The Arte and Offitio of the Pope in Italian Diplomatic Correspondence, 1464-1492
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The Arte and Offitio of the Pope in Italian Diplomatic
Correspondence, 1464–1492
Paul Marcus Dover
Mediterranean Studies, Volume 24, Number 2, 2016, pp. 139-164 (Article)
Published by Penn State University Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/644088
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]MS
The arte and offitio of the Pope in Italian
Diplomatic Correspondence, 1464–1492
Paul Marcus Dover, Kennesaw State University
abstract: This article focuses on diplomatic correspondence in order to explore the nuanced
rhetorical strategies employed by foreign ambassadors to describe papal dissimulation under
popes Paul II, Sixtus IV, and Innocent VIII (1464–92). Because they were aware that these popes
acted largely according to the calculus of political princes, ambassadors expected to be misled by
the pope and his curial or familial associates. The delicate business of reporting that the Holy
Father was lying was an arte of its own, as ambassadors used a variety of formulations, describ-
ing the “sweetness” or “beauty” of the pope’s words, or claiming that the pontiff had forgotten his
“office” (offitio) in his pursuit of political and territorial ends.
keywords: diplomacy, rhetoric, Pope Paul II, Pope Sixtus IV, Pope Innocent VIII
Introduction
In early 1486, the Florentine ambassador in Rome, Pierfilippo Pandolfini, wrote to
Niccolò Michelozzi, his colleague in Milan and personal secretary of Lorenzo de’
Medici, about the particular challenges of serving at the papal court. It is a reveal-
ing letter, as it is one ambassador writing to a friend who was also on diplomatic
assignment. As a result, it is free of the rhetorical restraint typical of a dispatch to
a prince or consultative body like the Dieci di Balìa in Florence.1 Pierfilippo wrote
that “if you have had varying things from here [in Rome], this is a function of the
nature of this place and of the times, which at the moment produce similar fruit:
for that which I write to Lorenzo tonight, you will see it change. I have for the
better come to this conclusion: believe day by day. And accordingly, I will look
at the outcomes (effeti) in order not to make a mistake.”2 As he wrote, Pandolfini
Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 24, No. 2, 2016
Copyright © 2016 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA140 Paul Marcus Dover
was receiving conflicting information from the pope and from the king of Naples,
who were at that time engaged in the bitter struggle of the Neapolitan Barons’
War, a revolt against Aragonese rule in the southern kingdom aided and abetted
by Pope Innocent VIII. Both sides wished to broadcast their own very different
views of what was at stake and who was in the wrong. Pandolfini’s Machiavellian
resolution—that he would evaluate according to the ends—was unsurprising,
given that he had long been exposed to the dissimulation that was so common
at Rome and at other Italian courts. Like other ambassadors stationed there, he
expected to be misled by cardinals, by papal officials, and by the pope himself. As
Pandolfini was writing, Rome was arguably the most important diplomatic center
in all of Europe—virtually every state sent envoys to Rome, not only to discuss
the business of the Church but also because it had become a center for diplomatic
exchange and intrigue. Numerous Italian princes and regimes kept an ambassador
there more or less permanently, not only because they needed to carry out business
with the pope and cardinals, but also because the papal court had become a meet-
ing place and listening post for representatives from across Europe.
Papal dissimulation, deflection, and delay were regularly addressed in the diplo-
matic correspondence of the period 1464 to 1492, which included the pontificates
of Paul II, Sixtus IV, and Innocent VIII. In the Italian state system that emerged
in the wake of the Peace of Lodi (1454) between the Duchy of Milan and Republic
of Venice, the papacy was one of the five major territorial states, along with Milan,
Venice, the Republic of Florence, and the Kingdom of Naples. In the formation
of the Italian League in 1455, which brought all of these powers into nominal alli-
ance, the papacy assumed an awkwardly bifurcated role. The aegis of Pope Martin
V made the League a “holy” one, ostensibly directed toward the protection of Italy
and Christendom against the threat from the Ottomans. At the same time, the
papacy was also a signatory, that is, a state with the same sorts of political, mili-
tary, and territorial preoccupations that concerned the other chief members of the
League. The League was expressly designed to prevent such concerns from upsetting
the general peace of Italy. The popes of this era, therefore, in addition to being reli-
gious and spiritual leaders, also pursued ends that were difficult to distinguish from
those of temporal, territorial princes. Unsurprisingly, such conflation generated
confusion and mistrust. It also presented political and rhetorical challenges to the
statesmen sent to, or resident at, the papal Curia. In an age that saw a marked increase
in diplomatic exchanges and in the overall volume of correspondence, envoys reg-
ularly expressed their frustrations with these shifting and sometimes overlapping
identities and with the ways that popes drew on their spiritual arsenal for the pursuit
of temporal ends. As we will see, ambassadors employed language that captured theThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 141
sense that the popes were transgressing the spiritual and ecclesiastical contours of
their appointment as head of the Church—they were accused of neglecting their
rightful “office” as pontiffs, and in so doing threatening the peace of Italy.
Of course, popes effectively acting as territorial princes, and complaints by
neighboring Italians about such activity, were hardly new to the fifteenth century.
