Piccolomini’s Letter to Mehmed and the Christian Lectio of the Civil Humanism

Jernej Šček

Piccolomini’s Letter to Mehmed and the Christian Lectio of the Civil Humanism

Key words: civil humanism, Italian renaissance philosophy, Christian anthropology, crusade ideology, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Mehmed the Conqueror

Abstract:
In 1461 the Italian humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini, pope Pius II, writes a famous letter to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, which is still quite unknown in the Slovenian academia. It reveals a complex and ambivalent, in fact an unquiet, mind, typical for the thought climate of the Late Middle Ages. It provides us a myriad of interesting historical, philosophical, sociological, philological and theological questions. This paper aims to contextualize this precious document in the field of historical humanism, problematize the late crusade ideology and search for relations with other irenic solutions. The Letter to Mehmed is a window on the world of the civil humanism meeting the active conception (vita activa) of the Christian humanism, which is the ultimate lesson of the early and middle Renaissance.

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