[2] In his letter titled Vineam Domini, dated 19 April 1213,[3] the Pope writes of the urgent need to recover the Holy Land and reform the Church.

[8] A preliminary legal session took place on 4 November,[9] while the opening ceremony of the council was held on St. Martin's Day and began with a private morning Mass.

[8] Afterwards, at the start of the first plenary session in the Lateran Palace, the Pope led the singing of "Veni Creator Spiritus"[10] and preached about Jesus' words to his disciples at the Last Supper,[11] quoting from Luke 22.

[14] The next day, in a ceremony attended by many council participants, the Pope consecrated the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere,[8] which had been rebuilt by Callixtus II.

[15] The second plenary session was held on 20 November; the Pope was scheduled to preach about church reform, but proceedings were disrupted by bishops who opposed the designation of Frederick II as Holy Roman Emperor.

[18] The seventy-one Lateran canons, which were not debated, were only formally adopted on the last day of the council;[19] according to Anne J. Duggan, the "scholarly consensus" is that they were drafted by Innocent III himself.

[25] As part of this, the Council stated that "between creator and creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot be seen between them," which became the basis of much Catholic theology, notable of the analogia entis.

Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress.

[29] The Chronica Majora by Matthew Paris contains a line drawing of one of the sessions at the council which his abbot William of St Albans had personally attended.

[30] An extensive eyewitness account by an anonymous German cleric was copied into a manuscript that was published in 1964, in commemoration of the Second Vatican Council, and is now housed at the University of Giessen.