The Council of Pisa, A Challenge to Papal Power

A Church Divided

In 1511, a group of French bishops, acting with the support of King Louis XII, convened the Council of Pisa as a direct challenge to Pope Julius II. The goal was to limit or even depose the pope by appealing to an older principle that had gained traction during the late Middle Ages, the idea that a general council of the Church held authority above the pope.

This was not the first time such a council had been called. The great conciliar movements of the fifteenth century, especially the Councils of Constance and Basel, had asserted the right of councils to reform the Church and check papal abuses. But by the early sixteenth century, the papacy had regained much of its control, and Julius II, often called the warrior pope, ruled with more political boldness than many of his predecessors.

When Louis XII clashed with Julius over territory in Italy, especially the papal claim to lands occupied by French forces, the conflict spilled into the realm of ecclesiastical politics. The king encouraged a handful of bishops to declare Julius a schismatic and to summon a council that would examine his conduct.

The Council and Its Failure

The Council of Pisa opened in November 1511, but it was sparsely attended. Only a few bishops took part, most of them under political pressure from the French crown. No major theologians lent it credibility, and the majority of Catholic Europe remained loyal to Julius.

Julius II responded quickly and forcefully. He declared the council illegal, excommunicated its organizers, and soon convened his own counter-council, the Fifth Lateran Council, which met in Rome beginning in 1512. There, the pope reasserted the primacy of papal authority and condemned the attempt at Pisa as rebellious and illegitimate.

The Council of Pisa fizzled out within months. It failed to gain momentum, failed to attract wider support, and failed to force Julius II to submit to conciliar discipline. But its failure was instructive. It revealed how fragile the unity of the Church had become, and how political alliances were beginning to fracture even the highest institutions of ecclesiastical life.

Theological and Political Implications

The Council of Pisa was not just a political stunt. It was rooted in a real theological tradition that many bishops and scholars still held — the belief that the pope could err, and that the Church as a whole, through a general council, could correct him. This belief, called conciliarism, had deep roots in canon law and the history of the Church. But by 1511, it was losing ground to a renewed emphasis on papal supremacy.

The attempt at Pisa made clear that conciliarism had become politically dependent. Without the support of powerful secular rulers or widespread clerical backing, the idea could not stand. Yet the very fact that such a council could be summoned in defiance of Rome showed how much tension remained under the surface.

Zwingli, Luther, and other reformers would soon pick up the theme, not by calling councils, but by returning to Scripture itself as the final authority. Pisa may have failed as a council, but the cracks it exposed in the medieval Church were real and growing.

A Sign of Things to Come

The Council of Pisa is often forgotten, overshadowed by the events of the Reformation that followed just a few years later. But it belongs to the same story. It revealed the growing gap between the papacy and national churches, between centralized control and local reform, and between tradition and the emerging call for a new kind of authority grounded in Scripture rather than hierarchy.

Though short-lived and politically motivated, Pisa stands as a signpost pointing to the deep fractures in the late medieval Church, fractures that reformers like Zwingli would soon take far more seriously than the bishops of France ever did.