Victorius Hispalensis

Barbarismī et soloecismī quōs Petrōnius cōnsultō adhibuit mihi saepe rīsum exprimunt. Inter eōs quōs adhūc offendī, maximē mē dēlectāvit "ōlim ōliorum", quī redolet illud "saecula saeculōrum" chrīstiānum.

Did a Pope write an erotic novel in Latin? Pope Pius II, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), is well known as a great humanist and for his efforts to launch a crusade against the Ottoman Turks. He is also famous for having written an erotic novel in Latin, arguably the first epistolary novel of its kind. The work is entitled Historia de duobus amantibus (“The Tale of Two Lovers”) and tells the story of Lucretia, a beautiful married woman who exchanges letters with a man named Euryalus. But how could a pope have written such a work? Although literary interests of this sort were not unusual among fifteenth-century humanists, the truth is that when the book was written, Aeneas Piccolomini was neither pope, nor bishop, nor priest: he was a layman. The work was composed in 1444, when Aeneas was thirty-eight years old and serving among the ambassadors of King Frederick III. Piccolomini entered the clerical state only in 1446 and was ordained priest and consecrated bishop in 1447. One can imagine that the work may have caused some embarrassment to the pope, even though it had been written while he was still a layman. A famous saying is attributed to him: Aeneam reicite, Pium recipite (“Reject Aeneas; receive Pius”).