A Marquis de Sade in a cassock making up stories of adultery in the 15th century. How was that possible?
As is well known, the history of the Roman Catholic Church during the 15th and 16th centuries was as convoluted as it was contradictory. And among all the curious stories of the period, surely that of Aeneas Silvius Bartholomeus was the most unusual, though not the best known. Bartholomeus, born in Siena's birthplace, was appointed Pope in 1458, succeeding Callixtus III in the pontificate.
So far, so good. The extraordinary emerges when we look into the career of this clergyman, who is more like a Marquis de Sade than a saint. In 1444, Bartholomew wrote and delivered an erotic novel of rather unbridled content, A Tale of Two Lovers. This narrative theme also had something to do with his vitality: it is known that while working in the Royal Chancellery of Vienna, our author and future Pope had fun composing poetry with a high level of content. This was not uncommon either in the humanistic culture of the time or in medieval Germanic literature. To add to the scandal, the protagonist of A Tale of Two Lovers was a married lady who committed adultery.
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