Second Lateran Council (1139)

The double election of 1130

At the death of Pope Honorius II, in the night of 13 to 14 February 1130, the College of Cardinals split. A minority of about sixteen cardinals, gathered around the chancellor Aimeric, swiftly elected Cardinal Gregory Papareschi, who took the name of Innocent II; a few hours later, the majority of the cardinals elected Peter Pierleoni, who took the name of Anacletus II. Both elected men received episcopal consecration on 23 February: Innocent at Santa Maria Nova, Anacletus at St Peter's. The conflict was not a quarrel of temperament: it engaged the very legitimacy of the Bishop of Rome, and hence the juridical communion of the Latin Church.^[6][7]

Anacletus II first controlled Rome, while Innocent II had to leave the city. International recognition then became decisive. Innocent received the support of major figures, notably St Bernard of Clairvaux, and of sovereigns who eventually tipped the balance in favour of his legitimacy. The schism lasted until the death of Anacletus on 25 January 1138, then until the absorption of the brief candidacy of Victor IV, who quickly submitted to Innocent.^[8][9]

A unity recovered but fragile

The council of 1139 was therefore first an assembly of pacification. It was not enough that Anacletus was dead: what was to become of the bishops, abbots, clerics, benefices, oaths and acts established during eight years of division had to be decided. Without a public judgment, each diocese could remain riven by local disputes.^[10]

The solution chosen by the council was severe: ordinations and promotions received from Anacletus and his principal partisans were annulled. The aim was clear: to prevent the schism from leaving behind it a parallel hierarchy or an ambiguous canonical memory.^[11]

The Lateran, the pope's cathedral

Like Lateran I, the assembly was held in the Basilica of St John Lateran, the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome. The place had a political and ecclesial value: after years in which Rome had been disputed, holding an ecumenical council at the Lateran showed that the Roman see was once again governed by a recognised pope.^[12]

The Catholic Encyclopedia puts forward nearly a thousand prelates, from most Christian nations^[13]; Tanner's introduction for its part gives a floor of at least five hundred fathers gathered in Rome (vol. 1, p. 195)^[14]. The gap may lie in the nature of the two figures: Tanner gives a floor ("at least five hundred"), while the Catholic Encyclopedia puts forward a broader total of prelates present. On a cautious reading, then, we retain a gathering of several hundred participants, conceived as a universal reception of the end of the schism.

April 1139

Denzinger places the council as begun on 4 April 1139. Modern editions of the decrees present it simply as the council held in April 1139 under Innocent II. This chronological setting matters: the assembly followed almost immediately upon the effective end of the schism, before local situations could harden.^[15][16]

Innocent II

Innocent II, born Gregory Papareschi, became pope in an extremely unfavourable situation: the other elected man occupied Rome and enjoyed powerful support. His final victory came not only from a military balance of power; it came from progressive recognition by a large part of the Western episcopate and by several sovereigns. Lateran II turned that recognition into a conciliar act.^[17]

His pontificate prolonged the Gregorian reform: defending the Church's freedom against lay pressures, purifying ecclesiastical offices of money, imposing clerical discipline and restoring canonical coherence after a political crisis.^[18]

Anacletus II

Anacletus II, Peter Pierleoni, was no longer alive at the time of the council. Yet he remained the negative figure around which the first decision was organised: to annul the acts, promotions and ordinations issued by the schismatical camp. The severity of Lateran II is explained by the nature of the crisis: a pontifical schism produces not merely a divergent opinion, but competing acts of government.^[19][20]

Bernard of Clairvaux

St Bernard of Clairvaux did not preside over the council, but his role in the recognition of Innocent II was central. The Catholic Encyclopedia stresses his action with princes, bishops and cities to have Innocent recognised against Anacletus. His spiritual authority gave Innocent's cause a force that went beyond mere political calculation.^[21]

Annulling the acts of Anacletus

The thirtieth and last canon, in the modern collections, targets ordinations conferred by Anacletus or his partisans: they are declared null and void (paraphrase after the text of canon 30).^[22] In simple words: ordination is the gesture that makes a priest or a bishop; promotion is appointment to an ecclesiastical office. The logic is radical: what was conferred in the line of the schism must not continue as if unity had never been broken. According to the letter of the canon, these acts are deprived of effect and held null ("render void [...] and deem them null"): offices and benefices received in the schismatical line do not stand.^[23]

This decision may seem harsh, but it answered a very concrete risk. If the schismatical appointments remained standing, each local Church could keep two competing memories: that of Innocent and that of Anacletus. The council therefore wanted to close the matter by a public juridical act.

Restoring a common discipline

Lateran II did not content itself with erasing past acts. It restored a common discipline, because the schism had revealed a Latin Church still vulnerable to the pressures of Roman families, princes and networks of interest. Pacification became inseparable from reform: to prevent further schisms, the moral and institutional causes that make them possible also had to be reduced.^[24]

Simony: nothing sacred is bought

Canon 2 condemns simony — in simple words, buying or selling an ecclesiastical office, a sacrament or a sacred reality — in a very concrete form: prebend, priory, deanery, ecclesiastical promotion, holy chrism, holy oil, consecration of altars or churches. The text brands with infamy all the parties to the traffic — buyer, seller and intermediary — and has the ill-gotten benefice or honour withdrawn (paraphrase after the text of canon 2).^[25]

This canon shows that medieval reform was not an abstract ideal. It touched the real economy of the Church: appointments, benefices, sacred ceremonies, customary dues and the temptation to turn the sacred into revenue.

