Letters, notes and whispers: Diplomacy, ambassadors and information in the Italian Renaissance princely state.

摘要

This dissertation examines the practice of diplomacy in the princely states of Ferrara and Mantua in the second half of the fifteenth century. With the creation of the Italian League in 1455, Italy entered a tense yet reasonably stable period in which the constituent states, led by the Duchy of Milan, began to exhibit recognizably modern diplomatic forms. Ferrara and Mantua depended particularly heavily on the 'new' diplomacy that appeared in the second half of the fifteenth century, which was characterized by the use of permanent resident ambassadors, and the systematic creation of institutions dedicated to the conduct of diplomacy, including chanceries and archives. For most of the second half of the fifteenth century, these changes were exclusive to princely regimes. The tasks of the resident ambassador changed accordingly. Most notably, he took on the role of information gatherer. In the finely balanced political environment of Italy, a new premium was placed on the gathering of information to anticipate potential threats and ambassadors spent much of their time seeking and interpreting information. After examining the respective political and geopolitical situations of the Gonzaga in Mantua and the Este in Ferrara, the dissertation considers two case studies of ambassadors stationed in Milan---Zaccaria Saggi da Pisa, the ambassador Marquis of Mantua, and Jacopo Trotti, the envoy of the Duke of Ferrara. The study shows how these ambassadors exploited a vast array of sources in their search for information. By attaching their ambassadors to the court of the Sforza, these princes could avail themselves of much of the information that was coursing through the vast diplomatic network. Milan is described in these pages as a "Renaissance information center," for its central political, diplomatic and economic role. In the conclusion, the argument is made that the preoccupation with capturing large volumes of information through resident ambassadors is representative of larger societal changes underway in fifteenth-century Italy. In many sectors of human activity, from commerce to government to humanistic study, there was a new emphasis on acquiring, interpreting and cataloging large volumes of information.