Council of Vienne - The Decisions Taken

The Decisions Taken

The acts of the Council have disappeared, with the exceptions of a fragment in a manuscript in the National Library in Paris, and of the financial documents of the Templars that were requisitioned. The work of the Council was not done in plenary session, but a commission was appointed to examine these official records concerning the order, with a smaller committee of archbishops and bishops presided over by the Archbishop of Aquileia, which was to examine exhaustively the official records and the abstracts. The pope and the cardinals negotiated with the members of this commission respecting the matter. A commission of cardinals was also appointed in order to investigate grievances and proposals advanced on the subject of church reform.

A majority of the cardinals and nearly all the members of the commission were of the opinion that the Order of Knights Templar should be granted the right to defend itself, and that no proof collected up to then was sufficient to condemn the order of the heresy of which it was accused by Philip's ministry, without straining Canon law. The discussion of Knights Templar was then put in abeyance. The topic changed to the need for an expedition to the Holy Land and about the reform of ecclesiastical morals. The delegates of the King of Aragon wanted the city of Granada to be attacked to attack the Muslims on the flank; others wanted a crusade to the east only.

In February 1312 envoys from the Philip IV negotiated with the Pope without consulting the Council, and Philip held an assembly in Lyon to put further pressure on the Pope and the Council. Philip IV went to Vienne on 20 March. Clement was forced to adopt the expedient of suppressing the Order of Knights Templar, not by legal method (de jure), but on the grounds of the general welfare of the Church and by Apostolic ordinance (per modum provisionis seu ordinationis apostolicae). The Pope gave to the commission of cardinals for approval the bull to suppress the Templars in Vox in excelso (A voice from on high), dated 22 March 1312)

This bull was approved by the Council on 3 April 1312 and the Pope announced a future crusade. The bulls, Ad providam of 2 May and Nuper in concilio of 16 May confiscated Templar property. The fate of the Templars themselves was decided by the bull Considerantes of 6 May. In the bulls Licet dudum (18 Dec. 1312), Dudum in generali concilio (31 Dec. 1312) and Licet pridem (13 Jan. 1313) Clement V dealt with further aspects of the Templars' property.

In return Philip IV dropped the threatened charges of heresy against the late Pope Boniface VIII. Nevertheless, an earlier decree was renewed, whereby the King of France was absolved from all responsibility for whatever he had done against Boniface, though the notorious "Outrage" at Anagni was never actually mentioned.

At the third and final formal session, held May 6, a letter from the King of France was read aloud, in which he promised to take up the cross, together with his sons and large numbers of the nobility, and to begin the Crusade within six years. If he should die before this time, his eldest son would undertake the expedition. The usual reaction to such a declaration was to lay a church tithe: the tax was levied throughout Christendom for six years for this purpose, but in France the revenues drawn from the six years of tithe were held by the king, who in fact used the funds to wage war against the Christians of Flanders. The Crusade never took place.

The written suggestions for discussion by the council as to the reform of the Church, did not aim to improve of morals, but instead tried to specify what constituted "poverty" for the clergy and to protect the Church's independence of action (an urgent question, in the circumstances). These matters were also dealt with in the third session of the Council by the approval of an unknown number of draft constitutions. These were revised and further constitutions were added after the Council had ended, but they were not finalised until after Pope Clement's death in 1314. They were published in 1317 by Clement's successor John XXII as the collection of canon law called the "Constitutiones Clementinae". Giovanni Villani discussed the Council of Vienne in his Chronicles, IX, XXII.