Ein Kardinal im Zeitalter der Renaissance

How did an impoverished but exceedingly ambitious and very talented prelate overcome his rather humble origins to rise to the very top of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Renaissance Italy? What did it take to earn the mitre, or even the tiara? What were the strategies and tactics needed? What alliances had to be forged? What obstacles surmounted?Based on a wealth of unedited sources, this study seeks to answer these questions through considering the life of Giovanni di Castiglione (ca. 1413-1460), an Italian cardinal who became a victim of Pius II's verdict and subsequently fell prey to a damnatio memoriae. Now underestimated and misunderstood, he was in fact a skilled political operative, not just in Italy, but in France, Hungary, and the Holy German Empire.