History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, Volume III

The fifteenth century saw the papacy torn between its ancient claims to universal authority and the revolutionary demands for reform that erupted from Constance and Basel. This volume traces that tumultuous struggle through the reigns of popes who ranged from saints to schemers, culminating in the remarkable pontificate of Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, Pius II. Creighton paints him as a figure of dazzling contradictions: a humanist poet who became a crusader pope, a diplomat who built his career in the highest echelons of ecclesiastical power, a writer whose private letters burned with passions his public office demanded he suppress. The council fathers at Basel rebelled against Eugenius IV, claiming supremacy over the papacy itself, a challenge the pope fought to suppress even as the Ottoman threat gathered in the East. What unfolds is the story of an institution in crisis: the papacy's desperate search for legitimacy, the humanist dream of reforming Christendom through classical learning, and the impossible burden of leading a crusade that would never sail. For readers drawn to the Renaissance, the history of Christianity, or the dark art of political theology, this is indispensable.