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Articles and Studies

Pope Pius II’s Letter to Sultan Mehmed II: a ReexaminationFootnote

Nancy BisahaVassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Pages 183-200 | Published online: 17 Feb 2023

  • The letter was printed around 1470, several years after Pius’s death. See Franz Babinger, “Pio II e l’Oriente maomettano,” in Enea Silvio Piccolomini Papa Pio II, ed. Domenico Maffei (Siena, 1968), p. 10. See also R. J. Mitchell, The Laurels and the Tiara (Garden City, NY, 1962), p. 155.
  • Franco Gaeta, “Alcune osservazioni sulla prima redazione della «lettera a Maometto»,” in Enea Silvio Piccolomini Papa Pio, p. 178.
  • James Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995), 128–30.
  • Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), p. 102.
  • Babinger, “Pio II e l’Oriente maomettano,” p. 6.
  • Mitchell, Laurels and the Tiara, pp. 153–54.
  • Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204–1571) (Philadelphia, 1978), 2:233.
  • Franco Gaeta, “Sulla «Lettera a Maometto» di Pio II,” Bulletino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medioevo e archivio muratoriano 77 (1965), 132.
  • Gaeta, “Alcune osservazioni,” p. 186.
  • Georg Voigt, Enea Silvio de’ Piccolomini als Papst Pius der Zweite und sein Zeitalter (Berlin, 1856–63), 3:658; cf. Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes (London, 1900), 3:256. Franco Cardini, “La repubblica di Firenze e la crociata di Pio II,” Rivista storica della chiesa in Italia 33 (1979), 471–72.
  • Cf. John Toews, “The View of Empire in Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II),” Traditio 24 (1968), 471. On the debate concerning Pius’s sincerity and character, see Robert Schwoebel, “Pius II and the Renaissance Papacy,” in Renaissance Men and Ideas, ed. Robert Schwoebel (New York, 1971), pp. 68–79; see also Schwoebel’s Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk (1453–1517) (New York, 1969), pp. 58–62.
  • Cardini, “La repubblica e la crociata,” p. 468.
  • Franz Babinger, Mehmed the Conqueror and his Time, ed. William C. Hickman, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, 1978), pp. 198–99.
  • Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent (see above, n. 11), pp. 51–67. He specifically discusses the letter on pp. 65–67. See also “Pius II and the Renaissance Papacy” (see above, n. 11).
  • Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, p. 65.
  • For a discussion of humanist views of the Turks, see my essay ‘”New Barbarian’ or Worthy Adversary: Humanist Constructs of the Turks in Fifteenth-Century Italy,” in Western Views of Islam in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Perception of Other, ed. David R. Blanks and Michael Frassetto (New York, 1999), pp. 185–205. See also my Ph.D. dissertation, “Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks.” See also James Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders” and Robert Black, Benedetto Accolti and the Florentine Renaissance (Cambridge, 1985), chap. 9.
  • Letter to Leonardo Benvoglienti (25 September 1453) in La caduta di Costantinopoli, ed. Agostino Pertusi (Milan, 1976), 2:62, 64. As Pertusi argues, this story is undoubtedly apocryphal; see 1:431, n. 20. Schwoebel also discusses the popularity of similar legends in the West: Shadow of the Crescent, pp. 12–13.
  • “... sevissimorum hominum, bonorum morum atque litterarum hostium.” Letter to Nicholas of Cusa (21 July 1453) ed. Rudolf Wolkan, Der Briefwechsel des Eneas Silvius Piccolomini in Fontes rerum austriacarum, section 2 (Vienna, 1918), 68:209.
  • “Secunda mors ista Homero est, secundus Platoni obitus.” Letter to Pope Nicholas V (12 July 1453), ed. Pertusi, La caduta, 2:46.
  • “Scripturi ad te aliqua pro tua salute et gloria proque communi multarum gentium consolatione et pace, hortamur ut benigne audias verba nostra ... Operibus tuis, non tibi sumus infensi: diligimus, iubente Domino, inimicos nostros et pro persecutoribus nostris oramus ...” Epistola ad Mahomatem II (Epistle to Mohammed II), ed. and trans. Albert R. Baca (New York, 1990), English, p. 11; Latin, p. 117.
