Related Papers
Collected Letters of Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Vol. 5: Letters 1448-1452 (nos. 226-283) Preliminary version
2024 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
The present volume contains Enea Silvio Piccolomini's personal letters from the years 1448-1452, altogether 57 letters. These letters cover a period when he became Bishop of Trieste and was later transferred to the See of Siena. During this period, he acted as a senior imperial diplomat and councillor, being sent on important missions to the King Alfonso V in Naples, to the pope and to Bohemia.
Collected Letters of Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Vol. 3: 1444 (nos. 111-165) Preliminary edition
2023 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
The present volume contains Enea Silvio Piccolomini’s personal letters from 1444, altogether 54 letters. These letters cover a period of intense literary activity, his conversion from the conciliarist to the papal cause, and his first appointment to a lucrative benefice. They also give a continuous comment on affairs at the imperial court, including the conflict of succession to the Hungarian throne, the development of the Church schism and the succession to the See of Freising.
Collected Letters of Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg, Vol. 2: 1442-1443 (letters 34-110). Preliminary edition.
2023 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
The present volume contains Enea Silvio Piccolomini's personal letters from the period 1442-1443, altogether 76 letters. These two years were the first years of Piccolmins' employment in the imperial chancery. The correspondance shows how Piccolomini rapidly gained the trust of his employers, Emperor Friedrich III and his chancellor, Kaspar Schlick and how he became involved with important affairs at the time.
Collected Reports on Diplomatic Missions, 1447-1455, of Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
2021 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
As a secretary and later councillor and top diplomat of Emperor Friedrich III, Enea Silvio Piccolomini (later Pope Pius II) undertook many diplomatic missions. His reports on five of the most important ones have survived. The first mission was to Pope Eugenius IV in Rome in 1447, where he negotiated and presented the Holy Roman Empire’s obedience to the Roman papacy and witnessed the pope’s death and the election of his successor. The second, later in 1447, was to the city of Milan to make that city accept imperial rule after the death of the last Visconti duke. The third was to Bohemia in 1451, where he was to persuade the Bohemian estates to accept that the boy-king, Ladislaus the Posthumous, would remain under the emperor’s guardianship until he came of age. Piccolomini also used the voyage to visit the Hussites in Tabor and have discussions with them, aiming at ending the Hussite schism. The fourth was to the imperial diet of Regensburg in 1454, summoned by the emperor to discuss a joint European military response to the Turkish conquest of Constantinople and the threat of a Turkish invasion of Europe. This report is also known as the History of the Diet of Regensburg. The fifth was to Pope Calixtus III in Rome 1455, where he presented the emperor’s declaration of obedience and also prepared the way for his own appointment as cardinal, the last career step before he was elected pope in 1456. Piccolomini’s five reports witness important political and religious processes in Europe at the middle of the fifteenth century and provide precious insight into the history of Renaissance diplomacy and the history of the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy.
Collected Reports on Diplomatic Missions, 1447-1455, of Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. 2021
2021 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
De Viris Illustribus and other Biographical Writings of Enea Silvio Piccolomini, edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg-
2021 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
During the 1440s, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, at the time secretary and diplomat of Emperor Friedrich III, was intermittently working on a book which he himself called De Viris Illustribus. It comprises 43 biographies of varying length of eminent persons of his time, emperors, popes, dukes, cardinals, and others, many of whom he had met or seen in person. The work seems never to have been finished, and the last extant draft dates from 1447. Despite a number of errors, important omissions, and some bias, it gives a reasonably adequate description of the persons selected and provides a highly interesting picture of his age.
Collected Orations of Enea Silvio Piccolomini / Pope Pius II. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta- Schönberg. Preliminary edition, version 2. Vol. VII: Orations 29-42, 1458-1459
2017 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
Collected orations of Enea Silvio Piccolomini / Pope Pius II. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Vol. 6: Orations 26-28 (1455-1457)
2019 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
Volume 6 of the Collected Orations of Pope Pius II contains three orations from the three year period 1455-1457. Two of them were addressed to Pope Calixtus III by Piccolomini in his capacity as imperial ambassador, and one of them to King Alfonso V in his capacity as representative of the City if Siena. The first oration to Calixtus concerned the imperial declaration of obedience to the new pope, whereas the second was a memorandum on the Hussite question in the form of an oration, possibly never delivered as such. The oration to Alfonso concerned a peace with the condottiero Jacopo Piccino and city-state of Siena.
Collected Orations of Enea Silvio Piccolomini / Pope Pius II. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Copenhagen, 2017 Vol. 3: Orations 6-13 (1445 – 1450). Final edition, 1st version
2018 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
Volume 3 of the Orations of Enea Silvio Piccolomini / Pope Pius II contains eight orations from the five year period 1445 - 1449. One is a sermon to his parishioners in Aspach (probably never held), two are academic lectures given at the University of Vienna in 1445, and six are ambassadorial orations on behalf of Emperor Friedrich III, of which four were addressed to Pope Eugenius IV and one to the people of Milan (1447).
Collected orations of Enea Silvio Piccolomini / Pope Pius II. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Vol. 5: Orations 21-25 (1454-1455). 3rd version..
2019 •
Michael von Cotta-Schönberg
Volume 5 of the Collected Orations of Pope Pius II contains five orations from the three-year period 1454-1455. They were delivered by Piccolomini in his capacity of imperial ambassador at three imperial diets, held after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. They are generally considered to be some of the most outstanding and influential orations belonging to the genre of Renaissance (anti)Turkish orations, though in the end they proved to be unsuccessful.
