Enea Silvio Piccolomini

While Piccolomini did use Augustine already in his first, conciliarist period, only after his ordination to the priesthood, and in particular after the fall of Constantinople, did Augustine’s teaching become central to his thinking and writing. In the first period we find a use of Augustine’s oeuvre that could be defined as functional or institutional. From the 1450s onwards, Piccolomini’s interest for Augustine became more selective and focused. Among Augustine’s works, De civitate Dei, substantially ignored in the first period, now occupies a central role: this is testified not only by the splendidly illuminated manuscripts commissioned by Enea Silvio, or by people close to him, but also by the extensive and explicit quotations supporting the conceptual framework of some of his most ambitious works, especially De somnio.