User:Kansas Bear/Council of Vienne

The Council of Vienne was the fifteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church that met between 1311 and 1312 in Vienne, France. One of its principal acts was to withdraw papal support for the Knights Templar at the instigation of Philip IV of France. The council unable to decide on a course of action, tabled the discussion. In March 1312 Philip arrived and pressured the council and Clement to act. Clement passed papal bulls, dissolving the Templar Order, confiscating their lands, and labeling them heretics.

Church reform was represented by the decision over the Franciscans, allowing abbots to decide how to interpret their Rule. The Beguines and Beghards of Germany were condemned as heretics, while the council forbid marriage, concubinage, rape, fornication, adultery, and incest.

The council addressed the possibility of a crusade, hearing from James II of Aragon and Henry II of Cyprus, and finally deciding to assign Philip of France as its leader. It was through Philip's influence that Clement finally canonised Peter di Marrone, taking care not to use his papal title Celestine V. The final decision by the council was the establishment of university chairs for Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic languages.



Background
The Knights Templar were a military order founded to ensure the safety of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem. In the following centuries the order grew in power and wealth. In the early 14th century, Philip IV of France urgently needed money to continue his war with England, so he accused the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques De Molay, of corruption and heresy. On 13 October 1307 Philip had all French Templars arrested, charged with heresy, and tortured until they allegedly confessed. This action released Philip from his obligation to repay loans from the Templars and allowed him to confiscate the Templars' assets in France.

The arrests of the Knights Templar, coupled with the defiance of the Colonna cardinals and Philip IV against Pope Boniface VIII, convinced Clement V to call for a general council to be held in Vienne. Though stigmatized as being under Philip's control, Clement chose Vienne, as site for the council.

Council
Pope Clement V convened the Council by issuing the bulls Faciens misericordiam and Regnans in coelis on 12 August 1308.

The opening of the Council was delayed, awaiting the Templars arrival to answer charges, and finally convened on 16 October 1311. The Regnans in coelis was sent to nearly 500 clerics, prelates, masters of militant Orders, and priors. The attendees consisted of twenty cardinals, four patriarchs, about one hundred archbishops and bishops, plus several abbots and priors. The great princes, including the rulers of Sicily, Hungary, Bohemia, Cyprus, and Scandinavia, as well as the kings of France, England, and the Iberian peninsula, had been invited. No king appeared, except Philip IV who arrived the following spring to pressure the council against the Templars.

Knights Templar
The main item on the agenda of the Council not only cited the Order of Knights Templar itself, but also "its lands", which indicated that further seizures of property were proposed. However the agenda also invited archbishops and prelates to bring proposals for improvements in the life of the Church. Special notice were sent to the Templars directing them to send suitable defensores (defenders) to the Council. The Grand Master Jacques de Molay and others had also been commanded to appear in person. Molay, however, was already imprisoned in Paris and trials of other Templars were already in progress.

A majority of the cardinals and nearly all the members of the commission were of the opinion that the Order of Knights Templar should be granted the right to defend itself, and that no proof collected up to then was sufficient to condemn the order of the heresy of which it was accused by Philip's ministry, without straining canon law. The discussion of Knights Templar was then put in abeyance.
 * AND, since you added that Charles Verlinden stated "22 Feb", according to The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumieges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni: Books V-VIII, by William Jumieges, edited Elisabeth M.C. Van Houts, page 146;"''The battle of Cassel took place in 1071, on Septuagesima, 20 Feb. as stated by Orderic(OV ii 282) or Monday, 21 Feb. as mentioned in the most reliable Flemish sources(C. Verlinden, Robert I le Frison (Antwerp/Paris, 1935), pp.65-66.

In February 1312 envoys from the Philip IV negotiated with the Pope without consulting the Council, and Philip held an assembly in Lyon to put further pressure on the Pope and the Council. Philip IV went to Vienne on 20 March. Clement was forced to adopt the expedient of suppressing the Order of Knights Templar, not by legal method (de jure), but on the grounds of the general welfare of the Church and by Apostolic ordinance (per modum provisionis seu ordinationis apostolicae). The Pope gave to the commission of cardinals for approval the bull to suppress the Templars in Vox in excelso (A voice from on high), dated 22 March 1312.

