European Diplomatic Gifts, Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries: Guest Editor's Introduction (original) (raw)
A B S T R A C T. This article explains how the concept and the practice of gift-making evolved in Spanish Italy in connection with power. Contemporary chronicles, avvisi (newsletters), and letters enable us to reflect upon how gifts were seen, given, and received in the period at the Spanish embassy in Rome and in the viceroyalty of Naples. It aims to establish how the exchange of presents affected the wielding of power and how it contributed to shaping the political culture of the Spanish in Italy. The seventeenth century and Italy were the time and place that witnessed the greatest experimentation in gift-making practices. This experimentation and the polysemic nature of gifts can also be explained as a result of the low level of professionalization that still characterized diplomacy in seventeenth-century Europe.
e-journal of Portuguese History, vol. 17, n.1, 2019
Diplomatic correspondence and the information transmitted through letters of instruction, which gave diplomats the necessary support for the performance of their duties, have become a highly important subject in the study of medieval diplomacy. In documents of this type, we can find some quite remarkable and valuable information about what could or could not be said in diplomatic contexts, outlining the rituals, attitudes, and procedures that a diplomat was required to adopt in the course of his international mission. Together with the letters of instruction, diplomats also carried with them letters of credence (commonly known as credentials). These were the documents that the various monarchs gave to their legitimate representatives, and which were designed to be presented at the courts visited by each diplomatic mission. These letters were essential for guaranteeing the correct conduct of negotiations, since, besides presenting the diplomats and expressing the wish that they be afforded credence in their role, these documents also explained the purpose of their missions. Thus, letters of instruction and credence are fundamental tools that enable historians to complete the picture of external relations through the description that they provide of other aspects of communication and symbolic representation, which sometimes tend to go unnoticed in different types of documents. In order to better understand certain fundamental aspects of this analysis, we complemented the information obtained from the aforementioned documentation with data from other documentary sources that indicate some of the protocols that were used in dealings with princes and kings of other realms, as well as the specific characteristics that some of the royal counsellors should have. Keywords Letter of instruction; letter of credence; diplomacy; ambassador; protocol; Middle Ages Resumo A correspondência e troca de informações, através das cartas de instrução que davam o suporte necessário à atuação de um diplomata, constitui um tema da maior 1 A first version of this work was presented at Splendid
Diplomats and Patrons in the Early Modern World
2018
, 2010), for the most recent and largest collection of essays on the possessions and patronage of mainly Italian cardinals. See also the biographies of individual cardinals referenced in essays in this collection.