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Aeneas Sylvius PICCOLOMINI (PIUS II, PAPA) (1405-1464) 
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Dialogus de Somnio .Romae, Johannes Schurener, de Bopardia, 11 September 1475. Small folio (293 x 210), 54 leaves (first blank), sign: a10, b-e8, f-g6. 37 lines to a page Type 1.:101R. Recased using a fascinating 15th century manuscript fragment, four-ribs spine covered by ancient vellum. Scattered underscoring, maniculae and marginal notes by ancient hands, minimal traces of use, the last leaf strengthened on internal blank margin. A very large, crisp and fine copy.
First edition, extremely rare (last copy appeared on the market more then thirty years ago) of one of the most relevant historical works composed by the great Italian humanist. Written between 1453 and 1455, the Dialogus is a key tool to achieve a thorough comprehension of the historiographical method adopted by the great Sienese humanist and his critical approach to the authenticity of sources. The work narrates a fictional dream in which Piccolomini, during a journey to the afterlife, encounters various historical figures, including Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444), with whom he discusses the authenticity of the alleged Donation of Constantine. Piccolomini, drawing on arguments previously put forward by Lorenzo Valla and Niccolò Cusano, denies the historical authenticity of the event ; he rejects therefore the historiographical tradition according to which Constantine, following a miraculous healing after his baptism, granted the Church of Rome temporal power over the whole of the West in return: despite the refuse of the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine, Piccolomini nevertheless does not refrain from asserting, by other means, the temporal power of the papacy, tracing it back to the early territorial grants by the Carolingians, through which, from the 8th century onwards, the Papal States had gradually been established. Donations which the papacy had reciprocated by acting as the architect of the translatio imperii from the Byzantine emperors to the Carolingians. The aim of the Dialogus is therefore to come up with a general justification of the Church’s secular power, in line with the post-conciliar approach of its author. From the perspective of historical methodology, the result is remarkable: despite the already prominent role he held within the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Piccolomini managed to free himself from centuries-old traditions based on a forged document yet still officially recognised by the Roman Church (which would only explicitly renounce it over a century later, towards the end of the sixteenth century). In the Dialogus, Piccolomini not only reaffirms the falsity of the Donatio Constantini, but also draws political conclusions from it, re-defining, with remarkable originality, the foundations of the Papacy’s temporal power. REF. GW M33745; BSB- INK P-502; GOFF P669; HC(Add) 193*; PELL 131; Bod-inc P-310; SHEPPARD 2794; Pr 3487; BMC IV 57. T. GNOLI Enea Silvio Piccolomini, Dialogo su un sogno, Dialogus de somnio quodam, Saggio introduttivo, Torino,2004. (Seller ref. MC0960)
14000,- EUR
Differenzbesteuert/Subject to margin taxation
Sachgebiete: Erstausgaben, Inkunabeln, Literatur bis ca. 1900
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