The previous century had seen major military campaigns by the Avignon popes
John XXII and Innocent VI (led by their warrior cardinals, Bertrand du Poujet
and Gil Albornoz, respectively) to restore their political authority in the Papal
States. It was these efforts, and especially those of Albornoz in the 1350s, which
essentially made the papal lands of central Italy a territorial state, by asserting
papal political authority, standardizing law and custom, and cracking down on
privileges and exemptions. In so doing, they also effectively made the pope a ter-
ritorial prince. The subsequent debacle of the Schism (1378–1417), during which
there were rival popes in Rome and Avignon, and the challenge of conciliarism,
with repeated calls for church councils to decide church doctrine and policy col-
lectively, not only had undermined the sacerdotal authority of the papal monar-
chical model, but also had weakened the position in Italy of the papal state. The
papal territory in central Italy found itself buffeted by the ambitions of major
players, such as the Visconti in Milan, and by the assertion of virtual indepen-
dence by petty princes nominally subject to the pope. The sensitivity of Italian
statesmen in the second half of the fifteenth century to the political aspirations of
the popes must therefore be seen in the light of the efforts of the popes in those
decades to restore both their spiritual and temporal authority. A return to the
status quo ante was, unsurprisingly, perceived as dangerous novelty. Such anxiety
on the part of the other states in the Italian League helps explain the persistence
of conciliar appeals, which were launched for political as much as doctrinal rea-
sons, even after Pius II issued his condemnation of conciliarism in the papal bull
Execrabilis in 1460.3
In the fifteenth century the offices of pope and cardinal became prizes,
emblematic of real and symbolic power for the elite families of Italy and yet
another arena for their mutual competition. The diplomatic concerns of the
secular states of Italy and the papacy converged, as the competition between the
leading political actors of the peninsula played itself out within the Curia and
College of Cardinals. The Renaissance papacy for the period from Paul II (elected
1464) to Innocent VIII (died 1492) had a certain unity, characterized by an increas-
ing Italianization of the Curia and of the popes’ political vision, by an ever more
princely style of rule, by increased occurrence of nepotism and corruption, and
by a willingness to use war as an instrument of papal policy in regional squabbles142 Paul Marcus Dover
over territory and sovereignty.4 The nepotism of these pontiffs helped transform
the College of Cardinals into a place in which the great families of Italy sought
representation, and this went hand in hand with the emergence of virtual satellite
courts in Rome of cardinal-princes such as Francesco Gonzaga, Ascanio Sforza,
and Giuliano della Rovere, all of whom oversaw significant households that were
centers for patronage and information exchange.5 Thus the spiritual and univer-
sal concerns of the papacy, while remaining important and frequent points of
reference, were gradually nudged out for attention by territorial preoccupations
and the interests of the papal familia, broadly construed. Popes acted less in the
mold of a spiritual sponsor of a general Italian League, as Nicholas V had been
in 1455, than as individual princes participating in the shifting leghe particolari,
the opposing alliances made up of two or more of the principal Italian states,
which helped maintain a rough geopolitical balance.6 In the forty years between
the formation of the Italian League and the invasion of Italy by the French king
Charles VIII (1494), the semi-independent vicariates in Umbria, the Marches, and
Romagna were repeatedly flash points for political tension. Neighboring states
competed with the papacy for influence and sought to resist the papal assertion of
sovereignty in cities like Rimini, Pesaro, Bologna, Città di Castello, and Perugia.
To some degree all the popes in the second half of the fifteenth century aspired to
extend the temporal power of the papacy; this was especially true starting with the
pontificate of Sixtus IV, whom Ferdinand Gregorovius labeled the first papa-re of
the Renaissance.7
Ambassadors in Rome were consumed chiefly by political affairs. The endless
search for information, which became an essential part of an ambassador’s job in
the second half of the fifteenth century, constrained these envoys to engage in
myriad meetings with many people. Ambassadors also continued their relentless
pursuit of benefices, which Roberto Bizzocchi has called “a giant and yearly nego-
tiation,” replete with intrigue, bribes, and the art of compromise.8 It required the
solicitation of a great many people in order to curry favor, engage in horse trading,
and circulate the names of potential candidates. There were countless ancillary
personnel at the Roman court, named and unnamed in the diplomatic corre-
spondence. Rome was a unique and polyvalent political and social space awash in
news and gossip.9 Awareness of these demands led the Bishop of Modena, Giovan
Andrea Boccaccio, in July 1490 to decline an assignment as the representative of
Ercole d’Este, the Duke of Ferrara, in Rome. He lamented that in order to do that
job, one always had to be “in motu et cum la pena in mano in avisare il suo Signore”
(on the move and with pen in hand to inform one’s Lord). He suggested that a
layman would be better suited to the position, as he would be more accustomedThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 143
to being on horseback all the time, visiting cardinals and ambassadors, in order to
be informed of everything.10
In Rome, what one heard on the edges often differed from what one heard
from the figure at the center, the pope. The Curia was widely described in diplo-
matic dispatches of the time as a “labyrinth,” and successful ambassadors estab-
lished interlocking and overlapping networks of social and political connections
that enabled them to confirm, corroborate, or bring into question the validity of
the news they had received.11 Complaints that there was so much to report from
a great many sources, and much of it contradictory, making it difficult to know
precisely what was true, were legion. Ambassadors fully expected to hear dissimu-
lation from the pope and his associates, and thus they sought means of corroborat-
ing or contradicting what they had heard. In 1467, a Milanese ambassador wrote
to Duke Galeazzo Maria on these difficulties peculiar to Rome: “By God, you
would be well advised not to trust so readily all the news [that you hear], although
I am sure that you are prudent enough that you will understand what is true. I
write you what I hear in good faith so that Your Lordship will know the whole.”12
Such comments were commonplace from ambassadors stationed in Rome—with
so much news in circulation, ambassadors were forced to distinguish between
the confirmed, the provisional, the incomplete, and the false. Often that meant
correcting what they had reported in previous dispatches. “We now have news
that many of the things [that we have heard] regarding the Turks are not true,” a
Mantuan ambassador had to report in 1466.13 Ambassadors were thus accustomed
to hearing half-truths and outright falsehoods, even, as it turned out, from the
pope himself.
Papal Dissimulation
If faced with papal dissimulation or fabrication, ambassadors in Rome were placed
in a difficult position. They were usually reluctant to state baldly that the pope
was lying and generally hesitated to blame the pope for the pursuit of his naked
personal political interests. At a court in which the pope was not only the prince,
but also God’s representative on earth, ambassadors stationed there found it dif-
ficult, in their interactions with the pontiff and with his officials, to oppose the
pope’s designs or to assign him responsibility for hostile policies. They were likely
to be sanguine when confiding in colleagues or writing dispatches. It was rare for
an ambassador to confront the pope over his lack of truthfulness, as Agostino
Rossi, the Milanese ambassador in Rome, did in 1468 when he accused Paul II of144 Paul Marcus Dover
making promises he had no intention of keeping. Agostino lamented to the Duke
of Milan that in making such remonstrations he had been forced to “speak the
devil” (dire el diavolo). The pope promptly accused him of “painting hell” (dipin-
gere l’inferno) and threatened to have him locked up in the Castello Sant’Angelo.14
Similarly, writing in a dispatch that the pope was seeking to mislead or acting
in a fashion indistinguishable from a secular prince was a sensitive business. Some
of the obvious reticence among the ambassadors may have had to do with the
likelihood that letters coming out of Rome would be seized and opened. This
was a constant danger, especially with much of the immediately surrounding ter-
ritories in the hands of the Orsini and Colonna families, both of which meddled
in papal politics and had partisan interests in the broader Italian political scene.
