Lateran and Laterano are the shared names of several buildings in Rome. The properties were once owned by the Lateranus family of the Roman Empire. The Laterani lost their properties to Emperor Constantine who gave them to the Catholic Church in 311.[1][2]
The most famous Lateran buildings are the Lateran Palace, once called the Palace of the Popes, and the Archbasilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, which although part of Italy is a property of the Holy See, which has extraterritorial privileges as a result of the 1929 Lateran Treaty. As the official ecclesiastical seat of the pope, Saint John Lateran contains the papal cathedra. The Lateran is Christendom's earliest basilica.
The Third Council of the Lateran (1179) limited papal electors to the cardinals alone, condemned simony, and forbade the promotion of anyone to the episcopate before the age of thirty.
^Cubitt, Catherine (2011), Whitby, Mary; Price, Richard (eds.), "The Lateran Council of 649 as an Ecumenical Council", Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400-700, Translated Texts for Historians, Contexts, Liverpool University Press, pp. 133–147, ISBN 978-1-84631-177-2, retrieved 2024-06-17
^"Canons of the Lateran Council of 649". Classical Christianity. March 25, 2012.
^"Pope Stephen III - PopeHistory.com". popehistory.com. 2017-01-27. Retrieved 2024-06-17.
^Gregorovius, Ferdinand, The History of Rome in the Middle Ages, Vol. III (1895)