The Council of Chalcedon was the fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Church. It was convoked by the Roman emperor Marcian. The council convened in the city of Chalcedon, Bithynia from 8 October to 1 November 451. The council was attended by over 520 bishops or their representatives, making it the largest and best-documented of the first seven ecumenical councils. The principal purpose of the council was to re-assert the teachings of the ecumenical Council of Ephesus against the teachings of Eutyches and Nestorius. Such doctrines viewed Christ's divine and human natures as separate (Nestorianism) or viewed Christ as solely divine (monophysitism).
An ecumenical council, also called general council, is a meeting of bishops and other church authorities to consider and rule on questions of Christian doctrine, administration, discipline, and other matters in which those entitled to vote are convoked from the whole world (oikoumene) and which secures the approbation of the whole Church.
The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea by the Roman Emperor Constantine I. The Council of Nicaea met from May until the end of July 325.
The First Council of the Lateran was the 9th ecumenical council recognised by the Catholic Church. The first ecumenical council to be held in Western Europe & the first since the Great Schism of 1054, it was convoked by Pope Callixtus II in December 1122, immediately after the Concordat of Worms. The council sought to bring an end to the practice of the conferring of ecclesiastical benefices by people who were laymen, free the election of bishops and abbots from secular influence, clarify the separation of spiritual and temporal affairs, re-establish the principle that spiritual authority resides solely in the Church and abolish the claim of the Holy Roman Emperor to influence papal elections.
The Second Council of Constantinople is the fifth of the first seven ecumenical councils recognized by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. It is also recognized by the Old Catholics and others. Protestant opinions and recognition of it are varied. Some Protestants, such as Calvinists, recognize the first four councils, whereas Lutherans and most Anglo-Catholics accept all seven. Constantinople II was convoked by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I under the presidency of Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople. It was held from 5 May to 2 June 553. Participants were overwhelmingly Eastern bishops—only sixteen Western bishops were present, including nine from Illyricum and seven from Africa, but none from Italy—out of the 152 total.
The Third Council of Constantinople, counted as the Sixth Ecumenical Council by the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and by certain other Western Churches, met in 680–681 and condemned monoenergism and monothelitism as heretical and defined Jesus Christ as having two energies and two wills.
Paul of Samosata was Bishop of Antioch from 260 to 268 and the originator of the Paulianist heresy named after him. He was a believer in monarchianism, a nontrinitarian doctrine; his teachings reflect adoptionism.
In the history of Christianity and later of the Roman Catholic Church, there have been several Councils of Aquileia. The Roman city of Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic Sea is the seat of an ancient episcopal see, seat of the Patriarch of Aquileia.
The Synod of Elvira was an ecclesiastical synod held at Elvira in the Roman province of Hispania Baetica, now Granada in southern Spain. Its date has not been exactly determined but is believed to be in the first quarter of the fourth century, approximately 305–6. It was one of three councils, together with the Synod of Arles (314) and the Synod of Ancyra, that first approached the character of general councils and prepared the way for the first ecumenical council. It was attended by nineteen bishops and twenty-six presbyters, mostly resident in Baetica. Deacons and laymen were also present. Eighty-one canons are recorded, although it is believed that many were added at later dates. All concern order, discipline and conduct among the Christian community. Canon 36, forbidding the use of images in churches, became a bone of contention between Catholic and Protestant scholars after the Protestant Reformation.
Acacius of Beroea, a Syrian, lived in a monastery near Antioch, and, for his active defense of the Church against Arianism, was made Bishop of Berroea in 378 AD, by Eusebius of Samosata.
The First Council of Orange was held in the diocese of Orange, then part of the Western Roman Empire, in 441. The meeting took place in a church called the ecclesia Justinianensis, under the presidency of Bishop Hilary of Arles. Seventeen bishops attended the meeting, among them Bishop Eucherius of Lyons.
The Councils of Carthage were church synods held during the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries in the city of Carthage in Africa. The most important of these are described below.
