 It would be difficult to find anyone during the fifteenth century better qualified than Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (1405–1464) to claim the mantle of civic humanism. As was the case with the authors already discussed he was steeped in the studia humanitas from a fine Florentine education. An almost exact contemporary of the great humanists Palmieri, Valla and Patrizi, he enjoyed a sterling reputation for his writings; his letters, in particular, compare favorably in their style as well as their substance with the best of humanist literature. He held positions in the imperial court as a secretary and diplomat, and eventually worked his way up the ladder of ecclesiastical preferment to be elevated to the papal see as Pius II—often called the first “humanist pope”. Yet, in his most famous work of political thought, De ortu et auctoritate imperii Romani (On the Origin and Authority of the Roman Empire; 1446), Piccolomini advanced a defense of a universalist, imperial and even absolutist ideal of government under the banner of the Holy Roman Empire. As with many of the authors previously surveyed, such a position would seem wholly incompatible with civic humanism.