Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

The new piety was recognised and formalised by the Fourth Lateran Council, held at the Lateran Palace in Rome in 1215. This was one of the three most important ecumenical councils of the Catholic church, the other two being the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, which considered the Catholic church’s response to Protestantism. Four hundred bishops and eight hundred other prelates and notables attended Lateran IV, which set the agenda for many aspects of Christianity and clarified and codified many areas of worship and belief. It was Lateran IV that nullified Magna Carta and fixed the number of the sacraments as seven (the early church had never defined the number of sacraments and, previously, some theologians like Damian had preferred nine, or even eleven). These seven were: baptism, confirmation, marriage, and extreme unction, marking the stages in life, plus mass, confession and the ordination of priests. Lateran IV also decreed that every member of the church must confess his or her sins to a priest and receive the Eucharist at least once a year, and as often as possible. This, of course, was a reassertion of the authority of the priesthood and a direct challenge to heretics. But it did reflect the needs of the new piety. In the same vein the council also decreed that no new saints or relics were to be recognised without papal canonisation.