  • “Christiani te omnes venerabuntur et suarum litium iudicem facient. Oppressi undique ad te, veluti commune patrocinium, confugient ...” Epistola, pp. 18, 122. As Schwoebel opines, the letter subsumes a benign recipient incongruous with all of Pius’s other descriptions of Mehmed: Shadow of the Crescent, p. 66.
  • Epistola, pp. 25, 129.
  • Epistola, pp.38, 144.
  • Epistola, pp.74, 180.
  • “... feroces populi, quos Iordanes at alii nonnulli, ex mulieribus magis et daemonum semine natos crediderunt ... Natio truculenta et ignominiosa in cunctis stupris ac lupanaribus fornicaria: comedit quae caeteri abominantur, iumentorum, luporum, ac vulturum carnes, et quod magis horreas, hominum abortiva ...” Opera quae extant omnia, ed. M. Hopperus (Basel, 1551, repr. Frankfurt, 1967), p. 307.
  • See Giuseppe Cugnoni, Aeneae Silvii Piccolomini Senensis ... opera inedita (Rome, 1883), pp. 252–54; cf. Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders,” pp. 133–34.
  • For a discussion of medieval and Renaissance interpretations of Constantine, see Robert Black, “The Donation of Constantine: A New Source for the Concept of the Renaissance?” in Languages and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. Alison Brown (Oxford, 1995), pp. 51–85.
  • Epistola, pp. 31, 137.
  • “Sed attingamus nonnullas alias tuae legis ineptias.” Epistola, pp. 67, 173.
  • “... tu ipse pro tuo ingenio multa intelligis adeo stulta esse, ut nulla possint ratione defendi.” Epistola, pp.70, 177.
  • Babinger, “Pio II e l’Oriente maomettano,” p. 4.
  • See Epistola, pp. 32, 41, 37.
  • “Tua lex in altera vita flumina lactis et mellis et vini promittit, et cibaria delicata et uxores multas et concubinas et virginum coitus et angelorum in turpibus obsequiis ministeria, et quicquid caro deposcit. Bovis haec paradisus et asini potius quam hominis est!” Epistola, pp.61, 167.
  • Epistola, pp. 88, 194.
  • “... innumerabiles sunt eius ineptiae et aniles fabulae et pueriles nugae.” Epistola, pp.91, 199.
  • Schwoebel, “Pius II and the Renaissance Papacy,” p. 74.
  • Commentaries, trans. Florence Alden Gragg, ed. Leona C. Gabel (Northampton, Mass, 1951), 4:510–12.
  • Pius vowed celibacy only after he entered the priesthood, as he acknowledged having fathered two illegitimate children in his youth.
  • Karl August Fink, “Pius II (1458–64),” in The Medieval and Reformation Church (an abridgement of History of the Church, vols. 4–6), ed. Hubert Jedin, English edn trans. and ed. John Dolan, abridged D. Larrimore Holland (New York, 1993), p. 312.
  • Benjamin Z. Kedar, Crusade and Mission: European Approaches toward the Muslims (Princeton, 1984); Norman Daniel, Islam and the West: the Making of an Image (rev. edn Oxford, 1960).
  • Kedar, Crusade and Mission, pp. 99–131, 159–61. See also Elizabeth Siberry, Criticism of Crusading 1095–1274 (Oxford, 1985), passim.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, book 1, ed. and trans. Anton C. Pegis (Notre Dame, 1975), p. 62. He also argued against forcible conversion of Muslims in his Summa theologica, as acceptance of Christianity must be a free choice. See Kedar, Crusade and Mission, pp. 183–84.
  • Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, p. 73.
  • pl 189: 673–74. The work has also been edited by James Kritzeck in Peter the Venerable and Islam (Princeton, NJ, 1964), pp. 220–94.
