If, after a second admonition, they have done nothing, they are to lose all rights of patronage, and the council is to appoint an official to exercise the right in their place. If the negligent bishop is the metropolitan himself, he is to be denounced to the Holy See. The disability laid on such bishops no one but the pope can remove. A last rule about appointments is that no cleric shall be given a canonry in a church where his father is already a canon -- whether the cleric be born in wedlock or no. All such appointments are null, and those who make such appointments are suspended. #### The new papal centralisation would protect the Church against unworthy clergy. It aims at protecting the clergy against rapacious prelates. Bishops are warned that they must not rob the clergy serving those churches which are in the gift of the bishops. The pope has heard of unfortunate priests who receive only one-sixteenth of the revenue due to them, the episcopal patron retaining the rest. Nor are bishops to make visitations an excuse for bleeding their clergy. The canon of 1179 is re-enacted, and bishops who have offended are now required, not only to make restitution to the full, but to give in charity a sum equal to that they have had to restore. Metropolitans who neglect complaints of this kind made against their suffragans are to be severely punished. #### Bishops, in canon 10, are reminded of their duty to preach, and when the bishop is not equal to the task, when for example the diocese is too extensive. he is to choose suitable priests to assist him. In all cathedral and collegiate churches he is to establish priests to act as his coadjutors in the work of preaching and hearing confessions. It is the bishop who is responsible for the education of the future clergy. The decree of the council of 1179. that in each cathedral, and in all the greater churches, there should be established a master to teach grammar, and in the metropolitan church a lecturer in theology, had in many churches the present council states, been entirely ignored. Whence it is now re-enacted, with this difference that a lectureship in theology is ordered to be founded in every cathedral. The bishop, furthermore. is specially warned to see that the clergy are trained in the administration of the sacraments. Better few good priests, so canon 27, than many bad ones. Churches are not to be used as depots in which the clergy may store their property. I hey are to be kept scrupulously clean, and the Holy Eucharist -- the chrism also -- is to be kept under lock and key. #### One of the most constantly recurring complaints of the sectaries is that the clergy are too fond of money. The council, in a series of canons, labours to protect from this all too human vice the sacred things of God committed to the clergy's stewardship. Bishops are forbidden to receive offerings of money from those they absolve from excommunication. They are not allowed to receive fees on the occasion of consecrations, blessings of abbots and ordinations. Convents of women are ordered for the future to abstain from demanding a premium, under the plea of the convent's poverty, from girls who wish to become nuns. Nuns received under such an arrangement are to be transferred to other convents, as are also the nuns responsible for the arrangement. The same is to apply to communities of men. Bishops are not to take advantage of a parish priest's death to tax the church beyond what the law allows, nor to enforce the payment of such taxes by laying an interdict on the church. For moneys thus obtained double restitution is to be made. With regard to the fees customary at funerals and marriages, while the clergy often ask too much, the laity as often offer nothing. The Sacraments are to be given absolutely without charge. On the other hand, the custom of the laity making a free offering is to be encouraged. #### The 62nd canon regulates the use of relics, and hopes to check the trade in spurious relics by ordering that no new relics are to be exposed for veneration without the Holy See's authentication of them. Collectors of alms, again, are not always genuine nor truthful. The canon gives a specimen of the letters of credence that should, and for the future must, guarantee them not to be frauds. The dress of such collectors is regulated, and they are to live religious lives. Bishops are warned not to grant extravagant indulgences. #### A last class of abuses are those where the laity are the sinners. Lay patrons are warned against farming out benefices at a starvation rate, and reminded that lay alienation of church property is null and void. Lay patrons, and the official lay defenders of the Church, are warned against abusing their office to their own personal profit. Offences of this kind entail serious legal disqualifications that continue for four generations. Clergy are not to be taxed without a license from the pope. Those who levy such taxes without his permission are excommunicated, and all their acts are legally null. Should their successors not repeal such taxes within a month of assuming office, and give satisfaction for the wrong done, they fall under the same penalties. Another canon deals with evasions of tithe and canon 54 recalls that tithes have precedence of all other taxes and must be paid first. #### Seven canons are taken up with the religious orders. To avoid grave confusion in the Church it is now forbidden to establish any new orders. Those who wish to be monks or nuns are to choose an existing approved rule. Founders of new houses are to do likewise. No abbot is to rule more than one monastery. Abbots are forbidden to exercise certain episcopal rights, to judge marriage cases, for example, to grant indulgences or to allot public penances. Monks must respect the rights of parishes in the matter of funerals, and the privileged monasteries' power of giving burial within the monastery to such laymen as are oblates of the house is given very strict definition: an oblate is one who lives in the monastic habit, or who, during his life, has made over his property to the monastery; a mere annual subscription is no qualification