Praeceptor Austriae. Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II) and the transalpine diffusion of Italian humanism before Erasmus

The focus of my dissertation is the Renaissance writer and churchman, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pius II), and the European diffusion of his works in the early Renaissance. Chapter I begins by examining various concepts of "humanism" in trying to explain why Piccolomini, although a humanist author of the first rank, tended to be marginalized in much twentieth-century scholarship.;Chapter II provides a brief bio-bibliography of Piccolomini, listing his major works and the historical circumstances in which they were produced.;Chapter III deals with the transmission of his works in manuscript and print, from his own later revisions to the appearance of his printed Opera omnia in the sixteenth century.;Chapters IV and V treat various readers of Piccolomini on both sides of the Alps.;The dissertation is completed by several appendices, the first three of which provide working editions and translations of various shorter works of Piccolomini. The other appendices document the diffusion of his writings by providing lists of fifteenth-century printed editions and extant manuscripts containing his work.