Barry Torch, writing this, would like to present Reginensi Latini 1995, or, the rough draft of Pius II's Commentaries!
Figure: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginensi Latini 1995, 1r.
A few booky/physical properties. Reg. Lat. 1995 is about 31 centimetres by 22 centimetres large (for our American friends, just over 12 inches by 8 inches), and is approximately 600 pages long (with some additional pages added by the bookbinders to make it fit into a book). This is a large book! Written on paper (I believe), the handwriting isn't Pope Pius'; the annotations are in his hand, but the main text was written by his secretary, close friend, and fellow Sienese, Agostino Patrizi.
This manuscript was found in March 1883 by the German historian Ludwig Pastor, after the Vatican Library/Archives had been opened to scholars. He declares in the Appendix to Volume II of his History of the Popes that:
I believe that in Cod Regin.,1995, Ms. chart. fol. sec. XV, fol. 595, I have found the
Original of the "Memoirs,", written in part by the hand of Pius II. himself, and the
Manuscript seems to be the one entrusted to Campanus for correction."
Pastor, along with the much-later commentator Leona Gabel, both argue that this manuscript was part of the Piccolomini Library at Sant'Andrea Della Valle, a church linked to the Piccolomini Palace in Rome. The entire library would later be absorbed into the Vatican Library. Fun note: Both Pius II, and his nephew (later pope) Pius III, are entombed in Sant'Andrea Della Valle, so you can go visit them today!
Figure 2: The Tomb of Pope Pius II, embedded in the wall along the nave of Sant'Andrea Della Valle.
But back to Reg.Lat.1995. AaronM, on his amazing Wiglaf Vatican project, noted that the collection of these documents (the Reginensi catalogue as a whole) was bought by a Pietro Ottoboni at the death of the Queen of Sweden, Christina, in 1689. While I don't think that Queen Christina owned the Commentaries, AaronM notes that, "some 1900 manuscripts were donated to the vatican to form the Reginenses Latini collection." What I think happened was that the donation of the Piccolomini Library occurred at the same time as Ottoboni's donation, and thus, a few documents that were meant to be collected under Pius' name, just got absorbed into Reg.Lat. That's my hunch. If anyone knows otherwise, please let me know!
The manuscript seems to have moved around like this. This is all hypothetical.
1) Created by Pius II and written by Agostino Patrizi at night/during the snippets of time the Pope had to dictate to his secretary.
2) At some point, the first 12 books/volumes were given to Giannantonio Campano to have made into a beautiful document (which now exists elsewhere; see a future post on this!); Pius continues to dictate a future book of his life to Patrizi. The pretty, illuminated copy (more later I promise!) enters Pius' library in the spring of 1464. (Emily O'Brien notes this on p. 15 of her brilliant book; see the bibliography of our website!)
3) Pius dies in August 1464 (spoiler alert). Future books aren't finished (but are part of this manuscript); this particular MS remains a part of Pius II's Library, now run by his nephew, Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini.
4) Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini has (both manuscripts? and...) the library of Pope Pius II; uses the manuscripts and the Commentaries to coordinate the painting program of the Piccolomini Library in Siena.
5) At some point, probably with Franceseco's pontificate of about a month long as Pope Pius III, this library comes back to Rome, into the Piccolomini Palace and Library at Sant'Andrea Della Valle.
6) 1584 (This is a future post too!): The Commentaries are first published and printed in Rome, and very heavily redacted by a different Francesco, a Francesco Bandini-Piccolomini.
7) March 1883: This manuscript, Reg.Lat.1995, is found in the Vatican Archive by Ludwig Pastor. It moves to the Vatican Library?
8) 1937-1957: This manuscript is the one used by Florence Alden Gragg and Leona Gabel for their English translation, published by the Smith College Studies in History.
9) 1984: Adrianus van Heck, with the Vatican Library press, edits an authoritative Latin edition of Pius II's Commentaries, based largely on this MS (along with the fair copy, also in Rome).
10) 2015: Barry Torch goes to the Vatican Library for the first time, attempts to see/hold Reg. Lat. 1995 after doing his Masters' paper on Pope Pius II. Barry is informed by the digital manuscript request service that Reg.Lat.1995 is being taken care of/restored, and there is a lovely digital edition, so go see https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Reg.lat.1995
The whole history of Pius' Commentaries, as a book and text, needs its own book to fully detail it; there are already several articles about different manuscripts and editions! This post is just about one of the two manuscripts we have - the rough draft of the Commentaries, as it were. But hopefully, readers, this post reveals two important ideas: 1) That the Commentaries are a very tricky document to deal with, and 2) That evidence doesn't come to historians very easily - there's always a story behind the documents we read, and how they come to us. So careful and critical reading is always an important element in any historical investigation!