Metropolitan Might and Papal Power on the Latin-Christian Frontier: Transforming the Danish Church around the Time of the Fourth Lateran Council

Abstract

before Fourth Lateran Council met in autumn of 1215, contemporaries believed it would be one of greatest ever convoked. When archbishop of Lund, Anders Sunesen, tried to excuse himself from attending, Innocent III expressed chagrin. Even if you had not been summoned, pope wrote,you ought to do everything possible to take part in such a great council. Surely, no prelate would want shameful stain on his glory that would result from a failure to participate in great solemn event, a work so necessary and so pious.1 Nor synod fail to satisfy expectation.2 Neither eye has seen nor ear has heard multitudes who flocked to apostolic see on this occasion and many languages they spoke, or so one observer reported.3 This assessment is shared by modern scholars. John Watt, for one, has called Fourth Lateran the most comprehensive expression of classical policies of medieval papacy in its heyday, at once typifying its major aspirations and identifying its goals.4 Indeed, agenda outlined in Rome that November-the reform of clerical morals, eradication of heresy, and a renewed commitment to crusading-would echo throughout next century. Given this sanguine interpretation of council's place in history of medieval church, it is surprising to read almost uniformly pessimistic evaluations of of Innocent's great program in various corners of Europe. While Raymonde Foreville credited Fourth Lateran with hastening a flowering of provincial and diocesan synodal activity,5 when it comes to bread-and-butter implementation of specific decrees, verdict has been harsh. As early as 1934, Marion Gibbs and Jane Lang criticized English episcopate for failing to comprehend spirit of pope's plan.6 And while their judgment is tendentious and marked by an unrealistically high estimation of what success might have meant in context of medieval reform, it continues to shape interpretation of Langton's church. Nicholas Vincent noted in 1996 that Cardinal-Legate Guala Bicchieri, notwithstanding his past as a reformer in France, did less than might be expected to modify laws of church of England in light of constitutions of 1215.7 discourse of Fourth-Lateran failure has also been reproduced for Spain by Peter Linehan, who traced almost comic ineptitude of papal legate John of Abbeville when confronted by a backward and greedy Spanish church, and for Germany, where Paul B. Pixton dissected German bishops' inability to effect change in years before First Council of Lyon (1245).8 In Pixton's words, The legislation of Lateran IV had little appreciable effect on German church in general or upon vast majority of German clerics as individuals. Imposed from above, Lateran decrees failed in their intended purpose and remained for most part mere bureaucratic statutes.9 To a great extent, this historiographical disjunct can be attributed to a difference in perspective. If individual statutes of council were not applied with sufficient vigor in particular dioceses or countries, congress's larger ideology nonetheless signal a major shift in Western church. To be sure, priests continued to keep concubines and canons to hoard incomes of underserved parish churches, but years after 1215 marked emergence of a new stage in papal universalism. big issues articulated at Fourth Lateran provided a foundation for tighter Roman control felt throughout Latin Christendom. anxiety over crusade funding, for instance, would make papal tax collector a familiar character across thirteenth-century Europe,10 while specter of heresy and emergence of mendicants, whose approval at time of council closed door on new religious orders, set stage for papally directed medieval inquisition.11 Likewise, decree on devolution of vacant benefices gave further impetus to practice of papal provision. …