The Premodern Italian Document Exchange

In 1605, the Tuscan diplomat Orazio della Renna wrote a Relazione segretta delle cose della corte de Spagna for the Grand Duke Ferdinando I. He offered a portrait of the Spanish court and the preferences and tastes of the Spanish royals and courtiers, remarking the importance of giving gifts secretly not to cause any measure of suspicion, discontent or jealousy. And, moreover, he recommended that giving gifts by the way of the women and the wives of ministers was as the safest means. During the past decade, scholars have been studying gift giving as part of the diplomatic practices; however, the presents exchanged by women have yet to be deeply analyzed. This paper demonstrates that women were not only active gif-givers and recipients of presents of all kinds, but also played a prominent role in the political and diplomatic gift exchange in Early Modern period. It focuses on the secret negotiation to marry Eleonora de’ Medici with Philip III of Spain, which offers us the possibility to study the role played by noblewomen in the diplomatic gift-giving strategies developed by the Medici between1611 and 1617. To close this secret deal, it was settled that the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena should commission and send extremely expensive gold-embroidered velvets to Inés de Vargas, a Spanish noblewoman married to Rodrigo Calderón, who was one of the most important Philip III’s ministers. The textiles were delivered by Orso Pannocchieschi d’Elci, the Tuscan ambassador in Madrid, as negotiations progressed.

The death of Philip IV of Spain in 1665 meant an inflection point in the political attitude of his illegitimate son John of Austria. Since his stay at the court of Brussels (1656-1659), John came into conflict with the Imperial family of Vienna, who did not agree to treat him as an Infant of Spain. These problems of acknowledgment increased during the minority of Charles II, John’s stepbrother. The contacts of John with the Imperial ambassador Pötting were frustrating for both sides, as neither of the two accepted the treatment demanded by the other. Therefore, the relationships were carried out through unofficial interviews of informal agents of John as Francisco Bremundan, Diego de Velasco or Mateo Patiño with different representatives of the Imperial embassy. The chief topic discussed was the negotiation to marry King Charles II to Archduchess Maria Antonia of Austria. This was the desired plan of Dowager Queen Marianne of Austria, but when John became ‘First Minister’ in 1677, he changed the political line developed until that time. John distrusted the alliance with his Viennese family and preferred to arrange the marriage of Charles II with the French Maria Luisa of Orleans. The aim of this paper is to show how unofficial diplomacy was used by John of Austria for the advancement of his own interests and its influence in the policy-making between the Habsburgs’ Courts between 1665 and 1679.

Journal of Medieval Worlds, 2019

This pedagogical article discusses sources and methods for teaching the history of imperial science and medicine in the Nahua world from 1400 to 1600, a period that ranges from the spectacular growth of the Aztec Empire through the conquest to the creation of New Spain. By providing students tools to explore non-European ontologies and world-building, this article presents several exercises in which students act as archival researchers and themselves puzzle out the complexities of information transfer in the archive of sixteenth-century Latin America. Combining European paleography workshops, linguistic tools pioneered by the IDIEZ Nahuatl program, the study of Mesoamerican archeological objects, and an engagement with Mexican medicinal plants to recreate early modern remedies, students gain access to a world of New Spanish knowledge-creation.

Journal of European Periodical Studies, 2019

Bauduin, T.M. and Julia Krikke, ‘Images of Medieval Art in the French Surrealist Periodicals Documents (1929–31) and Minotaure (1933–39)’. JEPS Journal of European Periodical Studies 4: 1 (Summer 2019), 144-61.

Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability is an interdisciplinary series devoted to all topics concerning health from all parts of the globe and including all premodern time periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early Modern. The series is global, including but not limited to Europe, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Asia. We encourage submissions examining medical care, such as health practitioners, hospitals and infirmaries, medicines and herbal remedies, medical theories and texts, care givers and therapies. Other topics pertinent to the scope of the series include research into premodern disability studies such as injury, impairment, chronic illness, pain, and all experiences of bodily and/or mental difference. Studies of diseases and how they were perceived and treated are also of interest. Furthermore, we are looking for works on medicinal plants and gardens; ecclesiastical and legal approaches to medical issues; archaeological and scientific findings concerning premodern health; and any other studies related to health and health care prior to 1800.

Textual Cultures of Medieval Italy. Ed. William Robins. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011. 11-49.

The premodern period, according to general surveys of technologies of communication, is framed, on the one hand, by the profound transformations brought about by the introduction of writing and, on the other hand, by the similarly deep transformations attendant upon the arrival of printing with movable type. Within this period -the chronological limits vary considerably from one culture to another -the situation of medieval Europe is characterized above all by a constant and productive interaction between written and oral modes of communication and, as far as the technology of writing is concerned, by the rise to prominence of the codex format of the book, by the gradual evolution of documentary practices within church and secular bureaucracies, and by a slow and steady rise in the importance of practical literacy. For several centuries after the breakdown of the western Roman Empire, control over the use of books and documents remained largely in the hands of a learned, ecclesiastical elite, who across Europe shared a common training in Latin letters and who possessed as a common focus of textual interpretation the sacred texts of Christian scripture. From about the twelfth century on, the castles and courts of the landed nobility constituted another sphere where the practices of writing were increasingly put to use, both in Latin and in the various vernacular languages of Europe. Members of the 'third estate' of working men and womenincluding merchants, guildsmen, and farmers -began to harness writing for their own practical and recreational purposes toward the end of the Middle Ages and in increasing measure throughout the early modern and modern periods. 1