1 SOURCES AND METHODS IN INFORMATION

1
SOURCES AND METHODS IN INFORMATION HISTORY
THE CASE OF MEDICI FLORENCE, THE ARMADA, AND THE SIEGE OF
OSTENDE
Brendan Dooley (International University Bremen)
Improving our knowledge of the dynamics of news and
politics in early modern Europe depends on the discovery
of new sources as well as new methods for exploiting old
ones. The Italian archives still contain enormous
quantities of unexplored, or insufficiently explored
material. The embarassment of riches of this kind in a
place like Florence is such that even the Medici Archive
at the Archivio di Stato can offer some surprises. In
the sector of newsletters alone, the archive rivals Rome
and Venice in quantity and quality.
Indeed, the extraordinary wealth and value of the
newsletter collection in the Medici Archive can be
grasped by scrutinizing a few single examples. Let us
consider a copy dated from Venice, March 19, 1588,
containing two stories: the building of the Rialto
bridge and the outfitting of the Spanish Armada. We
begin with the first; and the newsletter tells us:
Saturday in the Senate, since the pilings sunk for
the foundations of the Rialto Bridge are defective,
it was debated whether to close the Grand Canal to
put in new pilings or correct the present ones. The
decision was made to fix the present ones in order
not to inconvenience the city too much by closing the
canal.1
Even Francesco Sansovino himself, the designer of the
bridge, and one of Venice’s most renowned architects,
could scarcely have faulted this coverage of the
sociopolitical maneuverings involved in the construction
of his most famous work; and it is for this reason that
the newsletters are such an important source for the
architecture and art and patronage history of the
Renaissance cities—an important selling point in recent
efforts to gain public and private financing for
ambitious projects (which I will mention later on) to
provide on-line publications of entire series of these
documents.
Let us now turn to the news about the Spanish Armada. In
this case, the report concerning the caravan of some 130
2
galleons and galleasses that prepared to cross the
English channel in the early months of 1588 bears some
instructive inaccuracies:
Vessels: 600, including 150 large sailing ships,
which will remain to guard Spain.
Galleys: 320.
Small ships, such as caravelles, and boats: 320.
Ships carrying straw: 100. Spaniards: 30,000;
horse: 2000; Portuguese: 5000; Italians: 12,000;
Germans: 15,000; sailors: 8000; bombardiers and
sappers: 4400; mules to pull artillery: 1400; Moors
to govern the mules: 400; sea biscuit: 1,900,000
tons; pieces of pork: 120,000; weights of cheese:
150,000; weights of salted meat: 20,000; weights of
pickled tunny-back: 25,000; sacks of rice: 14,000;
sacks of chick peas: 20,000; weights of oil: 24,000;
weights of vinegar: 32,000; barrels of wine, 20
weights per barrel: 123,000; sacks of grain: 20,000;
barrels of horse irons: 30,000; braccia of cloth:
10,000; combat soldiers: 26,400.2
At this point we will not dwell on the rather fantastic
features of a report enumerating nearly a hundred
thousand men (far greater than any army at the time—on
land or sea). The story has clearly been affected either
by a good imagination or else by a propagandistic intent,
or both. Fortunately, at least concerning this matter,
the Medici court in Florence at the time, as we shall
see, was in possession of much more accurate information,
provided by the dynasty’s most reliable soldier-diplomat,
Don Giovanni de’ Medici (1567-1621), natural son of
Cosimo I, the founder of the Tuscan Grand Dukedom. The
difference in informative value between the two accounts,
in relation to the reporting of Giovanni de’ Medici,
illustrates some of the chief issues in research
concerning these sources: namely, the issues of author
and provenance, narrative purpose, and paths of
circulation.
Manuscript newsletter services were more than a peculiar
product of the emergence of an information marketplace
within a regime of press control. By the mid-sixteenth
century, with the globalization of conflict and the
systematic diversification of the military, political,
fiscal and disciplining functions of governments, rulers
waging war by proxy often depended upon widely
distributed informants in distant lands for the
information necessary to make decisions. Information
often reached governments third hand, at several removes
3
from the events themselves, through public and private
channels. Informants often served more than one
government, and occasionally served governments as well
as assorted private clients. Governments and their
practices were thus inscribed within a wider context of
information distribution and circulation. The better we
are able to trace these mechanisms, the more we are
persuaded that political and military affairs were the
effects of communication, rather than vice-versa.
Strategies for the acquisition, control and distribution
of knowledge may be seen as equivalent to strategies of
rule, and were subject to setbacks as well as successes.
This paper presents some new research tools for current
work on newsletters in general, and in particular those
connected with Don Giovanni de’ Medici, a political
informer. New documents now being made available by the
Medici Archive Project in Florence, a database management
initiative, permit the comparison of manuscript sources
of news on a scale never possible before. I would like
to show how this technology can be used to offer some
more systematic solutions to the problems I have raised.
Don Giovanni de’ Medici
But first let me introduce the figure of Don Giovanni.
