The Second Council of Lyons
Lyons · May–July 1274 · convened by Gregory X · East and West reunited, for a few years.
Gregory X called the council to reform the church, recover the Holy Land, and heal the schism with the Greek church. The last seemed achieved on July 6, 1274, when envoys of the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII accepted Roman primacy and the filioque, the teaching that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The union was political rather than heartfelt. The Greek clergy and people largely refused it, and it was repudiated after Michael’s death in 1282.
Thomas Aquinas died on his way to the council in March 1274. Bonaventure died while it was sitting. Its most lasting decree, Ubi periculum, created the papal conclave: after a pope’s death the cardinals were to be shut in together, their food reduced and their income from the papal treasury suspended, until they elected.
Principal Acts
- Reaffirmed the filioque clause.
- Received the Greek church into union with Rome.
- Suppressed the mendicant orders founded since 1215 without papal approval.
- Established the conclave for papal elections.
Why It Matters
The profession of faith read for the Greek emperor is an early conciliar witness to doctrines the Reformers would reject. It confessed the purgatorial cleansing of souls after death, the seven sacraments, and the full primacy of the Roman see over the whole church. Two centuries later the Councils of Florence and Trent built on the same ground.
Numbering. Rome reckons this the fourteenth ecumenical council. Protestants do not count it ecumenical, and neither do the Eastern Orthodox churches.
The Medieval Councils
- 1123Lateran I
- 1139Lateran II
- 1179Lateran III
- 1215Lateran IV
- 1245Lyons I
- 1274Lyons II
- 1311Vienne
- 1409Pisa
- 1414Constance
- 1431Basel–Ferrara–Florence
- 1512Lateran V
- 1545Trent
