The empress Irene, the same who afterwards had her son's eyes torn out,
convoked the second Council of Nice in 787, when the adoration of images
was re-established. But in 794 Charlemagne had another council held at
Frankfort, which declared the second of Nice idolatrous. Pope Adrian IV.
sent two legates to it, but he did not convoke it.
The first great council convoked by a pope was the first of Lateran, in
1139; there were about a thousand bishops assembled; but scarcely
anything was done, except that all those were anathematized who said
that the Church was too rich. In 1179, another great council of Lateran
was held by Alexander III., in which the cardinals, for the first time,
took precedence of the bishops. The discussions were confined to matters
of discipline. In another great council of Lateran, in 1215, Pope
Innocent III. stripped the count of Toulouse of all his possessions, by
virtue of his excommunication. It was then that the first mention was
made of _transubstantiation_.
In 1245, was held a general council at Lyons, then an imperial city, in
which Pope Innocent IV. excommunicated the emperor Frederick II., and
consequently deposed him, and forbade him the use of fire and water. On
this occasion, a red hat was given to the cardinals, to remind them that
they must imbrue their hands in the blood of the emperor's partisans.
This council was the cause of the destruction of the house of Suabia,
and of thirty years of anarchy in Italy and Germany.
In a general council held at Vienne, in Dauphiny, in 1311, the Order of
the Templars was abolished: its principal members having been condemned
to the most horrible deaths, on charges most imperfectly established.
The great Council of Constance, in 1414, contented itself with
dismissing Pope John XXIII., convicted of a thousand crimes, but had
John Huss and Jerome of Prague burned for being obstinate; obstinacy
being a much more grievous crime than either murder, rape, simony, or
sodomy. In 1430 was held the great council of Basel, not recognized at
Rome because it deposed Pope Eugenius IV., who would not be deposed. The
Romans reckon among the general councils the fifth Council of Lateran,
convoked against Louis XII., king of France, by Pope Julius II.; but
that warlike pope dying, the council had no result.
Lastly, we have the great Council of Trent, which is not received in
France in matters of discipline; but its doctrine is indisputable,
since, as Fra Paolo Sarpi tells us, the Holy Ghost arrived at Trent from
Rome every week in the courier's bag. But Fra Paolo Sarpi was a little
tainted with heresy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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