Commentaries, Volume 1

Books I-II

By: Pius II, Margaret Meserve (Editor), Marcello Simonetta (Editor)

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Hardcover | 17 February 2004 | Edition Number 1

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448 Pages

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21.0 x 14.0 x 2.7

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The Renaissance popes were among the most enlightened and generous patrons of arts and letters in the Europe of their day. The diaries of Pius II give us an intimate glimpse of the life and thought of one of the greatest of the Renaissance popes. Pius II (1405-1464) began life as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini in a small town near Siena, and became a famous Latin poet and diplomat. Originally an opponent of the papacy as well as something of a libertine, Aeneas eventually reconciled himself with the Roman church and became a priest, then a cardinal. Finally he was elected Pope Pius II (1458) and dedicated his pontificate to organizing a pan-European crusade against the Ottoman Empire. Pius's Commentaries, the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius's lifetime and an updated and corrected version of the 1937 translation by Florence Alden Gragg.

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Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, the Sienese humanist who became Pope Pius II, describes the election that brought him to the papal throne in a cold, mordant key that anticipates the Italian styles of Machiavelli and Guicciardini...For all his severity, Pius had a delightful way of describing cities and countryside. He could mock himself charmingly, as when he described his stay among the barbarian inhabitants of the British borders, who had never seen wine or white bread, and whose eager young women he refused to sleep with, as he stayed up all night for fear of bandits "among the heifers and nanny goats, who kept him from sleeping a wink by stealthily pulling the straw from his pallet." Pius's Commentaries, presented in a most elegant and informative way by Margaret Meserve and Marcello Simonetta, may well be the most entertaining work in the whole [I Tatti Renaissance Library] series. -- Anthony T. Grafton * New York Review of Books *

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Introduction
Maps
Preface
Book I
Book II
Note on the Text and Translation
Notes to the Text
Notes to the Translation
Bibliography
Index
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Commentaries, Volume 1

Books I-II

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

The I Tatti Renaissance Library

Commentaries on Plato, Volume 1

"Phaedrus" and "Ion"

Odes

The I Tatti Renaissance Library

History of Venice, Volume 2

Books V-VIII

Writings on Church and Reform

The I Tatti Renaissance Library

Essays and Dialogues

The I Tatti Renaissance Library

Humanist Educational Treatises

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Platonic Theology, Volume 3

Books IX-XI

Platonic Theology, Volume 4

Books XII-XIV

Humanist Comedies

The I Tatti Renaissance Library

Platonic Theology, Volume 6

Books XVII-XVIII

Baiae

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On the Donation of Constantine

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Famous Women

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Biographical Writings

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Invectives

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