Papal States

Timeline

1. 1451–1455Vatican Palace, Rome · RomeNicholas V (r. 1447–1455) was the archetypal Renaissance patron among the popes: he acquired Greek and Latin classical manuscripts on a large scale and established the Vatican Apostolic Library, recruited humanist scholars to translate classical texts, and actively advanced building renewal projects in Rome. News of the fall of Constantinople in 1453 deeply shook him, and he promptly issued a bull calling for a crusade, but the response from European states was scant, and the pope died dejected the following year.
2. 1455–1458Rome · LazioThe Spanish-born pope Callixtus III (r. 1455–1458) regarded an anti-Ottoman crusade as his foremost mission, imposing a church tithe to raise war funds and assembling a papal fleet; the Danube fleet he dispatched in 1456 assisted Hunyadi in repulsing the Ottoman army at Belgrade, the most important military achievement of his pontificate. He also retried and posthumously acquitted Joan of Arc (1456), and later critics cited him as a precedent for the nepotism and corruption of late medieval popes.
3. 1458–1460Rome and Mantua · ItalyThe former humanist scholar Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini was elected Pope Pius II (r. 1458–1464); his learning lent the papal court a strong literary and philosophical atmosphere. In 1459 he convened a great European congress at Mantua, striving to unite the monarchs of the various states in a joint crusade to recover Constantinople; however, enthusiasm among the attendees was limited and actual military commitments were few, reflecting the historical trend of the declining moral authority of the papacy and the rise of secular nation-states at the end of the Middle Ages.