PIO II, PAPA. – Born in Corsignano in the Sienese territory on 18 October 1405; died at Ancona on 15 August 1464.
I. THE YOUNG HUMANIST
Enea Silvio Piccolomini, of a family of impoverished and banished Sienese nobles, devoted himself in his youth to the study of law; but he loved much more to enrich himself with an exceedingly broad humanistic culture. In 1432 he went to the Council of Basel in the retinue of Cardinal Domenico Capranica; after various vicissitudes, having entered the service of the pious and learned Cardinal Albergati, he travelled with him through Western Europe and was sent to Scotland, thereby gaining first-hand knowledge of the most varied countries. A writer and abbreviator of the Council (1436), he played an active part in the opposition to Eugenio IV; he was secretary to the antipope Felice V; in a Libellus he defended the authority of the Council. Having, however, entered the imperial chancery, he followed and encouraged the policy of Federico III, of neutrality between the Pope and the Council. Up to this point he had been widely esteemed for his learning and eloquence; he liked to call himself a poet, having received the laurel from Federico (27 July 1442); he displayed, and almost flaunted, laxity of morals; the comedy Chrisis and the excessively famous De duobus omantibus historia (1444) date from this period. But the foreboding of an old age not far distant, reflection on the grave problems of Christendom and Europe, and perhaps new, higher ambitions brought about a radical change in him; as early as October 1444 he declared that henceforth he wished to serve God alone. Humanism itself, of which he continued to be an ardent follower and which he made his apostolate in Germany, now acquired for him a deeper content and turned him toward papal Rome.II. THE MAN OF THE CHURCH
Enea Silvio then perceives more clearly the danger that, by following the path upon which the Council had embarked, the universal Church might be split into national Churches; and he feels the need for the desired reform to be promoted by a pontificate made stronger. Ambassador of Frederick III in Rome, he is reconciled with the Pope; he receives Holy Orders (a priest on 4 March 1447), which he had previously refused in order not to bind himself to celibacy; he works to win the German nation for Enrico IV; and he plays a major role in that “concordat of the princes” (February 1447), which, although favorable to them, was nevertheless a decisive step toward the reunion of the Church around the Pontiff. Bishop first of Trieste (19 April 1447), then of his native Siena (23 September 1450), he confesses the error of having adhered to the Council, affirming that where the Pope is, there is the Council. He works for the recognition of Niccolò V by the Germans, while continuing also to serve the House of Austria, for which he arranged the marriage of Frederick III to Eleonora of Portugal, niece of Alfonso, king of Aragon and Naples, and conducted the difficult negotiations for the imperial coronation.One month after the coronation, on 25 April 1452, in a speech before the Pope and the Emperor, he sets forth the task that now presses upon Christendom: war against the infidels. As legate in the transalpine countries, he urges the Pope, the Emperor, and the German diets to avert the danger threatening Christian civilization, which the fall of Constantinople had revealed in all its gravity. But he already perceives the painful reality: the Papacy and the Empire are by now empty names; through inertia and discord, the Christians are “procurators of the Turks.” And yet, created cardinal by Callistus III (17 December 1456) and having become his adviser, while demonstrating his ability in various affairs, he insists above all on the plan for a crusade, encouraging the already zealous Pontiff in II.
In the Conclave of 1458, through a not disinterested defense of the independence of the Pontificate and of Italy from the transalpine nations, and especially from France, he succeeds in keeping the Frenchman Estouteville from the tiara; and, with the support of the envoys of Milan and Naples, he is
elected pontiff (19 August): P.’s new name is a somewhat pedantic reminder of the Virgilian plus Aeneas.
