Renaissance Diplomacy

The article is devoted to the little known but interesting Polish diplomat Mikołaj Sękowski, the envoy to Naples and Madrid in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Th e main purpose of the text is to complete Sękowski's biography with new details, and to shed a different light on his activity, placing it within the context of the beginnings of public diplomacy. Th rough the analysis of documental and literary sources comprised principally between 1576 and 1588, the author argues that Mikołaj Sękowski had, for more than a decade, remained a stable and active source of information about Poland in Italy in Spain. Th us, he provided an additional and unusual element of 'soft diplomacy' to the Polish foreign service actions in Naples and Madrid, aimed principally at recovering the Neapolitan sums.

Using the legal literature of the ius commune and a body of texts commonly known as the “treatises on the ambassador”, this research examines the birth and the development of the "experience" of diplomacy from the 13th to the 17th Century. It aims, in particular, to explore the development of the figure of the ambassador within a field of problematization involving ethics, politics and law.
After some methodological and historical remarks, the thesis deals with the development of the status of the ambassador from two perspectives, the legal and the professional. Regarding his legal status, the medieval legal conceptualisation of the role of the ambassador as a genuine public “office”, and that of the diplomatic function as “representation”, are examined. The way in which these conceptualisations help to define the negotiating powers conferred on the ambassador, his immunities and the honours to which he is entitled is then considered. This analysis allows for an investigation of the complex links between the exercise of diplomacy and claims to sovereignty during Europe’s transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity. Regarding his professional status, the thesis reconstructs the functions of the ambassador (particularly in relation to information gathering and negotiation), the means provided for the ambassador to undertake his functions (his salary and the assignment of an escort) and the objective, intellectual or moral qualities required of him. As well as illustrating the techniques which have been required for ambassadorial success since the 15th Century, this analysis offers some hints for studying the professionalization of public officials and the emergence of the modern criteria of political analysis.

The complex life of Frederick of Aragon, second-born of Ferdinando I of Naples, is analyzed through a work of decomposition and interpretation of the data that concern to the political, cultural and ideological physiognomy of a character considered marginal in the the dramatic Italian events of the end of the XV century. Frederick represents instead, in his formation and his roles, the extraordinary experiment that was the Aragonese system of government, and the meaning of a whole political civilization: the Renaissance of the specula principis, of the political art,  that can show once more the measure of its inexhaustible originality through the reconstruction of lives as this, transversals, uniques and deeply absorbed in the practice of the power.

Hungarian version of an earlier English article.

Relations of King Matthias Corvinus and the papacy have been studied by many historians since the nineteenth century. Uncovering and publishing sources that would elucidate this part of papal and central-European history was of prime interest. This paper tries to bring some new light to these relations thanks to a newly discovered instructions of the king to his envoy, Miklós Nyújtódi Székely, bishop of Knin, who travelled to Rome sometime in the beginning of 1472. On the basis of these instructions we can reconstruct the king's intentions and plans in the context of the political situation of central Europe in the early 1470s. At that time, relations to Bohemia and Poland set the framework of the policies, which were influenced from the papal side by the present papal nuncios, especially Lorenzo Roverella.

Despite fragmentation, heterogeneity and the continuous pressure of the Ottoman Empire, early modern “divided Hungary” witnessed a surprising cultural flourishing in the sixteenth century, and maintained its common cultural identity in the seventeenth century. This could hardly have been possible without intense exchange with the rest of Europe. This three-volume series about early modern Hungary divided by Ottoman presence approaches themes of exchange of information and knowledge from two perspectives, namely, exchange through traditional channels provided by religious/educational institutions and the system of European study tours (Volume 1 – Study Tours and Intellectual-Religious Relationships), and the less regular channels and improvised networks of political diplomacy (Volume 2 – Diplomacy, Information Flow and Cultural Exchange). A by-product of this exchange of information was the changing image of early modern Hungary and Transylvania, which is presented in the third and in some aspects concluding volume of essays (Volume 3 – The Making and Uses of the Image of Hungary and Transylvania). Unlike earlier approaches to the same questions, these volumes draw an alternative map of early modern Hungary. On this map, the centre-periphery conceptions of European early modern culture are replaced by new narratives written from the perspective of historical actors, and the dominance of Western-Hungarian relationships is kept in balance due to the significance of Hungary’s direct neighbours, most importantly the Ottoman Empire.

The editors of the volumes—Gábor Almási, Szymon Brzeziński, Ildikó Horn, Kees Teszelszky and Áron Zarnóczki—are based at Hungarian, Polish and Dutch institutions of historical research. Their collaboration is the result of a joint research programme generously financed by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund and carried out at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest.

Die "Ewige Stadt" zwischen - Kaiser- und Papsttum zu Beginn des 16. Jh. steht im
Mittelpunkt der vorliegenden MA-Arbeit. Zu jedem dieser "Meta-Themen"
(Stadtgeschichte, Italienische Kriege, Renaissance-Kurie) liegen umfangreiche Studien
bzw. Synthesen vor. Angesichts dieser Ausgangslage versucht die vorliegende Arbeit eine
spannende Verbindung zwischen diesen drei Kembereichen zu schlagen und strebt
danach, die stadtrömische Chronistik mit diplomatischer Korrespondenz verschiedener
Provenienz zu verflechten, um nach diskursiven Kontinuitäten bzw. Brüchen diskursiven
Elemente zu suchen
Anschließend an die konzisen Hinführungen zun den hauptsächlichen Quellengattungen - Ricordanze und diplomatische Quellen - finden sich die drei Themen - Aufstand
der Barone (1511), Sacco di Roma (1527) sowie die "Türkengefahr" der 1520er bis
1540er Jahre.
Dabei zielt die vorliegende Untersuchung darauf ab, die besondere Rolle der Patrizierfamilie der Colonna innert der drei behandelten
Themenbereiche aufzuzeigen. Dabei zeichnet die Untersuchung die vielfachen Berührungspunkte
zwischen der "großen Diplomatie" und den Colonna, und damit die Verflechtung auf mehreren Ebenen eben dieser Familie "urbi et orbi", also in der Stadt und auf dem Weltkreis. Ebenso wird die Wichtigkeit der Stadt Roms, auch ihrer politischen Institutionen, in den Rechenspielen der globalen Akteure aufgezeigt.

This essay argues that the modern newswriting tradition can be traced back to the networks of Italian medieval merchants and Renaissance diplomats. As of the late 1200s, merchant letters reveal an increasing tendency to report important political and military events for the sake of business interests. The emergence of permanent embassies in Italy in the mid-1400s gave a further impetus to the development of newswriting techniques, since one of the pivotal tasks of the Renaissance ambassadors was to keep their superiors informed about evolving situations in the foreign courts. As a result, both merchants and diplomats had to break with the rigid medieval letter-writing tradition in order to develop new rhetorical strategies capable of capturing the complex realities they observed. This study analyzes some of the key elements of this emerging reporting style such as the dateline, the lead, basic story structures, but also the early notions of objectivity that in their own way fostered the techniques capable of conveying direct speech. In conclusion, this essay points out several manuals for Renaissance diplomats and their secretaries that already clearly formulated the six journalistic Ws and also pondered the ability of news-writers to manipulate their audiences.

Nous nous proposons ici de poser les premiers jalons pour une recherche portant sur la question de la reconnaissance en tant que pratique fondamentale dans le processus de constitution de l’État, afin de problématiser le rapport entre l’exercice de la diplomatie et la possession de la souveraineté à la fin du Moyen-âge et au début de l’époque moderne. Nous  chercherons à mettre en lumière surtout deux niveaux de la reconnaissance : le premier, qui opère sur le plan de l’existence juridique, constitue la conditio sine qua non de l’établissement d’une relation diplomatique et implique une série de questions comme le droit d’ambassade et l’obligation de recevoir les ambassadeurs étrangers ; le second, qui opère sur le plan de la réputation, intervient après que la relation diplomatique a été établie et concerne plutôt un ensemble de problèmes liés au cérémonial diplomatique, notamment les préséances. Par là nous espérons montrer que la diplomatie, loin d’intervenir après-coup pour relier des sujets politiques déjà formés, a été un vecteur capital dans le processus de constitution des États et de l’ordre « international » moderne.

Im Rahmen der Erneuerung der Studien zur politischen und diplomatischen Geschichte Italiens analysiert dieser Beitrag die Dynamiken des frühen Quattrocento mit dem Ziel, ein neues Licht auf die verflochtenen Beziehungen zu werfen, die die Republik mit den Legaten von Bologna unterhielt, die in den zwanziger Jahren des fünfzehnten Jahrhunderts aufeinander folgten (Carrillo, Condulmer, Alamanni). Die vorliegende Studie zeigt daher anhand der Schnittmenge von Archivdokumentation und vorhandener Bibliographie Elemente und Wirkungen der florentinischen Diplomatie mit diesen päpstlichen Vertretern auf und zeigt nicht nur die Bedeutung solcher Verhandlungen im Konflikt mit Filippo Maria Visconti, sondern auch, dass bestimmte sukzessive politische Entwicklungen gerade in diesen Verbindungen grundgelegt waren.

Nous sommes aujourd’hui accoutumés à voir des chefs d’État échanger des poignées de main relayées par les médias, mais il n’en a pas toujours été ainsi. L’histoire de l’Europe comporte en effet des périodes où il était courant que les monarques se rencontrent et d’autres où, à l’inverse, ils évitaient à tout prix de se trouver en présence de leurs homologues. À cet égard, la Renaissance est un moment d’effervescence pour les entrevues entre princes: elles sont particulièrement fréquentes, spectaculaires et «médiatisées» à cette époque, avant de connaître une certaine éclipse qui durera jusqu’à la fin de l’Ancien Régime.

Summer Lecture
Professor Jyotsna Singh
Anglican Global Crossings and the Specters of Islam in the Early Modern
Period
13 July 2015 5.30pm, Room 112, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1





The Performance and Experience of Domestic Service
Organiser: Dr. Emma Whipday
Saturday 18th July 2015, 2pm-6.30pm
Room 538, Birkbeck, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX