Western Church in the context of "Catholic (term)"

The First Council of Constantinople (Latin: Concilium Constantinopolitanum; Ancient Greek: Σύνοδος τῆς Κωνσταντινουπόλεως) was a council of Christian bishops convened in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey) in AD 381 by the Roman Emperor Theodosius I. This second ecumenical council, an effort to attain consensus in the church through an assembly representing all of Christendom, except for the Western Church, confirmed the Nicene Creed, expanding the doctrine thereof to produce the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, and dealt with sundry other matters. It met from May to July 381 in the Church of Hagia Irene and was affirmed as ecumenical in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon for Chalcedonian Christianity and the Second Council of Ephesus for the Oriental Orthodox Churches.

A Hodegetria, or Virgin Hodegetria, is an iconographic depiction of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) holding the Child Jesus at her side while pointing to him as the source of salvation for mankind. The Virgin's head usually inclines towards the child, who raises his hand in a blessing gesture. Metals are often used to draw attention to young Christ, reflecting light and shining in a way to embody divinity. In the Western Church this type of icon is sometimes called Our Lady of the Way.

The most venerated icon of the Hodegetria type, regarded as the original, was displayed in the Monastery of the Panaghia Hodegetria in Constantinople, which was built specially to contain it. The painting became known as the Madonna of Constantinople. Unlike most later copies it showed the Theotokos standing full-length. It was said to have been brought back from the Holy Land by Eudocia, the wife of emperor Theodosius II (408–450), and to have been painted by Saint Luke the evangelist, the attributed author of the Gospel of Luke. The icon was double-sided, with a crucifixion on the other side, and was "perhaps the most prominent cult object in Byzantium".

The Vulgate (/ˈvʌlɡeɪt, -ɡət/) is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Vetus Latina Gospels used by the Roman Church. Later, of his own initiative, Jerome extended this work of revision and translation to include most of the books of the Bible.

The Vulgate became progressively adopted as the Bible text within the Western Church. Over succeeding centuries, it eventually eclipsed the Vetus Latina texts. By the 13th century it had taken over from the former version the designation versio vulgata (the "version commonly used") or vulgata for short. The Vulgate also contains some Vetus Latina translations that Jerome did not work on.

The Cluniac Reforms (also called the Benedictine Reform) were a series of changes within medieval monasticism in the Western Church focused on restoring the traditional monastic life, encouraging art, and caring for the poor. The movement began within the Benedictine order at Cluny Abbey, founded in 910 by William I, Duke of Aquitaine (875–918). The reforms were largely carried out by Saint Odo (c. 878 – 942) and spread throughout France (Burgundy, Provence, Auvergne, Poitou), into England (the English Benedictine Reform), and through much of Italy, northern Portugal and Spain.

The Eleusa (or Eleousa; Greek: Ἐλεούσα – tenderness or showing mercy) is a type of depiction of the Virgin Mary in icons in which the Christ Child is nestled against her cheek. In the Western Church the type is often known as the Virgin of Tenderness.

Plainsong or plainchant (calque from the French plain-chant; Latin: cantus planus) is a body of chants used in the liturgies of the Western Church. When referring to the term plainsong, it is those sacred pieces that are composed in Latin text. Plainsong was the exclusive form of the Western Christian church music until the ninth century, and the introduction of polyphony.

The monophonic chants of plainsong have a non-metric rhythm, which is generally considered freer than the metered rhythms of later Western music. They are also traditionally sung without musical accompaniment, though recent scholarship has unearthed a widespread custom of accompanied chant that transcended religious and geographical borders.