A New Concept of Monastic Organization: The General Chapters and the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

Abstract

The reform of the monastic order was one of the great issues of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Two intentions were clearly formulated. One was the preservation of the traditional framework of existing orders, which included a ban on the foundation of any new order. The second was the innovative establishment of assemblies, to be attended by the delegates of all monasteries of a single order in a single ecclesiastical province. The assemblies, called capitula generalia, were to invest visitatores with power to control monasteries and compose reports. In this the Council followed the model of the Cistercian Order. In consequence of the integration of this decree into the canon law of the Liber extra, canonists analysed it and discussed problematic issues such as the definition of the power of the assemblies and the endangered autonomy of the monasteries. The decree of the Council, although repeated by some popes until the middle of the thirteenth century, failed to come into effect. The resistance of the monasteries to the reform was too strong, and popes had to accept failure. This article discusses the reasons for this failure on the part both of successive popes and of the archbishops as the hierarchical leaders of the ecclesiastical provinces in the field of monastic reform and the organization of the capitula generalia.