This article was downloaded by: [Aston University]

On: 23 February 2014, At: 09:17

Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:
1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,
London W1T 3JH, UK
Diplomacy & Statecraft
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fdps20
Italian renaissance
diplomacy
Michael Mallett
a
a
Warwick University
Published online: 19 Oct 2007.
To cite this article: Michael Mallett (2001) Italian renaissance diplomacy,
Diplomacy & Statecraft, 12:1, 61-70, DOI: 10.1080/09592290108406188
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09592290108406188
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all
the information (the Content) contained in the publications on our
platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors
make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,
completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any
opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and
views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor
& Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and
should be independently verified with primary sources of information.
Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,
proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities
whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in
connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study
purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,
reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any
form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access
and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-
conditions
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

Italian Renaissance Diplomacy
MICHAEL MALLETT
A renewed interest in Italian fifteenth-century diplomacy and the publication of extensive
sections of the diplomatic archives of the Italian states justify a new assessment of the
significance of Italian Renaissance diplomacy. The conclusions of this essay are threefold,
that Italian developments were less unique and less isolated from the European scene than
used to be thought; that too much emphasis has been placed on a transition from
occasional to continuous diplomacy; and that the emergence of the resident ambassador
has to be seen in the context of changing decision-making mechanisms and bureaucratic
structures. The differences between the diplomatic institutions and personnel of the
princely and republican Italian states are particularly emphasized.
Debates about the nature of the transition from Middle Ages to
Renaissance have raged amongst historians on both sides of the
'divide' for over 100 years. The history of diplomacy has been a
significant part of these debates. Charles Carter's dictum is typical:
'In the Middle Ages the goal of diplomacy was the peace of
Christendom; in the Renaissance it was the interests of the individual
states." The break-up of medieval universalism, the growth of the
western European state: these are big issues, debated over a timespan
of 500 years. In the middle of them stands the figure of Erasmus - a
Renaissance prototype, and yet scornful of emergent nationalism and
militarism; critic, and yet committed defender, of the Roman
Catholic Church. The pitfalls of overgeneralization and easy
acceptance of a necessary continuity in transition and change abound
in this period and have beset the historiography of diplomacy.
The classic accounts of Renaissance diplomacy focused attention
on Italy and on the fifteenth century, particularly the latter half of the
fifteenth century. De Maulde la Claviere, Perret, Mattingly and
others had largely prepared the ground which then lay fallow for a
long period, as indeed did the study of diplomacy generally.
2
In recent
years there has been a remarkable revival of interest, particularly in
Italy. The ongoing publications of diplomatic material by Kendall and
Ilardi (Milanese dispatches from the courts of France and
Burgundy),
3
by Sestan (Milanese-Burgundian relations),
4
and above
all Rubinstein and his colleagues (the letters of Lorenzo the
Diplomacy & Statecraft, Vol.12, No. l (March 2001), pp.61-70
PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

