Papal Erotica

Pius II, Pope (Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini). Opuscula Enee Silvii de duobus amantibus. Et de remedio amoris. Cu[m] ep[isto]la retractatoria eiusdem Pii secu[n]di ad quenda[m] Karolum.

€ 9,500.00

Scarce incunable edition of three works by Enea Silvio Piccolomini (1405-1464), the renowned Renaissance humanist and poet who became Pope Pius II in 1458. The book opens with his famous "De duobus amantibus" ("Tale of two lovers"), one of the earliest epistolary novels, full of erotic imagery, and (unsurprisingly) a fifteenth-century bestseller. Composed in 1444, it is a story of illicit love between Lucretia, a young, cultured, and unhappily married Italian lady in Siena, and Euryalus, a courtier to the Duke of Austria. This is followed by the "De remedio amoris", a letter addressed by Piccolomini to his friend Ippolito, who had fallen in love with a prostitute; and the volume ends with his "Epistola retractatoria", written after he had become Pope, encouraging readers to ignore his "youthful" amorous outpourings (in fact, Piccolomini he was almost forty when he wrote "De duobus amantibus") and to pay heed instead to his papal pronouncements.

Konrad Kachelofen (ca. 1450 - ca. 1529) began his career trading in paper, groceries, and wine, but rose to become the most significant printer in fifteenth-century Leipzig. This was his only edition of Piccolomini.