  • See Virginia Berry, “Peter the Venerable and the Crusades,” in Petrus Venerabilis 1156–1956: Studies and Texts Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of his Death, Studia Anselmiana 40, ed. Giles Constable and James Kritzeck (Rome, 1956), p. 160; Kritzeck, Peter the Venerable and Islam, p. 23.
  • Siberry, Criticism of Crusading, p. 17.
  • Kedar, Crusade and Mission, pp. 99–103.
  • Southern, Western Views of Islam, pp. 94–99. Southern, incidentally, opines that Pius “answered” Segovia with his letter to Mehmed. If so, it was a very late reply to Segovia, who died in 1458.
  • On Cusa and Segovia, see Thomas M. Izbicki, “The Possibility of a Dialogue with Islam in the Fifteenth Century,” and James E. Biechler, “A New Face Toward Islam: Nicholas of Cusa and John of Segovia,” both in Nicholas of Cusa in Search of God and Wisdom, ed. Gerald Christianson and Thomas M. Izbicki (Leiden, 1991), pp. 175–83; 185–202. See also Southern, Western Views of Islam, pp. 86–94. Extracts from a letter by Segovia to Cusa outlining some of his views on converting the Turks may be found in Documents on the Later Crusades (1274–1580), ed. and trans. Norman Housley (New York, 1996), pp. 144–47.
  • Cusa’s support for war against the Turks seems to have been restricted to defensive warfare in protection of Christian territories. See, for example, his hopes for a joint effort between Poland and Prussia against the Turks in 1454: Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, p. 41. See also his enthusiasm over the victory at Belgrade in 1456: John O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome: Rhetoric, Doctrine, and Reform in the Sacred Orators of the Papal Court c.1450–1521 (Durham, N. C., 1979), pp. 233–34.
  • Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei and Cribratio Alkorani: Translation and Analysis, ed. and trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis, 1990), p. 35.
  • James Biechler, “Christian Humanism Confronts Islam: Sifting the Qur’an with Nicholas of Cusa,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 13 (1976), 1:11.
  • Cusa’s De pace fidei and Cribratio, pp. 19, 96, 158, 147, 154. On Cusa’s medieval sources see Biechler, “Christian Humanism,” p. 10.
  • Biechler, “Christian Humanism,” p. 10.
  • See Biechler, “Christian Humanism,” p. 7.
  • Cusa’s De pace fidei and Cribratio, p. 145.
  • Ibid., p. 132.
  • Gaeta, “Sulla Lettera a Maometto,” p. 177.
  • Biechler, “Christian Humanism,” p. 14. For a similar statement on the positive nature of both Cusa’s and Segovia’s works in comparison to contemporary views, see Biechler, “A New Face Toward Islam,” p. 200. See also Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, pp. 223–25.
  • Gaeta, “Sulla Lettera a Maometto,” pp. 161–74.
  • On the Truth of the Faith of Christians to the Emir (1453), On the Eternal Glory of the Autocrat (1466), and On the Divinity of Manuel (1467). See John Monfasani, George of Trebizond: A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden, 1976); see also Monfasani’s Collectanea Trapezuntiana: Texts, Documents, and Bibliographies of George of Trebizond (Binghamton, NY, 1984).
  • Monfasani, George of Trebizond, pp. 131–36.
  • Paul sent George to Constantinople with unknown instructions. He was unable to meet with the sultan and returned home disappointed; ibid., pp. 185–87; on Pius and Ferrante, see pp. 140–41.
  • Monfasani, Collectanea, p. 513.
  • On Mehmed’s interests see Monfasani, George of Trebizond, pp. 187–88.
  • “Parva res omnium qui hodie vivunt maximum et potentissimum et clarissimum te reddere potest. Quaeris quae sit? Non est inventu difficilis, neque procul quaerenda, ubique gentium reperitur: id est aquae pauxillum, quo baptizeris et ad Christianorum sacra te conferas et credas Evangelio.” Epistola, pp. 17–18, 122.
  • See respectively Babinger, “Pio II e l’Oriente maomettano,” p. 4, and Gaeta, “Sulla Lettera a Maometto,” pp. 190, 193–94.
