The First Lateran Council
The Lateran Basilica, Rome · March 1123 · convened by Callistus II · the first general council held in the West.
The council met to seal the end of the Investiture Controversy, the half-century struggle between popes and emperors over who had the right to appoint bishops. The Concordat of Worms, agreed on September 23, 1122, gave the church the investiture of bishops with ring and staff, the signs of spiritual office, while the emperor kept a hand in the bestowal of their lands. Lateran I confirmed it.
Its canons pressed forward the Gregorian reform of the clergy. Simony was condemned, priests, deacons, and subdeacons were forbidden to live with wives, and those who took the cross for Jerusalem or Spain were granted the remission of sins first promised by Urban II in 1095.
Principal Acts
- Confirmed the Concordat of Worms.
- Forbade clergy in major orders to marry or keep wives.
- Condemned simony and lay control of church offices.
- Granted indulgences to crusaders.
Why It Matters
Two threads the Reformers would later cut are drawn tighter here: compulsory clerical celibacy, which Luther, Zwingli, and Cranmer each renounced by marrying, and the crusading indulgence, from which grew the trade in pardons that provoked the Ninety-Five Theses.
Numbering. Rome reckons this the ninth ecumenical council, the first of four held at the Lateran in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Protestants do not count it ecumenical.
The Medieval Councils
- 1123Lateran I
- 1139Lateran II
- 1179Lateran III
- 1215Lateran IV
- 1245Lyons I
- 1274Lyons II
- 1311Vienne
- 1409Pisa
- 1414Constance
- 1431Basel–Ferrara–Florence
- 1512Lateran V
- 1545Trent
Sources
- Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. 1. Latin and English text of the canons.
- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 5, The Middle Ages, A.D. 1049–1294 (CCEL).
