On November 11, the Lateran Council met. It was an impressive assembly, including seventy-one patriarchs and metropolitans, four hundred abbots and bishops, and a huge number of delegates holding proxies for bishops who were unable to come. The Patriarch of Jerusalem was there, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, as the Greek Orthodox Church (for the first and last time since the ninth century) was in full communion with Rome, owing to the occupation of Constantinople by the short-lived “Latin Empire” which the iniquitous fourth Crusade had planted there. According to the well-known laws which govern human assemblies, this august body was impotent for effective deliberation, and at the mercy of the manipulation of its leaders, because of its great size. In general, its function was not so much to make decisions but merely to register decisions made before it had convened. In its three sessions, on November 11, 20 and 30, the Council passed all the decrees submitted to it, no less than seventy in number, which had been resolved upon, as we should say, in committee. Indeed, in every matter but the Albigensian, Pope Innocent seems to have been in complete control. On the three stock subjects of faith, Church organization, and discipline, the Council affirmed transubstantiation, settled the order of precedence of the Patriarchs in the order Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, required sacramental confession once a year, and followed the usual mediæval practice of legislating interminably against the irregularities of the clergy. Those in orders were forbidden to act as surgeons, since operations cause the shedding of blood. Trial by combat was forbidden. Trial by ordeal was virtually abolished by forbidding any religious ceremonies in connection with such trials, thus depriving them of all reason for being, since they depended on religious sanction for their whole moral force. Decrees were passed against “incontinence, drunkenness, hunting, attendance at farces and stage plays,” on the part of the clergy. Other decrees regularized the procedure and penalties against heretics and their protectors, as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter. In the political field, the Council confirmed the election of Frederic II, son of Henry VI, as Holy Roman Emperor, and attempted to decide the future of Languedoc. Every principal actor in the Albigensian drama was present, except de Montfort who was represented by his brother Guy. Arnaut Amalric, Archbishop and Duke of Narbonne, Fulk and Guy, bishops, respectively, of Toulouse and Carcassonne, and Theodisius now Bishop of Agde, represented the Languedocian clergy. Over against them on the lay side were the two Raymonds, the Count of Comminges, Count Raymond Roger of Foix, the boldest and most energetic of them all, and a minor noble, Bermond of Anduze, a son-in-law of Raymond’s, who pretended to have rights over the Toulousain inheritance.