Carteggio degli oratori mantovani alla corte sforzesca (1450-1500). .

Isabella Lazzarini, ed. Carteggio degli oratori mantovani alla corte sforzesca (1450-1500). Vol. 1, 1450-1459.

(Publicazioni degli Archivi di Stato.) Rome: Ministero per i beni e la attivita culturali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1999. xx + 575 pp. index. n.p. ISBN: 88-7125-160-1.

-----. Carteggio degli oratori mantovani alla corte sforzesca (1450-1500). Vol. 2, 1460.

(Publicazioni degli Archivi di Stato.) Rome: Ministero per beni e la attivita culturali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 2000. 493 pp. index. n.p. ISBN: 88-7125-167-9.

-----. Carteggio degli oratori mantovani alla corte sforzesca (1450-1500). Vol. 3, 1461.

(Publicazioni degli Archivi di Stato.) Rome: Ministero per i beni cia attivita culturali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivisrici, 2000. 470 pp. index. n.p. ISBN: 88-7125-190-3.

Maria Nadia Covini, ed. Carteggio degli oratori mantovani al/a corte sforzesca (450-1500). Vol. 8, 1468-1471.

(Publicazioni degli Archivi di Stato.) Rome: Ministero per i beni e la attivita culturali, Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 2000. 688 pp. index. n.p. ISBN: 88-7125-168-7.

In the second half of the fifteenth century, the Gonzaga, the ruling family of the small city-state of Mantua, made the decision to hitch their fortunes to those of the neighboring Milanese duchy, serving the ruling Sforza as mercenary military captains and as allies in the fractured political landscape of Italy. Following a practice that was gradually becoming common in Italy, the Gonzaga sent an ambassador to the Sforza court to remain there as a resident and report regularly back to the marquis of Mantua. For nearly fifty years, the Gonzaga retained a nearly continuous presence there, and the resultant copious correspondence of these ambassadors is a remarkable resource for the history of Milan under the Sforza, for the general diplomatic and political history of Italy, and for the important changes taking place in diplomatic institutions and practice in the fifteenth century. Now, under the general direction of Franca Leverotti of the University of Turin, almost the entire run of this correspondence, foun d in the originals in the Archivio Gonzaga in the State Archives of Mantua, is being published over several years and in sixteen volumes, with the contributions of eight editors. This review covers the first four of those volumes to be published, volumes one through three (covering the years 1450-61) and volume eight (covering 1468-71). Volume seven (covering 1466-67) was also published in 1999, but this reviewer has not received a copy.

This Herculean effort on the part of Leverotti and her collaborators is part of a broader move to publish the wealth of fifteenth-century diplomatic correspondence that resides in Italian archives. Recent years have seen the publication of separate editions of the letters of Florentine, Milanese, and Venetian ambassadors at the Neapolitan court, as well as the ongoing project to publish the letters of Lorenzo de' Medici, the vast majority of which are diplomatic in nature. There are also the slightly older volumes of the correspondence of Milanese ambassadors in Burgundy and Milan. The sum total of these efforts is to make easily accessible many important sources for the study of Italian political and diplomatic history in the Renaissance.

The ambassadors of the marquis of Mantua were uniquely well positioned to inform us on both the history of fifteenth-century Milan and its court, and on the broader diplomatic and political history of Italy. The Mantuan dispatches from Milan that make up this collection are distinguished by their continuity, the richness of information that they contain, and by their sheer volume. After 1458, there are on average over 300 dispatches a year: these ambassadors wrote nearly every day, and on occasion twice a day. Volume three, which covers the year 1461, alone contains 381 letters, all but a few written by the resident ambassador, Vincenzo della Scalona. There was much to write about that year, for Francesco Sforza was suffering from a life-threatening illness (an extensive modern-day medical diagnosis of this condition is provided by Giorgio Cosmacini in this volume), a matter of great concern to the Marquis Ludovico. Some of the letters, of course, are quite short, informing the marquis of the arrival in Milan of a certain individual, or passing on a request for a letter of recommendation. But others, written at times of intense diplomatic or social activity at the Sforza court, or during periods when a new condotta was being negotiated, are exceptionally long, running as much as six pages. These ambassadors clearly worked hard and left few details unmentioned.

Their letters reveal the wide array of tasks to which these resident ambassadors were expected to attend. They were, of course, the principal means by which the Gonzaga managed their alliance with the Sforza, a link that was of the utmost importance to a small, vulnerable, and resource-poor state such as Mantua. This was not always an easy task, for the priorities of the two allies were rarely the same. These dispatches make clear that each side sought to get the most out of the alliance, while reciprocating as little as they possibly could. It seems that the duke of Milan always wanted a larger and more energetic military contribution by the marquis of Manrua than he was ever willing or able to give, while the marquis was constantly seeking to minimize the expense and danger to which he and his forces would be exposed. This friction over the nature of the marquis' contributions to the military projects of the duke was undoubtedly enhanced by the difficulties that the dukes had in paying the stipend called fo r by the condotta on time or in full. Part of the problem was that like most late medieval rulers, the dukes had serious cash flow problems; the Mantuan ambassadors, in their search for the marquis' cash, were handed off from ducal official to ducal official, who feinted and made empty promises in a seemingly endless dance to avoid paying up. Even when the ambassadors were able to secure promissory notes, this often only led to an equally frustrating search for financiers in Milan who would accept the duke's credit. A large portion of the ambassadors' dispatches, sometimes in mind-numbing detail, deal with the frustrations of the marquis in getting the money that was due from his contract.