Ambassadors often suspected that the pope was involved in the interception of
diplomatic packets. In 1479, amid the Pazzi War, a conflict that involved most of
the major states of Italy, the ambassador of Ercole d’Este reported that couriers
were regularly being waylaid and their dispatches and horses seized. Suspicion
fell on the papal nephew Girolamo Riario, but it was also broadly assumed that
the pope was complicit in what the ambassador called a nefario caso (nefarious
incident). In October 1485, upon the interception of the post between Milan and
Naples, suspicion once again fell on the pope, in this case Innocent VIII, who
had sided against the king of Naples in the revolt of the Neapolitan barons.15
Complaints about intercepted letters at Rome were nearly as frequent as com-
plaints about money.16 The risk of a letter falling into wrong hands and causing
embarrassment to the correspondent was a real one.
But the risk of interception did not always preclude the inclusion of both overt
and oblique references to the Holy Father’s truthfulness in diplomatic correspon-
dence. While not nearly as ambitious in his political designs as the two pontiffs
who succeeded him, Pope Paul II (1464–71) aroused the ire of numerous ambas-
sadors assigned to his court. The complaints of ambassadors about Paul II focused
primarily on his variability, his inaccessibility, his tendency to temporize, and the
maddening hours that he kept. One ambassador described him as the pope who
turned night into day.17 But ambassadors also commented on his dissimulation. A
Milanese ambassador in Rome, Lorenzo da Pesaro, observed of Paul shortly after
his election: “It is certain that His Holiness speaks very well, but his words differ
from the facts.”18 When, in 1468, Paul, who was working to assemble support for
a renewal of the Italian League of 1455, insisted that Ferrante of Naples obey him
in everything, Agostino Rossi wrote that this was intended “only to sow suspicion
among those who are not familiar with his arte.”19 In another letter, Agostino
described an example of such arte: “it seems a good game (bel zoco) to appearThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 145 indifferent and neutral, showing himself not to be on one side or the other, only to be the master and [then] be able to pit one side against the other.”20 The other Milanese ambassador in Rome at the time, Giovanni Bianchi, also referred to the arte of the pope. Giovanni believed that Paul was playing to Jean of Anjou and his designs on Italy and at the same time encouraging the competing ambitions of Venice.21 It was typical for Paul to speak “the sweetest words” (dolzissime parole) and to deliver them in long-winded discourses.22 Such harangues were sometimes described by those subjected to them as “sermons” (prediche), a word that aptly captured the dual identity of the pope as pastor and prince. Such arte, so frequently described in the diplomatic correspondence of the period, was meant to mislead or confuse. Popes were just as apt to use it as sec- ular princes. It was broadly assumed in the wake of the Pazzi Conspiracy, for example, that Sixtus IV was complicit in the plot against the Medici, and that his subsequent actions, regardless of his rhetoric, were chiefly designed to remove the Medici from their perch.23 Lorenzo de’ Medici himself wrote to his ambassador in Naples, Giovanni Lanfredini, in January 1478 that Sixtus was seeking to detach Florence from her alliances sotto el colore (under the appearance) of reconstitut- ing a universal league.24 In the spring of 1479, ambassadors in Rome described a pope who, while making onerous demands of Lorenzo de’ Medici that he knew Lorenzo could never accept, nonetheless reassured the ambassadors of the League of Milan, Florence, and Venice that he desired peace. The League ambassadors did not find such reassurances from the pope convincing, and relied instead on other avenues of information. “[We] hear from a reputable source that neither the King [of Naples] nor the Pope want peace under any circumstances and that at Naples they are making the greatest preparations in the world for war,” they reported.25 Several days later, when Sixtus informed the League ambassadors, with an air of great humility, that he intended to remove Florence from under the interdict and that his ally, the king of Naples, wanted to establish peace on the basis of the Peace of Lodi of 1454, one ambassador observed that Ferrante was at that very time gath- ering his forces; the ambassador made it clear that one should not trust the pope’s words (non si fidare di parolle).26 One of the more creative means of describing Sixtus’s tendency to dissemble in pursuit of his ambitions was offered by Zaccaria Saggi, long the Mantuan ambas- sador in Milan. Zaccaria was a fascinating figure, a prim, punctilious yet gossipy diplomat, whose dispatches betrayed a chronic logorrhea. A student at Vittorino da Feltre’s Casa Giocosa as a boy, alongside the Marquis Ludovico Gonzaga, he regularly sprinkled his lengthy dispatches with urbane literary references. In November 1481, Zaccaria reported that in Milan they had received the news that
146 Paul Marcus Dover
the pope had declared in a public consistory that he wanted Italy to be at peace
and that anyone who threatened that peace was inviting intervention from ultra-
montane powers, a clear reference to France. Zaccaria noted that Ludovico Sforza
had brightened at this news but also that Ludovico had chosen not to share some
of the other letters that had arrived from Rome, indicating that the information
therein was not as reassuring. Zaccaria then wrote the following: “Et ho risposto
per le buone parolle del papa, de l’ambasatore venetiano e del conte Geronimo
credere ch’el sia il testamento di ser Cozzo, ilquale moriendo disse a figliuoli: ‘Dite
bene e nol fate, fate male e no dite’” (I responded that from the pretty words of
the pope, the Venetian ambassador and Count Girolamo, one believes them to
be the testament of Sir Cozzo, who, as he was dying, told his sons: “Speak well
and don’t do it, do evil but don’t say it”).27 This is a paraphrase of one of the Detti
piacevoli of the humanist Angelo Poliziano, which in full reads: “Ser Cozzo, notaio
Fiorentino, lasciò a’ figliuoli per testamento questo ricordo: Fate sempre male, e
non lo dite; dite sempre bene, e non lo fate” (Sir Cozzo, a Florentine notary, left
to his sons as a testament this reminder: “always do evil, but don’t speak it; always
say good, but don’t do it”).28 Although the aphorism was intended to be humor-
ous, it is evident that in his intent, Zaccaria was not joking at all. He invoked the
same phrase twice more over the next few weeks, again in reference to the buone
parolle of the pope—“it appears that the pope is saying good words and making
the testament of Ser Cozzo,” he wrote on January 2, 1482.29
Before his election as pope, Innocent VIII, the cardinal of Molfetta, hardly
seemed likely to be a pontiff who would be accused of dissimulation in the pur-
suit of worldly goals. Giovanni Lanfredini, the Florentine ambassador in Rome
at the time of Innocent’s installation in August 1484, offered his assessment:
“[he is] of a sweet nature, very reflective, very timid, someone who wishes to
satisfy everyone and say yes to everyone.”30 But as the Florentine ambassador
Pierfilippo Pandolfini in Milan remarked in September 1484 in a letter to Lorenzo
de’ Medici: “experience shows that when these priests change status (stato), they
change nature.”31 And indeed, after a year of rebuilding papal finances (with con-
siderable assistance from Genoese bankers) in the wake of the mess left by Sixtus,
Innocent soon fulfilled Pandolfini’s expectations, as he focused his energies mani-
acally on overthrowing Ferrante in Naples, backing the Neapolitan barons in their
insurrection against the king.32
As a Genoese, Innocent was a natural foe of Aragonese power and he adopted
the ambitions of the bellicose cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. For months he
insisted that his primary interest was peace and that the Neapolitan barons genu-
inely wished to come to an agreement with the king, propositions that GiovanniThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 147
Lanfredini regarded as “all poultices and words” (tutti impiastri et parole).33
Ludovico Sforza in Milan counseled his ambassador in Rome after the end of
the Barons’ War that Innocent VIII’s gestures had been mere arte and that malice
lurked beneath his “color of goodness” (colore di bontà).34 Ludovico warned that
Innocent’s political ambitions reminded one of the “great ambition of the priests
to dominate.”35 At about the same time, Pierfilippo Pandolfini wrote that “I know
that his nature is to change easily between one opinion and another.”36 Innocent
repeatedly denied that he had prior notice of the revolt, or that he was pleased
when news of its outbreak spread, but conceded that he sympathized with the
complaints of the barons. At the end of September 1485, on the same day that the
pope was expressing his great happiness with the news that an accord had been
reached with the barons, word arrived in Rome of an uprising in l’Aquila, where
the royal governor Antonio Ciccinello had been hacked to pieces.37 The revolt, and
papal support for it, were far from over.
