History
THE POPE WHO MET THE KING OF THE SCOTS HOW THE FUTURE PIUS II UNDERTOOK A SECRET MISSION TO SCOTTISH KING JAMES I Margaret Stenhouse
P
ius II is one of the most original popes of the early Renaissance... an adventurous traveller, an acute observer, a womaniser, a town planner and the author of a best-selling novel of unrequited love. While still a layman, he was sent on a dangerous mission to the northern reaches of Europe. A land “rude, uncultivated and unvisited by the winter sun.” So wrote Aeneas Silvius Bartolomeus Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, describing his visit to the kingdom of Scotland in Commentaries, his 13-book-long biography, which he wrote in the third person to conceal his identity. Aeneas was 30 years old, an ambitious and up-and-coming player in the diplomatic field. He had been sent as an envoy on behalf of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, on a secret mission to the court of the Scottish king James I.* His journey to the remote and dismal north in 1435 could hardly have got off to a worse start. It was the winter solstice and he had endured a terrifying passage from the Flemish port of Sluys to the Scottish town of Dunbar, with days and nights of relentless gales battering his ship. Aeneas had feared for his life and he had sworn to walk barefoot to offer thanks at the celebrated shrine of Our Lady at Whitekirk if he was delivered safely to his destination. The shrine was over 12 kilometres away from his landing place and by the time he arrived, his feet were so frozen that his servants had to carry him back on a litter.
Pope Pius II, born Aeneas Silvius Bartolomeus Piccolomini.
10 | March 2022 • Wanted in Rome
When he had recovered from his ordeal he requested an audience with James I, who appears