62 DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT
Magnificent) have reawakened interest.
5
There is now a major project
underway to publish substantial sections of the Ferrarese and
Mantuan diplomatic archives; Margaroli's book on Milanese
diplomacy in the 1450s,
6
Corazzol's publication of Zaccaria
Barbaro's dispatches from Naples in the early 1470s,
7
Queller's
interest in Venetian ambassadors,
8
Cerioni's work on Milanese
ambassadors and ciphers,
9
Fubini's wide-ranging essays on Italian
politics and diplomacy,
10
have all refocused attention on Italy's great
diplomatic collections of the second half of the fifteenth century.
The thrust of much of this recent work has been to dispel three
long-standing misconceptions and prejudices: first, that the Italian
states developed and conducted their foreign affairs in the fifteenth
century, in a sort of vacuum, free from ultramontane interference;
secondly, that the main thrust of diplomatic development was
towards the rapid emergence of the resident ambassador; thirdly, that
diplomacy in the hands of the resident degenerated into news-
gathering and espionage. The effect of these misconceptions was to
stultify interest in the subject; historians in other countries lost
interest in the supposedly unique Italian developments,
preoccupation with the resident ambassador led into the monotonous
minutiae of diplomatic practices, denigration of the resident led to a
loss of interest both in the men and in their dispatches which became
regarded as worthless gossip. This article examines where we now
stand with regard to these three areas of misconception.
The Importance of Foreign Relations
The origins of the idea of an Italy free from foreign interference in
the fifteenth century lie in part in contrasts with the fourteenth
century, filled with foreign rulers and foreign mercenary companies
rampaging through the peninsular, and with the post-1494 period of
foreign invasion and takeover. The emerging western European states
were seen as preoccupied with their own affairs, with the Hundred
Years' War, with the Iberian Reconquista, with the internal problems
of the Holy Roman Empire, with the Turkish advance in the Balkans,
and so on. However, the contradictions in this picture of isolation are
manifest: the Aragonese conquest of the Kingdom of Naples,
completed in 1442; the continued Angevin and French interest in
that area and attempts to recover it; the defence of imperial rights of
sovereignty in northern Italy; the conflicts between papal authority
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE DIPLOMACY 63
and ultramontane conciliarism; concern with Turkish expansion in
the Mediterranean area as a whole; and, of course, the growing
impact of Italian cultural and intellectual developments on the
European imagination. Italy was the goal for scholars, churchmen,
merchants and pilgrims; for princes and armies; and for diplomats.
Italy was also a fundamental part of a developing system of
international relations in the fifteenth century, and at the centre of
that system was the emerging sovereign state.
11
Spasmodic and long
drawn out as was the process of state creation in the late Middle Ages
and early modern period, the increasing importance of external
affairs was a fundamental part of it. However much historians may
wish to argue about the erratic development of centralization and the
internal authority of states and governments, the concern of those
governments about their relations with other states was a precocious
phenomenon. Recognition of the need for continuity and expertise in
the handling of foreign affairs was an early phase in state-building,
and the growth of bureaucracy and professionalism associated with
state-building. Alongside the growth of permanent armies in the
fifteenth century went the development of sustained diplomacy; both
were costly, both created the need for more efficient tax-gathering
and fiscal management to meet the costs, both conferred reputation,
power and security on rulers and governments.
It is, of course, possible to argue that Italian states progressed
more rapidly along this road in the fifteenth century. They were
smaller, distances were shorter, their elites were better educated,
threats from neighbouring states were more immediate.
Confrontation and competitiveness necessitated constant preparation
and alertness in foreign affairs. Alliance systems, as much as
individual military strength, were seen as crucial for the maintenance
of the independence of the main Italian states; alliances created by
diplomacy and maintained by diplomacy. The famous Italian League
of 1455 is often seen as the starting point of a systematic attempt to
maintain peaceful international relations through balance of power,
and hence of a 'diplomatic revolution'.
12
But the leagues and alliances
which dominated the second half of the fifteenth century in Italy,
normally balanced alliances of two or three states against the others
rather than the general league, had their origins in the long years of
war before 1455. The reestablishment of the papal court at Rome
from the 1420s, the long alliance of Venice and Florence to thwart
Milanese expansion from 1425 until the late 1440s, the realignment
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

