Everything about Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini totally explained
Pope Pius III (
May 29,
1439 –
October 18,
1503), born
Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, was
Pope from
September 22 to
October 18,
1503.
He was born in
Siena, the nephew of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, the future
Pope Pius II, by his sister Laodamia. He was received as a boy into the household of Aeneas Silvius, who permitted him to assume the name and arms of the Piccolomini family (his brother Antonio being made Duke of
Amalfi during the pontificate of Pius II). Pius II appointed him in
1460, when only 22 years of age, to the
see of Siena, which he'd just raised to an
archbishopric and made him a
cardinal, at his first consistory, 5 March 1460. Within months he sent him as legate to the
March of Ancona, with the experienced
bishop of Marsico as his counsellor. He proved studious and effective.
Cardinal Piccolomini participated in the
conclave that elected
Pope Paul II (1464–71) in
1464 but was absent when
Pope Sixtus IV (1471–84) was elected in
1471. He was employed in several important legations, as by Paul II at the
Imperial diet at Regensburg/Ratisbon, and by Sixtus IV to secure the restoration of ecclesiastical authority in
Umbria. He participated in the conclave of 1484 which elected
Innocent VIII and in the conclave of 1492 which elected
Alexander VI. The cardinal was involved in Alexander's brief-lived effort to reform the Roman curia, following the murder of his son
Giovanni Borgia (1474) in 1497.
In
1502 the Cardinal commissioned a library with access from an aisle of the
Duomo di Siena, which was intended to house the library of
humanist texts assembled by his uncle, and commissioned the
artist Pinturicchio to fresco its vault and ten narrative panels along the walls depicting scenes from the life of
Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Though Pinturrichio labored for five years, in the event, the books never reached their splendid destination; yet the Piccolomini Library is a monument of the
High Renaissance in Siena. It gives an edited version of Pius' life, passing over his former support of the antipope
Felix V.
Amid the disturbances consequent upon the death of the
Borgia Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503), it took the combined pressures of all the ambassadors to induce
Cesare Borgia to withdraw from Rome, so that an unpressured conclave might take place. In it, Cardinal Piccolomini was elected Pope Pius III on
September 22,
1503. This selection can be seen as a compromise between factions, Borgia and della Rovere, picking a frail cardinal with long experience in the Curia over the kin of either Sixtus IV or Alexander VI. His coronation took place on
October 8, 1503. He at once took in hand the reform of the papal court and arrested Cesare Borgia; but after a brief pontificate of twenty-six days he died (
October 18,
1503) of an
ulcer in the leg, or, as some have alleged, of
poison administered at the instigation of
Pandolfo Petrucci, governor of Siena.
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