A.D. 1215 - Fourth Lateran Council
The twelfth ecumenical council, held at the Lateran in 1215 under pope Innocent III., and attended by more than 400 bishops, enacted a decree of excommunication and extermination against all heretics and their abettors, made it the chief business of the episcopal synodal tribunals to search out and punish heretics, inculcated the necessity of a new crusade to recover the Holy Land, determined several points of doctrine and discipline, especially requiring an annual confession of sins to the priest, and sanctioned the establishment of the two great orders of mendicant monks - the Dominicans, to extirpate heresy -and the Franciscans, to preach and assist the parochial clergy. The Catholic Almanac specifies the object of this council as "for general legislation."
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