eral councils, important ones too, have been sadly neglected. Thus far the five councils of the Lateran and the two of Lyons have been treated in a stepmother fashion. Even the Fourth Council of the Lateran, presided over by the great Innocent III, one of the greatest and most influential ecclesiastical assemblies, has to date received only scant consideration from the historian. A conciliar decree may be brief, simple, and unassuming; yet, what a wealth of interesting historical material lies buried and forgotten in its background! To keep this book within a reasonable compass, I have added commentaries to those decrees only that required them for the purpose of elucidation.
The arrangement of the work is the same throughout. First is given a historical sketch of the council; this is followed by a digest of the decree, the decree itself, and the commentary where one is given. For purposes of convenience I have added the text of the decrees. The Greek text is that edited by Lauchert, Die Kanones der wichtigsten altkirchlichen Concilien, Freiburg i.Br., 1896. The Latin text of the Eighth General Council I have taken from Catalani, Sacrosancta concilia oecumenica. From the same work and from Hefele-Leclercq, Histoire des conciles, with reference to the Friedberg edition of the Corpus Juris Canonici, is taken the text of the following councils; while that of the Councils of Basle and the Fifth Lateran is taken from the Conciliorum collectio of Hardouin.
