The Secret Memoirs of a Renaissance Pope

These Commentaries, written in the 1460s by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini after his election as Pius II, are a first-person record of a humanist diplomat who becomes pope. He recounts his Sienese youth, service at the Council of Basel, missions for the Emperor Frederick III, and the bargaining that produced his election in 1458. Once in office he describes curial factions, Italian wars, the fall of Constantinople as a standing problem, and his attempt to launch a crusade from Ancona. Portraits of princes, cardinals, and cities sit beside self-justification and gossip. The book is an abridged papal autobiography, not a later historian's life of the Renaissance papacy.

Bound in full cream elephanthide with leather titling label and coat-of-arms blocked front cover. Brown or red slipcase.