Clergy: canon 7 and the invalidity of clerical marriage

Canon 7 is one of the best-known texts of Lateran II. It takes up the Latin discipline against marriage or conjugal cohabitation by major clerics, but it takes a juridical step further. The letter of the text targets cases where bishops, priests, deacons, subdeacons, canons regular, monks or professed lay brothers "have presumed to take wives": they must then be separated from their partners — "For we do not deem there to be a marriage which, it is agreed, has been contracted against ecclesiastical law" (paraphrase after the text of canon 7).^[26][27]

Its exact scope must be well understood. The council does not define a dogma saying that a priest could never have been married at any point in the history of the Church. It fixes, in the 12th-century Latin Church, a strict canonical discipline: those who have received major orders cannot validly contract marriage against the law of the Church. It is a major stage in the Western history of priestly celibacy.^[28]

Usury: a severe sacramental exclusion

Canon 13 condemns usury — in simple words, lending money while demanding interest, a surplus which the borrower must repay on top — in very strong terms. Denzinger presents it as a rapacity rejected by Scripture in the Old and New Testaments; usurers, cut off from all consolation of the Church, must not be admitted to the sacraments without extreme caution; held infamous, they are deprived of ecclesiastical burial if they do not come to repentance (paraphrase after the text of canon 13).^[29]

The severity is explained by the social context. In an economy where debt could lastingly crush families, usury was understood as financial violence against the weak. Lateran II thus placed the moral reform of money alongside the moral reform of the clergy.

False penance: one does not deliberately keep a sin

Canon 22 deals with false penance — in simple words, confessing one sin while refusing to leave the others. It targets the case of the penitent who confesses one sin while refusing to abandon the rest, or who keeps a function incompatible with justice, or who refuses to make reparation, to forgive or to renounce unjust violence.^[30]

This pastoral doctrine is dense: penance is not a sacramental formality, but a real conversion. The council thus recalls that outward discipline has meaning only if it leads to inward reform.

Heresies: Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne

Canon 23 condemns those who reject the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, the baptism of children, the priesthood, ecclesiastical orders and the bond of legitimate marriages. The text of the canon names no one; modern historiography sees in it the Petrobrusian and Henrician circles, linked to Peter of Bruys and to Henry of Lausanne, who had taken up and developed the theses of the former according to Peter the Venerable.^[31][32][33] The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) for its part attached these errors to Peter of Bruys and Arnold of Brescia^[34]; but Arnold is named in no canon: it is in person, by a distinct sentence of Innocent II pronounced at this same council — imposed silence and exile, with a ban on returning to Brescia without pontifical permission — that he was condemned.^[35]

The canon therefore targets those who, under cover of piety, deny sacraments and the ecclesial order (paraphrase after the text of canon 23).^[36]

The condemnation shows that Lateran II was not only a council of inward discipline. It also answered movements contesting fundamental elements of sacramental life: Eucharist, baptism of children, priesthood, orders and marriage.

Crossbows and violence between Christians

Canon 29 forbids the murderous use of the bow and crossbow against Christians and Catholics. The formula is often quoted because it seems to target a precise military technique. It must be read in the tradition of the Peace and Truce of God: the Church did not yet possess a modern theory of international law, but it sought to limit certain forms of violence between Christians.^[37]

A council less famous than Lateran IV, but decisive

Lateran II is often less well known than Lateran IV, whose doctrinal and pastoral constitutions profoundly marked the medieval West. Yet it plays an essential role in the series of Lateran councils: it consolidated the model of a Western Roman council centred on the juridical, moral and pastoral reform of the Latin Church.^[38]

It also confirms that medieval councils were not only assemblies of speculative doctrine. They governed: they annulled, sanctioned, regulated, pacified, protected the sacraments and imposed norms of conduct.

A reform preparing the councils to come

Several themes of Lateran II would return at Lateran III and Lateran IV: simony, clerical discipline, heresies, usury, protection of the faithful, reform of morals. The continuity is clear: the medieval Church understood that a crisis is not resolved by a single act, but by a series of decisions progressively building a firmer canonical order.^[39]

A lesson on coming out of crisis

Lateran II teaches that a crisis of unity does not end merely when the visible conflict ceases. The acts performed during the crisis must still be dealt with, legitimate authority clarified and a common discipline restored. That is why the council so strongly linked schism and reform.

This logic remains current. Any ecclesial reconciliation demands something other than an emotion of unity: it calls for verifiable acts, common rules, purification of abuses and a clear canonical memory.

A concrete reform of the Latin Church

The council also recalls that Catholic reform is concrete. It touches money, sexuality, appointments, sacraments, penance, preaching and even forms of social violence. Lateran II does not offer a reform slogan; it promulgates canons.

Finally, its canon 7 explains why the history of Latin priestly celibacy cannot be reduced to a late opinion or a mere custom. In the 12th century, the discipline became a strong juridical norm: clerical marriage was no longer merely forbidden, it was declared invalid by an ecumenical council received in the Catholic tradition.^[40][41]

• Read Lateran I: the council that confirmed the way out of the Investiture Controversy.
• Read What to think of priestly celibacy?: to place canon 7 within the whole history of Latin discipline.
• Read Lateran III: the next stage of medieval conciliar reform.
• Keep in mind the heart of the matter: Lateran II turned the end of the schism of Anacletus II into a public act of pacification and reform.