In 1215, Pope Innocent II (r. 1198-1216) called into session the Fourth Lateran Council. The council was made up of around 400 bishops, 800 other priests of high rank, and a large contingent of representatives on behalf of the monarchs of Christendom. The Fourth Lateran is lauded as one of the greatest church councils preceding the Council of Trent (1545-1563). The members of Pope Innocent II’s council debated reforming church theology, tithes and church lands. They also confirmed the idea of transubstantiation in the Eucharist, the Christian religious meal—transubstantiation argues that the bread and wine taken in the Eucharist transforms into the essence of Jesus’ blood and body. While the Fourth Lateran Council clarified and reformed the Catholic Church in many positive ways, it was in no way perfect. The council’s decisions concerning the treatment of Jews were especially awkward.
Canons 67 through 70 of the Fourth Lateran Council stated the church council’s decisions concerning what to do with the Jewish populations living in Christian lands. Canon 67 decreed that Jews could no longer loan money in return for an interest rate (usury), and the council argued that some Christians should be pressured by the church to end their commerce with Jews. Banning usury was not an uncommon occurrence, as the church thought usury was sinful (even for Christians) for much of history. Yet, Canon 67 specifically singled out Jews. The Council also proposed that if a Jew bought a home or building belonging to a Christian, the Jew would be required to continue paying the tithes of the Christian from which they were buying property—therefore the church would not loose any tithe money if Christians left their local parish.
In Canon 68, Jews and Muslims were ordered to wear clothing that distinguished their religion. The canon stated that this was to end intermarriage between Christians, Jews and Muslims. A copy of the Fourth Lateran Council found on The Global Catholic Network (EWTN) states,
“Whence it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians join with Jewish or Saracen women, and Jews or Saracens with Christian women. In order that the offense of such a damnable mixing may not spread further, under the excuse of a mistake of this kind, we decree that such persons of either sex, in every Christian province and at all times, are to be distinguished in public by the character of their dress” (Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 68).
Canon 69 forbade Jews from holding public office, arguing that Jews should not be given positions of power over Christians. At the end of the canon, the council decreed that pagans could not hold public office, either. Muslims were not mentioned in the canon, but were likely excluded from public office, as well, or at least faced discrimination. Canon 70 called for priests to be on the lookout for new Jewish converts to Christianity and to closely observe them for any sign of backsliding into their old religious habits. If a faltering convert was found, the priest was given permission to use “salutary or necessary coercion” (Fourth Lateran Council, 70). After Canon 70, the council diverged from the topic of Judaism and moved on to planning another Crusade.
Sources:
- The European Reformations (Second Edition) by Carter Lindberg. Massachusetts: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
- https://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/LATERAN4.HTM
- http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09018a.htm
- https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lateran-Council-Roman-Catholicism
Take note of the Catholic Mass.
Cannibal – Cahna-baal
The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop
Section I The Great Red Dragon
“………………….Head of the system of fire-worship. Nimrod, as the representative of the devouring fire to which human victims, and especially children, were offered in sacrifice, was regarded as the great child-devourer.
Though, at his first deification, he was set up himself as Ninus, or the child, yet, as the first of mankind that was deified, he was, of course, the actual father of all the Babylonian gods; and, therefore, in that character he was afterwards universally regarded. * * Phaethon, though the child of the sun, is also called the Father of the gods. (LACTANTIUS, De Falsa Religione) In Egypt, too, Vulcan was the Father of the gods. (AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS) As the Father of the gods, he was, as we have seen, called Kronos; and every one knows that the classical story of Kronos was just this, that, “he devoured his sons as soon as they were born.” Such is the analogy between type and antitype. This legend has a further and deeper meaning; but, as applied to Nimrod, or “The Horned One,” it just refers to the fact, that, as the representative of Moloch or Baal, infants were the most acceptable offerings at his altar.
We have ample and melancholy evidence on this subject from the records of antiquity. “The Phenicians,” says Eusebius, “every year sacrificed their beloved and only-begotten children to Kronos or Saturn, and the Rhodians also often did the same.” Diodorus Siculus states that the Carthaginians, on one occasion, when besieged by the Sicilians, and sore pressed, in order to rectify, as they supposed, their error in having somewhat departed from the ancient custom of Carthage, in this respect, hastily “chose out two hundred of the noblest of their children, and publicly sacrificed them” to this god. There is reason to believe that the same practice obtained in our own land in the times of the Druids. We know that they offered human sacrifices to their bloody gods. We have evidence that they made “their children pass through the fire to Moloch,” and that makes it highly probable that they also offered them in sacrifice; for, from Jeremiah 32:35, compared with Jeremiah 19:5, we find that these two things were parts of one and the same system. The god whom the Druids worshipped was Baal, as the blazing Baal-fires show, and the last-cited passage proves that children were offered in sacrifice to Baal. When “the fruit of the body” was thus offered, it was “for the sin of the soul.” And it was a principle of the Mosaic law, a principle no doubt derived from the patriarchal faith, that the priest must partake of whatever was offered as a sin-offering (Num 18:9,10).
Hence, the priests of Nimrod or Baal were necessarily required to eat of the human sacrifices; and thus it has come to pass that “Cahna-Bal,” * the “Priest of Baal,” is the established word in our own tongue for a devourer of human flesh. ** * The word Cahna is the emphatic form of Cahn. Cahn is “a priest,” Cahna is “the priest.” **
From the historian Castor (in Armenian translation of EUSEBIUS) we learn that it was under Bel, or Belus, that is Baal, that the Cyclops lived; and the Scholiast on Aeschylus states that these Cyclops were the brethren of Kronos, who was also Bel or Bal, as we have elsewhere seen. The eye in their forehead shows that originally this name was a name of the great god; for that eye in India and Greece is found the characteristic of the supreme divinity. The Cyclops, then, had been representatives of that God–in other words, priests, and priests of Bel or Bal.
Now, we find that the Cyclops were well-known as cannibals, Referre ritus Cyclopum, “to bring back the rites of the Cyclops,” meaning to revive the practice of eating human flesh. (OVID, Metam.)
Now, the ancient traditions relate that the apostates who joined in the rebellion of Nimrod made war upon the faithful among the sons of Noah. Power and numbers were on the side of the fire-worshippers. But on the side of Shem and the faithful was the mighty power of God’s Spirit. Therefore many were convinced of their sin, arrested in their evil career; and victory, as we have already seen, declared for the saints.
The power of Nimrod came to an end, * and with that, for a time, the worship of the sun, and the fiery serpent associated with it……………….”