As Melissa Bullard has shown in her study of Italian diplomatic correspondence
during the Barons’ War, the high level of anxiety among statesmen at this time was
fed not only by deliberate fabrication, but also by the sheer volume of information
shared by resident ambassadors. The gap between words and actions was regularly
a space in which dissimulation occurred. Meetings of ambassadors with the pope
normally took place in highly formal and ritualized settings. These encounters
often occasioned what ambassadors described as good (buone), sweet (dolzi), or
pleasing (amorevoli) words, labels that can generally be taken to indicate speech
that was empty or deliberately misleading. Such characterizations are found every-
where in diplomatic correspondence from the period. Early in the pontificate of
Paul II, the Milanese ambassador Ottone dal Caretto wrote that “I have begun to
take this opinion of His Holiness: that he has quite a skill in providing words that
are without consequence” (una bella arte de dare parole senza effecto).38
When pressed by the ambassadors of Ferrara and Milan to lift the Interdict
against Florence, we are told that Sixtus used “le più dolce parolle del mondo”
(the sweetest words in the world).39 Battista Bendedei, the Ferrarese ambassador
in Rome for several years, repeatedly described Sixtus and his nephew Girolamo
Riario as speaking “in rhymes” (per le rime) to hide their preparations for a
move against Ferrara.40 Ludovico Sforza warned the Bishop of Como, Branda
Castiglione, as he sent him to Rome, to beware of the buone parole that Innocent
VIII was surely to employ; he said similar things to the Ferrarese ambassador
stationed in Milan, pointing to the “best and sweetest words” used by the pope
to hide his true intentions.41 The Florentine ambassador Niccolò Michelozzi sus-
pected that the papal talk of a desire to end the crisis in early 1486 was “messing148 Paul Marcus Dover
around” (trastullare) and nothing more.42 It was a viewpoint widely shared, and
Lorenzo de’ Medici wrote plainly of the “dishonesty” (disonestà) of the peace pro-
posals of the pope.43
The task of distinguishing the pope’s true words from his “good” or “sweet” ones
was not always straightforward. Pierfilippo Pandolfini, in a letter to Lorenzo de’
Medici, reflected on his own difficulties in assessing the truthfulness of Innocent
VIII: “When I speak with the Pope, and consider the good words (buone parole)
that he uses, it appears to me that he is speaking the truth and without simulation.
But I then I think about it more . . . and I begin to suspect that he might be using
sleight of hand, and in this way I am not sure how to resolve things. . . . As I wrote
earlier, I often find myself acting to examine what judgment one can make of the
mind of the Pope, and given the adversity of many things, I do not know how to
resolve it on my own.”44
Part of the difficulty with Innocent, at least when discussing the matter of
Naples, was his tendency to resort to hyperbole. In the fall of 1485, Leonardo
Botta, the Milanese ambassador, reported that the pope was making apocalyptic
warnings regarding the actions of Ferrante, suggesting that in their desperation
the Neapolitan barons might even turn to the Ottoman Sultan Bajezid for help.
Innocent even proposed the papal annexation of the kingdom, which would allow
the pope to use it as a base from which to launch a crusade to liberate the Holy
Land from the Turks.45 One month later, Botta’s replacement in Rome described
Innocent as expressing his willingness to protect the honor of the papacy by giving
the “monarchy of Italy” (monarchia d’Italia) to Venice, or even to the Turks! Seeing
that he was not getting his way, the “desperate” (desperato) pope was portrayed
as threatening to relocate the Holy See to a different nation, where he would be
regarded and honored more highly than he was by the princes of Italy, who refused
to show him political and spiritual obeisance. Implicit in such talk was a papal
return to France and a reversal of the fifteenth-century commitment of popes to
keep France at arm’s length.46 All who heard this threat would have recognized at
once Innocent’s rhetorical frippery, given the unlikelihood of such a move.
In addition to sweetening their words, popes, like other princes, dissembled
through deliberate delay. The particular nature of the curial administration made
this option readily available to popes. They could insist that they needed to con-
sult the cardinals in consistory, that papal secretaries needed to search the archives
for relevant documents, or merely that as head of the church, they needed time
to consider proposals or circumstances. Ambassadors saw through the strategic
use of consistories called by popes as necessary forums for discussion of policy; in
practice they were less places for genuine debate than settings for the confirmationThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 149
of decisions already taken by the pope. Paul II drove ambassadors to distraction
with his prorogation, indecision, and meandering garrulousness.47
Sixtus, a man of more pressing ambition, nonetheless recognized the value of
delay. In the spring of 1479, as league ambassadors repeatedly pushed Sixtus IV
for a response, the pope merely responded “audivimus, consultabimus, et respon-
debimus” (we have listened; we will consider and we will respond).48 Like his
predecessor, Sixtus regularly declined to grant audiences in order to avoid delicate
exchanges.49 Likewise, in describing his experience with Innocent, Guidantonio
Vespucci wrote to the Dieci in Florence during the Barons’ War in 1485 that “My
Magnificent Lords, although the words that His Holiness said in his speech are
sweeter (più dolci) than usual; still all of us [ambassadors] reckoned that this is a
fiction designed to settle things down until the Lord Roberto [di Sanseverino] gets
here,” a reference to the condottiere enjoined to lead the papal forces in the war.50
Prevarication, of course, is an age-old diplomatic tactic; it was one that popes were
more than willing to employ in pursuing their political ends.
