VIENNE
424
VIENNE
called a general council to meet on 1 Oct., 1310, at
Vienne in France for the purpose "of making provi-
sion in regard to the Order of Knights Templar, both
the individual members and its lands, and in regard
to other things in reference to the Catholic Faith,
the Holy Land, and the improvement of the Church
and of ecclesiastical persons". The BuU was sent to
the kings of the respective Christian countries and to
the archbishops of the various church provinces.
The archbishops of every church province with two
or three bishops, as designated in the individual Bulls,
were to appear in person at the coimcil, the bishops
remaining at home were to transfer their rights to
their colleagues who had been personally called. The
bishops and prelates of all kinds were also to bring
to the council proposals and motions in WTiting con-
cerning the points to be improved in church hfe. A
special Bull of 8 Aug., 1308, duected the Order of
Knights Templar to send suitable defensores to the
council, before which the grand master and the other
chief officials had been commanded to apjjear in
person. The council, however, could not open at the
appointed time, on account of the trials of the Tem-
plars which were begun in the various countries, and
the process respecting Boniface VIII which Clement
V had undertaken at the appeal of the French king
Philip the Fair. The Bull "Alma mater" of 4 April,
1310, postponed the opening of the council until 1 Oct.,
1311, on account of the investigation of the Templars that was not yet finished. In September the pope went to Vienne with the cardinals and on 16 Oct., 1311, the first formal session of the council was held in the cathedral there. This was the Fifteenth (Ecumeni- cal Council. In his opening address the pope again designated the three following points as the main tasks of the council: the matter of the Templars; the assistance to be given the Holy Land; and the reform of the clerical order and of morals.
The Acts of the council h.ave disappeared, with exception of a fragment which Father Ehrle, S.J., found in a manuscript in the National Library at Paris (see below). Consequently there is no positive certainty as to the course of the synod. The number of its members is also variously stated by the authori- ties. Villiani ("Chron.", IX, XXII, ed. Muratori, "Script.", XIII, 454) enumerates 300 bishops, while other authorities whose testimony is more probable give 114 bishops, to which should be added a number of abbots and proxies. The best known proceedings of the council are those respecting the Templars. A commission was appointed to examine the official records concerning the order, in which commission the various cla,sses of participants in the council and the different countries were represented. From the members of this commission was formed a smaller committee of archbishops and bishops presided over by the Archbishop of Aquileia, which was to examine exhaustively the official records and the abstracts of these. The pope and the cardinals negotiated with the members of this commission respecting the matter. The majority of the cardinals and nearly all the mem- bers 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 aecustd without straining the law. As early as the beginning of December, 1311, the cardinals and commission had voted to this effect. The pope was in a difficult position, on account of the insistence of the powerful French king. In February, 1312, the king himself .appeared with a great retinue before the gates of the city of Vienne, and vehemently demanded the suppression of the Templars in a letter of 2 March, addressed to the pope. Clement now adopted the expedient of suppressing the Order of Knights Templar, not by legal method {de jure), but on the plea of solicitude
for the Church and by Apostolic ordinance (per
modum provisionis seu ordinationis aposlolicoe). The
pope announced this decision in an a,ssembly of the
cardinals, on 22 March, 1312. On 3 April the second
formal session of the council was held; the French king
and his three sons were present, and the decision
respecting the suppression of the Templars was
promulgated. The Bull of Suppression "Vox cla-
mantis" is dated 22 March, 1312. The pope had
retained for himself the decision as to the persons and
the lands of the Templars; two further Bulls were
issued to cover these points on 2 and 6 May. During
the council, appai-ently at this second session,
Boniface VLTI was declared to have been a lawful
pope, and absolved from the accusations brought
against him. Nevertheless, an earlier Decree issued by
Clement V was renewed, whereby the King of France
was absolved from all responsibility for what he had
done against Boniface and the Church.
The synod also took up the question of the Holy Land. In the third formal session, held 6 May, a letter from the King of France was read aloud, in which he promised to take the cross, together with his sons and large numbers of the nobility, and to begin the Crusade within six years. If he should die before this time his eldest son would undertake the expedi- tion. Upon this, it was decided to lay a church tithe for six years for this purpose, which was to be raised throughout Christendom for the Holy Land. Con- cerning the raising of this tithe, cf. Kirsch, "Die papstlichen KoUektorien in Deutschland" (Pader- born, 1894), 18. In France the revenues drawn from the tithe for six years were given to the king, who used the money for the war against Flanders. The Crusade never took place, although both the Kings of England and of Navarre had agreed to it at the council.
As already mentioned, the bishops were directed before the meeting of the council to bring with them written suggestions as to the reform of the Church. The pope renewed this demand at the opening of the council. Only three of the proposals sent in are known up to now, namely the treatise of William Durandus, Bishop of Mende, on the holding of the council ("De modo celebrandi generalis concilii"), that of Major, Bishop of .\ngers [in "Collection des documents inedits sur I'hist. de France. Melanges historiques", II (1877), 471 sqq.], and that of James Dueze, later Pope John XXII [published by ^'erlaque, "Jean XXII" (Paris, 1883), 52 sqq.]. This material W.TS divided into two parts for discussion by the coun- cil: improvement of morals and protection of the independence of the Church. The countless com- plaints, opinions, and suggestions that were handed in by prelates as well as by secular nobles were sys- tematically arranged and treated. Still it is not known what decrees on these questions resulted from the discussions of the council itself and were promul- gated in the third and last session. All that is certain is that a number of decrees on these subjects were proclaimed. These were issued later on 25 October, 1317, by John XXII, together with other decrees of Clement V, which the latter had been prevented by death from promulgating. John published thom as the collection of the laws of the Church, the Clemen- tines, "Corpus Juris Canoniei". The decrees passed at the council which ai'C found in this collection refer to the disputes concerning the Franciscan Spirit- uals (condemnation of the three propositions attrib- uted to Petrus .Johannes Olivi), the dispute about poverty among the Minorites, the Mendicants, the visit.ation of convents by the bishops, tlie Beguines, the observance of the ecclesiastical hours, administra- tion of religious foundations, matters relating to benefices, the foundiiij; of profcs.sorships for the Orien- tal languages at t he Curia and at the four chief univer- sities, the management of the Inquisition, and various
