Ronchey, S. “Andrea, il rifondatore di Bisanzio. Implicazioni ideologiche del ricevimento a Roma della testa del patrono della chiesa ortodossa nella settimana santa del 1462.” Dopo le due cadute di Costantinopoli (1204, 1453). Eredi ideologici di Bisanzio. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi dell'Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini di Venezia (4-5 December 2006). Eds. M. Koumanoudi and C. Maltezou. Venice: Edizioni dell'Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini e Postbizantini, 2008. 259-72.

This essay considers the significance and implications of the transfer of St. Andrew’s head by Thomas Palaiologos from the Peloponnese to Italy and its deposition in St. Peter’s in a complex and highly symbolic ceremony.  The event, celebrated in paintings by Bernard Rantwyck (now in the Museo Diocesano, Pienza) and on the marble bas relief sculpted by Paolo Romano for Pius II’s tomb (now in the Basilica of Sant’Andrea della Valle, Rome), detailed in the Pope’s Commentarii and in other literary and archival sources, includes Bessarion and Aeneas Sylvius among its protagonists, along with the last Byzantine imperial heir, Thomas Palaiologos.  In the allegorical architecture of the liturgical events of Holy Week 1462, the three men came to represent the triad Paul-Andrew-Peter, united in the plan to save Byzantium in the West, promoted during the Council of Mantua in 1459.  The transfer to Rome of the head of the patron of the Orthodox Church also conveyed - in its rituals and ecclesiastic symbolism - a project within the Papacy: the purification of the Western Church and the renewal of Christianity in its focus on the crusade against the Turks which Pius II established as the goal of his papacy.