64 DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT
of Florence with Milan at the time of Francesco Sforza's accession to
the dukedom in 1450, the search for support from the new power of
Aragonese Naples after 1442; it was these events which formed the
background to a new intensity and a new importance of diplomacy in
Italy which continued into the post-1455 period.
13
However, this emphasis on innovative diplomatic practices in Italy
is somewhat misplaced. State-building, and its impact on the
importance of foreign relations, was a European phenomenon in the
second half of the fifteenth century, after the end of the Hundred
Years' War, with the dramatic emergence of an independent
Burgundy, with the union of the Spanish crowns and the new energy
of the Emperor, Maximilian I. While the particular development of
resident ambassadors was first practised widely in Italy and by the
Italian states, the new concern with diplomacy in a broader sense was
felt throughout western Europe.
Resident and Non-Resident Diplomacy
The appearance of the resident ambassador, as opposed both to the
special and temporary missions and to the presence of less formal
types of resident agents in the Middle Ages, has often been seen as
the main characteristic of a new diplomacy in the later fifteenth
century. By the 1450s it was recognized by the larger Italian states
that the maintenance of relations with an allied state required the
exchange of resident ambassadors. This,
M
O{ course, is somewhat
different to saying that there was already a comprehensive system of
residency in Italy. By the 1470s Milan, and to a lesser extent Venice,
were maintaining resident ambassadors at some of the major
European courts. One could say that the idea of residents was
gradually catching on, despite their cost and other perceived
drawbacks which will be discussed later. Nevertheless, the bulk of
diplomatic activity in western Europe in the second half of the
fifteenth century was not conducted by resident ambassadors.
Ceremonial and honorific missions to congratulate a new ruler or a
pope on his accession, to attend a dynastic marriage or to
congratulate a prince on the birth of a child, remained an essential,
and indeed expanding, part of European dynasticism. The
opportunities for display and for high level contacts were a part of
the changing diplomatic world, and such missions were conducted by
mixed groups of ambassadors, including high churchmen and
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE DIPLOMACY 65
prominent courtiers and nobles. Similarly the use of experienced
negotiators for specific working missions, the negotiation of a treaty
or the preparations for a royal marriage, remained commonplace.
The men chosen for such missions would usually come from a group
of foreign affairs advisers regularly consulted by the government. A
group of Italians, mostly Neapolitan Angevin adherents like Boffillo
del Giudice and Jacopo Galeota, held high positions at the court of
Louis XI of France, advised on Italian affairs and went on missions to
Italy.
14
Such men were as much a part of the heightened profile of
diplomacy and the new prestige conferred by involvement in foreign
affairs as was the resident ambassador.
Inevitably the growing emphasis on the discussion and conduct of
foreign affairs led to an obsession with secrecy. This did not just
concern the confidentiality of dispatches from and instructions to
ambassadors abroad, but pervaded the mechanisms for the discussion
of foreign affairs at home. It was also a part of a general trend
towards increasingly professional and elitist government. The process
can be observed most easily among the Italian states. The creation of
the Consiglio Segreto in Milan, the growing role of the Council of
Ten in Venice, noted for its secret procedures and success in detecting
internal conspiracies, in the discussion of foreign affairs, the creation
of a special foreign policy committee in Florence in 1480, the Otto
di Pratica, all pointed in the same direction.
15
It was in the early 1480s that Venetian ambassadors abroad first
started writing confidential letters to the Ten alongside their formal
dispatches to the Doge and the Senate.
16
Florence's Otto di Pratica
wrote its first letters to ambassadors abroad in 1480 announcing the
establishment of the new committee and inviting them to pass secrets
direct to it.
17
The point about this apparent transition was that
traditionally the discussion of foreign policy issues had been
relatively open, an occasional responsibility for large councils of state
in which ambassadors of allied states were invited to participate.
However, it was becoming increasingly apparent in the 1460s and
1470s that these mechanisms did not give sufficient continuity or
confidentiality to the conduct of foreign affairs when even allies
could be suspected of having contrary interests. The passage of
information and the conduct of diplomacy was beginning to operate
at two levels. Diplomatic dispatches were edited before being made
public, ad hoc meetings of specialist advisers were taking place
alongside the more formal discussions, ambassadors were finding
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

