Council of Mantua (1459)

Pius II, convenor of the council.

The Council of Mantua of 1459,[1] or Congress of Mantua, was a religious meeting convoked by Pope Pius II, who had been elected to the Papacy in the previous year and was engaged in planning war against the Ottoman Turks, who had taken Constantinople in 1453. His call went out to the rulers of Europe, in an agonized plea to turn from internecine warfare[2] to face Christendom's common enemy.

  1. ^ There was a Council of Mantua in 1064 and a Council of Mantua in 1537.
  2. ^ Though the Wars in Lombardy had been ended by the Peace of Lodi (1454), England was convulsed in the Wars of the Roses, and the Thirteen Years' War was pitting the Prussian cities and the local nobility against the Teutonic Knights, whose support would be crucial in any concerted action against the Turk.