Communication of Linguistic Idioms in Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini’s Letters

Eneas Silvius Piccolomini was a prolific writer in all phases of his life. His writing, influenced by the devotion to classical style of Renaissance humanism, has nevertheless been described as “falling below the highest humanistic standards” and even as “frequently incorrect.” Piccolomini’s style, moreover, includes lexical and syntactical practices of the medieval scholastics that have at times been thought to be the collective object of banishment by the humanists. Those negative assessments acquire more validity when Piccolomini’s style is judged strictly by the exaggerated standards of classical purity which many humanists claimed. Piccolomini’s hybrid style, however, was effective and at times even necessary; and nowhere better can the effectiveness of his merging of Latin idioms be seen than in the letters he wrote between his early secular career and brief reign as Pope Pius II. This essay examines the Latinity of Piccolomini’s detailed epistolary reports on the Council of Basel composed in 1450, and on his mission to Bohemia in 1451. Just as his actual mission that year blended secular and religious agendas, the style of his letters that reflect on the Council and its aftermath skillfully achieves not only a combination but a communication between classical and ecclesiastical Latin vocabulary, sentence structures, and concepts.