Ratisbon

Ratisbon a city of Germany, is noted in ecclesiastical history as the seat of several important Church councils (Concilia Ratisponenses). The first of these was held in 792. In this council the errors of Felix, bishop of Urgel, who maintained that Christ is only the adoptive Son of God, were condemned, and he himself sent to Rome to pope Adrian, before whom he confessed and abjured his heresy in the church of St. Peter; he maintained, with Elipandus, that Christ, as to his human nature, was the Son of God by adoption only. See Labbe, Concil. 7:1010. SEE FELICIANS.

A second council was held in 796. Grievous complaints having been made both by the priests and laity of the ministrations of the chorepiscopi, it was decided in this council that the latter had no power to perform episcopal functions, being only priests, and that, consequently, all the previous acts were null and void; it was also forbidden to make any new chorepiscopi. This rank, however, among the clergy did not entirely cease until the middle of the 10th century. See Labbe, Concil. 7:1152.

A third council was the conference held in 1541, and generally called the Diet of Ratisbon. Though it had in view the settlement of all religious differences between the Protestants and the adherents to papal authority, it only resulted in effecting a mutual agreement to refer the settlement of their differences to a general council. See Riddle, Hist. of the Papacy; Mosheim, Eccles. Hist.; Meth. Quar. Rev. Jan. 1872, p. 143; Marsden, Hist. of the Sects of Christendom; Buchanan, Treatise on Justification; Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Free Thought. SEE REFORMATION.