Oration ”Nisi satis exploratum” of Enea Silvio Piccolomini (13 October 1445, Vienna). Edited and translated by Michael von Cotta-Schönberg. Preliminary edition. (Orations of Enea Silvio Piccolomini / Pope Pius II; 8)

In autumn 1445 Enea Silvio Piccolomini, secretary in the Imperial Chancery of Emperor Friedrich III and poet laureate, was invited to give two academic lectures at the University of Vienna. The first one, the Nisi satis exploratum, was most probably delivered at the beginning of the winter semester at the Faculty of Law in October. It is an oration in praise of all the arts and sciences taught at a contemporary university, belonging to a well-established rhetorical genre developed at Italian universities. It has two main sections: in the first Piccolomini outlines the benefits (utilitas) of each art and science, in the second he speaks of their pleasures (voluptates et ornamentum). Noteworthy in the oration are Piccolomini’s treatment of history as a distinct art, his description of the pleasure of scholarship, and his insistence on the interrelationship between research and teaching.