Uncommon eighteenth-century edition of this famous story of the popes. Platina was not only an educator, but also a Renaissance humanist, a scholar of literature and popular traditions. Under the papacy of Sixtus IV, he was appointed director of the Vatican Library in 1478 where he wrote the Liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum , a collection of biographies of the popes who lived until then, of which the present work is translation. In the same years he published the De principe, the De vera nobilitate and the De false et vero et bono. His main work, however, remains a short treatise on gastronomy, the De honesta voluptate et valetudine.