Fifth Council of the Lateran

The Fifth Lateran Council was a 1512 to 1517 in the Lateran at Rome, which meets Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church. It was convened in 1512 by Pope Julius II, continued under Leo X. after his election in 1513 and quickly completed early in 1517. It started the reform of the church, but could not agree in some theological points of contention.

Prehistory

The church policy framework around the Council makes the discussion of the conciliar movement, which was a product of the previous councils in Constance and Basel. Started in 1431 the Council of Basel was 1438/39 laid against the will of there, which meets Council Fathers by Pope Eugene IV to Ferrara, where a union should be made with the Eastern Church. The decision was made in July 1439, but proved to be due to historical and theological prejudices as untenable. Nevertheless, the hearing gave the Pope a moderate success over the Council of Basel, which had previously made vain efforts to own a meeting with the Greek delegation.

The now schismatic Council of Basle, was denied on the papal council at Ferrara and Florence, where it was moved after a year of any legitimacy. The radicalism of the local council participants - mainly French and German clerics - were moving away from the Council, the European powers. They turned back to the Pope.

This did not mean that the idea of the conciliar movement would just disappeared. On the contrary, both the French king had ( in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges ) and the German clergy ( in the Mainz acceptation ) recognized parts of the decisions of the Council of Basel, including the explanation of the "Tres veritates " in which the council sovereignty over the whole Church, so also about the Pope, claimed. The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges is a crucial document of the Gallican. Because it also the right of appointment of French bishops was held by the king, the popes sought on a search for the withdrawal of the declaration.

After all these incidents which again strengthened to Ferrara and Florence, the papacy was not in the mood for another council, if only because the threat of such soon became a common weapon of policy. In fact, the French King Louis XII called. 1511 by opposing cardinals to a council at Pisa, the Conciliabulum of Pisa so-called. The convening of this counter council was the trigger for the convening of the Fifth Lateran Council.

Council History

The Fifth Lateran Council was the by counting the Latin Church, 18th ecumenical council and the so far last, which was held in the Lateran. It was convened on 19 April 1512 by Pope Julius II and opened on 10 May 1512. At the opening session was attended by 15 cardinals and 79 bishops, there were almost exclusively Italian.

The council was in its Rules of Procedure, unlike his two immediate predecessors and tied back on practice in front of Konstanz. The Rules were determined by the Pope and the decrees adopted as a Papal bull.

Condemnation of the counter- council of Pisa

First, the council went to the disempowerment of the subject Council of Pisa, which condemned it as schismatic. The kings of England and Aragon and Emperor Maximilian I assured the Pope their support. After Julius II died on 21 February 1513, the French king had the meeting in Pisa fall. With France the Concordat of Bologna ( 1516) was still closed during the Council by Pope Leo X, which regulated the connections between church and state and was upheld by the Council.

Dogmatic Definition of the immortality of the individual soul

In his single dogmatic definition of the Council on the question of the immortality of the individual soul dealt. The Neuaristotelimus had the Averroistic idea resurrected from Monopsychismus. Averroes had been the most important commentator of Aristotelian works in the Middle Ages and had experienced a wide reception on scholastic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas, also in the West. According to Averroes, the rational soul is in all men numerically the same, so there is no individual soul, but only this general soul and only this is immortal. This was claimed in the 16th century by Pietro Neuaristotelikern as Pomponazzi. The council turned against them with Christian theology incompatible idea and stated in the eighth session on 19 December 1513 that humans possess an individual and immortal soul, which is the prerequisite for a personal immortality.

Efforts to reform church

On the agenda of the council was again a church reform, which has also been tried on the previous councils, but had never come across approaches beyond.

At proposals lacked not, several participants came forward with some fierce criticism of conditions in the church to speak, at the offices accumulations, the neglect of the residence obligation, the privileges of the mendicant orders. A Spanish memorandum demanded that the court must begin in the house of the Lord. Proposed revision of the Church's Code, the unification of the honors system and the liturgy, a remake of the Union with the separated Eastern Churches and mission of the recently newly discovered territories.

To a tough reform, the council could not decide, however. It issued several decrees in which bishops, legates and cardinals their duties were inculcated and certain grievances regarding the lax execution of transferred tasks were banned. Thus, the dignitaries were obliged to take on administrative tasks such as visitations itself, rather than to understand her position as a sinecure and to appoint representatives for all tasks. Furthermore, the Council adopted provisions on the curial Taxwesen, the censorship of books and the profit pawnshops.

Even this comparatively soft decisions could be circumvented by dispensing again. For a consistent line lacked the corresponding will, as Leo X. was not a reforming pope. The decisions of the Council were therefore hardly a reverberation. This was partly due to its temporal setting: When it was completed in the 12th session, they wrote the March 16, 1517 Seven months later, the Reformation began..

The Reformation was finally triggered the convening of the reform Council of Trent (1545-1563 ).