ABSTRACT
The fourth Council of the Lateran and twelfth Oecumenical Council of the Christian Church, ‘Maximum et celeberrimum Concilium’, was held by Innocent III, the most powerful and widely revered of medieval popes, and it was the climax, the crowning glory of his arduous career. In holding the Council Innocent had two main objects in view, to expand externally by overcoming the forces of heresy and paganism and to develop internally by sweeping away abuses and encouraging a general spirit of enthusiasm and reform. The Lateran Council of 1215 is famous for its canons on procedure significant as showing the appreciation of and interest in questions of law and organization manifested by the Church at this stage in its history. The task of tracing the influence of the Lateran Council on English provincial and diocesan administration which followed the holding of the Council is complicated by the impossibility of isolating its decrees from the mass of earlier, and later, ecclesiastical legislation.
