Deposed the emperor Frederick II and called for the relief of the Holy Land and of the Latin East.
- Where
- Lyons — Lyon, France
- Convoked by
- Pope Innocent IV, who had fled Rome by sea and summoned the council to Lyons, outside imperial reach
- Pope
- Innocent IV, presiding in person
- Emperor
- Frederick II — the defendant
- Sat
- Three sessions: 26 June, 5 July and 17 July 1245
- Sessions
- Held in the cathedral of St. John at Lyons, then an imperial free city under the archbishop rather than the French crown
- Bishops present
- Three patriarchs and about 150 bishops. Many could not come: the East was under Mongol attack, the Holy Land under Saracen attack, and Frederick had made travel through Italy unsafe
What it faced
Frederick II was the most alarming ruler in Europe: king of Sicily, king of Germany, Holy Roman Emperor, raised in Palermo among Arabic scholars, fluent in six languages, keeper of a menagerie and a harem, and excommunicated three times. He had gone on crusade while excommunicate and taken Jerusalem by negotiation rather than battle, which impressed nobody in Rome.
By 1240 he had encircled the papal states, and when Gregory IX called a council, Frederick's fleet intercepted the ships carrying the prelates and imprisoned them at sea. That is why this council met at Lyons and not in Italy: Innocent IV had escaped from Rome in disguise and by galley.
The council therefore met as something close to a court. The charges were perjury, breach of the peace he had sworn, sacrilege in seizing cardinals, and suspicion of heresy.
What it defined
- ✠The deposition of the emperor Frederick II, and the release of all his subjects from their oaths of loyalty.
- ✠A crusade for the Holy Land, funded by a levy of one twentieth of Church revenues for three years.
- ✠Aid for the Latin Empire of Constantinople, from half the revenues of non-resident clergy.
- ✠Measures of defence against the Mongols, whose armies had reached Hungary and Poland four years earlier.
- ✠Twenty-two constitutions reforming legal procedure, appeals and the accounting of Church property.
In its own words
“We deprive him of them by our sentence. We absolve from their oath for ever all those who are bound to him by an oath of loyalty…”
“…the wicked race of the Tartars, seeking to subdue, or rather utterly destroy the christian people…”
Its constitutions
Chiefly procedural and financial, and the machinery of a crusade.
- Const. I.1–11Reform of legal procedure: fewer summonses, cheaper litigation, faster judgments, and the suspension of dishonest judges.
- Const. II.1Every church must keep an inventory when a new prelate takes office, and bishops must account annually for their administration.
- Const. II.2Half the revenues of non-resident clergy are assigned for three years to the relief of the Latin Empire of Constantinople.
- Const. II.4Orders fortifications and ditches against the Mongols, and reporting to Rome so that Christendom can coordinate a defence.
- Const. II.5The crusade: a twentieth of Church revenues for three years, tax and debt relief for crusaders, a four-year general peace, and a plenary indulgence.
- ✕It did not depose Frederick by spiritual authority alone, and it did not settle whether a pope may depose an emperor at all. The claim was hotly contested at the time and has never been renewed; no pope has attempted it since the Middle Ages, and the Church today makes no claim to depose civil rulers.
- ✕It probably did not give cardinals the red hat, though the story is usually told of this council. The acts as printed contain nothing about it, so this site does not assert it.
- ✕It did not stop Frederick, who ignored the sentence and ruled until his death in 1250, nor did it recover the Holy Land or save the Latin Empire, which fell in 1261.
What people think it did
The council excommunicated Frederick II for being a freethinker who tolerated Muslims.
What happened: The charges as laid were perjury, breaking the peace he had sworn, sacrilege in seizing cardinals at sea, and suspicion of heresy — a legal indictment about conduct, not a verdict on his intellectual tastes. He had already been excommunicated three times before this council, for failing to go on the crusade he had vowed and then for going while excommunicate.
What followed
Frederick died five years later, still fighting, and his dynasty collapsed within a generation. The papacy had won the medieval struggle with the empire — and had spent so much of its moral capital doing it that within sixty years a French king would be able to move the popes to Avignon.
The Mongol constitution is a reminder of how the thirteenth century actually felt from inside. Four years before the council the Mongols had destroyed the armies of Hungary and Poland in a single week, and only the death of the Great Khan turned them back.
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.