Forgetting His “Office”
The popes of the later fifteenth century in general focused less on their universalist
claims as head of the Western church and more on local, territorial, and familial
concerns. This move toward a fully politicized papacy would reach its apotheosis
in the reigns of Alexander VII (1494–1503) and Julius II (1503–13); religious con-
cerns came to predominate once more only with the advent of the Reformation
controversies after about 1520. For example, after failing to bring the conflict over
the succession in the papal vicariate of Rimini (1468–70) to a conclusion favorable
to the papacy by reconstituting a papal-sponsored lega universale (Holy League),
Paul II looked to leghe particolari to further his political ends. While they might
have made reference to their mandate to renew the Holy League, the popes under
consideration here essentially acted as secular princes within the Italian state sys-
tem, and moved in and out of alliances accordingly.51 Two complementary trends
thus emerged: the use of armed force as a tool of papal policy (the so-called guerra
papale) and the application of spiritual sanctions against both states and individ-
ual antagonists. Of course, none of this was unprecedented: papal armies and
political interdicts were features of the late medieval landscape. But now that, to
most observers, the objectives of the popes appeared indistinguishable from the
goals of the pope’s extended family, home state, or political allies, the waters were
muddied even further. For ambassadors in Rome, on a day-to-day basis, the lines150 Paul Marcus Dover
between the ecclesiastical concerns of the pope as the head of the Church and his
ambitions as secular prince became increasingly difficult to locate. As a result, dip-
lomats and statesmen in the fifteenth century regularly acknowledged and empha-
sized the difference between these two spheres and pointed out instances where
the pope was neglecting what was supposed to be his primary duty.
Renaissance popes from Paul II onward could look back on papal geopolitics
since the resolution of the Schism in 1417 and see nothing but failure—the lord-
ships in the Emilia-Romagna were essentially independent; Umbria and the feudal
lands of Lazio were now largely beyond papal control; and the ability of the Holy
See to reverse these realities was critically hampered by the implacable opposition
of Italy’s secular princes and the tottering papal finances.52 Sixtus IV desperately
wished to alter these realities; for him, the reassertion of direct papal control over
the Papal States and the various papal vicariates was paramount. This was to be
achieved, wherever possible, to the benefit of his own family, and in particular
to the benefit of his relentlessly ambitious nephew, Girolamo Riario. The two of
them desired to break the oligarchies in the cities of the Papal States and replace
them with regimes under the direct control of the papacy.53 They also sought to
bring to heel the powerful barons of the Colonna family in the environs of Rome.
An ancillary benefit of these policies would be the establishment of Girolamo as
a territorial prince in the papal vicariates of Forlì and Faenza. This was a litany
of ambitions that was bound to be opposed by neighboring states—such designs
helped to make Girolamo the most hated and mistrusted figure in Rome.54
Thus, in the summer of 1480, when Sixtus IV and Girolamo were openly agi-
tating for a military campaign against the papal vicariate of Pesaro, designs that
the Duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro labeled “a fantasy” (una fantasia),
ambassadors of the league of Milan and Florence in Rome complained that “it is
not the office of the Pope to take all of Italy into war, instead it is his office to lead
it into peace and quiet when it is not.”55 Complaints of this type continued in the
course of the next several months, after Sixtus formed an alliance with Venice and
it became increasingly evident that Sixtus was backing the Venetian march to war
against Ferrara, again with the designs of Girolamo Riario foremost in his mind.56
In the months leading up to the outbreak of the war, the ambassadors of Ferrara in
Rome were in especially trying circumstances. Battista Bendedei lobbied the pope
to work to bridle the aggression of the Venetians, but it became clear to him that
the pope’s outward evenhandedness was merely an act. In January 1482, Bendedei
was less than comforted when the pope announced to Battista his intention to
write a brief to both Ercole d’Este and the Doge of Venice, urging them to desist
from open conflict. Bendedei confided in Ercole that “it appears that you will haveThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 151
to get help and remedy from someone other than the Pope,” implying that the
pope’s neutrality was a ruse.57
Innocent VIII, too, was regularly subject to the criticism that he was forget-
ting his primary duty as a pastor, especially on account of his vendetta against
Ferrante of Naples. In September 1485, Cardinal Giovanni d’Aragona and the
Neapolitan ambassador Anello Arcamone told the pope that, should the pope
continue to support the Barons’ Revolt, he could expect calls for a council, which
would work to “elect a preserver of the peace of Christians, a pastor and not a dis-
rupter like His Holiness the pope.”58 Innocent’s deception and desire to wage war
on Ferrante of Naples were described in a collective letter from the ambassadors of
the league of Milan, Naples, and Florence as “most pernicious to all of Italy and to
the whole of the Christian religion, and especially to His Holiness and contrary to
his pastoral office (officio pastorale).”59
Behind this sort of language, which suggested that the pope was assuming a role
to which he had not been appointed, was frustration at the increasing frequency
with which popes used spiritual sanctions for political purposes. The Milanese
ambassador in 1468 described Paul II’s willingness to blur these lines as follows:
“One can believe that he has no other intention in mind other than making a
peace that is of advantage to himself and to his great reputation and authority . . .