66 DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT
ways of filtering reports into the system by writing confidential
letters to individuals in or close to the home government.
Much has been written about the 'double diplomacy' of Lorenzo
de' Medici in this context, but the pattern was being repeated in
other states.
18
Ludovico Sforza's position as one of a council of
regency for his nephew led to him receiving confidential letters from
ambassadors alongside the formal dispatches addressed to the Duke.
Prominent senators in Venice also filled the same role and would pass
on the 'secrets' to appropriate caucuses within the decision-making
mechanisms. By the 1480s new formal mechanisms were in place;
secrecy was institutionalized; in Venice the Council of Ten was
deciding which foreign policy issues could go to open debate and
which had to be restricted within the circle of the Ten and a specially
chosen group of advisers.
19
The Importance of Renaissance Ambassadors
Resident ambassadors were only a part of this world, but they were a
more significant part than De Maulde la Claviere or Mattingly have
given them credit for. Both these authorities stressed the importance of
information gathering in the more intensive diplomacy of the fifteenth
century and drew attention to the role of resident ambassadors and
their almost daily dispatches in this process. Information became a
form of currency, to be given and exchanged as well as received and
passed on. Both Louis XI and King Ferrante of Naples commented on
the role of Florence and its ambassadors as good sources of
information, and the first question asked of an ambassador when he
presented himself to a host government was what news did he bring.
20
Information of the most diverse kind was of interest; not just state
secrets, policy decisions or even levels of military preparedness, but
personal information on key political figures, comments on levels of
internal disaffection, fiscal and economic statistics, comings and goings
at court. As Niccolo Michelozzi, Lorenzo de' Medici's secretary,
commented: 'Not even the Devil could imagine how useful a piece of
information might be.'
21
All this was undoubtedly true and an
important way of looking at late fifteenth-century European politics,
but it was only a part of diplomacy and by no means the sole function
of the resident ambassador.
This point becomes clearer if we consider the type of men who
served as resident ambassadors in fifteenth-century Italy. From the
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE DIPLOMACY 67
1430s residency became increasingly common, but there was a sharp
contrast between the practices of the main republics and those of the
princely states. The ambassadors of Milan and Naples tended to be
drawn either from the ranks of the emerging state bureaucracy or
from the provincial nobility. They were left in post for long periods,
sometimes as much as 20 years, and were true professionals. Not
infrequently they were actually foreign-born, but in the permanent
service of the Sforza dukes or the Aragonese kings. Some of them
served as foreign policy advisers to the central government when not
abroad, but on the whole they were detached from the central
decision-making processes. Nevertheless, their advice and opinions,
as men often with profound knowledge of, and contacts in, the states
to which they were sent, were highly influential.
22
On the other hand the ambassadors of Venice and Florence came
from the patrician elites of the two cities; they were experienced and
respected members of the political class, filling the role of
ambassador as part of a cursus honorum of political office-holding.
Such men could not be spared for long periods abroad, nor did they
normally wish to be away from their businesses, or, more
importantly, political life at home, for more than two or three years.
Hence the resident representatives of these republican states changed
over fairly quickly, but they brought considerable prestige and varied
experience to their diplomatic postings. Tommaso Soderini, leader of
the pro-Venetian faction in Florence in the 1470s, or Bernardo
Bembo, distinguished and scholarly Venetian patrician, brought a
special cachet to the role of ambassador as they went to serve in
Venice and Florence respectively." Zaccaria Barbaro, son of the
famous humanist and military hero, Francesco, who had played a
major role in cementing the Florentine-Venetian alliance in the
1430s, was able to perform the role of resident ambassador in Rome
and Naples with considerable pomp and prestige.
24
Such men, while
they conformed to type in producing daily dispatches filled with
minutiae, were much more than news-gatherers and spies.
While the fifteenth-century ambassador could not exceed his
formal mandate and had to seek new instructions in the event of any
major policy issue requiring a decision, he nevertheless was left with
scope for considerable personal initiative. He was responsible for
maintaining an alliance; he participated in constant discussions with
the government to which he was attached; he went hunting with
Ludovico Sforza and attended mass with Lorenzo de' Medici; he had
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

68 DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT
private audiences with the Pope in the Sala del Pappagallo and was
visited by King Ferrante's private secretary in the middle of the night.
He spent some of his time protecting and furthering the interests of
individual fellow countrymen, and a lot of his time quietly cultivating
contacts, not just among those with authority in the host state but
also those temporarily on the sidelines, the opposition factions. He
kept an eye on the activities of exiles from his own state and worked
to frustrate their potentially dangerous initiatives.
25
It is true that the ambassador of an Italian state at the French or
imperial court was in a different world, a less intimate world, a world
in which diplomacy was regarded with some suspicion, as a poor
alternative to war. But this was a sort of appendix to the world of
Italian diplomacy, a situation from which many of the complaints
voiced by Italian envoys tended to come as they made endless
uncomfortable journeys in the wake of the court, as their
correspondence with home was interrupted and their funds ran out.
Too much has been made by the influential writers on Renaissance
diplomacy of the complaints of ambassadors. De Maulde la Claviere,
Mattingly, and particularly Queller, have described the post of
resident ambassador as immensely unpopular and difficult to fill."
The evidence for this is largely Venetian and has to be handled with
care. There were indeed moments, particularly around 1500, when
senior Venetian politicians were reluctant to undertake embassies
abroad because of the tensions in the political and economic situation
at home. There was always a tendency to idealize the commitment of
the Venetian patriciate to public service and office-holding; fierce
prologues to Senate legislation denouncing those individuals who
evaded office have coloured our views on this general issue and led
to exaggerations of the extent of avoidance of office. Much, of
course, depended on the office in question and in the case of the
resident ambassador there were attractions as well as drawbacks to
accepting the post. It is very important to appreciate the prestige and
the degree of influence enjoyed by ambassadors in Italy, as well as the
difficulties and sometimes hardships of their task.
A final point: the increasing reliance on continuous diplomacy, on
reports and information-gathering, on the opinions and actions of
specialists in foreign affairs in the later fifteenth century, led
inevitably to delays in decision-making, to a tendency towards
temporization. This was to become one of the dominant themes in
international relations in the sixteenth century. Machiavelli, who had
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