Fortunately, the ambassadors have a lot to say on a host of other topics as well. They naturally report on the internal politics of the Milanese regime. The Sforza regime was an insecure one; Francesco Sforza had only become duke in 1450 and was never able to obtain investiture from the Holy Roman Emperor. Much of the attention of Francesco was directed toward securing his international position in the years after the Peace of Lodi in 1454. He sought to secure his western flank against France, and was actively involved in the politics of Genoa (which would eventually come under direct Milanese control in 1464) and Naples, where he actively supported Ferrante d'Aragona in the war of Neapolitan succession that began in 1458. These affiirs are covered in exceptional detail in the letters in volumes one through three of this series. Similarly, the correspondence in volume eight chronicles the aggressive, mercurial personality of Francesco's heir, Galeazzo Maria, who bickered with his mother, antagonized Milan's a llies, and frequently drove the prim Mantuan ambassador to distraction. As a window on the history of the Sforza, this body of correspondence is without rival.

The voluminous nature of this correspondence stands as a testament to the new role of the resident ambassador as an information gatherer. Certainly these ambassadors were expected to seek out news on particular topics and people, but there is also an unmistakable fly-on-the-wall character to these letters. The ambassadors of the Gonzaga, while they had to be discerning in their reporting of information, clearly erred on the side of too much information, rather than too little. It is this tendency that makes these letters such a remarkable resource for historians today.

These ambassadors had consistent access not only to the duke and his inner circle, but also to the vast quantities of information coming in from the wide-ranging corps of Milanese ambassadors stationed all over Italy and beyond, the most ambitious network deployed by any European state at that time. Indeed, the Mantuan ambassadors often heard these letters read in council, and were even permitted to make copies of them from time to time. As a result, they packed their dispatches with news from not only Rome, Naples, and Genoa, but also England, trance, the Empire, and the Near East. Clearly their employers were interested in receiving such news, both because their flute was closely linked with that of the duke of Milan and because the Gonzaga were a family with significant international political and marital connections in Germany and in France. In many of the letters, the ambassadors of the Gonzaga provide summaries of all that they have learned, garnered from the correspondence of Milanese ambassadors repor ting from all over Italy and beyond, thus providing a panoramic snapshot of the political situation in Europe. These letters reveal that any characterization of Italy in the period of the Italian League as a state system largely isolated from the politics of the broader European milieu is untenable.

The ambassadors sought news from a myriad of sources: the duke, of course, but also members of the duke's council, Milanese nobles, other ambassadors, and a variety of individuals identified only as "a good source," "a friend of mine," or "someone friendly to you." These ambassadors could cultivate these various contacts, for they remained at Milan for a long time. The chief representative in Milan for the entire period covered in the first three volumes (1453-61), the aforementioned Vincenzo della Scalona, spent in total over a decade at the Sforza court. The letters in volume eight introduce us to Zaccaria Saggi da Pisa, the remarkable ambassador who ended up serving in Milan for all of two decades. These men lived in the house that the marquis of Mantua owned in Milan, and in essence became part of the social furniture at the ducal court. Saggi, some years later, was even appointed to the secret ducal council, thus residing at the very center of decision-making in the duchy.

The editor of the first three volumes under review is Isabella Lazzarini, who has elsewhere done important work on the Gonzaga administration in Mantua. Her expertise in this area is reflected in her useful account of the development of a diplomatic chancery under Ludovico Gonzaga in the introduction to the first volume, and in the information that she includes in the endnotes. Maria Nadia Covini, the editor of volumes six and seven, is an expert on the bureaucracy of the Sforza state and the author of a book on the armed forces of the duke. Her endnotes repeatedly reveal her extensive knowledge of the inner workings of Milanese politics.

Indeed, the endnotes to the letters in all of the volumes under review do an admirable job of identifying the personages mentioned in the text -- no small task, given the vast cast of officials, ambassadors, courtiers, and hangers-on who inhabited the space of the Sforza court. The endnotes tell us less about the events described in the letters than we might want to know, but the summary of major relevant events provided in the introductions to each volume goes some way to filling that gap.

I should mention here that these volumes supply only one side of the correspondence; there are no letters of instruction from the marquis included here. The decision not to include these is understandable, for their inclusion would add minimal benefit -- most of these letters (I have read many of them in the State Archive in Mantua) are short, uninteresting, and concerned largely with the infernal matter of getting the condotta paid. What is more, they would have added hundreds more pages of text. The editor did make the commendable decision to include a list of letters (and their dates) that the marquis and his wife sent to their ambassadors in Milan, but she might have included just a few sample letters of instruction, to give the reader a flavor of this material.

As I read through these letters, I imagined how helpful brief summaries of the letters' content at the beginning of each entry would have been. Recent editions of fifteenth-century diplomatic correspondence, for example the letters of Milanese ambassadors at the court of Alfonso of Aragon, edited by Francesco Senatore, have included both summaries and an index of people and places mentioned, making life a whole lot easier for researchers. The indices of people and places provided in each of the volumes are helpful to the reader looking for something in particular, but letter summaries would have been even more so.

These drawbacks do little, however, to mitigate the pleasure of seeing these letters in print and widely available to scholars. The existence of these volumes, along with the other editions of collected correspondence mentioned above, and of the splendid Ilardi Microfilm Collection of Renaissance Diplomatic Documents, housed at Yale, means that a great deal of primary-source research in fifteenth-century Italian diplomatic history can now be undertaken without a trip to the archives in Italy. (Not entirely a good thing, of course.) I hope now that American Renaissance scholars will follow the lead of their Italian and British colleagues and start to give these wonderful sources the attention that they surely deserve.