it will turn out that some will accept, and others not. He will draw close with
those who obey him and act temporally and spiritually against the others. And
if censures and the interdict aren’t enough, he will put them in their place with
many other threats.”60
While it occasioned no surprise that a pope would use the spiritual powers of
his office to pursue political ends, the sentiment that in doing so the pontiff was
engaging in category confusion remained widespread. This is how it was expressed
by Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan, in instructions to his ambassador
in Rome amid a long-running dispute with Paul II over clerical appointments in
the Milanese duchy: “While I can tolerate that the Pope has jurisdiction over us
and our state, we will ourselves protect our own right. And His Holiness, under
this pretense (colore) of the spiritual will indirectly come to take for himself also
the temporal of this our dominion, which, as is said, is free and strong and we do
not have to recognize any superior other than the Holy Empire.”61 Similarly, the
Florentine chronicler Ammirato, in his Istorie Fiorentine, saw Paul’s attempts to
forge a universal peace as un colore for getting the other Italian states to pay for
Bartolomeo Colleoni’s military contract (condotta).62
Applying the pretense (colore) of the spiritual in pursuit of military and polit-
ical ends became increasingly prominent as the fifteenth century drew to a close.152 Paul Marcus Dover
The so-called guerra papale became a commonplace of Renaissance politics, as did
the use of spiritual censure and the interdict in the pursuit of political goals. In
1460 Pius II had excommunicated (and reverse canonized into hell) the lord of
Rimini, Sigismondo Malatesta, for his repeated defiance of the papal will, but it
was really only with Sixtus IV that the threat of excommunication and the inter-
dict emerged as an essential tool of papal policy inside Italy. Sixtus slapped the
interdict on both Florence (1478) and Venice (1483), and went to war with both; in
neither case did they withdraw. Innocent followed his predecessor’s lead and used
these spiritual weapons for leverage. In July 1485, he published a bull that threat-
ened grave censures on Florence and Genoa if they did not put down arms in
their contest over the Ligurian town of Sarzana. Filippo Sacromoro, the Milanese
ambassador in Florence, wrote that the Florentine response was defiant: to give
the pope the power to settle such affairs would be to concede that he could raise
arms against any state in the peninsula.63 In his struggle with Ferrante, Innocent
long threatened to excommunicate him, and finally did so in 1489.
Such moves were met with predictable counter-threats to call church coun-
cils, whereby secular princes might assume spiritual roles, effectively mirroring the
papal assumption of roles historically accorded to worldly authorities. The regular
calls for a church council from secular princes were thus pointed responses to the
perception that the pope was confusing the secular and the spiritual. Conciliarism
remained a fresh memory and a convenient recourse in seeking to limit the power
of the popes. The kings of France and Naples were particularly ready to play this
card, in so doing pointing out the pope’s dereliction of his spiritual duties.
Calls for a council from France stemmed from a long tradition of Gallican
resistance to papal claims to authority on French soil. In early 1479, in the wake
of Sixtus’s moves against Florence, which was an ally of Louis XI, ambassadors in
France of the Italian states in league with Florence spoke openly with the French
king about checking the pope’s moves against the Medici. The pope’s ambitions,
they insisted, threatened to bring the name of Christ and the universal good of
the Christian religion to ruin. They encouraged the king to remind the pope that,
were he to continue in this vein, he would be remembered in secula seculorum (in
eternity) not as a defender of the Christian faith but as its destroyer and a supporter
and spreader (augmentatore) of Mohammedanism (maomitannia). Were he not to
refrain from his current enterprise, the king, the emperor, and all the Christian
princes should bring the pope before a council.64 The king was partial to these
suggestions, although at an audience several days later he averred that many lords
would hesitate to provoke the pope in such a manner.65 But in early February, in a
contentious exchange with the papal legate to France, Louis angrily snapped thatThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 153
the pope had forgotten the God-given responsibilities of his earthly office. The
legate insisted that the king would be better off favoring and helping the Church
than supporting a “little merchant” like Lorenzo de’ Medici. Louis should follow
the example of his ancestors and act as a protector and defender of the Church;
were he to do otherwise, the anger and indignation of God would come down
upon him and he would meet an evil end, as had so many other enemies of the
Apostolic See. If he had to, the pope would use spiritual weapons (arme spirituali)
against the king and other enemies of the Church. Louis, incensed, denied that
the pope was committed to peace, as “the true shepherd and head of our faith”
(vero pastore e capo de la fede nostra) should be. He countered that he feared neither
the scourge of God, nor a malign end. Instead, it was Pope Sixtus who should
worry about these things, for his vice of the flesh (vicio de la carne) was matched
by the vice of blood (vicio di sangue). Had the cardinals who had chosen him in
conclave known what type of pope he would be, they would have never elected
him, a typically perfidious and depraved Genoese. Now these cardinals would
have to wait for punishment from God for their terrible mistake. Louis declared
himself a humble and faithful servant of the Holy Church, but not of this pope.
He was not afraid of spiritual weapons, because he knew he was reputed to be a
better Christian than this pope and had done nothing to offend God.66
In November 1485, the ambassadors of the league of Florence, Milan, and
Naples, on the instructions of Ferrante, composed a letter in which they declared
that a church council was needed to confront the danger of the Turks, especially
because the pope was not uniting Christendom but dividing it by undermining
the Kingdom of Naples, which lay on the front line of the struggle against the
Ottomans. The letter called for ambassadors and prelates to be sent to the Holy
Roman Emperor and the king of France in support of the proposal.67
In one extraordinary instance in 1489, Don Federico, the second son of
Ferrante, in the wake of the excommunication of the Neapolitan king, launched a
storm of invective against Innocent VIII in prefacing a call for a council to mod-
erate the ambitions of the pope. Before an assembly of Neapolitan prelates and
nobles in the Cathedral of San Federico (of all places) he thundered:
[Don Federico declared him (the pope)] very ignominiously and vitupera-
tively as a waster of the wealth of the holy church and ravisher of virgins and
as a seditious man of evil nature, wanting never to leave Italy at peace, and
with many other words of this sort; he concluded that, on account of his
injustices, he deserved to be called to council; and this Florentine ambassa-
dor [who recorded this outburst] concludes that to him it appears that the154 Paul Marcus Dover
King [Ferrante] is kicking the anthill (struzichando il formichaio), because
he remembers many impertinent things, like when the Pope was the cause
of the death of Messer Antonio Cicinello and two hundred of his troops [a
reference to the 1485 revolt against the king of Naples in l’Aquila, in which
Innocent always denied having any role].68
The ambassador who reported this outburst clearly considered its frankness and
intemperance as out of the ordinary. Prince Federico was known for his volubil-
ity and the long-standing rivalry between Innocent and Ferrante had engendered
great bitterness. But in reporting Federico’s broadside, the ambassador was almost
certainly channeling feelings widely shared but rarely expressed in such stark terms
in the diplomatic correspondence of the age.
