Humanist, pope (1458-1464), and propagandist of a crusade against the Ottoman Turks.
Enea Silvio (Latinized as Aeneas Silvius) Piccolomini was born at Corsignano on 18 October 1405 into an Italian noble family. He trained as a jurist, attended the Council of Basel (1432-1442), and later entered the service of Frederick III, king of the Romans. After his ordination (1446), a stupendous ecclesiastical career elevated Aeneas to the bishopric of Siena (1450), the cardinalate (1456), and, finally, to the papacy. He was elected in 1458 as successor to Pope Calix- tus III, taking the name Pius II. Ever since the fall of Constantinople (mod. Istanbul, Turkey) to the Ottomans (29 May 1453), he had propagated a crusade against the Turks, both as a diplomat and a rhetorician. From 1458 it became the foremost issue of Pius’s pontificate. In 1459-1460 he summoned the Congress of Mantua, trying, though with little success, to inaugurate a common European alliance against Turkish aggression. In the crusading bull Ezechielis (23 September 1463) Pius promised to participate in the expedition personally, but on his way to Ancona, where a fleet already lay at anchor, he died on 15 August 1464.
In his famous Latin letters and speeches at the diets in Regensburg (1454) and Frankfurt am Main (1454) and at Mantua, which soon became models of their genre, he evoked the examples of Pope Urban II’s sermon at the Council of Clermont (1095) and the First Crusade (1096-1099). He made extensive use of the chronicle of Robert of Rheims as well as of Bernard of Clairvaux’s letter of exhortation, blending them with humanist style and thought. Besides advocating the military option, Pius addressed a letter to the conqueror of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmed II (Epistola ad Mahumetem, 1461), advising him to adopt Christianity and thus become a second Constantine. In 1458 he composed an epitome of the Histori- arum decades of Flavio Biondo (1392-1463), which comprised an account of the First Crusade.
Pius II arrives at Ancona and calls forth the Crusade, by Pinturrichio (1454-1513). (Scala/Art Resource)