Son of a famous beauty named Eleonora degli Albizzi and
her lover Cosimo I, he sought all his life to erase the
stain of his illegitimacy. A man of formidable talents,
Don Giovanni personally designed the newer part of the
Medici Mausoleum at San Lorenzo in Florence where he
never got to be buried (and this is only one of the many
ironies concerning his story). His project for the
Chapel of the Princes, as this part of the Mausoleum is
called, rather than the one presented by the legendary
architect Bernardo Buontalenti, was chosen in 1602 by a
panel of experts, and to have it built he personally
selected the marble and had it sent down from Flanders.3
As a military architect he worked on fortifications at
Leghorn and in Hungary. As a conoisseur, he collected
and commissioned paintings that ended up in the Uffizi
galleries as well as at the Medici villa in Artimino and
elsewhere. He financed an acting company and wrote plays
for it to act. As a philosopher and alchemist he dabbled
in secret recipes and sought all his life to find the
philosopher’s stone. As a diplomat, he represented the
Medici dynasty in Rome and in Madrid. And as a soldier,
he campaigned for the imperial forces on the fields of
Flanders and Hungary and finally as general of the forces
of the Venetian Republic, he fought in Friuli.4
4
Don Giovanni’s operations afford ample field to the
investigations of the social scientist--and I don’t mean
just one interested in his dysfunctional family. His
accomplishments in each of the areas I just mentioned
offer a wide variety of material. And the 450 or so
relevant folders in the Florentine archive, each
containing some 600-1000 documents apiece, have barely
been worked over, except by those patient souls in the
American-funded Medici Archive Project. With a yearly
budget of over a half-million dollars from private
donors, this nonprofit organization promises to place a
digest of these documents at our disposal on the
Internet, perhaps within our lifetimes.
Included in the Archive among the documents relating to
Don Giovanni is an assortment of some 150 avvisi or
handwritten newsletters, dated from Antwerp and sent by
him along with his dispatches back to the Florentine
court. From these, as well as from other related
documents in the archive, we can discover much concerning
the information market in early modern Europe.
Don Giovanni came on the scene in a particularly delicate
moment for the Medici dynasty.5 His half-brother,
Ferdinand I, another son of Cosimo I, was forced out of a
cardinalship and into the job of grand duke by the
premature death of his brother Francesco. What we may
presume to have been Ferdinand’s expectations of a life
of holiness, intrigue and relative celibacy as a prince
of the Church were now transformed into the certainty of
a life of profanity, intrigue and relative promiscuity as
a prince of the state. His destiny was to navigate
diplomatically between the various Henries in France,
Philip II in Spain, Rudolph II in Prague, and Elizabeth I
of England. The system of diplomacy consolidated by
Cosimo I allowed the grand duke to operate like a spider
in a web. By Ferdinand’s time, the web had grown to
cover nearly every important part of Europe; and the
persons involved included career bureaucrats as well as
half-brother Giovanni de’ Medici.
Leadership of Tuscan military forces, the commissioning
of artworks, design of important monuments, all these
were part of Don Giovanni’s life-long effort to wipe out
the stain of illegitimacy by proving his fidelity to the
family. Indeed, what better way to accomplish this than
by designing the very place where the family dynasty
would be interred.
Somewhat modified across the century
5
it took to build, Don Giovanni’s winning plan for the
Chapel called for seven simple altars in niches so that,
standing at any place in the building, the observer could
reverence all the Medicis at once.
So far, the least known aspect of Don Giovanni’s
activities is his role as a military communicator, while
on campaign and while observing the campaigns of others.
In fact, his activities as a communicator included an
interesting parenthesis as organizer of a team of
informers who may have sold their services to others, a
sort of news bureau. Giovanni’s personal authorship of
the handwritten newsletters published by his entourage is
not yet proven. What is known is the high quality of
information they--and he through them--distributed.
News and Newsletters
By Don Giovanni’s time, manuscript newsletter services
were already a well-developed genre. Born of a
combination of military and political necessities and
developed as a business, they had been in regular
circulation at least from the first decades of the
sixteenth century. Their authors, as we know, included
professional diplomats as well as paid informers,
literary hacks and spies. At the time, a rather vague
distinction was made between the so-called “private”
newsletters written up by diplomats for their governments
and sometimes transmitted by special couriers, on the one
hand, and, on the other, the so-called “public”
newsletters, written up by scribes in multiple copies and
circulated along all the main mail routes. In practice
the distinction was impossible to maintain. Secret
diplomatic correspondence often traveled along the mail
routes along with letters of every type. “Private”
newsletters, lost, stolen and sold outright, were often
incorporated into the “public” sheets; and governments
paid nearly as much attention to the “public” sheets as
they did to the “private” ones.6
Emanuele Filiberto, duke of Savoy in the latter half of
the sixteenth century, was not alone in holding
newsletter writers to be "a race of men more fit for the
gallows than the galleys." They were, he added, "all
insolent scoundrels, and living very dangerously, they
utter a thousand lies." Nor was he alone in conceding
that "whoever needs them ought to let them keep lying."7
Already in the 1590s, the Secretary of State of the
Republic of Lucca had ordered his Venetian correspondent
6
to "find out, from the master of the post of Genoa and
from other friends of mine and experts especially in the
matter of newsletters, just who are the best in this
genre."8
In his famous satire, “The Postman, Robbed”, the
Piacentine writer-adventurer Ferrante Pallavicino
fictionalized an all-too-frequent occurrence, the robbery
of the public mailbag.9 According to the fiction, a
certain prince has ordered the interception of letters
from the governor or Milan directed to Rome and Naples.
