Lyons, Second Council of (1274)

A church council that met from May to July 1274. Convoked by Pope Gregory X to organize a general crusade in aid of the Holy Land, the council deliberately mirrored the agenda of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215): the reform of the church, the Eastern crusade, and the reunion of the Greek and Latin churches.

At the council a delegation from the Mongol Ilkhan of Persia proposed a potential alliance against the Muslims in the East. Representatives sent by the Byzantine emperor, Michael VIII Palaiologos, agreed to the formal reunion of the Greek and Latin churches, which led to the withdrawal of papal support for a crusade to reestablish the Latin Empire of Constantinople, then being planned by Charles I of Anjou, king of Sicily. The council approved all of the elements necessary for a crusade, including a six-year clerical tithe and a modest annual poll tax, but clerical opposition to the tax’s collection and Gregory X’s death in 1276 spelled the demise of a passagium generale (a general crusade recruited from Western Christendom). In fact, proposals submitted for consideration at the council by leading reformers, including Humbert of Romans and Guibert of Tournai, lauded the strategy that was to characterize future expeditions, in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the passagium particulare, a perpetual crusade composed of professional soldiers financed by the church and the faithful.

-Jessalynn Bird

Bibliography

Petersen, Stefan, “Geld fur den Kampf gegen die Unglaubigen? Norddeutsche Widerstande gegen die Erhebung des Lyoner Kreuzzugszehnten 1274-1304,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte: Kanonistische Abteilung 117 (2000), 262-319.

Schein, Sylvia, Fideles Crucis: The Papacy, the West and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1274-1314 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991).

Setton, Kenneth, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1571,4 vols. (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976-1984).

Tanner, Norman P., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1: Nicaea I to Lateran V (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), pp. 303-331.

Throop, Palmer A., Criticism of the Crusade: A Study of Public Opinion and Crusade Propaganda (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1940).