This book contains eleven essays on Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405-1464), humanist, author, courtier, inveterate traveller, conciliarist and then papalist, priest, bishop and finally pope under the name Pius II (1458-1464), urban architect of Pienza, grand patron of the arts, and would-be Crusader.

Contributors include: Giuseppe Chironi, Thomas M. Izbicki, Zweder von Martels, Claudia Märtl, Margaret Meserve, Rolando Montecalvo, Keith Sidwell, Marcello Simonetta, and Benedikt Konrad Vollmann.