enough. No monk is to stand security for a debt without the abbot's permission. Monks to whom land that is tithe-bearing has been given are not exempt from payment of tithes. #### The most important canon of all, so far as monks are concerned, is the twelfth, which, incidentally, marks the high water mark of Citeaux's influence in the Church of the Middle Ages. In every ecclesiastical province, it is now enacted, there shall be held every three years a common chapter of abbots, and of priors in those orders which do not have abbots, where so far this has not been the custom. All are to attend. The chapter, to begin with, will invite two Cistercian abbots of the neighbourhood to lend the assistance of their experience of the procedure at general chapters. The Cistercian abbots will choose two of the chapter and these four will preside. The object of the chapter is a thorough review Of the state of monastic life throughout the province. It has power to decide where reforms are needed. The chapter must appoint visitors for all the religious houses of the province, of women as well as of men, empowered to correct, as representatives of the Holy See, whatever calls for correction, and to denounce evil-doers to the local bishop. The bishops are to watch over the ordinary life of the monasteries so that the visitation will always find everything in good order. They are to be the monasteries' protectors, defending the monks especially from lay tyranny and usurpation. #### The council also legislated for two of the sacraments. Canon 21 is the once famous law Omnis utriusque sexus that every Catholic, under pain of being debarred from church while alive and being denied Christian burial when dead, should, at least once a year, confess his sins to his parish priest, and, if only at Easter, receive the Holy Eucharist. The canon concludes with a warning to confessors about the spirit in which they should receive confessions, and of the obligation not to reveal what is confessed to them. Offenders against this last prescription are to be thrust into a severe monastery, there to do penance for the rest of their life. Related to this canon is the one which follows, reminding physicians that it is their duty to see that their patients remedy the ills of the soul no less than those of the body, and forbidding them to recommend, as a remedy for sickness, practices in themselves sinful. Three canons concern the sacrament of matrimony. Clandestine marriages are severely condemned and the clergy forbidden to assist at them. Clergy who are negligent in this matter are to be suspended for three years. The impediments of consanguinity and affinity are notably restricted: henceforward they invalidate marriage only as far as the fourth degree. #### The relations between Jews and Christians are also before the council’s mind. Christians are to be protected by the State against the rapacity of Jewish moneylenders. Jews -- and Saracens too-are to wear a special dress so that no Christian shall come to marry them in ignorance of what they are. During Passiontide Jews are to keep indoors; there have been only too many riots caused by their mockery of the Christians' lamentations on Good Friday. No Jews or pagans are to be elected or appointed to a public office; it is contrary to the sense of things that those who blaspheme Christ shall hold authority over Christ's followers. #### It is perhaps the canonist that, in Innocent III, is the source of all his policy. In the General Council summoned by him Canon Law and procedure receive very notable attention. Seven canons deal with procedure in trials of one kind or another. Other canons regulate excommunications, rights of appeal, and the rules for the trial of clerics, the rights of chapters to correct their own members, and the rules for resignation of benefices. The clergy are forbidden to extend their jurisdiction by encroaching on that of the civil courts. But the most elaborate of this series is the third canon which details the policy to be followed in the pursuit of heretics. [ ] #### The laws were made. How could the council secure that the would be observed, that the bishops, once retired into the distant sees, would put into practice what they had accepted? The sixth canon is an attempt to provide the means. It lays down that the bishops of each ecclesiastical province are to meet annually, for the correction of abuses -- clerical abuses particularly -- and for the express purpose of maintaining the discipline which this council establishes. Official investigators are to be appointed for each diocese, who shall report to the provincial council whatever they have found needing correction and uncorrected. Negligent bishops are to be suspended from office and from income, and the decisions of the provincial council are to be published in every see through the annual diocesan synod. #### The new canon lawyers had soon begun to collect and classify the decisions now pouring out from the popes, on all kinds o f questions, in reply to appeals from bishops everywhere. There were 4,000 such from Alexander III, more than 5,000 from Innocent III -- all set out in professional legal form, relating the case to principles, law that was living. Innocent III and Honorius III each sponsored a collection of his own decretals. By the time of Gregory IX there were too many collections. They overlapped. The law could not, always, be known with certainty. This pope then commissioned a Catalan Dominican -- St. Raymund of Penaforte -- to reduce the vast mass to a coherent code. In 1234 the code was ready -- the Five Books of the Decretals, 1963 capita in all, destined to be the basis of the Canon Law down to 1918. This code of 1234 was henceforward the only law, and it was universal, to be taught in all universities, to be administered in every bishop's court. Boniface VIII was to supplement it in 1295, and John XXII in 1317. But the main work was done in 1234, and with every year that passed it deepened the effect of the papacy as ruler of the whole church. (cf. CIMETIER, Les Sources du droit ecclesiastique, Paris, 1930; VILLIEN, art. Decretales in D.T.C.) |