Collected Letters of Enea Silvio Piccolomini. Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Vol. 1: General Introduction and Letters 1431-1441 (nos. 1-33). Second Revised Version (2025)

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expectations. Among the Basilean decrees not recognised by the Germans was the deposition of Pope Eugenius. After 1439, the European powers and national churches gradually came to recognise Pope Eugenius as the legitimate pope and no longer recognised the Council of Basel. In this context, German neutrality became less and less tenable. It did, however, entail considerable advantages for the German princes and prelates who did not strictly observe neutrality but ably played the papal or conciliar card to their own advantage. After the death of Emperor Albrecht in 1439, Friederich III, the new emperor, initially adhered to the German neutrality. However, in 1443 the imperial court gradually began to favour the papal cause, and through a rather convoluted course of negotiations and diets, a basis was created for German recognition of the pope. The pope himself was not very helpful; at one point he even excommunicated two imperial electors, the archbishops of Cologne and Trier, causing absolute fury in Germany.As a secretary in the imperial chancery and a protégé and friend of Kaspar Schlick, the powerful imperial chancellor, Piccolomini came to be used in the process of negotiations, both at the papal court in Rome and at various German diets, and eventually he became the principal imperial negotiator in this whole matter. Thus, he played a crucial role at the Diet of Frankfurt, which began on 14 September 1446. On behalf of the emperor, he managed to formulate a compromise formula that did not completely satisfy the conditions either of the electors or of the pope. Nonetheless, it was accepted by the various parties at the diet albeit not without some acerbity on the part of the two deposed electors and their supporters. Thus, the road was opened to German recognition of the pope if he would agree to the conditions contained in the compromise formula. Afterwards, it was decided to send an embassy from the emperor and the electors of Mainz and Brandenburg, as well as from other German princes and prelates, to Rome to negotiate the matter and, in the case of success, to declare the obedience of the German nation to Pope Eugenius.