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 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 were in attendance. The 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.
