Gave the election of a pope to a two-thirds majority of the cardinals alone, and condemned lending at interest.
- Where
- The Lateran Basilica, Rome — Rome, Italy
- Convoked by
- Pope Alexander III, after making peace with Frederick Barbarossa at Venice in 1177
- Pope
- Alexander III
- Sat
- 5 to 19 March 1179
- Sessions
- Three sessions in the Lateran basilica
- Bishops present
- About 300 fathers from across Europe and the Latin East, with one legate of the Greek church
What it faced
Alexander III had spent his whole pontificate fighting an emperor and three antipopes in succession. The schism began in 1159 when the cardinals split; Frederick Barbarossa backed Victor IV, then Paschal III, then Callistus III against him, and it took eighteen years and the emperor’s defeat at Legnano to end it.
The lesson Alexander drew was procedural, and it has outlasted everything else he did: a papal election must produce one pope beyond argument. Hence the two-thirds rule — high enough that a faction cannot impose its man, and still the law of the conclave.
The council also faced something new in southern France. The Cathars had built an alternative church with its own hierarchy and its own bishops, and the routiers — unemployed mercenary companies — were burning what the Cathars had not.
What it defined
- ✠That a pope is elected by a two-thirds majority of the cardinals, and by no one else.
- ✠That the acts and ordinations of the antipopes are void.
- ✠Minimum ages for orders: thirty for a bishop, twenty-five for lesser clergy.
- ✠That every cathedral must keep a master to teach its clerics and the poor, free of charge.
- ✠That notorious usurers are refused communion and Christian burial.
- ✠The excommunication of the Cathars and of the mercenary companies.
In its own words
“…that person shall be held as Roman pontiff who has been chosen and received by the two thirds…”
“…in every cathedral church a master is to be assigned some proper benefice so that he may teach the clerics of that church and the poor scholars.”
“…wherever so many are gathered together under a common way of life that they are able to establish a church for themselves with a cemetery and rejoice in their own priest, they should be allowed to have them without contradiction.”
Its canons
The disciplinary rules it made — law, not doctrine, and most of them long since changed.
- Canon 1Two thirds of the cardinals elect the pope; anyone claiming the office on a lesser vote is excommunicate.
- Canon 7No fee may be charged for the sacraments, for ordination, or for burial.
- Canon 18Every cathedral must support a schoolmaster who teaches the poor for nothing.
- Canon 23Leper communities may have their own church, cemetery and priest, and owe no tithes on their gardens.
- Canon 25Notorious usurers are refused communion and Christian burial.
- Canon 27Excommunicates the Cathars and the mercenary bands, and offers an indulgence to those who resist them.
- ✕It did not launch the Albigensian Crusade. That comes thirty years later, under Innocent III. Canon 27 excommunicates the Cathars and the mercenary companies together and encourages resistance, which is a long way short of the war of 1209.
- ✕It did not create the office of cardinal or the conclave. The cardinals had elected popes since 1059; the locked conclave arrives at Lyon II in 1274.
- ✕It did not put an end to antipopes, as the following centuries would show at length.
What people think it did
Canon 23 shows the Church segregating lepers and casting them out of the community.
What happened: The canon does the opposite of what it is usually quoted for. It grants leper communities the right to their own church, cemetery and priest — a full sacramental life — and exempts them from tithes. In a society that feared leprosy absolutely, this is a canon about giving the excluded the Mass, not about excluding them further.
What followed
The two-thirds rule is the most durable thing any medieval council legislated. It has been suspended and restored at various points and it governed the election of every pope in living memory.
Canon 18 is a small clause with a long shadow. Requiring every cathedral to teach the poor for nothing is one of the roots of the European school and, through the cathedral schools of Paris and Bologna, of the university itself.
Follow it further
Sources
Every date, figure and quotation on this page was checked against the conciliar text or a published translation before it was written, and independently re-checked by three separate passes over dates, quotations and theology. Where the sources disagree — attendance figures above all — the page gives the range rather than choosing.