The development of Italian diplomacy

It is unclear which Italian city-state had the first permanent envoy. In the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance period, most embassies were temporary, lasting from three months to two years. As early as the late 14th and early 15th centuries, however, Venice, Milan, and Mantua sent resident envoys to each other, to the popes, and to the Holy Roman emperors. At this time, envoys generally did not travel with their wives (who were assumed to be indiscreet), but their missions usually employed cooks for purposes of hospitality and to avoid being poisoned. Resident embassies became the norm in Italy in the late 15th century, and after 1500 the practice spread northward. A permanent Milanese envoy to the French court of Louis XI arrived in 1463 and was later joined by a Venetian representative. Ambassadors served a variety of roles, including reporting events to their government and negotiating with their hosts. In addition, they absorbed the role of commercial consuls, who were not then diplomatic agents.

Italy's early economic revival, geographic location, and small size fostered the creation of a European state system in microcosm. As the peninsula was fully organized into states, wars were frequent, and the maintenance of an equilibrium (“ balance of power ”) necessitated constant diplomatic interaction. Whereas meetings of rulers aroused expectations and were considered risky, unobtrusive diplomacy by resident envoys was deemed safer and more effective. Thus, the system of permanent agents took root, with members of the upper middle class or younger sons of great families serving as envoys.

Rome became the centre of Italian diplomacy and of intrigue, information gathering, and spying. Popes received ambassadors but did not send them. The papal court had the first organized diplomatic corps: the popes addressed the envoys jointly, seated them as a group for ceremonies, and established rules for their collective governance.

As resident missions became the norm, ceremonial and social occasions came to dominate the relations between diplomats and their hosts, especially because the dignity of the sovereign being represented was at stake. Papal envoys took precedence over those of temporal rulers. Beyond that there was little agreement on the relative status of envoys, and there was frequent strife. Pope Julius II established a list of precedence in 1504, but this did not solve the problem. Spain did not accept inferiority to France; power fluctuated among the states; papal power declined; and the Protestant revolt complicated matters—not least regarding the pope's own position. By the 16th century the title of ambassador was being used only for envoys of crowned heads and the republic of Venice. Latin remained the international language of diplomacy.

The French invasion of 1494 confronted the Italian states with intervention by a power greater than any within their own state system. They were driven to substitute subtle diplomacy and expedient, if short-lived, compromise for the force they lacked. This tendency, plus their enthusiasm for diplomatic nuances and the 16th-century writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, gave Italian diplomacy a reputation for being devious. But it was no more so than that of other states, and Machiavelli, himself a Florentine diplomat, argued that an envoy needed integrity, reliability, and honesty, along with tact and skill in the use of occasional equivocation and selective abridgment of aspects of the truth unfavourable to his cause—views seconded since by virtually every authority.

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