**THINGS YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW** ONE OF THE POPES WROTE AN EROTIC BOOK

• Before he was Pope Pius II, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini was a poet, scholar, diplomat, and
• rakehell. And an author. In fact, he wrote a bestseller. People in fifteenth-century Europe couldn't
• get enough of his Latin novella Historia de duobus amantibus. An article in a scholarly
• publication on literature claims that Historia "was undoubtedly one of the most read stories of
• the whole Renaissance." The Oxford edition gives a Cliff Notes version of the storyline: "The
• Goodli History tells of the illicit love of Euralius, a high official in the retinue of the [German]
• Emperor Sigismund, and Lucres, a married lady from Siena [Italy]."
• It was probably written in 1444, but the earliest known printing is from Antwerp in 1488. By the
• turn of the century, 37 editions had been published. Somewhere around 1553, the short book
• appeared in English under the wonderfully old-school title The Goodli History of the Moste
• Noble and Beautyfull Ladye Lucres of Scene in Tuskane, and of Her Louer Eurialus Verye
• Pleasaunt and Delectable vnto ye Reder. Despite the obvious historical interest of this archaic
• Vatican porn, it has never been translated into contemporary language. (The passages quoted
• below mark the first time that any of the book has appeared in
• modern English.)
• The 1400s being what they were, the action is pretty tame by today's
• standards. At one point, Euralius scales a wall to be with Lucres:
• "When she saw her lover, she clasped him in her arms. There was
• embracing and kissing, and with full sail they followed their lusts and
• wearied Venus, now with Ceres, and now with Bacchus was
• refreshed." Loosely translated, that last part means that they shagged,
• then ate, then drank wine.
• His Holiness describes the next time they hook up:
• Thus talking to each other, they went into the bedroom, where they had such a night as we
• judge the two lovers Paris and Helen had after he had taken her away, and it was so
• pleasant that they thought Mars and Venus had never known such pleasure....
• Her mouth, and now her eyes, and now her cheeks he kissed. Pulling down her clothes, he
• saw such beauty as he had never seen before. "I have found more, I believe," said Euralius,
• "than Acteon saw of Diana when she bathed in the fountain. What is more pleasant or
• more fair than these limbs?... O fair neck and pleasant breasts, is it you that I touch? Is it
• you that I have? Are you in my hands? O round limbs, O sweet body, do I have you in my
• arms?... O pleasant kisses, O dear embraces, O sweet bites, no man alive is happier than I
• am, or more blessed."...
• He strained, and she strained, and when they were done they weren't weary. Like Athens,
• who rose from the ground stronger, soon after battle they were more desirous of war.
• But Euralius isn't just a horndog. He waxes philosophical about love to Lucres' cousin-in-law:
• You know that man is prone to love. Whether it is virtue or vice, it reigns everywhere. No
• heart of flesh hasn't sometime felt the pricks of love. You know that neither the wise
• Solomon nor the strong Sampson has escaped from this passion. Furthermore, the nature
• of a kindled heart and a foolish love is this: The more it is allowed, the more it burns, with
• nothing sooner healing this than the obtaining of the loved. There have been many, both in
• our time and that of our elders, whose foolish love has been the cause of cruel death. And
• many who, after sex and love vouchsafed, have stopped burning. Nothing is better when
• love has crept into your bones than to give in to the burning, for those who strive against
• the tempest often wreck, while those who drive with the storm escape.
• Besides sex and wisdom, the story also contains a lot of humor, as when Lucres' husband
• borrows a horse from Euralius: "He says to himself, 'If you leap upon my horse, I shall do the
• same thing to your wife.'"
• Popes just don't write books like that anymore!