The means by which popes in this period presented their palpably political
decisions also reflected this uncomfortable blurring of lines between spiritual and
secular concerns. Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII used the College of Cardinals as
a rubber stamp for their provocative political and military initiatives, claiming
that as a consultative body it had signed off on their decisions. It was a means of
giving a collaborative air to autocratic decision making. Sixtus and, by extension,
his accomplice Girolamo Riario were employing the distinctive structure of papal
government to justify their own secular ambitions. Thus the ambassador of Ercole
d’Este in 1482 was expressly told by a friendly cardinal not to trust Girolamo
Riario. Whatever bone parole Girolamo might utter, he could be expected to do
the opposite, and then offer the excuse that he was carrying out neither the will of
the pope, nor his own, but that of the College of Cardinals.69 Given the fractured
nature of the College, and the presence of cardinals who objected to the pope’s
priorities and his family’s ambitions, observers found papal claims of the agree-
ment of the College unconvincing. Ludovico Sforza in January 1482 expressed his
doubts that the cardinals of Mantua and Aragon would have signed off on a brief
from Sixtus IV that insisted that Ercole d’Este visit Venice to resolve his differ-
ences with the Republic.70
It was awareness of such window dressing that prompted the Estense ambas-
sador, Jacopo Trotti, for several years a prominent figure at the papal court, to
remark some two decades after his experience in Rome that “I, and anyone else
who knows any cardinals, would surely rather be the lord of an insignificant castle
than a cardinal, because they are like domestics of the Pope, and have to accede to
everything that the Pope wants.”71 At the same time, a cardinal in bad graces with
the pope was like a fish out of water (uno cardinale da longo dal Papa è come uno
pesce senza aqua), according to the Mantuan ambassador Bartolomeo Bonatto.72The Arte and Offitio of the Pope 155
The role of Girolamo Riario in the pontificate of Sixtus IV was perhaps the
ultimate expression of the way territorial and secular ambition came to dominate
the designs of the papacy. His was a unique situation: a secular lord, spending
most of his time in Rome, exercising extensive influence over a pontiff. By the
end of the fifteenth century, it was customary for cardinals from the pope’s family
or home state to serve as a sort of right-hand man in political affairs. Girolamo,
however, had no clerical portfolio. Nonetheless, during Sixtus’s pontificate he was
an omnipresent figure in Rome, a must-stop among the visitations expected of a
resident ambassador. The overarching goal of Sixtus and Girolamo was to trans-
late the concern for papal sovereignty over its vicariates, regularly expressed as the
“freedom of the church,” into lordly domination. The papal-Venetian alliance of
April 16, 1480, which led directly to the War of Ferrara (1482–84), was, in part,
a vehicle for the ambitions of Girolamo Riario. Girolamo became lord of Imola
through marriage to Caterina Sforza in 1473, and on August 21, 1480, he became
the papal vicar at Forlì, in a move recognized by all the powers of Italy.
Frustration with the obstinate support of the pope for the extraordinarily dis-
ruptive ambitions of Girolamo Riario, regardless of the diplomatic and military
consequences for Italy, was regularly expressed in Rome. It became a conviction,
both spoken and unspoken, that Sixtus was quite willing to shunt aside his obli-
gations as pope in the pursuit of the interests of his extended family. For ambas-
sadors penning dispatches from Rome, criticism of the hated Girolamo could
stand in as a safer, indirect means of criticizing the pope. In 1479, the Venetian
ambassador remarked plainly that it was Girolamo who was “running the affairs
of the church.”73 The Neapolitan ambassador in Rome in the run-up to the War of
Ferrara rightly insisted that it was Girolamo who was inducing the pope to pursue
ends other than peace, that it was his influence over the pope that was making him
willing to turbare la pace (disturb the peace).74 Milanese ambassadors sent to Rome
were invariably instructed to seek to get into the good offices of Girolamo, as he
was “the sole and principal guide and director of our affairs” at the Roman court.75
In February 1481, Battista Bendedei, the ambassador of Ercole d’Este, wrote that
he had bought and given to Girolamo a large quantity of marzipan from Siena
“in order to make me pleasing and acceptable to the Illustrious Count” (per farme
grato et accepto a lo Illustrissimo Conte).76
In the early years of Innocent VIII’s pontificate, the chief target of criticism was
Giuliano della Rovere, the influential cardinal of San Pietro ad Vincula, who had
contended with Girolamo for influence over Sixtus IV. Giuliano established an
alliance with the Colonna family, bitter opponents of the Riario, and was in posi-
tion to profit from the predictable backlash against Girolamo after Sixtus’s death.156 Paul Marcus Dover
Under Innocent, his star was in the ascendant and he became widely known as
“the captain of the ship” (el patrone della barca).77 To some he was known as papa
et plus quam papa (pope and more than pope) on account of his perceived influ-
ence over the pope.78 For Ernesto Pontieri, the diplomacy of Lorenzo de’ Medici
and others who sought to dissuade the pope from his Neapolitan designs failed
because the pope’s plans were the “succubus of the overbearing and impetuous will
of Giuliano della Rovere.”79 Girolamo and Giuliano served as obvious precursors
and models for a more famous, and notorious, papal nephew of the subsequent
pontificate of Alexander VIII, Cesare Borgia.
The popes occasionally displayed sensitivity to the perception that they were
conflating their roles as pastors and princes. They either denied that their concerns
were chiefly political and territorial or sought to defend the pursuit of political ends
as essential to the defense of the honor and dignity of the Holy See. Paul II had
an instinctive dislike for war and tended to approach the political questions of the
papacy from a doctrinal perspective, which led him to see issues of papal sovereignty
in theological terms. He tried hard to renew the universal peace of 1455 under his
aegis. While his antagonists suspected his motives in pursuing this peace, it appears
that he genuinely felt that forging peace in Italy was his duty. No such irenic convic-
tions can be found with Sixtus IV, but he, too, routinely defended himself against
complaints of war-mongering and political deception with claims that he was only
seeking to “preserve the reputation of the Holy Church.”80 Innocent used similar
language in defense of his strident policy toward the king of Naples, who was,
after all, technically a papal vassal. In 1489, when Cardinal Ascanio Sforza pleaded
with the pope to treat Ferrante as his son rather than go to war with him, the pope
responded that it was an essential part of his pastoral office to take steps to defend
the ecclesiastical state against the king of Naples.81 All three popes regularly invoked
the (genuine) threat of the Turks in seeking to secure spiritual and political obedi-
ence. Taking the lead in the defense of Christendom against the House of Islam,
all agreed, was an essential component of the pope’s “office.” Of course, as we have
seen, the pope’s critics could just as easily claim that a pope in single-minded pur-
suit of his familial and territorial ambitions in Italy was ignoring precisely this duty.