III. THE PONTIFF IN HIS CULTURAL AND POLITICAL ACTIVITY
Aged prematurely and tormented by illness, P. displayed a varied and magnificent activity. He continued his work as a writer, in an agile, polished, highly elegant Latin, rich in acute observations, vivid portraits, piquant anecdotes, and descriptions animated by a lively sense of the beauties of nature. While the many letters, differing greatly in subject and length, most of the orations, the Cosmographia, and treatises on the most varied subjects (Historia bohemica, Historia rerum Friderici III imperatoris, De viris aetate sua claris, De liberorum educatione, De curialium miseriis) belong to the years preceding the pontificate, the Commentarii belong to this period. In the first book, after summarizing the life of Enea before his papal election, they recount in the other twelve the deeds of Pope Enea and of Italy and, insofar as he knew them, of the world during the years of his pontificate, up to the first months of 1464; it is a work of great literary merit and, despite its inevitable subjectivity, of high historical value.He was a patron of humanist culture, both because of his own character as a most learned and refined humanist and because it seemed to him that he could employ it to the advantage of the pontificate; he held eminent humanists dear, such as Biondo Flavio, who dedicated the Roma triumphans to him, and Campano; he promoted Italian and foreign universities. But he disappointed the hopes of many, both because of the very refinement of his taste, which enabled him to distinguish tinsel from gold, and because he was reluctant to enrich, at the Church’s expense, men who possessed little or nothing ecclesiastical about them. More munificent where art was concerned, he had a loggia and two palaces built at Siena and transformed his small Corsignano into a jewel, raising it to the status of a city and bishopric under the name of Pienza.
He devoted no small effort to politics: he subdued the Roman disturbances; reorganized the Papal State; waged a harsh war against Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, taking Fano and Senigallia from him while leaving him Rimini; and strongly supported Ferrante d’Aragona, securing the Kingdom of Naples for him against the intrigues of the barons and the invasion of Giovanni d’Angiò. Although it is impossible to absolve him entirely from the charge of nepotism and excessive concern for worldly interests, it must be acknowledged that he wished to strengthen the pontificate in temporal as well as spiritual terms, so as to enable it to attend more effectively to its spiritual mission; and in Italy, which he declared in moving words that he wished to defend against the shame and harm of foreign domination, he saw a safeguard for the freedom of the Church, especially in the face of French interference, whose danger the Avignon exile had demonstrated.
IV. THE ASSERTOR OF PAPAL AUTHORITY
In the more strictly spiritual sphere, he was an energetic defender of the supreme authority of the pontiff. Even before making amends for his former anti-papal doctrines with the bulla retractationis (26 Apr. 1463), he had condemned, in the bull Esecrabilis, dated at Mantua, 18 Jan. 1460, as an execrable abuse, appealing from the pope to the council. After difficult negotiations, he obtained that Luigi XI of France abrogate the Pragmatic Sanction (27 Nov. 1461) and have solemn obedience rendered to the Pontiff (16 March 1462): the event was celebrated, as it truly was, as a triumph of the pontificate, although the King, disappointed in his twofold hope of seeing the Pope’s attitude changed in the matter of Naples and of bringing the most important benefices of France into his own hands, rendered the abrogation practically null through a series of ordinances.In the German lands, where anti-Roman tendencies were very strong, he excommunicated and declared heretical Duke Sigismund of Tyrol for the violence he had committed to prevent card. Cusano from implementing ecclesiastical reforms in his diocese of Bressanone; the duke appealed to the council in a most violent writing by his adviser Gregorio di Heimburg, one of Rome’s fiercest enemies; and the conflict was not settled until after the Pope’s death. He was, however, able to obtain the submission of Diether von Isenburg, archbishop of Mainz and leader of the anti-papal movement, whom he had excommunicated and deposed. In Bohemia, he initially helped consolidate the authority of the national king Giorgio di Podiebrad; but, despite his insistence, he declared the Compactata of Basel null and void (31 March 1462); and when the King, after a long period of ambiguity, declared himself favorable to utraquism, he initiated proceedings against him, which remained suspended upon the Pope’s death. Although the plans of Cusano and of the bishop of Torcello, Domenichi, for a radical reform of the Church were not implemented because of the difficulties of the times, P. eliminated abuses, restored cloister discipline in several places, and promoted the reform of religious Orders; he favored the missions; he supported, as a defense against usury, the establishment of the Monti di pietà; the solemn canonization of Caterina da Siena (29 June 1461) was a tribute from P. not only to the virtues of his great fellow citizen, but also to her courageous work for the purification of morals.
