The Fifth Lateran Council

The Lateran Basilica, Rome · May 3, 1512 to March 16, 1517 · convened by Julius II, concluded by Leo X · the last council before the Reformation.

Julius II summoned the council chiefly to answer a rival. In 1511 a handful of cardinals, backed by Louis XII of France, had opened a council at Pisa to reform the church and depose the warrior pope. Julius met council with council. Lateran V condemned the Pisan assembly as a schismatic “conciliabulum,” and after Julius died in 1513 it continued under Leo X.

The opening sermon, by Giles of Viterbo, prior general of the Augustinian order to which Luther belonged, pleaded that men must be changed by religion, not religion by men. The decrees that followed were modest. The council defined the immortality of the individual soul, ordered that no book be printed without prior approval by church authority, and in its eleventh session declared that the pope alone has authority to summon, transfer, and dissolve councils.

Principal Acts

  • Condemned the schismatic Council of Pisa of 1511.
  • Defined the immortality of the individual soul (Apostolici regiminis, 1513).
  • Required prior church approval for every printed book (Inter sollicitudines, 1515).
  • Declared the pope’s authority over councils (Pastor aeternus, 1516).
  • Approved the Concordat of Bologna with Francis I of France.
  • Regulated preaching and called for a crusade against the Turks.

Why It Matters

The council closed on March 16, 1517, its reforms largely unenforced. On October 31 of the same year Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses. Within months the decree on printing was being turned against the Reformers’ pamphlets and Bibles, and Pastor aeternus stood behind the refusal to let any council meet freely, outside papal control, to hear Luther’s case.

Numbering. Rome reckons this the eighteenth ecumenical council, though its standing was long questioned, especially in France. Protestants do not count it ecumenical.

The Medieval Councils

Roman Catholic Councils

Notes

  1. Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (London: Sheed & Ward; Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990), vol. 1. Latin and English text of the decrees.
  2. Nelson H. Minnich, The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17): Studies on Its Membership, Diplomacy and Proposals for Reform (Aldershot: Variorum, 1993).
  3. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 6, The Middle Ages, A.D. 1294–1517 (CCEL).