Diplomacy In Renaissance Rome

The first comprehensive study of Renaissance diplomacy for sixty years, focusing on Europe's most important political centre, Rome, between 1450 and 1530.

Modern diplomacy began in the fifteenth century when the Italian city-states established resident embassies at the courts of their neighbors. By the sixteenth century, the forms and techniques of the new continuing diplomacy had spread northward to be further developed by the emerging European powers. “The new Italian institution of permanent diplomacy was drawn into the service of the rising nation-states. and served, like the standing army of which it was the counterpart, at once to nourish their growth and foster their idolatry. It still serves them and must go on doing so as long as nation-states survive.” Garrett Mattingly, author of Catherine of Aragon and The Armada, here tells the story of Western diplomacy in its formative period and explains the evolution of the diplomat’s function. His able and lively discussion also forms, in effect, a history of Western Europe from an entirely fresh point of view. “Garrett Mattingly develops his theme with historical skill, a sense of the relevance of his subject to modern problems, and a literary grace all too rare in works of serious scholarship.”-New York Herald Tribune “An important book...carefully and elegantly written.”-Times Literary Supplement “Presents the many facets of a highly complex subject in a way which is as readable as it is scholarly.”-American Historical Review “A remarkable book: bold, scholarly and original, it will appeal equally to the expert and to the historically-minded general reader.”-New Statesman and Nation

Diplomacy has never been a politically-neutral research field, even when it was confined to merely reconstructing the backgrounds of wars and revolutions. In the nineteenth century, diplomacy was integral to the grand narrative of the building of the modern 'nation-State'. This is the first overall study of diplomacy in Early Renaissance Italy since Garrett Mattingly's pioneering work in 1955. It offers an innovative approach to the theme of Renaissance diplomacy, sidestepping the classic dichotomy between medieval and early modern, and re-considering the whole diplomatic process without reducing it to the 'grand narrative' of the birth of resident embassies. Communication and Conflict situates and explains the growth of diplomatic activity from a series of perspectives - political and institutional, cognitive and linguistic, material and spatial - and thus offers a highly sophisticated and persuasive account of causation, change, and impact in respect of a major political and cultural form. The volume also provides the most complete account to date of how it was that specifically Italian forms of diplomacy came to play such a central role, not only in the development of international relations at the European level, but also in the spread and application of humanism and of the new modes of political thinking and political discussion associated with the generations of Machiavelli and Guicciardini.

Diplomacy during the period from about 1350 to about 1520 increasingly experimented with new ways of answering urgent political needs--to represent, negotiate, participate, and keep informed--by developing a broad range of innovative solutions that had to be integrated and absorbed within the traditional jurisdictional framework of medieval diplomacy. During the fifteenth century, diplomatic sources multiplied at an unprecedented rate, mostly due to the remarkable volume of dispatches exchanged between governments and envoys sent abroad for increasingly prolonged missions. The present book draws on these rich diplomatic sources, which are mostly unavailable to English readers. Most of the chapters present a selection of dispatches, either in their final version or in draft form; occasionally, instructions, letters of appointment, and final reports are added.

This 2000 volume was the first attempt at a comparative reconstruction of the foreign policy and diplomacy of the major Italian states in the early modern period. The various contributions reveal the instruments and forms of foreign relations in the Italian peninsula. They also show a range of different case-studies and models which share the values and political concepts of the cultural context of diplomatic practice in the ancien régime. While Venice, the Papal States, the duchy of Savoy, Florence (later the duchy of Tuscany), Mantua, Modena, and later the kingdom of Naples may be considered minor states in the broader European context, their diplomatic activity was equal to that of the major powers. This reconstruction of their ambassadors, their secretaries, and their ceremonies offers a fascinating interpretation of the political history of early modern Italy.

How did Europe's oldest political institution come to grips with the disruptive new technology of print? Printing thrived after it came to Rome in the 1460s. Renaissance scholars, poets, and pilgrims in the Eternal City formed a ready market for mass-produced books. But Rome was also a capital city—seat of the Renaissance papacy, home to its bureaucracy, and a hub of international diplomacy—and print played a role in these circles, too. In Papal Bull, Margaret Meserve uncovers a critical new dimension of the history of early Italian printing by revealing how the Renaissance popes wielded print as a political tool. Over half a century of war and controversy—from approximately 1470 to 1520—the papacy and its agents deployed printed texts to potent effect, excommunicating enemies, pursuing diplomatic alliances, condemning heretics, publishing indulgences, promoting new traditions, and luring pilgrims and their money to the papal city. Early modern historians have long stressed the innovative press campaigns of the Protestant Reformers, but Meserve shows that the popes were even earlier adopters of the new technology, deploying mass communication many decades before Luther. The papacy astutely exploited the new medium to broadcast ancient claims to authority and underscore the centrality of Rome to Catholic Christendom. Drawing on a vast archive, Papal Bull reveals how the Renaissance popes used print to project an authoritarian vision of their institution and their capital city, even as critics launched blistering attacks in print that foreshadowed the media wars of the coming Reformation. Papal publishing campaigns tested longstanding principles of canon law promulgation, developed new visual and graphic vocabularies, and prompted some of Europe's first printed pamphlet wars. An exciting interdisciplinary study based on new literary, historical, and bibliographical evidence, this book will appeal to students and scholars of the Italian Renaissance, the Reformation, and the history of the book.

In 1676-77 a single event revitalized the traditions of Roman design. That event, the union of the French Royal Academy and the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome, is given new significance in the present study. It has long been thought that the academies' fusion signaled the passing of artistic preeminence from Rome to France. Here, however, the author proposes a more complex interpretation. By demonstrating that Rome continued, in fact, to be the more innovative and influential of the two academies, Gil Smith is able to discern patterns of influence that cross geographical and temporal boundaries, and to portray late-Baroque architecture in international terms. For this Compelling portrait of a transitional period of European architectural trends, Professor Smith draws on the student competitions inaugurated at the Saint Luke Academy to commemorate its ties with the French academies. Far more important than mere "academic" work, these competition drawings reveal the nature of instruction in Rome, the influences of the academy's officers and patrons, and the nature of contemporary projects similar in program to the competitions. The design synthesis pursued in Rome until the end of the seventeenth century, particularly by Carlo Fontana, would become an important source of inspiration for prominent architects of the next century. Among others, the academy's design methodology influenced Fischer von Erlach, Filippo Juvarra, and Giles Oppenord in their search for a progressive Baroque language.