Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17)
When elected pope, Julius II promised under oath that he would
soon convoke a general council. Time passed, however, and this
promise was not fulfilled. Consequently, certain dissatisfied
cardinals, urged, also, by Emperor Maximilian and Louis XII,
convoked a council at Pisa and fixed 1 September, 1511, for its
opening This event was delayed until 1 October. Four cardinals
then met at Pisa provided with proxies from three absent
cardinals. Several bishops and abbots were also there, as well as
ambassadors from the King of France. Seven or eight sessions were
held, in the last of which Pope Julius II was suspended, whereupon
the prelates withdrew to Lyons. The pope hastened to oppose to
this conciliabulum a more numerously attended council, which he
convoked, by the Bull of 18 July, 1511, to assemble 19 April,
1512, in the church of St. John Lateran. The Bull was at once a
canonical and a polemical document. In it the pope refuted in
detail the reasons alleged by the cardinals for their Pisa
conciliabulum. He declared that his conduct before his elevation
to the pontificate was a pledge of his sincere desire for the
celebration of the council; that since his elevation he had always
sought opportunities for assembling it; that for this reason he
had sought to reestablish peace among Christian princes; that the
wars which had arisen against his will had no other object than
the reestablishment of pontifical authority in the States of the
Church. He then reproached the rebel cardinals with the
irregularity of their conduct and the unseemliness of convoking
the Universal Church independently of its head. He pointed out to
them that the three months accorded by them for the assembly of
all bishops at Pisa was too short, and that said city presented
none of the advantages requisite for an assembly of such
importance. Finally, he declared that no one should attach any
significance to the act of the cardinals. The Bull was signed by
twenty-one cardinals. The French victory of Ravenna (11 April,
1512) hindered the opening of the council before 3 May, on which
day the fathers met in the Lateran Basilica. There were present
fifteen cardinals, the Latin Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch,
ten archbishops, fifty-six bishops, some abbots and gererals of
religious orders, the ambassadors of Kings Ferdinand, and those of
Venice and of Florence. Convoked by Julius II, the assembly
survived him, was continued by Leo X, and held its twelfth, and
last, session on 16 March, 1417. In the thid session Matthew Lang,
who had represented Maximilian at the Council of Tours, read an
act by which that emperor repudiated all that had been done at
Tours and at Pisa. In the fourth session the advocate of the
council demanded the revocation of the Pragmatic Sanction of
Bourges. In the eighth (17 December, 1513), an act of King Louis
XII was read, disavowing the Council of Pisa and adhering to the
Lateran Council. In the next session (5 March, 1514) the pope
published four decrees:
� the first of these sanctions the institution of ontes pietatis,
or pawn shops, under strict ecclesiastical supervision, for the
purpose of aiding the necessitous poor on the most favourable
terms;
� the second relates to ecclesiastical liberty and the episcopal
dignity, and condemns certain abusive exemptions;
� the third forbids, under pain of excommunication, the printing
of books without the permission of the ordinary of the diocese;
� the fourth orders a peremptory citation against the French in
regard to the Pragmatic Sanction. The latter was solemnly revoked
and condemned, and the concordat with Francis I approved, in the
eleventh session (19 December, 1516).
� Finally, the council promulgated a decree prescribing war
against the Turks and ordered the levying of tithes of all the
benefices in Christendom for three years.
H. LECLERCQ
Transcribed by Tomas Hancil
From the Catholic Encyclopedia, copyright � 1913 by the
Encyclopedia Press, Inc. Electronic version copyright � 1996 by
New Advent, Inc.
Taken from the New Advent Web Page (www.knight.org/advent).
This article is part of the Catholic Encyclopedia Project, an
effort aimed at placing the entire Catholic Encyclopedia 1913
edition on the World Wide Web. The coordinator is Kevin Knight,
editor of the New Advent Catholic Website. If you would like to
contribute to this worthwhile project, you can contact him by e-
mail at (knight.org/advent). For more information please download
the file cathen.txt/.zip.
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