Beginning with three synods convened between 264 and 269 in the matter of Paul of Samosata, more than thirty councils were held in Antioch in ancient times. Most of these dealt with phases of the Arian and of the Christological controversies. For example, the Catholic Encyclopedia article on Paul of Samosata states:
It must be regarded as certain that the council which condemned Paul rejected the term homoousios; but naturally only in a false sense used by Paul; not, it seems because he meant by it a unity of Hypostasis in the Trinity, but because he intended by it a common substance out of which both Father and Son proceeded, or which it divided between them, — so St. Basil and St. Athanasius; but the question is not clear. The objectors to the Nicene doctrine in the fourth century made copious use of this disapproval of the Nicene word by a famous council.
The Council of Agde was a regional synod held in September 506 at Agatha or Agde, on the Mediterranean coast east of Narbonne, in the Septimania region of the Visigothic Kingdom, with the permission of the Visigothic King Alaric II.
Paphnutius of Thebes, also known as Paphnutius the Confessor, was a dubiously historical early Christian figure, said to be a disciple of Anthony the Great and a bishop of a city in the Upper Thebaid in the early fourth century. He is accounted by some as a prominent member of the First Council of Nicaea which took place in 325. Neither the name of his see nor the precise date of his death are known.
Gelasius of Cyzicus was an ecclesiastical writer in the 5th century. The often attributed name Gelasius is an error of Photius I of Constantinople and of the editor of the editio princeps; the anonymous author never mentioned his name, so he is sometimes called Anonymous Cyzicenus.
Arles in the south of Roman Gaul hosted several councils or synods referred to as Concilium Arelatense in the history of the early Christian church.
Theodotus of Antioch, patriarch of Antioch, in 420 succeeded Alexander, under whom the long-standing schism at Antioch had been healed, and followed his lead in replacing the honoured name of John Chrysostom on the diptychs of the church. He is described by Theodoret, at one time one of his presbyters, as "the pearl of temperance", "adorned with a splendid life and a knowledge of the divine dogmas". John Moschus relates anecdotes illustrative of his meekness when treated rudely by his clergy, and his kindness on a journey in insisting on one of his presbyters exchanging his horse for the patriarch's litter. By his gentleness he brought back the Apollinarians to the church without rigidly insisting on their formal renouncement of their errors. On the real character of Pelagius's teaching becoming known in the East and the consequent withdrawal of the testimony previously given by the synods of Jerusalem and Caesarea to his orthodoxy, Theodotus presided at the final synod held at Antioch at which Pelagius was condemned and expelled from Jerusalem and the other holy sites, and he joined with Praulius of Jerusalem in the synodical letters to Rome, stating what had been done. The most probable date of this synod is that given by Karl Josef von Hefele: 424. When in 424 Alexander, founder of the order of the Acoemetae, visited Antioch, Theodotus refused to receive him as being suspected of heretical views. His feeling was not shared by the Antiochenes, who, ever eager after novelty, deserted their own churches and crowded to listen to Alexander's fervid eloquence. Theodotus took part in the ordination of Sisinnius I of Constantinople as patriarch of Constantinople, in February 426, and united in the synodical letter addressed by the bishops then assembled to the bishops of Pamphylia against the Massalian heresy. He died in 429.
In Christianity, Church councils are formal meetings of bishops and representatives of several churches who are brought together to regulate points of doctrine or discipline. The meetings may be of a single ecclesiastical community or may involve an ecclesiastical province, a nation or other civil region, or the whole Church. Some of those convoked from the Church as a whole have been recognized as ecumenical councils and are considered particularly authoritative. The first ecumenical council is that of Nicaea, called by the Emperor Constantine in 325.
The Lateran Council of 769 was a synod held in the Basilica of St. John Lateran to rectify perceived abuses in the papal electoral process which had led to the elevation of the antipopes Constantine II and Philip. It also condemned the rulings of the Council of Hieria. It is perhaps the most important Roman council held during the 8th century.
