Legislated a reform of the Roman clergy that was never carried out. It closed in March 1517; Luther posted his theses that October.
- Where
- The Lateran Basilica, Rome — Rome, Italy
- Convoked by
- Pope Julius II, by the bull Sacrosanctae Romanae Ecclesiae of 18 July 1511, to answer a schismatic assembly at Pisa
- Pope
- Julius II, who opened it; Leo X, who continued and closed it
- Sat
- First session 10 May 1512; twelfth and last session 16 March 1517
- Sessions
- Twelve sessions in the Lateran basilica
- Bishops present
- Thin, and heavily Italian. Bishops from outside Italy were so notably absent that the council's ecumenical standing has been disputed ever since
What it faced
Julius II was a soldier before he was a pastor, and by 1511 a group of cardinals in league with Louis XII of France had convened a rival council at Pisa to depose him. This council was called to crush that one, and it did so at its second session.
The deeper problem was that everyone knew the Church needed reform and nobody with power wanted it enough. The curia was a machine for selling offices; bishops drew revenues from sees they had never visited; the Roman court under Leo X was the most brilliant and most worldly in Europe.
There was also a philosophical crisis. In the universities of northern Italy the Averroist reading of Aristotle taught that there is one intellect for the whole human race, and therefore no personal immortality — a view that could be held, its defenders said, as philosophy while the opposite was held as faith.
What it defined
- ✠That the schismatic assembly at Pisa and all its acts are null.
- ✠That the intellectual soul is immortal and individual — against the Averroist claim that it is mortal, or one and the same in all human beings.
- ✠That the doctrine of double truth is rejected: what is false in theology cannot be true in philosophy.
- ✠The abrogation of the French Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which had subjected the French Church to the crown.
- ✠Reform decrees for the Roman curia, the cardinals, and the appointment of bishops.
In its own words
“…we condemn and reject all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, or that it is only one among all human beings, and those who cast doubt on these truths.”
Its sessions and decrees
Twelve sessions across five years, and a reform that was legislated but never enforced.
- Session 2Nullifies the schismatic council of Pisa and all its acts.
- Session 4Abrogates the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges of 1438 as damaging to papal authority and the freedom of the Church.
- Session 5Forbids simony in papal elections, on pain of excommunication and loss of every ecclesiastical rank.
- Session 8Apostolici regiminis: the individual immortality of the soul, and a requirement that clerics studying philosophy also study theology or canon law.
- Session 9Reform of the curia, of episcopal appointments, and of the households of cardinals.
- ✕It did not reform anything. The council's own official history is unusually candid: the decisions on the reform of the curia 'produced almost no effect because of the timidity and inadequacy of the recommendations, especially since the papacy showed slight inclination to carry the matter through.'
- ✕It did not represent the Church outside Italy in any real way, which is why its ecumenical standing is argued to this day.
- ✕It did not see what was coming. Its final session closed on 16 March 1517, and Martin Luther posted the ninety-five theses on 31 October — seven and a half months later.
What people think it did
Lateran V shows the Church did nothing about corruption until Luther forced her hand.
What happened: The council did legislate against corruption — simony in papal elections, absentee bishops, curial abuses. What it failed to do was enforce any of it, which is a different and in some ways worse charge. The reforming impulse was real and long-standing; the will to make it cost the Roman court anything was not.
What followed
The condemnation of Averroism is the council's lasting doctrinal act, and a more interesting one than it looks: by rejecting the theory of 'double truth' the Church committed herself to the position that faith and reason cannot finally contradict each other. Vatican I would build on exactly that, three and a half centuries later.
Everything else was overtaken. Within a generation half of northern Europe was out of communion with Rome, and the reform that Lateran V could not manage was carried out at Trent under the pressure of catastrophe.
It is the most useful cautionary tale in the whole list of twenty-one: a council that identified the right problems, legislated feebly, and was answered by history within the year.
Follow it further
Sources
Every date, figure and quotation on this page was checked against the conciliar text or a published translation before it was written, and independently re-checked by three separate passes over dates, quotations and theology. Where the sources disagree — attendance figures above all — the page gives the range rather than choosing.