The 800th anniversary of the Fourth Lateran Council was marked by a major international conference in Rome in 2015. The present collection is one of several thematic volumes to emerge from that conference. The decision to unite theology and pastoral care as a single theme is itself an argument, fully borne out by the contents: that in Lateran IV, organized by “theologian-bureaucrats” (13) and presided over by the first pope to have studied in the Paris schools, “the pastoral and the scholastic are mutually constitutive, if not inseparable” (35). Even in the two theological canons that open the series, “scholastic theology was not only a mode to precise formulations of abstract doctrine, but a way to work out how to live as a Christian” (16).
While Part I of the book considers how the pastoral emphases of Peter Lombard and Peter the Chanter shaped the Council's theology, Part II demonstrates that the converse was also true: pastoral care itself was being redefined, representing a “scholastic turn in pastoral care” (96). Understanding this paradigm shift clarifies the secular-mendicant controversies: friars followed Lateran IV's new understanding of the pastoral role which de-emphasized the liturgical and communal concerns of the parish priest while expanding the emphasis on doctrinal teaching through preaching and confession. Yet the Council also established the primacy of the parish priest in administering confession. It thus set in motion both sides of “the most serious and persistent conflict” of medieval canon law, unresolved until the Council of Trent (155). The final essays explore how the Council's decrees and underlying vision were expressed in synodal sermons and in Innocent III's direct work as diocesan bishop of Rome and as liturgical reformer.
