The Contribution of the Council of Vienne in 1311-12 to the Development of Medieval Canon Law

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the reasons for the convocation, preparation and organization of the work, the essence of the resolutions (constitutions, decrees) and their significance for the development of the unified canon law in the 14th century. of the general Church Council – namely the Council of Viennе of 1311–1312. The authors state that the Council of Viennе continues the traditions established by the previous councils of the Western Church and demonstrates the further growth of the papacy's effective exercise of legislative power. It was noted that many issues related to the work of the Council of Viennе remained controversial for a long time: the date of the final promulgation of the cathedral constitutions, the official entry into force of the cathedral decrees; the number of council resolutions and their exact content; stages of drawing up resolutions (which corrections were made to the original text). The opinion is expressed that the current state of documentation still does not allow to draw final conclusions on these issues. It is proved that the Council of Viennе played an important role in initiating the administrative, financial, and judicial reforms of the Roman pontiffs of the Avignon period. It has been found that the main features of the Council of Viennе are: 1) selective calling by the pope of bishops, as a rule, only two from each church province (that is, the number of participants is smaller compared to the average for the cathedrals of the 13th century); 2) reduced the total number of sessions to three (between the first and second five and a half months, while in the 13th century every 8–20 days); 3) a system of commissions for making decisions; written reports; 4) reports were prepared separately from different ‘nations’ under the leadership of the cardinals and with the participation of the pope; 5) submissions (‘gravamina’) were organized into categories and stored by geographical division. The authors came to the conclusion that the Council contributed to the legal justification of the papal primacy, the further growth of the prerogatives of the Roman pontiffs in the Church and the authority and weight of the medieval Western Church in the contemporary society.