Conclusions
All this suggests that despite popes acting like Renaissance territorial princes,
despite the inclusion of the papacy as a constituent member of the Italian state
system and its adherence to the many leghe particolari into which these statesThe Arte and Offitio of the Pope 157
congregated, and despite Rome becoming the most important diplomatic center
in all of Europe, there remained a sense in diplomatic correspondence that the
pope was something other than just another prince. The reluctance to engage
in full-throated accusations of deception and dissimulation in correspondence;
the willingness to deflect such accusations onto others around the pope; and the
apparent awareness that the pope’s secular and spiritual hats could not really be
worn at the same time: all of these suggest that the pope did remain a subject apart
in diplomatic correspondence. There is virtually no evidence that any of these
ambassadors and other statesmen were shocked or dismayed by the head of the
church engaging in the same sort of dissimulation, prevarication, and fabrication
expected from other Italian princes. They did not expect better from a church-
man, even the pope. But they did expect the pope to remember that his office was
foremost a spiritual one. In seeking to pursue the goals of a Renaissance territorial
prince, the pope invariably neglected it and instead threatened the peace of Italy.
The pursuit of those papal ambitions, of course, often rubbed up against others’
political and territorial interests, and it is when this happened, predictably, that
the complaints about the pope shading the truth and forgetting his office were
heard most loudly.
Paul Marcus Dover is Associate Professor of History at Kennesaw State University.
A long-term NEH fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 2015–16, he is the
author of The Changing Face of the Past: An Introduction to Western Historiography
(2014), editor of Secretaries and Statecraft in the Early Modern World (2016), and
author of the forthcoming The Information Revolution of Early M odern Europe
in the New Approaches to European History series from Cambridge University
Press. He has published numerous articles in late medieval and early modern
political and intellectual history, including, in the pages of Mediterranean Studies
(2005), “Royal Diplomacy in Renaissance Italy: Ferrante I d’Aragona and His
Ambassadors.”
Notes
1. The Dieci di Balìa was the narrow ad hoc committee, composed of members of the
Florentine elite, which oversaw foreign policy and war within the Republic.
2. Pierfilippo Pandolfini to Niccolò Michelozzi, January 31, 1486, Rome, BNF (see the Works
Cited section at the end of this article for abbreviations), MGC, CM, Ambasceria Fiorentina
a Roma, 29/103. Carta 27: “Se di qua avete avuto cose varie, procede dalla natura del paese et
di questi tempi, che generano al presente simili frutti: per quello che stasera scrivo al Lorenzo,
vedrete mutatione in meglio lo (h)o fatto questa conclusione: di credere dì per dì. Et secondo158 Paul Marcus Dover
vedrò gli efecti per non errare. Questo credo in vero potere affermare: che costui non abbi per ora
a fare guerra, non avendo commodità di farla. Et col tempo secondo che le cose procederano pigl-
iare partito. Et però, stando ben provisto et con gli ochi aperti, non si porterà pericolo in credere
alle buone parole di costui, le quali se pure avessino buoni facti, facerebbe per noi, considerato la
compagnia ne’ è fatta da altri. Anzi credo che l’amicitia d’altri si goderebbe meglio mantenendosi
con costui, o amico o non amico. Pur di queste cose me ne rimetto al parere di Lorenzo. La vostra
a Napoli questa sera (h)o mandate per buona via.” This dispatch can be viewed digitally at http://
teca.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/ImageViewer/servlet/ImageViewer?idr=BNCF0003826186#page/53/
mode/1up.
3. For this paragraph, see Renouard (1954), Thomson (1980: 3–28, 114–44), and Ullman
(2003: 306–32).
4. Chambers (2006: 77).
5. On Francesco Gonzaga, see Chambers (1992); on Ascanio Sforza, see Pellegrini (2002); on
Giuliano della Rovere, see Shaw (1993).
6. On the leghe particolari, see Rubinstein (1988).
7. Gregorovius (2010).
8. Bizzocchi (1987).
9. Dover (2012).
10. Cited in Folin (2004: 230): “laico, disposto a stare ogn’hora a cavallo, visitando cardinali et
oratori per intendere ogni cosa.”
11. Folin (2004).
12. Agostino Rossi to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, August 20, 1467, ASMi, AS, PE-Roma, Cart. 63:
“Siché m’ha commisso ve prega per Dio siati bene advertente de non ve fidare così liberamente
de ogni novelle, benché se renda certo siati così prudente che bene intenderati il facto vero. Et io
ve scrivo ciò che intendo a bona fede aciò che VS sapia il tuto.”
13. Giovan Pietro Arrivabene to Barbara Gonzaga, 20 June 1466, Rome, ASMa, AG, AE-Roma,
B.843: “se hanno nove che tante cosse del Turcho non sono vere.”
14. Agostino Rossi to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 10 November 1467, Rome, ASMi, AS, PE-Roma,
Cart. 63. Agostino’s account of this troubling audience with the pope runs to nine pages!
“Painting hell” is an expression found frequently in diplomatic exchanges of the period.
15. Pontieri (1970: 288).
16. Of course, the interception of letters in the Papal States need not be at the behest of the
pope. On April 26, 1486, the Senate in Venice discussed the interdiction of a Venetian courier en
route between Rome and Venice by armed men under Virginio and Nicola Orsini, who were at
that time allied with Ferrante of Naples against Pope Innocent. Pontieri (1968: 75–76).
17. Dover (2008). The ambassador in question was Jacopo Trotti, writing in December 1467;
see Dover (2008:13).
18. Lorenzo da Pesaro to Francesco Sforza, October 27, 1464, Rome, ASMi, AS, PE-Roma,
Cart. 56: “Per certo Sua Santità parla molto bene ma le parole sono diverse dalli facti.”
19. Agostino Rossi to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, 4 February 1468, Rome, ASMi, AS, PE-Roma,
Cart. 64: “solo per seminare qualche suspitione a chi non intendesse l’arte.” Agostino’s words
are similar to those uttered years later by Pierfilippo Pandolfini, who remarked that “an
ambassador had to be cunning as well as skilled in detecting cunningness in others.” Bullard
(1994: 98).
20. Agostino Rossi to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, December 6, 1466, Rome, ASMi, AS, PE-Roma,
Cart. 61: “gli pare uno bel zoco de stare così indifferente et neutrale, non mostrando essere di qua
ni de là, solo per essere il maestro et potere sbatere l’uno per l’altro.”
21. Giovanni Bianchi to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, February 26, 1468, Rome, ASMi, AS,
PE-Roma, Cart. 67: “Ma che nientedimancho el Papa sa usare tanta arte, con manesar da
uno conto col mezo del Duca Johanne, da l’altro canto col mezo de Venetiani et con mellare
suspecti altri.”You can also read
