Les humanistes et les poètes de la Renaissance s'approprient le discours érotique de l'Antiquité pour le transformer en une érotologie littéraire et artistique. Issus d'un colloque (Cambridge 1995), ces essais cherchent à relancer le débat sur le traitement de l'érotisme, de ses images et de ses lieux communs, de l'admiration quasi platonicienne à l'obscénité.

Petrarch’s revival of the ancient practice of laureation in 1341 led to the laurel being conferred on poets throughout Europe in the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. Within the Holy Roman Empire, Maximilian I conferred the title of Imperial Poet Laureate especially frequently, and later it was bestowed with unbridled liberality by Counts Palatine and university rectors too. This handbook identifies more than 1300 poets laureated within the Empire and adjacent territories between 1355 and 1804, giving (wherever possible) a sketch of their lives, a list of their published works, and a note of relevant scholarly literature. The introduction and various indexes provide a detailed account of a now largely forgotten but once significant literary-sociological phenomenon and illuminate literary networks in the Early Modern period. A supplementary Volume 5 of Poets Laureate in the Holy Roman Empire. A Bio-bibliographical Handbook will be published in June 2019.

Volume 52

"Written in the mid-fifteenth century, Pope Pius II's Commentaries are the only known autobiography of a reigning pontiff and a fundamental text in the history of Renaissance humanism. In this book, Emily O'Brien positions Pius' expansive autobiographical text within that century's contentious debate over ecclesiastical sovereignty. Presenting the Commentaries as Pius' response to the crisis of authority, legitimacy, and relevance that was engulfing the Renaissance papacy, she shows how the Commentaries function as both an aggressive assault on the papal monarchy's chief opponents and a systematic defense of Pius's own troubled pontificate and his pre-papal career. Illustrating how the language, imagery, and ideals of secular power inform Pius' apologetic self-portrait, The Commentaries of Pope Pius II (1458 1464) and the Crisis of the Fifteenth-Century Papacy demonstrates the role that Pius and his writings played in the evolution of the Renaissance papacy."--Provided by publisher.

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 Martl, Margaret Meserve, Rolando Montecalvo, Keith Sidwell, Marcello Simonetta, and Benedikt Konrad Vollmann.

While most works on Nicholas of Cusa concentrate either on his early career as author of the monumental 'Catholic Concordance' or on his later career as writer of remarkable philosophical/theological works such as 'On Learned Ignorance' and 'The Vision of God', the essays included here attempt to address the whole Cusanus, sharing common contexts, issues and themes. Following chapters on the legacy of conciliarism and ecumenicity, the story begins with the Council of Basel for which Cusanus wrote 'The Catholic Concordance', but from which he broke away, raising issues of private conscience as well as the balance between papal authority and representative councils in the pursuit of reform. The story then turns to the 'matrix' between Constantinople and a new council in Ferrara when Cusanus received a ship-board gift from the 'Father of Lights' and began to write his great philosophical/theological treatises. When taken together the essays in this book not only form a cohesive whole, they also enlighten aspects often left in the shade, such as the enigmatic aspects of Cusanus' participation in the council, and his mystical theology that reveals a man of faith in search of certainty beyond the well-trod paths of philosophical reflection.

Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini (1405-1464, elected Pope Pius II in 1458) was an important and enigmatic figure of the Renaissance as well as one of the most prolific writers and gifted stylists ever to occupy the papacy