Ambassador Stella, Sanudo Diaries: May 11, 1526

nedits: Secretaries for ambassadors in Venetian Europe were drawn from the citizen class and were often crucial in maintaining the network of diplomatic policy and protocols and communications to all points throughout Europe and beyond. When to buy or sell or sign or just be at the right gathering. A great deal of responsibility could be placed on such a citizen foreign emissary and great care was used in choosing such representatives.

Sanudo Diaries: May 11, 1526 (41:322): "A bill was proposed by the councillors, the heads of the Forty, and the savi di Consiglio and di Terraferma concerning the expenditures of Andrea Rosso, our secretary to the most Christian king [of France]. [He purchased] a gown of black velvet, called a saio, and a robe of lightweight black damask for the sum of 48 ducats, as appears in his letters. Since it is not proper for him to be out of pocket for these items, it was proposed in the bill that the 48 ducats be paid by our Signoria. It passed."

Editor's note: "in the late fiifteenth and early sixteenth centuries Venice gave no European power more consideration than it gave France. The Venetian alliance with the French king,"the most Christian king" (il re christianissimo), was usually the hinge of its policy. " p. 218

nediits:Whether fearing them in the 1480's and '90's, in league with them or opposed as in the war of the League of Cambrai by 1509, France was also a continual focus in the 1500's because of all its seasonal markets. Though during France's reign of Louis XII 'there was little money passing between Paris and Venice' according to just such an ambassadorial  secretary as Zuan Piero Stella [and as late as 1498 (2:30-31)], Louis had claimed Milan as one of his father Charles VIII's captures and thereby his own inheritance and also saw something of the sort of a regional capital in Italy to oversee things (as opposed to the historical venue for that sort of french protectorate in Italy, Naples).  So of course it would be important to keep impressing the French.... This is an example of the kinds of networks that Venice used to guide policy abroad. 

[Braudel lays this out explicitly, though provisionally and in outline in the other post. Yes, it is all connected. They did it back then and they still do it now.]


in Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008