Councils of Aquileia

A council held in 381, presided over by St. Valerian of Aquileia, and attended by thirty-two bishops, among them St. Philastrius of Brescia and St. Justus of Lyons, deposed from their offices certain stubborn partisans of Arius. This council also requested the Emperors Theodosius and Gratian to convene at Alexandria a council of all Catholic bishops in order to put an end to the Meletian Schism at Antioch, since 362 the source of the greatest scandal in the Christian Orient. The council of 553 inaugurated the schism that for nearly a century separated many churches of Northern Italy from the Holy See; in it the Bishops of Venetia, Istria, and Liguria refused to accept the decrees of the Fifth General Council (553) on the plea that by the condemnation of the Three Chapters it had undone the work of the Council of Chalcedon (451). The Council of 1184 was held against incendiaries and those guilty of sacrilege. In 1409 a council was held by Gregory XII against the pretensions of the rival popes, Benedict XIII (Peter de Luna) and Alexander V (Peter of Candia). He declared them schismatical, but promised to renounce the papacy if they would do the same. In 1596 Francesco Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia, held a council at which he renewed in nineteen decrees the legislation of the Council of Trent.