[hprints-00683151, v2] Enea Silvio Piccolomini (Pius II ... - Hprints.org

hprints-00683151, version 2 - 19 Mar 2013
with the English and was reconciled with the court of France. Enea Silvio Piccolomini
actually participated in the congress as a secretary to the papal legate, Cardinal
Albergati who played a decisive role.
In the Iberian Peninsula, the process of reconquista was under way, and the Spanish
kings gradually succeeded in conquering the Moorish states in the South. Dynastic
consolidation between the houses of Aragon and Castile was under way, and the
King of Aragon and Sicily had started his military campaign to join the Kingdom of
Naples to his realms.
In England, King Henry VI, who was peaceful, but intermittently insane, had not yet
attained his majority, and the kingdom was ruled by regents. Political discord was
rampant, and the rivalry between the houses of Lancaster and York would
eventually lead to the War of the Roses.
In Scandinavia, the Calmar Union between Denmark, Norway and Sweden was
tottering: the autocratic rule of the union monarch, Eric of Pomerania, had
unleashed important forces of opposition, and after a revolt in Sweden the form of
the union was revised in 1436 and the powers of the monarch curtailed. Eric,
however, could not accept his more limited role, and very soon he went into
voluntary exile on the island of Gotland. The Council of Basle actually became
involved in the matter through letters of complaint against the king from the
Swedish bishops.
Italy was being torn apart by the major powers in the peninsula: the Kingdom of
Naples in the South, the Church State in the middle, and Florence, Milan, Venice
(and to some extent Genoa) in the North. The Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti,
had succeeded in restoring the Visconti dominance over the Lombard region and
continued his father’s expansionist policies. In consequence of this development,
Venice and Florence allied themselves against Milan. Pope Eugene IV., who had
succeeded Martin V. in 1431 and who was himself a Venetian, joined the alliance as
a defensive measure against the depredations by Milan in the Church state. At the
same time, he became involved in the conflict between the French House of Anjou
and the Spanish House of Aragon over the Kingdom of Naples. The pope sided with
the French thereby incurring the enmity of the Aragonese. In 1434, the Roman
population rose up against Pope Eugene who had to flee and sought refuge in
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