Commentaries are so well written, so well translated and edited, that it’s easy to forget they’re written about a Pope by the Pope himself.

Remember that fact and you’ll see that Pope Pius II’s speeches were not imbued with witchcraft, ending wars in seconds, that he was not as magnanimous as he claimed, and that figures such as Sigismondo Malatesta – whom he had canonised to Hell – may not have been as demonic as we are led to believe.

But they are a brilliant primary source; a window to a time where the Papacy was the one of the most powerful entities in the world, and the ways of the Renaissance were truly being set in their ways.