Church Document
Laetentur Caeli
Papal Bull of Pope Eugene IV / Council of Florence (1439)
The bull of union with the Greeks, solemnly read in the cathedral of Florence and the high point of the Council of Ferrara-Florence. Working through the questions that had divided East and West, it defines that the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son as from one principle and by one spiration, and that the Latin addition of the Filioque to the Creed was lawfully made; that the Body of Christ is truly confected in unleavened and in leavened wheat bread alike, each priest following the usage of his own Church; that the souls of those who die in charity but have not yet made satisfaction are cleansed after death and helped by the suffrages of the living, that the fully purified are received into heaven and see God clearly, and that those who die in mortal sin descend to hell; and that the Roman Pontiff holds the primacy over the whole Church as successor of Peter, with the order of the ancient patriarchal sees set out. The union it proclaimed did not endure in the East. The Holy See publishes the text in Latin and Italian.
Key themes
The procession of the Holy Spirit and the Filioque
The validity of leavened and unleavened bread
Purgatory, suffrages for the dead, and the last things
The primacy of the Roman Pontiff
The order of the patriarchal sees
Union between East and West
Document type
Papal bull
Issuing authority
Pope Eugene IV / Council of Florence
Issued date
Related documents
- pastor-aeternus
- orientalium-ecclesiarum
- unitatis-redintegratio
Content subtype
papal_bull
