Roman Catholic Councils
From Lateran I to Trent · 1123 to 1563 · the councils by which Rome defined its doctrine, fought over its government, and finally answered the Reformation.
Rome counts twenty-one ecumenical councils. The first eight, from Nicaea in 325 to Constantinople in 869–870, belong to the age before the division of East and West, and the early creeds they produced are received by Protestants as faithful summaries of Scripture. The councils gathered here are different. They were Western assemblies called by popes, and between them they made transubstantiation a dogma, bound every conscience to annual confession, fixed purgatory and the seven sacraments, burned Jan Hus, and contended for two centuries over whether a council or a pope has the final word in the church.
The Reformers did not receive them as binding. Their authority, as the Reformers saw it, extended only as far as they agreed with the Word of God, and at Leipzig in 1519 Luther said plainly that councils can err. These pages set out briefly what each decreed, so that the questions of the sixteenth century can be seen in the light of the four centuries that prepared them.
The Councils
The Papal Monarchy
- 1123Lateran I — the Concordat of Worms, clerical celibacy, crusading indulgences.
- 1139Lateran II — the end of a schism, and clerical marriages declared void.
- 1179Lateran III — the two-thirds rule for papal elections; the Cathars condemned.
- 1215Lateran IV — transubstantiation defined; annual confession imposed.
- 1245Lyons I — a pope deposes an emperor.
- 1274Lyons II — a brief union with the Greeks; the papal conclave.
- 1311Vienne — the Templars suppressed; chairs of the biblical languages.
Schism and the Conciliar Movement
- 1409Pisa — two popes deposed, and a third elected.
- 1414Constance — the schism ended; Jan Hus burned.
- 1431Basel–Ferrara–Florence — council against pope; purgatory and the seven sacraments defined.
The Eve of the Reformation and Rome’s Answer
- 1512Lateran V — papal supremacy reasserted, seven months before the Theses.
- 1545Trent — the Counter-Reformation council.
- 1547The Anathemas of Trent — the thirty-three canons on justification.
Pisa. The Council of Pisa (1409) is included for the sake of the narrative, though Rome does not count it ecumenical. Rome’s two later councils, Vatican I (1869–1870), which defined papal infallibility, and Vatican II (1962–1965), fall outside the scope of this site.
