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Exhibit 493

Council of Toulouse, canon 14 (1229)

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'.

Cited by

Finding REL-2.1
Primary record The provincial Council of Toulouse in 1229 forbade lay people in its province to have the books of the Old or New Testament, except a Psalter, a breviary or the Hours of the Virgin, and forbade them to have those books translated into the vernacular.
Finding REL-2.10
Open question How far vernacular Scripture was restricted in Europe and England before 1520, given licensing, noble and orthodox ownership and the limits of the Toulouse and Oxford texts, is disputed and is not settled by the documents cited here.