This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Christian Councils gathers the atlas's largest single grouping under this type, twenty four assemblies running from the apostles' own first meeting to a twenty first century Orthodox gathering, telling a story less of one church legislating than of several churches drawing different lines around the same early meetings.
The Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts, is the earliest, deciding gentile converts need not be circumcised or keep the whole Mosaic law. Seven councils followed it, the First Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, Ephesus, Chalcedon, a second Constantinople settling the Three Chapters controversy under Justinian, a third ruling Christ has two wills as well as two natures, and a second Nicaea restoring image veneration, which is, in its own reckoning, the last both Eastern and Western churches count among the seven ecumenical councils. Even these were not received everywhere alike: the Council of Dvin rejected Chalcedon's Christology for the Armenian church, and the Quinisext Council, supplying canons the fifth and sixth had not issued, became Orthodox church law never received at Rome.
After the schism the traditions built separate sequences. Rome continued numbering its own councils through the Lateran and Lyons councils, Constance ending the Western Schism, Florence, Trent's eighteen year answer to the Reformation, and two Vatican councils, while Orthodoxy held nothing on the same scale again until the Holy and Great Council of Crete in 2016. The Reformation split the picture further: Dort settled Reformed doctrine against Arminian objection, and the Marburg Colloquy, called to unite Luther and Zwingli, produced agreement on fourteen of fifteen prepared articles and open division on the last, Christ's presence in the bread and wine.