Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/502

 452 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE and influential in all Western Christian lands, the popes freed them entirely from the control of the bishops in whose dioceses they might live and work. Such of them as had been ordained were allowed not only to preach, but also to perform the sacraments anywhere, which of course meant a further diminution in the influence of the parish priest. Although the individual friars had vowed to lead lives of poverty, both organizations were soon building large churches and convents and receiving large gifts which the world was anxious to shower upon such holy men. In time this too great wealth and popularity had an injurious effect. At the start the friars, like the monks of Cluny, represented a reform movement, but like most previous monastic orders, they were to decline in the course of time. It was impossible to keep the clergy constantly up to the ideals of St. Francis, when the Church continued to exercise so much worldly power and to possess so much of this world's goods. In 1215, toward the end of his reign, Innocent held at the Lateran in Rome a great church council, regarded by Roman Th F th Catholics as the most important in the Middle Lateran Ages. Through this council Innocent attempted to reform various evils in the ecclesiastical sys- tem but without much lasting success, although some sev- enty reformatory decrees were promulgated. This Fourth Lateran, or Twelfth (Ecumenical Council, was notable for the numbers present, for the wide territory represented, showing how Latin Christendom had expanded, and for the supreme control exercised by Innocent over all the pro- ceedings. The council simply agreed to what he proposed. The first eight general councils of the whole Christian Church had been held in the East, and the pope had not exerted much control over their deliberations and findings, although their decrees are accepted by the Latin Church. But since the Eighth Council held at Constantinople in 869, the Roman Catholic Church had recognized only those councils which popes had summoned in the West. All four of these had been held at the Lateran, the first in 1123. In 12 15 there were present over four hundred bishops, eight