The First Council of the Lateran was the Ninth Ecumenical Council recognized by the Roman Catholic Church. It was convoked by Pope Honorius II in December 1122, and was convened in the Lateran Palace in the city of Rome in the Papal States. As the first ecumenical council called since the ninth century AD, it sought to finalize the ongoing efforts of the Gregorian Reforms and confirm all these previous decisions within the scope of Catholic Dogma. This was a religious congress to immediately follow up with the political success of the Investiture Conflict, ratified by the Princes of the Holy Roman Empire and Italy in the Council of Florence, and earlier the Council of Piacenza.
The Council was attended by 400 bishops and 600 abbots across the Catholic world, as far flung as Finland and Edessa. It ratified 18 Cantons in total.
List of Canons
- Ordinations and promotions made for pecuniary considerations are devoid of every dignity.
- Only a priest may be made provost, archpriest, and dean; only a deacon may be archdeacon.
- Lay persons, no matter how pious they may be, have no authority to dispose of anything that belongs to the Church.
- Marriages between blood-relatives are forbidden to the seventh degree
- No man who has Sodomized shall ever be made a priest or deacon
- Any priest or deacon who lays with a woman outside of marriage shall be made anathema
- Military persons are forbidden under penalty of anathema to invade or forcibly hold any city in Tuscany
- Those excommunicated by one bishop, may not be restored by others.
- To those who give aid to the Christians in the Orient or Andalusia is granted the remission of sins, and their families and possessions are taken under the protection of the Roman Church.
- The property of the porticani dying without heirs is not to be disposed of in a manner contrary to the wish of the one deceased.
- If anyone violates the Truce of God (violating codes of honor or chivalry, making war on a Holy Day or during Spring or Winter), and after the third admonition does not make satisfaction, he shall be anathematized.
- Laymen are absolutely forbidden to remove offerings from the altars of Roman churches.
- Counterfeiters of money shall be excommunicated.
- Robbers of pilgrims and of merchants shall be excommunicated.
- The appointment of priests to churches belongs to the bishops, and without their consent they may not receive tithes and churches from laymen.
- Taxes paid to bishops by monks since Gregory VII must be continued. Monks may not by prescription acquire the possessions of churches and of bishops.
- Churches and their possessions, as well as the person and things connected with them, shall remain safe and unmolested.
- Clerics in major orders may not marry, but may continue in any marriage already contracted