The council, to placate Philip IV of France, condemned the Templars and delivered all their wealth in France to him. Delegates for King James II of Aragon insisted the Templar property in Aragon be given to the Order of Calatrava. The bulls Ad providam of 2 May and Nuper in concilio of 16 May confiscated Templar property. The fate of the Templars themselves was decided by the bull Considerantes of 6 May. In the bulls Licet dudum (18 Dec. 1312), Dudum in generali concilio (31 Dec. 1312) and Licet pridem (13 Jan. 1313), Clement V dealt with further aspects of the Templars' property.

Church reform
The council instituted into canon law, the eccelesiastical tradition of no clerical marriages. Included in this was punishments for concubinage, rape, fornication, adultery, and incest. Any cleric who broke canon law was deposed, and their marriages ruled invalid.

Franciscan rule
Prior to the Council around 1311, Ubertino da Casale, former friar at Santa Croce, protested that only a few brethren were following the Franciscan Rule. These brethren were called spirituals. Upon arrival at the Council, the spirituals, defended by Ubertino, faced opposition from those that ran the Franciscan order.

At the final session of the council, Clement issued the papal bull, Exivi de paradiso, that reinforced the previous bull, Exiit qui seminat, which left the decisions regarding habit and accumulation of wine and grain to the abbot in charge of that monastery.

Disbanding Beguines
In 1312, the Council and Clement's papal bull, Ad nostrum qui, condemned the Beguines and Beghards movement, a group of laymen and laywomen that lived in semi-monastic communities, as heretical. According to the Council, members of this movement were deemed heretics because of their antinomian heresy of the "Free Spirit". Following the Council's decision, there were instance where beghards and beguines were burned as heretics.

Crusade & Philip IV's vow
The topic for a crusade was discussed. The delegates of the King of Aragon wanted the city of Granada to be attacked, to attack the Muslims on the flank. In response, the papal vice-chancellor suggested to the Aragonese delegates that the Catalans, now located in Thebes and Athens, should march through Cilician Armenia to attack the Moslems in the Holy Land. Henry II of Cyprus' envoys suggested a naval blockade to coincide with an invasion of Egypt.

On 3 April 1312, Philip IV vowed to the council to go on crusade within the next six years. Clement, however, insisted on fulfullment of his vow within one year and assigned Philip as its leader. Philip died 29 November 1314, but the crusading tithe instituted by the church had been spent by the reign of Charles IV of France.

University chairs
The Council decreed the establishment of chairs (professorships) of Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic at the Universities of Avignon, Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca, although the chairs of Arabic were not actually set up. The delegates from Aragon pushed for the creation of an adequate place to teach different languages so as to preach the Gospel to every man.

Canonisation of Peter di Murrone
The issue of Pope Celestine V's(Peter di Murrone) sainthood was brought to the council, since his election was locked in the divisiveness of the cardinals; the Colonna contingent voting for his canonisation while the Caetera group voting against. Clement assigned a commission of prelates from outside the papal curia to investigate the issue. Though, after their report, Clement was still hesitant to canonise Murrone, until Philip IV's influence forced the issue. Clement waited two years to canonise Peter di Murrone, not Celestine V, as saint, refusing to surrender to Capetian influence.

Aftermath
The council ended on 6 May 1312. A Parisian chronicler, John of Saint-Victor stated, "It was said by many that the council was created for the purpose of extorting money." French ascendancy into the Church hierarchy was very present at the Council.

According to the Friedberg édition of the Corpus Iuris Canonici all of Clement's decrees were made at the Council of Vienne. John XXII's prefatory letter, however, states Clement combined decrees drafted before and after the meeting at Vienne. In 1312, in anticipation of a revised version of the council being drafted at the time, Clement ordered that copies of the Vienne decrees that were then in circulation be recalled or burned. The final draft was approved in March 1314, but Clement's death interrupted the process of distribution of the new copies.

Source

 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262
 * 262