V. THE HERALD OF THE HOLY WAR
But P. wished his pontificate to be directed above all toward the grave task of gathering the forces of Christendom for the holy war: this was at once a necessary defense against the threat of the Turk and a means of restoring to the respublica christianorum the sense of unity that was gradually being lost. And since, of the two heads of the Christian world, one was—both because of the decline of the imperial institution and because of the inadequacy of the man invested with it—unsuited to the great undertaking, P., accentuating a tendency that had already emerged under some of his predecessors and anticipating the future, wished that, above the variety of nations by then independent, all Christians should unite around the pontiff for religious interests. With the bull Vocavit nos of 13 October 1458, he summoned the representatives of the Christian states to a diet, which he himself was to preside over; and, overcoming opposition and difficulties, he opened it at Mantua on 1 June 1459. Negotiations began only on 26 September; several months were spent trying to extract some promise from the Christian powers, divided and concerned solely with their own interests, incredulous of the terrible common danger; Venice, the most threatened and at the same time the most fervently solicited, hesitated for fear—by no means unjustified—of being left alone before the enemy. Finally, even before obtaining universal consent, P., on 14 January 1460, proclaimed the crusade for three years, granting indulgences and imposing a tenth on the revenues of the clergy, a thirtieth on those of the laity, and a twentieth on the property of the Jews. And the Diet was dissolved (18 January), without having concluded anything.The Pontiff, whom religious conflicts, political intrigues, and the coldness of the Christian states deprived for the time being of any hope of undertaking the enterprise, dreamed of seeing in Maometto II a new Constantine converted to Christianity and seated, with papal consecration, upon the throne of the East; and he addressed to him a long letter, almost a dogmatic treatise, to induce him to convert. But the dream—which, moreover, was not unlike the one he had previously entertained regarding the Tartars—was short-lived.
VI. THE CRUSADING POPE
P. returned to his former design when Venice was drawn into war by the Turks themselves and the Hungary of Mattia Corvino, likewise threatened, seemed prepared to fight effectively at his side, while, among the princes of the West, at least one, the chivalrous duke of Burgundy, announced his participation in the Crusade. But he thought that example was worth more than speeches, however eloquent; that the Vicar of Christ, becoming the Godfrey of the new Crusade, might draw the world to follow him. Having once again proclaimed the holy war (22 Oct. 1463), he set out, old and infirm, for Ancona. But the troops assembled there on deceptive promises had dispersed, and the Venetian galleys were delayed; P. was barely able to see them from the hill of Ancona before dying a death as moving as that of a martyr. He was buried in Rome, first in S. Pietro, then transferred to S. Andrea della Valle.Not free from doctrinal and moral failings in his youth, nor ever from ambition and vanity, at times almost childlike, too fond of his own, too readily given to enthusiasms not always restrained by a vigilant sense of reality, P. II was nevertheless, by intelligence, culture, and industry, one of the greatest men of his age; by piety, charity, simplicity of life, and complete devotion to his duty as head and defender of Christendom, he was among the noblest figures of the pontiffs.
imperii romani», Cologne 1939; E. Hocks, Pius II. und der Halbmond, Freiburg im Br. 1941; F. A. Gragg, The commentaries of Pius II, Northampton 1942; G. Paparelli, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Bari 1950; A. Silvestri, Documenti inediti, in Atti e memorie della Società tiburtina di storia e d'arte, 24 (1951), pp. 205-30.
Giovanni Battista Picotti