Monica Azzolini, Isabella Lazzarini (éd.), “Italian Renaissance Diplomacy. A Sourcebook”, Brepols, 2017

Italian Renaissance Diplomacy. A Sourcebook

Diplomacy has never been a politically neutral field of historical research, even when it was confined to merely reconstructing the context of wars and revolutions. Since the nineteenth century, Renaissance Italy has been at the forefront of scholarship on diplomacy ; today, with increasing awareness of the long history of the subject as well as a broader spectrum of case studies, the study of Italian diplomacy has become sophisticated and highly articulated, offering scholars many new directions for further exploration. During the period c. 1350–c. 1520 covered by the present volume, diplomatic sources became extremely rich and abundant. This sourcebook presents a selection of primary materials, both published and unpublished, which are mostly unavailable to English readers : a broad range of diplomatic sources, thematically organized, are introduced, translated, and annotated by an international team of leading scholars of the Italian Renaissance. The aim of this volume is to illustrate the richness of diplomatic documents both for the study of diplomacy itself as well as for other areas of historical investigation, such as gender and sexuality, crime and justice, art and leisure, and medicine.

Table of Contents

Introduction • Monica Azzolini and Isabella Lazzarini

Part One : Diplomacy

Chapter 1 • Isabella Lazzarini • The Preparatory Work : From Choice to Instructions
Chapter 2 • Brian J. Maxson • Diplomatic Oratory
Chapter 3 • Isabella Lazzarini • The Conduct of the Embassy
Chapter 4 • Isabella Lazzarini • The Final Report

Part Two : Politics

Chapter 5 • John E. Law • Diplomacy and War
Chapter 6 • Monica Azzolini and Isabella Lazzarini • Diplomacy and the Papacy
Chapter 7 • Christine Shaw • Factions
Chapter 8 • Serena Ferente • Women and Men
Chapter 9 • Monica Azzolini • Ritual

Part Three : Society and Culture

Chapter 10 • Trevor Dean • Crime and Punishment
Chapter 11 • Elizabeth Horodowich • The Wider World : Foreigners, Travels, and Geography
Chapter 12 • Timothy McCall and Sean Roberts • Art and the Material Culture of Diplomacy
Chapter 13 • Monica Azzolini • Medicine and Astrology
Chapter 14 • Alessandro Arcangeli • Games and Leisure Activities

Contributors
Index of Translated Documents
General Index

Source