Fourth Lateran Council
- When
- 1215 AD
- Where
- Rome
- Kind
- Council
The high point of medieval papal authority: it defined transubstantiation, required annual confession, and imposed distinguishing dress on Jews and Muslims.
Innocent III gathered over four hundred bishops and eight hundred abbots and priors, and legislated for the whole of western Christendom in a way no council had before. It gave transubstantiation its conciliar definition, required every believer to confess and communicate at least once a year — which is how private confession became universal practice — and reformed clerical discipline and preaching. It also ordered Jews and Muslims to wear distinguishing dress and barred them from public office. That canon is part of the record of the council, and of what followed from it in Europe, as much as its eucharistic definition is.
Bodies it bears on
Party to it
Either side of it
The whole timeline, from the apostolic communities to the present.