The Third Lateran Council

The council met at the end of a schism. Its second canon names three rivals of Alexander III: Octavian and Guido, whom it calls heresiarchs, and John of Struma, who followed them. It declares void the ordinations made by them and by those they ordained (Decretals of Gregory IX X 5.8.1 (the Latin of canon 2: ordinationes)). The editor’s notes identify them as the antipopes Victor IV, Paschal III and Callistus III, who between them claimed the papacy from 1159 to 1178 (Third Lateran Council, canon 2 and notes 2–4).

Bishops travelled to Rome from as far as Ireland and Scotland; from England, Roger of Hoveden says, only four went, the English bishops insisting that no more were owed (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle year 1179 (Riley, vol. 1, p. 494)). The pope sat with his cardinals in the Lateran church on three days in March 1179, and on the third he enacted the decrees (Roger of Hoveden, Chronicle year 1179 (Riley, vol. 1, pp. 494–495)).

The first canon deals with the cause of the schism. If the cardinals cannot agree, the man chosen and received by two thirds of them is pope, and anyone who takes the name on the votes of the remaining third is excommunicated with his supporters. The canon adds that this is not to prejudice other churches, where the judgement of the greater and senior part prevails and a doubt can be settled by a superior; in the Roman church there is none to appeal to (Third Lateran Council, canon 1).

Most of the twenty-seven canons concern discipline. No one is to be chosen bishop before the age of thirty; clergy who keep concubines must dismiss them or lose their posts; the holding of many churches by one man is to be corrected (Third Lateran Council, canons 3, 11 and 14). Every cathedral is to give a benefice to a master who will teach its clerics and poor scholars, and no one may demand payment for a licence to teach (Third Lateran Council, canon 18). Lepers living in community may have their own church, cemetery and priest, and notorious usurers are refused communion and Christian burial (Third Lateran Council, canons 23 and 25). Jews and Saracens may not keep Christian servants, and the testimony of Christians is to be accepted against Jews in every case (Third Lateran Council, canon 26).

The last canon turns to Gascony and the country of Albi and Toulouse, where, it says, the heresy of those called Cathars, Patarenes or Publicani is preached openly. They and those who defend or shelter them are placed under anathema. The canon goes on to the bands of mercenaries, Brabanters, Aragonese, Basques and others, who spare neither churches nor the defenceless, and lays the same sentence on those who hire them. It enjoins the faithful, for the remission of their sins, to protect the Christian people by arms. Those who take up arms against them on the advice of the bishops receive two years’ remission of penance, or more at the bishops’ discretion for longer service, and those who set out to drive out the heretics are taken under the church’s protection like pilgrims to the Lord’s sepulchre (Third Lateran Council, canon 27). Walter Map, who was at the council and writes of them with scorn, describes followers of Waldo of Lyon asking the pope there for leave to preach (the Poor of Lyon) (Walter Map, De nugis curialium 1.31).

The first canon and the opening of the last passed into the Decretals of Gregory IX (Decretals of Gregory IX X 1.6.6) (Decretals of Gregory IX X 5.7.8). The council of 1215 extended the full crusading indulgence to those who took the cross against heretics (Fourth Lateran Council) (Fourth Lateran Council, constitution 3), by which time the war in the south had begun (the Albigensian Crusade).