Born at the close of the 14th Century, Tommaso Parentucelli was the son of a poor but well-respected doctor in Genoa. Tommaso’s father died in while his son was still in school, thus preventing the boy from finishing, but Tomasso was able to serve as a tutor for two prominent Florentine families before returning to Bologna to finish school. He would go on to serve the bishop of Bologna, Niccolo Albergati, as his personal secretary for the next 20 years. Only after Albergati’s death in 1443 would Tommaso agree to work for Pope Eugene IV, where he served as a valuable diplomat to Italy and Germany.

A well-respected cardinal by Eugene IV’s death, Pope Nicholas V was an obvious choice to be his successor. He opted for the name “Nicholas” in homage to his mentor, Bishop Albergati. Mercifully, there wasn’t a whole lot for Nicholas V to do politically by the time he took office. Being a skilled diplomat, he put to rest all questions of schism, persuaded Antipope Felix V (the Church's last antipope) to resign and submit to him, and returned a universal prestige to the papacy that hadn’t been seen in decades.

Nicholas V convened a Jubilee Year in 1450, welcoming many pilgrims to Rome and using the opportunity to canonize St. Bernardine of Siena, a popular and holy Franciscan preacher who had died just six years earlier. One of the sole dark spots on an otherwise happy papacy was the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, an event which affected Nicholas deeply. Just weeks after his eighth anniversary as pope, Nicholas V fell ill and died on the night of March 24, 1455.

Pope Nicholas V was the first “Renaissance Pope,” and as a result is best known for his love of art, learning, fine buildings, rare books, and (probably) drinking things with his pinky in the air. Nicholas continued his immediate predecessors’ trend of rebuilding the city of Rome in every respect, but his crowning achievement was the founding of the Vatican Library. Wishing to compile, “a library of all books both in Latin and Greek that is worthy of the dignity of the Pope and the Apostolic See,” and in an effort to preserve the most important historical documents in existence, Nicholas sent agents far and wide to build up what remains an immense and storied collection. By his death, Nicholas’ library had grown to over 5,000 volumes.

Fun Fact: Pope Nicholas V was the third of four consecutive popes to take names that were, with their respective papacies, used for the final time. Popes Martin V, Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Callistus III are the last installments of those storied papal names, all four of which boast a saint in their ranks.

 

In the early 1450s, Nicholas of Cusa, a respected German theologian, cardinal, and scientist, recommended the use of concave lens spectacles to treat nearsightedness (myopia). Nicholas is also responsible for introducing the idea of tracking a person’s pulse for use in clinical medicine.