EuroCult is a Horizon 2020 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action coordinated by the University of Turin, Department of Philosophy and Education Sciences and the University of Toronto, Departement of Italian Studies (under grant agreement N° 101028944) for the period 2022-2025 and it will offer the first investigation of the wide-ranging cultural network established in the early Renaissance by Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464), who at the end of his life became Pope Pius II.

Initially a humble lay-secretary to some bishops during the Council of Basel (1431-1439), Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini became secretary to the Emperor, bishop himself (1448), and cardinal (1456). Before being elected pope (1458-1464) Piccolomini travelled throughout Europe (north from Rome, but also to the Council of Basel, to England, and to Vienna), visiting numerous important personalities of his age, including popes and emperors, and engaging in correspondence with major figures such as ambassadors from many European countries, cardinals and bishops, as well as minor personalities such as notaries, teachers, and copyists. He exemplifies the distinctive socio-cultural function of a man in that age: he became key transmitter of the new approaches to antiquity and the new cultural outlooks that were transforming European thought.

This project will consider the wide spread of his literary models and of his religious and political ideas thanks to humanism throughout northern Europe; the importance of institutional contexts (such as religious centres, universities and courts connected with religious men as well as the laity) and of his socio-political and religious aims for contemporary humanist writers. And thanks to the fact that he is one of the best documented men of the 15th century, EuroCult will offer the first analysis and assessment of his contribution to early modern European culture within the context of his multiple Europe-wide networks which used Latin as an international language.