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: