Description
Book SynopsisThe establishment of permanent embassies in fifteenth-century Italy has traditionally been regarded as the moment of transition between medieval and modern diplomacy. In The Refugee-Diplomat, Diego Pirillo offers an alternative history of early modern diplomacy, centered not on states and their official representatives but around the figure of the refugee-diplomat and, more specifically, Italian religious dissidents who forged ties with English and northern European Protestants in the hope of inspiring an Italian Reformation.
Pirillo reconsiders how diplomacy worked, not only within but also outside of formal state channels, through underground networks of individuals who were able to move across confessional and linguistic borders, often adapting their own identities to the changing political conditions they encountered. Through a trove of diplomatic and mercantile letters, inquisitorial records, literary texts, marginalia, and visual material, The Refugee-Diplomat
Trade Review
Traditionally, diplomacy has been defined as the formal exchange of ambassadors between sovereign states. There have always been problems with this, because there were also informal means of communication; in addition, merchants, political dissidents, spies, and travelers gathered information and passed on news. But the concept was so strongly reinforced by Garrett Mattingly's 1955 Renaissance Diplomacy that only recently was it challenged by advocates of the "New Diplomacy."... Few have taken on Mattingly's formulation as boldly as Pirillo.
* Choice *
The book provides an excellent and valuable study of the circulation of manuscripts in the first information age...In this portrayal of Venice in the Reformation, the author conveys the anxiety produced by the new media landscape. With his integration of book history with diplomacy, Pirillo makes an original and important contribution to the study of early modern Europe.
* Renaissance Quarterly *
This is a fine contribution both to the religious history of the European Reformations and to diplomatic historiography and will surely have significant influence in the field.
* AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. When Diplomacy Fails
2. Tudor Diplomacy and Italian Heterodoxy
3. Spying on the Council of Trent
4. The Merchant, the Queen and the Refugees
5. Reading Tasso
6. Reading Venetian Relazioni
7. Great Expectations
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
