Exhibit 493 ยท Council canon (in translation)
Council of Toulouse, canon 14 (1229)
We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or the New Testament; unless anyone from motives of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.
Canon 14 forbids lay people to have the books of the Old or New Testament, with an exception for a Psalter, a breviary or the Hours of the Virgin for devotion, and forbids their having translations of these books. The same council's canons 1, 6, 10 and 11 order parish searches for heretics, destruction of houses where heretics are found, and marked clothing for penitents.
- Source
- Council of Toulouse (provincial council, Bishop Folquet de Marselha)
- Date
- 1229
- Quoted from
- Canon 14, in Peters, Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe (Penn, 1980), no. 37, p. 195 (translation after S. R. Maitland, Facts and Documents, 1832, pp. 192-94)
- Grade
- Primary record
- Document
- https://archive.org/details/factsdocumentsil00mait
- Accessed
- 2026-11-09
- Cited by
- Findings citing this exhibit
- Note
- English wording is Peters's. The Latin of canon XIV is printed in Maitland's Authorities appendix (from Labbe, Concilia XI pt 1, col. 427); its second sentence reads 'in vulgari translatos', that is, translated into the vernacular. Peters p. 191 groups this council with Tarragona 1242 as 'extreme condemnations of heresy'.