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{{Short description|1459 ecumenical council}}
[[Image:Pintoricchio 012.jpg|thumb|right|[[Pius II]], convenor of the council.]]
The '''Council of Mantua of 1459''',<ref>There was a Council of Mantua in 1064 and a Council of Mantua in 1537.</ref> 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<ref>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 (1454–66)|Thirteen Years' War]] was pitting the [[Prussia]]n cities and the local nobility against the [[Teutonic Knights]], whose support would be crucial in any concerted action against the Turk.</ref> to face Christendom's common enemy.

==Process of the Council of 1459==
[[Image:Andrea Mantegna - Cardinal Lodovico Trevisano - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|right|[[Ludovico Trevisan]], participant in the war congress.]]
Pius entered Mantua on 27 May; his long progress to the place of assembly resembled a triumphal procession. He opened the council on 1 June and waited in [[Mantua]] as the guest of [[Ludovico III of Gonzaga|Ludovico III Gonzaga]] until September for the various representatives to assemble. On 26 September he called for a new crusade against the Ottomans. The refugee Cardinal [[Bessarion]] and Cardinal [[Juan de Torquemada (cardinal)|Juan de Torquemada]] were in attendance. The [[Philip the Good|Duke of Burgundy]] was represented at the Council by the duke of Clèves, who brought in his train the young Burgundian cleric [[Ferry de Clugny]]. The humanist [[Isotta Nogarola]] wrote and dispatched to Pope Pius an oration favoring a crusade.

==Criticism and effects==
Not all the leaders of the Church were in favor of a Crusade. The Venetian Cardinal [[Ludovico Trevisan]], patriarch of Aquileia, met Pius in Siena, 16 March, and followed the pope to Mantua, although he opposed the aims of the Council.<ref>[http://www.fiu.edu/~mirandas/bios1440.htm Salvador Miranda, "The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church": Ludovico Trevisano]</ref>

By the time the Council was disbanded in January 1460, an ineffectual call for a new [[Crusades|crusade]] against the [[Infidel]] had been decided upon, and proclaimed by Pius on 14 January.  One of the only European rulers to fully endorse the Crusade was [[Vlad III]], though he was too preoccupied defending his native [[Wallachia]] to contribute troops.<ref>Treptow, Kurt W. (2000). Vlad III Dracula: the life and times of the historical Dracula. The Center for Romanian Studies. {{ISBN|973-98392-2-3}}</ref>  The paper crusade was to last for three years and was to prove ineffectual.  Pius would die in [[Ancona]], making one last effort to launch this campaign by his own example.

Historians of the [[Tarot]] like Heinrich Brockhaus<ref>Brockhaus, "Ein edles Geduldspiel: "Die Leitung der Welt oder die Himmelsleiter" die sogenannten Taroks Mantegnas. Vom Jahre 1459-60" ''Miscellanea di Storia dell'arte in onore di [[Igino Benvenuto Supino]],'' (Florence) 1933,pp 397-416 ([http://trionfi.com/0/m/15/ On-line text (German)]). "Placed edge to edge, they form a symbolic ladder leading from Heaven to earth", wrote [[Jean Seznec]] (''The Survival of the Pagan Gods'', Princeton University Press, 1940:139).</ref> have asserted that the so-called [[Tarocchi|Tarocchi di Mantegna]] were devised and made during the sitting of this council.

==Artistic legacy==
The painter [[Andrea Mantegna|Mantegna]] had been invited to Mantua by Ludovico in 1457; although remaining in [[Padua]], he painted the ''Agony in the Garden'' that is in the [[National Gallery, London]], for its [[Podestà]]; in Mantegna's picture, the disciples sleep in Gethsemane, while Jerusalem is envisaged as [[Constantinople]], with the rising [[Hilal (crescent moon)|crescent moon]] signifying its capture by the Turk.<ref>J. H. Whitfield, "Mantegna and Constantinople" ''The Burlington Magazine'' '''119''' No. 886 (January 1977), p. 41.</ref>  Long after the pope's death, the artist [[Pinturicchio]] painted the convocation of the council among the scene's from Pius' life on the walls of the [[Piccolomini Library]] in [[Siena Cathedral]].

==Notes and references==
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[[Category:1459 in Europe]]
[[Category:15th century in Italy]]
[[Category:15th-century crusades]]
[[Category:1459]]
[[Category:History of Mantua]]