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From The Commentaries of Pope Pius II on the Memorable Events of His Times, Translation by Florence Alden Gragg, with Historical Introduction and Notes by Leona C. Gabel, Smith College Studies in History, Vol. XXII, Nos. 1-2, October, 1936-January, 1937, Northampton, Mass., Department of History of Smith College, 1936-1937; pp. 3-6
It is recognized that the literary productivity of fifteenth century Italian humanism is more impressive for its bulk than for works of enduring quality or profound insight. This fact has tended to obscure the intrinsic interest of a number of writings of the period as well as their importance as documents of an age of fundamental change of outlook.
Such a work is the Commentaries of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, later Pope Pius II. The author was a humanist, poet, historian, diplomat, keen observer of men and things. As history, the Commentaries belong to the category of memoir-writing, ranging widely over the field of European affairs in the author’s life-time. Few writers could draw upon so rich and varied an experience, few were so intimately acquainted with the political as well as ecclesiastical and religious currents of fifteenth century Europe. To such resources Pius II brought the scholarly talents and tastes of a humanist man of letters, a lively interest in people, customs and geography and an untiring pen.
The Commentaries, it is true, have distinct shortcomings both in style and in accuracy. There is an unevenness and a lack of organic unity throughout the work which reflect its origin in notes from a diary. Events are put down in a day-to-day order or as they came to the author’s notice. His constant recourse to expressions like “at that time” or “soon after this” or “the same year” are the despair of the reader in search of specific dates. Miscellaneous items such as travel notes, philosophical reflections or special reference to his own oratorical triumphs are brought in at random. Not the least of the author’s faults are inaccuracy and a lack of objectivity where his own interests or preferences are at issue. His vanity is all too apparent. The work needs to be checked and supplemented by reference to other sources, a task which the present edition has in some measure attempted to perform.
Two important considerations qualify the seriousness of these defects. In the first place, there survives in this unpolished draft the original directness and vividness of impression which subsequent 4 revision might easily have lost. Campano, his biographer and court-poet, reminds us that the Pope was seldom able to give so much as two consecutive hours to the work, often stolen from hours of sleep.i And Pius himself expressed the hope that someone might undertake the task of arranging the chronology, since “we have not so much leisure time.”ii As a piece of historical writing, furthermore, it is the work of one who was an important actor in the events he relates, whose opinions and prejudices helped to shape as well as to reflect the times of which he writes. These too are the materials of history.
The Commentaries have a curious history. Pius evidently entrusted his notes to date to Campano for corrections and revision. Campano’s contribution, however, consisted merely in dividing the material somewhat arbitrarily into twelve books, in supplying a preface and an occasional flattering phrase, and in omitting matter which he considered it unwise to include. At the end he wrote: “This is what we have to write concerning his acts up to the sixth year of his pontificate not yet completed, arranged in twelve books, of which the last was finished December 31, 1463.”iii
In this formiv the Commentaries were given in 1464 to Johann Gobellinus, a German cleric, who was commissioned to make a copy. The copy made, Gobellinus signed his name, thereby unwittingly furnishing the basis for a long-lived misunderstanding concerning the authorship of the work. The credit for perpetuating this error belongs to Francesco Bandini de’ Piccolomini, Archbishop of Siena, who had a printed edition of the Commentaries made in 1584, declaring Gobellinus to have been the author. The Archbishop further asserted his own MS to be authentic, those differing from it false. The heat of religious controversy of the late sixteenth century is discernible in his rejection of the so-called false MSS, “which the heretics gladly seize upon.” Lesca even 5 considers the deception deliberate.v Thus the Commentaries saw the light in printed form in a version incomplete and differing from the original notes. A second printing in Rome in 1580 and a later edition in 1614 at Frankfort gave to that version, for practical purposes, a definitive character.
The error lived long and died hard. As early as 1630 Ciaconto questioned the assumed authorship of the Commentaries, stating his belief that they were really the work of Pius II. Further doubt was cast by subsequent scholars on the completeness of the printed text. Both Campano and Platina had indicated that the twelve books did not complete the work.vi The names of such scholars as Vittorelli, Garampi, Luisgi Nardi, Voigt, Cugnoni and Pastor mark steps in the gradual solution of the problem. In 1883 J. Cugnoni, librarian of the Chigi library, published his work on a MS found there which he thought to be the original. Soon after it was Pastor’s good fortune to discover the Vatican Codex Reginensis 1995,vii which he recognized as the true original, written partly in the hand of Pius himself, the rest dictated by him and finally handed over to Campano. This MS forms the basis of the present work.
It is our purpose ultimately to publish text and translation of the complete work, with an introduction. The present instalment (Book I) deals with the career of Aeneas Sylvius up to his election to the pontificate. It is the only section of the Commentaries which the author succeeded in polishing beyond the stage of a rough draft, and concludes with a detailed account — unique among the sources — of his own election. In this book are reflected the qualities which mark the Commentaries as a whole, qualities which no less strikingly characterize the man and his age.
This translation, which is the first English version of any considerable portion of the Commentaries, follows the Vatican MS, 6 Reginensis 1995. The differences between this MS and the printed editions are so numerous, so extensive, and so interesting that it has seemed worth while to make them clear even to the casual reader. The edition of Frankfort, 1614, has been taken for comparison. Italics indicate passages lacking in that edition. Lettered notes give the reading of the edition when it differs from the MS, except that slight variants which do not affect the meaning are not recorded.
i Campanus, Vita, in Muratori, Script., III, ii. 983.
ii Comment., ed. Frankfort, 1614, p. 168.
iii Ibid., p. 347.
v For data concerning the MS, I have relied largely upon the works of G. Lesca, I Commentarii d’Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini Bk. I; L. Pastor, History of the Popes, II, 323 n. 2; III, 42-44, and App. 65; G. Voigt, Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini, als Papst Pius der Zweite und sein Zeitalter, II, 336-341.
v Op. cit., p. 23.
vi Campanus, loc. cit., Platina, Vita Pontificum, Pius II, ed. Rome, 1485; also in Aeneas Silvius, Opera omnia etc., ed. Basle, 1571.
vii For a detailed survey of the problem and a comparison of the texts, see G. Lesca, op. cit.
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