Probes the basic attitudes, the underlying values and the core convictions that Rome's intellectuals and artists experienced, lived for, and believed in from Pope Eugenius IV's reign to the Eternal City in 1443 to the sacking of 1527.

From the middle of the fifteenth century a distinctively Roman Renaissance occurred. A shared outlook, a persistent set of intellectual concerns, similar cultural assumptions and a commitment to common ideological aims bound Roman humanists and artists to a uniquely Roman world, different from Florence, Venice, and other Italian and European centers.This book provides the first comprehensive portrait of the Roman Renaissance world. Charles Stinger probes the basic attitudes, the underlying values and the core convictions that Rome's intellectuals and artists experienced, lived for, and believed in from Pope Eugenius IV's reign to the Eternal City in 1443 to the sacking of 1527. He demonstrates that the Roman Renaissance was not the creation of one towering intellectual leader, or of a single identifiable group; rather, it embodied the aspirations of dozens of figures, active over an eighty-year period.Stinger illuminates the general aims and character of the Roman Renaissance. Remaining mindful of the economic, social, and political context--Rome's retarded economic growth, the papacy's increasing entanglement in Italian politics, papal preoccupation with the crusade against the Ottomans, and the effects of papal fiscal and administrative practices--Stinger nevertheless maintains that these developments recede in importance before the cultural history of the period. Only in the context of the ideological and cultural commitments of Roman humanists, artists, and architects can one fully understand the motivation for papal policies. Reality for Renaissance Romans was intricately bound up with the notion of Rome's mythic destiny.The Renaissance in Rome is cultural history at its best. It evokes the moods, myths, images, and symbols of the Eternal City, as they are manifested in the Liturgy, ceremony, festivals, oratory, art, and architecture of Renaissance Rome. Throughout, Stinger focuses on a persistent constellation of fundamental themes: the image of the city of Rome, the restoration of the Roman Church, the renewal of the Roman Empire, and the fullness of time. He describes and analyzes the content, meaning, origin, and implications of these central ideas of Roman Renaissance.This book will prove interesting to both Renaissance and Reformation scholars, as well as to general readers, who may have visited (or plan to visit) Rome and have become fascinated and affected by this extraordinary city. "There is no other book like it in any language," says Renaissance historian John O'Malley. "It presents a coherent view of Roman culture....collects and presents a vast amount of information never before housed under one roof. Anyone who teaches the Italian Renaissance," O'Malley stresses, "will have to know this book."

In 1468, on the final night of Carnival in Rome, Pope Paul II sat enthroned above the boisterous crowd, when a scuffle caught his eye. His guards had intercepted a mysterious stranger trying urgently to convey a warning—conspirators were lying in wait to slay the pontiff. Twenty humanist intellectuals were quickly arrested, tortured on the rack, and imprisoned in separate cells in the damp dungeon of Castel Sant’Angelo. Anthony D’Elia offers a compelling, surprising story that reveals a Renaissance world that witnessed the rebirth of interest in the classics, a thriving homoerotic culture, the clash of Christian and pagan values, the contest between republicanism and a papal monarchy, and tensions separating Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks. Using newly discovered sources, he shows why the pope targeted the humanists, who were seen as dangerously pagan in their Epicurean morals and their Platonic beliefs about the soul and insurrectionist in their support of a more democratic Church. Their fascination with Sultan Mehmed II connected them to the Ottoman Turks, enemies of Christendom, and the love of the classical world tied them to recent rebellious attempts to replace papal rule with a republic harking back to the glorious days of Roman antiquity. From the cosmetic-wearing, parrot-loving pontiff to the Turkish sultan, savage in war but obsessed with Italian culture, D’Elia brings to life a Renaissance world full of pageantry, mayhem, and conspiracy and offers a fresh interpretation of humanism as a dynamic communal movement.

The Vatican Library contains the richest collection of western manuscripts and early printed books in the world, and its holdings have both reflected and helped to shape the intellectual development of Europe. One of the central institutions of Italian Renaissance culture, it has served since its origin in the mid-fifteenth century as a center of research for topics as diverse as the early history of the city of Rome and the structure of the universe. This extraordinarily beautiful book which contains over 200 color illustrations, introduces the reader to the Vatican Library and examines in particular its development during the Renaissance. Distinguished scholars discuss the Library's holdings and the historical circumstances of its growth, presenting a fascinating cast of characters - popes, artists, collectors, scholars, and scientists - who influenced how the Library evolved. The authors examine subjects ranging from Renaissance humanism to Church relations with China and the Islamic world to the status of medicine and the life sciences in antiquity and during the Renaissance. Their essays are supported by a lavish display of maps, books, prints, and other examples of the Library's collection, including the Palatine Virgil (a fifth-century manuscript), a letter from King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, and an autographed poem by Petrarch. The book serves as the catalog for a major exhibition at the Library of Congress that presents a selection of the Vatican Library's magnificent treasures.