ITALIAN RENAISSANCE DIPLOMACY 69
some diplomatic experience but was not really a professional
diplomat, observed and deplored this without really appreciating the
inevitability of it. He was more accustomed to being at the heart of
the decision-making process as secretary of the Dieci di Balia, rather
than on the fringes of it. At the same time, the particular indecision
and caution that he chafed at were those of a peculiarly weak and
vulnerable state which had a long diplomatic tradition. Nevertheless,
while his message was born out of particular circumstances, it came
to have universal application.
Warwick University
NOTES
1. C.H. Carter, The Western European Powers, 1500-1700 (London, 1971), p.19.
2. M.A.R. De Maulde la Claviere, La diplomatie au temps de Machiavel, 3 vols. (Paris,
1892-93); EM. Perret, Histoire des relations de la France avec la Venise, 2 vols. (Paris,
1896); A. Desjardins and G. Canestrini (eds.), Negotiations diplomatiques de la France
avec la Toscane, 6 vols. (Paris, 1859-86); G. Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy
(London, 1955).
3. P. Kendall and V. Ilardi (eds.), Dispatches and related documents of Milanese
Ambassadors to France and Burgundy, 3 vols. (Athens, OH, 1970-71, and Dekalb IL,
1981). See also V Ilardi, Studies in Italian Renaissance Diplomatic History (London,
1986).
4. E. Sestan (ed.), Carteggi diplomatici fra Milano sforzesca e la Borgogna, 2 vols. (Rome,
1985).
5. N. Rubinstein et al. (eds.), Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici, 7 vols. (Florence, 1977 - ).
6. P. Margaroli, Diplomazia e stati rinascimentali. Le ambascerie sforzesche alia
conclusione delta lega italiana, 1450-5 (Florence, 1992).
7. G. Corazzol (ed.), Dispacci di Zaccaria Barbaro, 1471-3 (Rome, 1994).
8. D.E. Queller, Early Venetian Legislation on Ambassadors (Geneva, 1966).
9. L. Cerioni, La diplomazia sforzesca nella seconda met del Quattrocento e i suoi cifrari
segreti, 2 vols. (Rome, 1970).
10. R. Fubini, Italia Quattrocentesca: politica e diplomazia nell' eta di Lorenzo il Magnifico
(Milan, 1994); idem, 'La figura politica dell ambasciatore negli sviluppi dei regimi
oligarchici quattrocenteschi', in Forme e techniche del potere nella citta, ed. S. Bertelli
(Perugia, 1979-80), particularly pp.33-6.
11. For a recent survey of fifteenth-century political developments in Italy and contacts
with the ultramontane powers, see New Cambridge Medieval History, vol.7, ed. C.
Allmand (Cambridge, 1998), ch.23, pp.547-87.
12. For the classic account of the Italian League, see G. Soranzo, La Lega italica (1454-55)
(Milan, 1924); more recently G. Pillinini, Il sistema degli stati italiani, 1454-94
(Venice, 1970), pp.7-15, and Margaroli, Diplomazia, have redefined the role of the
League.
13. For the importance of the wars in Lombardy, 1425-54, in the development of
interstate relations, see Fondazioni Treccani, Storia di Milano, vol.6 (Milan, 1955),
pp.248-386; Storia di Venezia dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, vol.4, ed. A.
Tenenti and U. Tucci (Rome, 1996), pp.181-244.
14. Dictionnaire de Biographie Francaise, 6, pp.771-3 (Boffillo del Guidice or Boffille de
Juge), 15, pp.156-7 (Jacopo Galiota or Jacques Galiot). A broad view of French
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4

