Fifth Council of the Lateran

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The Fifth Council of the Lateran, held between 1512 and 1517, was the eighteenth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church and was the last council before the Protestant Reformation and the Council of Trent. This was the first time since 1213 that the Papal States would hoist an ecumenical council. It would be the last time that Rome’s Lateran Palace (which had hoisted 4 ecumenical councils in the past) would be the venue for such a event.

It was convoked by Pope Julius II with a political motive of restoring peace between warring Catholic rulers and to re-assert the authority of the Pope.

After Pope Leo X took over in 1513, the Council attempted various institutional, dogmatic and social welfare reforms. Institutional reforms were intended to improve unity, reduce nepotism, absenteeism, disinterest, luxury and simony for high church officials, improve the training and regulation of priests, to strengthen the position of bishops over friars, and to assert the independence of the church and clergy from lay control. The social welfare reform allowed no-interest microfinance lending by monti di pietà.

These addressed some issues that had been raised by contemporary reformers, but were not the particular issues that the subsequent Protestant Reformation alighted on. As with the immediately previous Councils, its institutional reforms were ineffectively implemented at that time.