Gerald of Wales and the Fourth Lateran Council

"Gerald of Wales and the Fourth Lateran Council," Gerald's Speculum Ecdesiae has seemed to be "a compendium, lacking form or structure, of derogatory anecdotes" about the failings of Benedictine and Cistercian monks; it is usually dated circa 1220, or at the earliest 1216, The present paper suggests that Gerald gave the work its present form on the eve of Lateran IV as an appeal for certain reforms, namely closer supervision of monastic orders, especially the Benedictines, and the provision of a regular income for the Roman curia by assigning it the income from one benefice in every cathedral, Originally Gerald had set out to compile a collection of instances of monastic laxity; for over twenty years he had collected materials and in 1212 he began to arrange them in three distinctions. But when Lateran IV was summoned in April 1213, Gerald restructured his work by adding a fourth distinction that had his twofold reform program as its centerpiece (chapter 19). By the spring of 1215, the Speculum Ecdesiae as we know it was substantially complete; and in September he presented a copy to Stephen Langton, to whom the work was dedicated, several weeks before the archbishop set out for the council. Subsequently Gerald twice updated the Speculum by making small but specific additions: in 1216 he noted how his proposals had fared at the council; and before his death circa 1223, he also added a reference to the 1220 bull Super speculum.