Fifth Council of the Lateran
[1] The Republic of Venice had encroached on papal rights in Venetian territories by independently filling vacant episcopal sees, subjecting clergy to secular tribunals and generally disregarding the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Julius II in other ways.
In 1509, Julius II joined the League of Cambrai, a coalition formed to restore lands that had been recently conquered by Venice to their original owners.
Julius II censured Venice with an interdict and deployed the armies of the Papal States, along with the combined forces of the League of Cambrai, to Venetian-occupied Romagna.
In 1510, Venice negotiated with Julius II, who withdrew from the League of Cambrai and removed the censure in exchange for terms that included Venice agreeing to return disputed towns in Romagna, to renounce claims to fill vacant benefices, to acknowledge jurisdiction of ecclesiastical tribunals over clergy and their immunity to secular tribunals including exemption from taxes, to revoke all unauthorised treaties made with towns in the Papal States, to abandon appeal to a future general council against the papal bans and to concede free navigation of the Adriatic Sea to Papal States subjects.
However, declaring allegiance to France would expose Florence to an immediate attack, and alienate its citizens, who dreaded a conflict with the head of the Church.
To gain time, Florence sent Niccolò Machiavelli on a diplomatic mission to France in July 1510, where he found Louis XII eager for war and inclined towards the idea of a general council to depose Julius II.
Julius II began hostilities by deposing and excommunicating his vassal, Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who supported France.
[1] According to Shahan, dissatisfaction with treatment by Julius II, as well as subserviency to the excommunicate Louis XII, led Carvajal to that rebellious attitude.
[9] Julius II was quick to oppose the conciliabulum and convoked a general council by a papal bull of 18 July 1511, which was to meet on 19 April 1512 in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, in Rome.
A war of polemics was waged about the councils, pitting Thomas Cajetan, the Dominican Master General, on the papal side against the conciliarist arguments of Jacques Almain, the spokesman of the University of Paris.
France's victory over the Papal States and the Spanish Empire at the Battle of Ravenna (1512) hindered the opening of the council called by Julius II.
At the seventh session, in 1513, Carvajal and Sanseverino separated from their French colleagues and formally renounced the schism, and they were restored by Leo X to their offices.
The details of the room, measurements, structures, and facilities were reconstructed by scholar Nelson Minnich, who heavily relied on the diaries of Paride De Grassi himself.
[20] Participants included fifteen cardinals, the Latin patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, ten archbishops, fifty-six bishops, some abbots and generals of religious orders, the ambassadors of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor and those of Venice and of Florence.
Several decrees were published, most for institutional reform and political peace rather than doctrinal clarification, including: Little was done to put the work of the council into practice.
[33] In the view of a Franciscan teacher: "Yet, for all its solemnity, five years’ labors, and many sincere and earnest speakers, the Fifth Lateran was not to achieve reform.
