In 842 a grand council was held at Constantinople, convened by the Empress Theodora. Here the worship of images was solemnly established. The Greeks still have a feast in honor of this council called "Orthodoxia." Theodora did not preside at this council.
"In 861 a council was held at Constantinople consisting of three hundred and eighteen bishops, assembled by the Emperor Michael. St. Ignatius, patriarch of Constantinople, was deposed and Photius elected.
"In 866 another council was held at Constantinople, in which Pope Nicholas III. was deposed for contumacy and excommunicated.
"In 869 was another council at Constantinople; in this Photius, in turn, was deposed and excommunicated and St. Ignatius restored.
"In 879 another council was held in Constantinople, in which Photius, already restored, was acknowledged as true patriarch by the legates of Pope John VIII., who declares all those to be Judases who say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
"In 1122–3 a council was held at Rome, in the church of St. John of Lateran, by Pope Calixtus II. This was the first general council assembled by the popes. The emperors of the west had now scarcely any authority, and the emperors of the east, pressed by the Mahometans and by the crusaders, held none but little wretched councils. In this council the bishops complained heavily of the monks. 'They possess,' said they, 'the churches, the lands, the castles, the tithes, the offerings of the living and the dead; they have only to take from us the ring and the crosier.' The monks remained in possession."
"In 1139 was another council of Lateran, by Pope Innocent II. It is said a thousand bishops were present. Here the ecclesiastical tithes are declared to be of divine right, and all laymen possessing any of them are excommunicated.
"In 1215 was the last general council of Lateran, by Pope Innocent III. Four hundred and twelve bishops and eight hundred abbots were here. This was in the time of the Crusades, and the popes have established a Latin patriarch at Jerusalem and one at Constantinople. These patriarchs attend this council. This council declares, among other things, that 'no one can be saved out of the Catholic church.' The word transubstantiation was not known until after this council. It forbade the establishment of new religious orders; but, since that time, no less than eighty have been instituted. It was in this council that Raimond, Count of Toulouse, was stripped of all his lands.
"In 1245 a council assembled at the city of Lyons. Innocent IV. brings thither the Emperor of Constantinople, John Puleologus, and makes him sit beside him. He deposes the Emperor Frederick as a felon, and gives the cardinals a red but, as a sign of hostility to Frederick, and the source of thirty years of civil war.