70 DIPLOMACY & STATECRAFT
foreign policy in this period is to be found in D. Potter, History of France, 14601560
(London, 1995), pp.251-83.
15. On the Milanese Consiglio Segreto, see D.M. Bueno de Mesquita, 'The Privy Council
in the Government of the Dukes of Milan', in Florence and Milan: Comparisons and
Relations, ed. S. Bertelli et al. (Florence, 1989), pp. 135-56; F.M. Vaglienti,
'"Fidelissimi Servitori de Consilio suo Secreto". Struttura e organizzazione del
Consiglio Segreto nei primi anni del ducato di Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1466-69)' ,
Nuova rivista storica, 76 (1992), pp.645-708; R. Fubini, Italia Quattrocentesca,
pp. 107-35. The increasing role of the Venetian Council of Ten in consideration of
foreign affairs is discussed in M.E. Mallett. 'Diplomacy and War in Later Fifteenth-
Century Italy', Proceedings of the British Academy, 67 (1981), p.288, and the creation
and function of the Florentine Otto di Pratica in idem, 'The Florentine Otto di Pratica
and the beginning of the War of Ferrara', in P. Denleyand C. Elam (eds.), Florence and
Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein (London, 1988), pp.3-12.
16. For the beginnings of this practice, see State Archives, Venice, Consiglio dei Dieci,
Misti, 20, ff. 4v-5v.
17. Lettere di Lorenzo de'Medici, vol.5, p.314. For a calendar of the letters of the Otto di
Pratica, see now / Carteggi delle Magistrature dell' eta repubblicana; Otto di Pratica, I,
Legazioni e commissarie, 2 vols., ed. P. Viti et al. (Firenze, 1987) and II, Missive, 2 vols,
ed. R.M. Zaccaria et al. (Florence, 1996).
18. N. Rubinstein, 'Lorenzo de' Medici: The Formation of his Statecraft', Proceedings of
the British Academy, 63 (1977), pp.71-94; Mallett, 'Diplomacy and War', pp.282-7;
M. Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance (Florence,
1994), pp.81-109.
19. For the role of Nicolo di Ca' Pesaro, a prominent Venetian politician, in secret
negotiations between Florence and Venice during the War of Ferrara, see Lettere di
Lorenzo de' Medici, vol.7, pp.235-7 and 317-18.
20. The quality of the information provided both by Lorenzo de' Medici in his letters to
Florentine ambassadors in France, and by those ambassadors back to Italy, was often
commented upon. For examples of this, see Lettere di Lorenzo de' Medici, vol.5,
pp.40-61 and 206-16.
21. 'Come dice, ser Niccolo, non pensarebbe il diavolo quello che puo qualche volta
giovare uno aviso' (Bernardo Rucellai, Florentine ambassador in Milan to Lorenzo de'
Medici, 7 April 1482, Archivio Mediceo avanti il Principato (Florence), L1, 107).
22. This issue is discussed by M.E. Mallett, 'Ambassadors and their Audiences in
Renaissance Italy', Renaissance Studies, 8/3 (1994), pp.233-4. For career details of
Milanese ambassadors, see Cerioni, Diplomazia sforzesca, vol.1, and F. Leverotti,
Diplomazia e governo dello stato: i 'famigli cavalcanti' di Francesco Sforza (1450-66)
(Pisa, 1992), pp. 105-256.
23. On Bembo, see N. Giannetto, Bernardo Bembo: umanista e politico veneziano
(Florence, 1985), and on Soderini, see P. Clarke, The Soderini and the Medici (Oxford,
1991). Many Venetian ambassadors of the period are profiled in M.L. King, Venetian
Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986).
24. Zaccaria Barbaro, in a diplomatic career lasting from 1469 to 1485, went twice as
ambassador to Rome and Milan, and once each to Naples, Mantua and Ferrara
(Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, 6, pp.118-19). See also Corazzol, Dispacci di
Zaccaria Barbaro, passim.
25. Mallett, 'Ambassadors and their Audiences', pp.236-8.
26. See particularly Queller, Early Venetian Legislation, passim; idem, The Venetian
Patriciate: Reality versus Myth (Urbana and Chicago, 1986), pp. 113-71.
D
o
w
n
l
o
a
d
e
d

b
y

[
A
s
t
o
n

U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
]

a
t

0
9
:
1
7

2
3

F
e
b
r
u
a
r
y

2
0
1
4