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2. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Histories of the Council of Basel
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2 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Histories of the Council of Basel } emily o’brien It is a misfortune of mine and a fate by which I am plagued that I cannot steal away from history and use my time more profitably.”1 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini puts forward this resigned and rhetorical lament in the preface to the Two Books on the Proceedings of the Council of Basel (De gestis concilii Basiliensis commentariorum libri II, 1439–40), one of his many works of contemporary history. Time would prove that Aeneas was not just an irrepressible historian; he also had particular difficulty steering his pen away from the Council of Basel (1431–49). Over the course of the next twenty-five years, Aeneas would continue to revisit this pivotal moment in ecclesiastical history.In 1450,he wrote the Commentary on the Proceedings of Basel (De rebus Basiliae gestis commentarius ), a shorter but more chronologically extensive discussion of the Basel assembly.2 A dozen years later,having been elected Pope Pius II (r. 1458–64),Aeneas folded an account of the council into his Commentaries (Commentarii, 1462–64), the monumental autobiographical account of the first five years of his papacy. Discussions of the council’s events and members also appear in several of his other works,including OnFa60 1. De gestis concilii Basiliensis commentariorum libri II, ed. and trans. Denys Hay and W. K. Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 2: “Nescio quae mea calamitas est quibusve urgeor fatis, ne me historiae furari sciam tempusque meum utilius consumere.” All English translations of the De gestis offered here are taken from this edition. 2.DerBriefwechseldesEneasSilivusPiccolomini,ed.Rudolf Wolkan,vol.2,Fontes Rerum Austriacarum :Diplomataria et Acta,2nd ser.,vol.67 (Vienna:Hölder,1912),164–228. “ mous Persons (De viris illustribus, 1440–50), Germany (Germania, 1457), and dozens of his letters.3 It would be difficult to deny the significance of Aeneas’s writings on the Basel council.His accounts,and specifically his description of the assembly’s composition , lie at the root of many later histories of this event.4 Still more important, these works offer the rare perspective of an eyewitness and participant. Aeneas held many administrative positions at the council, including abbreviator major, master of ceremonies at the papal conclave, and secretary to Felix V; and he took part in some of the assembly’s most significant victories.He also played a central role in its demise. By the mid 1440s, Aeneas had retreated from his conciliarist stance and,as secretary to Emperor Frederick III,helped to forge a peace between Germany and the Roman Church. If Aeneas’s administrative prominence at the council renders these writings important,so do his talents as a historian.Aeneas was one of the most respected and prolific humanists of his age.Indeed,the literary habits he once condemned as a “misfortune”have proven anything but to his readers.Today,he ranks among the most distinguished historians of Renaissance Europe. Despite their significance,Aeneas’s writings on the Council of Basel have not enjoyed the attention they so clearly deserve.5 Given that both the De gestis and AeneasandHistoriesof theCouncilof Basel 61 3.Enee Silvii Piccolominei.Postea PII PP.II.De viris illustribus, ed.Adrianus van Heck,Studi e testi 341 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2001); Germania, ed. Adolf Schmidt (Cologne: Böhlau, 1962). For the letters ,see Reject Aeneas,Accept Pius:Selected Letters of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II), trans.and intro.Thomas M.Izbicki,Gerald Christianson,and Philip Krey (Washington,D.C.:The Catholic University of America Press, 2006).Aeneas also wrote more theoretical works on conciliar theory,including the Libellusdialogorumdegeneralis concilii auctoritate et gestis Basileensium, vol. 2 of Analecta monumentorum omnis aevi vindobonensia, ed. Adam F. Kollar (Vienna: Trattner, 1743), cols. 691–790; and his letter of April 1443 to Hartung von Kappel, in Der Briefwechsel, vol.1,Fontes Rerum Austriacarum:Diplomataria et Acta,2nd ser.,vol.61 (Vienna:Hölder,1909),132–44. 4. See Gerald Christianson, “Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini and the Historiography of the Council of Basel,” in Ecclesia Militans:Studien zur Konzilien- und Reformationsgeschichte, ed.Walter Brandmüller,Herbert Immenkötter, and Erwin Iserloh (Paderborn:Schöningh,1988),157–84. 5. Aeneas’s writings have received periodic attention from leading scholars of conciliar theory, but never a thorough analysis.Luigi Totaro has written twice on Aeneas’s histories of Basel:see Pio II nei suoi “Commentarii”: Un contributo alla lettura della autobiografia di Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Bologna: P...