TheCouncil of Mantua of 1459,[1] or Congress of Mantua, was a religious meeting convoked byPope Pius II, who had been elected to the Papacy in the previous year and was engaged in planning war against theOttoman Turks, who had takenConstantinople 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.
Pius entered Mantua on 27 May 1459; his long progress to the place of assembly resembled a triumphal procession. He opened the council on 1 June and waited inMantua as the guest ofLudovico III Gonzaga until September for the various representatives to assemble. On 26 September he called for a new crusade against the Ottomans. The refugee CardinalBessarion and CardinalJuan de Torquemada were in attendance. TheDuke of Burgundy was represented at the Council by the duke of Clèves, who brought in his train the young Burgundian clericFerry de Clugny. The humanistIsotta Nogarola wrote and dispatched to Pope Pius an oration favoring a crusade.
Not all the leaders of the Church were in favor of a Crusade. The Venetian CardinalLudovico Trevisan, patriarch of Aquileia, met Pius in Siena, on 16 March 1459, and followed the pope to Mantua, although he opposed the aims of the Council.[3]
By the time the Council was disbanded in January 1460, an ineffectual call for a newcrusade against theInfidel had been decided upon, and proclaimed by Pius on 14 January 1460. One of the only European rulers to fully endorse the Crusade wasVlad III, though he was too preoccupied defending his nativeWallachia to contribute troops.[4] The paper crusade was to last for three years and was to prove ineffectual. Pius would die inAncona, making one last effort to launch this campaign by his own example.
Pope Pius II had originally called for a crusade against the Turks in 1456, with limited success. But at the council, he again called for the crusade only to be turned down by the leaders of Western powers. He surmised it was both because they were too caught up fighting one another,[a] because they were afraid of the Turkish power and because the Hungarians had been too successful in their own battles with the Turks.[6]
Historians of theTarot like Heinrich Brockhaus[7] have asserted that the so-calledTarocchi di Mantegna were devised and made during the sitting of this council.
The painterMantegna had been invited to Mantua by Ludovico in 1457; although remaining inPadua, he painted theAgony in the Garden that is in theNational Gallery, London, for itsPodestà; in Mantegna's picture, the disciples sleep in Gethsemane, while Jerusalem is envisaged asConstantinople, with thecrescent moon appearing on several towers of the city signifying its capture by the Turk.[8] Long after the pope's death, the artistPinturicchio painted the convocation of the council among the scene's from Pius' life on the walls of thePiccolomini Library inSiena Cathedral.
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