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Juan de Valdés played a pivotal role in the febrile atmosphere of sixteenth-century Italian religious debate. Fleeing his native Spain after the publication in 1529 of a book condemned by the Spanish Inquisition, he settled in Rome as a political agent of the emperor Charles V and then in Naples, where he was at the centre of a remarkable circle of literary and spiritual men and women involved in the religious crisis of those years, including Peter Martyr Vermigli, Marcantonio Flaminio, Bernardino Ochino and Giulia Gonzaga. Although his death in 1541 marked the end of this group, Valdés’ writings were to have a decisive role in the following two decades, when they were sponsored and diff...
Diplomacy in Renaissance Rome is an investigation of Renaissance diplomacy in practice. Presenting the first book-length study of this subject for sixty years, Catherine Fletcher substantially enhances our understanding of the envoy's role during this pivotal period for the development of diplomacy. Uniting rich but hitherto unexploited archival sources with recent insights from social and cultural history, Fletcher argues for the centrality of the papal court - and the city of Rome - in the formation of the modern European diplomatic system. The book addresses topics such as the political context from the return of the popes to Rome, the 1454 Peace of Lodi and after 1494 the Italian Wars; the assimilation of ambassadors into the ceremonial world; the prescriptive literature; trends in the personnel of diplomacy; an exploration of travel and communication practices; the city of Rome as a space for diplomacy; and the world of gift-giving.
Drawing from new archival research, Pius IV and the Fall of the Carafa shows how the popes of the mid-sixteenth century sought to re-assert and project their authority over the Catholic Church during the first phase of the Counter-Reformation. Its narrative focus is the trial of cardinals Carlo and Alfonso Carafa, nephews of Paul IV (1555-1559), who, together with Carlo's brother Giovanni, were arrested and indicted by their uncle's successor Pius IV (1559-65) on charges of murder, theft, and corruption. Taking place from June 1560 to April 1561 as preparations were underway for a resumption of the Council of Trent, this was the only occasion in the early modern period in which a papal famil...
A Companion to the Early Modern Cardinal is the first comprehensive overview of its subject in English or any language. Cardinals are best known as the pope’s electors, but in the centuries from 1400 to 1800 they were so much more: pastors, inquisitors, diplomats, bureaucrats, statesmen, saints; entrepreneurs and investors; patrons of the arts, of music, literature, and science. Thirty-five essays explain their social background, positions and roles in Rome and beyond, and what they meant for wider society. This volume shows the impact which those men who took up the purple had in their respective fields and how their tenure of office shaped the entangled histories of Rome and the Catholic Church from a European and global perspective.
"In the heart of her book Hallman performs an amazing feat: patiently tracing the acquisition, trading, subdividing, leasing, and renting of pieces of property that also happened in most cases to carry with them the cure of souls. She does so without losing the reader in a mass of detail by combining quantitative generalizations with examination of aptly chosen individual cases. . . . In short, she demonstrates that the sixteenth-century Italian Church, to alter slightly the epithet used by Ginzburg's Menocchio, was increasingly "a prelates' business." This is a very important book. Not only will it serve those scholars in various disciplines who wich to trace the patronage networks of individual Italian cardinals. As I have indicated, it will also stimulate those interested in reformulating existing paradigms and periodization schemes in early modern European history." --Anne Jacobson Schutte, Lawrence University, in Renaissance Quarterly, Volume 40, Number 2, Summer, 1987.
‘An eye-opening book, an intricate and fascinating story’ Hilary Mantel 1527. Henry, desperate to marry Anne Boleyn and ensure the Tudor line asks Pope Clement VII to grant him a divorce. Enter Gregorio Casali, an Italian diplomat hired to represent Henry’s interests in the Vatican. Through six years of persuasion, threats and bribery Casali lives by his wits, playing off one powerful patron against another, negotiating with ambassadors from Spain, France and beyond, each crowding the Vatican to press their interests in the Tudor break up. Before it is done, Henry will decide to divorce not just Catherine, but the Church itself. Set against the backdrop of war-torn Renaissance Italy, The Divorce of Henry VIII combines a gripping family saga with a highly charged political battle between the Tudors and the Vatican to reveal the extraordinary true story behind history’s most infamous divorce. (Originally published with the title Our Man in Rome)
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