Lodovico Pontano (ca. 1409-1439)

Book excerpt: The short but fiery career of the famous jurist Lodovico Pontano (†1439) led from the universities of Bologna, Florence, Rome and Siena, the Roman curia and the court of Alfonso V of Aragón to the Council of Basel where he became rapidly one of the major conciliarist leaders and died at the age of only 30 years of the plague. Pontano’s biography and the sequential analysis of his largely unedited works shows how a man of learning managed to present his legal skills, later enhanced by persuasive theological arguments, as an expertise indispensable for government and to make himself so essential that he could regularly afford to break his contracts. The first edition of ten important tracts and speeches completes the work.