  • Answering the challenge that Pius’s crusade would give too much power to the Venetians, he replied: “Would you rather obey Venice or the Turks? No Christian who deserves the name would prefer the rule of the Turks under which the sacraments of the Church must finally be doomed and the gate to the other life be closed to those who desert the Gospel.” Commentaries, 5:814–15.
  • “Et s’el Turcho volesse tore un cuchiaro di aqua sopra la testa, dicendo, “io sono Chrystiano,” dice lo adiutaria et si voria adiutarlo contra Venetiani.” Dispatches with Related Documents of Milanese Ambassadors in France, ed. Vincent Ilardi, trans. Frank J. Fata (Dekalb, Ill., 1981), 3:284–85.
  • Gaeta, “Sulla Lettera a Maometto,” pp. 127, 192.
  • Commentaries, 4:517.
  • Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, pp. 66–67; Gaeta, “Sulla Lettera a Maometto,” p. 192.
  • See above, n. 10. Schwoebel effectively argues that Pius was actually willing to lose much power if it meant defeating the Turks; he would have been obliged to make concessions to temporal powers and to neglect affairs at home in order to make the crusade possible. See Shadow of the Crescent, pp. 59–62; “Pius II and the Renaissance Papacy,” pp. 75–76.
  • See Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders,” p. 130, n. 57; Babinger, “Pio II e l’Oriente maomettano,” 11; Schwoebel, Shadow of the Crescent, p. 66.
  • See Commentaries, 4:517. Norman Housley has shown that Pius’s gamble bore some fruit and might have accomplished more had he not died at Ancona. Contrary to notions that no one followed Pius to Ancona, Philip of Burgundy send a force of 3,000 men, the Venetians were mustering, albeit slowly, and a small force was sent by Francesco Sforza. In comparison to other fifteenth–century efforts outside the Balkans, a good deal had been planned and accomplished. See The Later Crusades: From Lyons to Alcazar 1274–1580 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 107–09.
  • Peter the Venerable’s Liber contra sectam Saracenorum and Cusa’s Cribratio Alkorani, have been posited as works of this type.
  • See Epistola, Book III. For a discussion of the devshirme system and patterns of conversion and accommodation in the Balkans, see Robert J. Donia and John V. A. Fine, Jr., Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (New York, 1994), chap. 3.
  • Epistola, pp. 18–19, 122–23.
  • A correlation between the letter and the Commentaries may be drawn along these lines. In the Commentaries (4:504) he rails against the heresies of Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini who denied the resurrection of the dead and, not coincidentally, was embroiled in warfare against the papacy. Compare this to the letter to Mehmed (Book IV:29) when Pius attempts to compliment Mehmed by saying that although Mehmed desires glory, he is not so foolish as to forget his soul. Pius will not number him among “Epicurus and a few other mad philosophers who believed that the soul is destroyed along with the body.”
  • Commentaries, 4:515–16.
  • This has been noted by scholars such as Gaeta, “Sulla Lettera a Maometto,” pp. 129–30, and Southern, Western Views of Islam, p. 102.
  • On the Western notion of positional superiority, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), p. 7.
  • “Non pugnabis contra feminas, aut Italiam, aut Hungariam, aut aliam in occidenti provinciam ingressus. Ferro hic res geritur...” Epistola, pp. 13, 117.
  • Lettere, ed. Helene Harth (Florence, 1987), 3:323.
  • “Magna olim et florida in Alexandria philosophorum schola fuit ... At, postquam lex Mahumetea cursum habuit, paucissimi nominantur, qui, naturae arcana perscrutati, excellentes evaserint: quia non praestat parvulis sapientiam tuus propheta aut tua lex, cuius fundamentum voluptas est et tutela gladius. Inter nos vero liberalium artium studia admodum florent.” Epistola, pp. 91, 199.
  • See above, n. 16.
  • See above, n. 20.
  • Bisaha, “Petrarch’s Vision of the Muslim and Byzantine East,” Speculum 76 (2001), 284–314.
  • Southern, Western Views of Islam, chap. 3.

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