Table of Contents

* Carnival to Lent * The Price of Magnificence * Lessons of Rebellions Past * A Pagan Renaissance: Sodomy and the Classical Tradition * Consorting with the Enemy: Mehmet II and the Ottoman Threat * The Emperor's Tomb * Humanism Imprisoned * Epilogue * Notes * Acknowledgments * Bibliography * Index

Promotional Information

A work of outstanding scholarship presented in a taut yet lively narrative. D'Elia brings to life the vibrant, cruel, and glitteringly public city of Renaissance Rome. A splendid achievement. -- Christopher S. Celenza, author of The Lost Italian Renaissance

About the Author

Anthony F. D’Elia is Professor of History at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

Reviews

A work of outstanding scholarship presented in a taut yet lively narrative. D'Elia brings to life the vibrant, cruel, and glitteringly public city of Renaissance Rome. A splendid achievement.
*Christopher S. Celenza, author of The Lost Italian Renaissance*

Although there is no conclusive evidence that a conspiracy to murder Paul II was afoot on the eve of Lent 1468, D'Elia painstakingly establishes the plausibility of such a conspiracy by deftly employing an array of distinct but related causes and showing how they could easily coalesce to bring down the Barbo pontificate. And in doing this he paints a portrait of mid 15th-century Rome that is illuminating and serves as a corrective to those who hold the jaundiced and indefensible view that the papacy is constitutionally irreformable and that things have never been worse in Rome than they are now.
*Literary Review of Canada*

D'Elia deserves a medal for producing such a satisfying study...Sex, papal politics, the excesses of carnival in Renaissance Rome, Christendom confronting the Ottoman empire, scholars joyfully and dangerously dreaming about the glories of ancient Greece: one couldn't really ask for anything more.
*Catholic Herald*

[A] commendable reconstruction of a Renaissance mystery.
*Booklist*