He keeps the important letters and leaves the rest to the
amusement of his courtiers. The protagonists in the
satire set about reading the purloined correspondence and
commenting upon it, very much as they might have done
with a newsletter.
So far, the sheer volume of newsletter material existing
in state archives throughout Europe, as well as the
widely dispersed locations where it is found, has impeded
a systematic cross-cultural analysis. We still cannot
tell with any accuracy just how stories born in Amsterdam
circulated down to Rome, or how information about wars in
Hungary, written up in newsletters from Buda, became
material for newsletters in Venice. Recently new tools
and new research methods have become available that might
make this task somewhat easier.
The Medici Archive Project
One particularly important research instrument that has
emerged recently is the Medici Archive Project in
Florence.10 This nonprofit organization, founded in 1995,
has taken it upon itself to analyze not just the 67 or so
volumes of newsletters present in the Medici portion of
the State Archive, but all 6400 volumes of Medici
material. It must be said that the Project not only
constitutes an innovative application of information
technology to archival research, but also an innovative
application of the principles of Wall Street and Madison
Avenue to financing such research. Financial
contributions are solicited from a wide array of small to
medium level private donors belonging to the worlds of
art dealing, industry and the professions, mostly in New
York City and environs.
The Project’s approach to analyzing a colossal mass of
material on the history of information is as far from
1970s content analyses (Rétat, Labrosse, Sgard and so
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forth) as it is from 1980s qualitative analyses (Popkin,
Censer. 11 The technology originated from applications of
the Access data management program within the insurance
and banking industries, allowing operatives to trace
thousands of interrelated accounts and compare them
according to a large number of parameters. The Project
applies the same tracing techniques to thousands of
individual documents.
Each document in the Medici Project Database is tagged to
the persons and places mentioned in it (as well as the
subject); and the Project members, selected for their
expertise concerning the period, undertake research to
establish identities and coordinates. The collection of
names so far contains over 10,000 entries, many of them
identifiable only through the documents themselves. The
collection of places includes another 80,000 entries.
Following the norms set down by the Getty foundation,
geographical names, including myriad variants, are tagged
to particular geographical locations rather than vice
versa. Thus, the expressions “Sluys,” “Inclusa,” or
“Esclusa” may all refer to the same town; and so also
“‘sHertogenbosch” and “Bolducch.” Document entries are
searchable by keyword as well as by any of 33 topics
ranging from “arms and armor” to “art historical
writing.”
At the most elementary level, the analysis of volumes in
the Medici Archive raises some interesting questions
about the modes of production and circulation of
newsletters. A typically full collection of newsletters
dated from Milan in the year 1641, for instance, includes
at least two copies of each issue, in different hands;
very often one newsletter contains crossouts and
corrections which are incorporated into another
newsletter of the same date.12 Most likely, the sheet
arriving from Milan was modified by someone in Florence,
copied out in a fine hand and sent along another route.
Close comparison of thousands of documents and
handwritings has allowed the identification of many
previously unknown writers of newsletters. Consider this
annotation to Medici Archive Project doc. 11234, in filza
3085, a letter dated Oct. 11, 1586 from one Ulisse del
Pace in Brescia to Ermonio Venturi in Perugia.
“Similarity of handwriting indicates that avviso from
Venice on fol. 193 may be his.”
Comparison of stories allows hypotheses concerning which
sheets are related and which are not. For instance, the
8
annotation concerning a newsletter in vol. 3085, dated
Rome, 21 March 1587, states, “Same as avviso on fol. 392,
except includes additional reports from Prague 10 March
and Venice 28 March. Venice news (via Turin) says there
was a plot to kill King Henry III of France.” (Medici
Archive Project 11189) The annotation concerning yet
another newsletter, this one dated from Prague, 7 April
1587, states the following: “Includes Venice 25 April.
Prague report is same as in avviso on fol. 426. From
Venice: printed broadsheets in Paris proclaim the queen
of England to be a whore.” (Medici Archive Project 11213)
Don Giovanni and the Spanish Armada
In September 1587, Don Giovanni and a small retinue
headed north to the fields of Flanders to take part in
the Low Country Wars on the Catholic side.13 There they
found Alessandro Farnese, governor of Flanders and
commander of the Catholic forces, buoyed up by recent
successes at Sluys in Zeeland, just across the Flanders
border. Unlike Deventer and Zutphen, acquired by Farnese
through the cunning insinuation of extraordinary rewards
to enemy defectors, this conquest was the result of sheer
military prowess. The new acquisition gave Farnese an
important deep water port he could use for reconquering
Ostende to the south and the Zeeland littoral to the
north. If he could keep pushing northward and westward,
closing in the enemy in a vise, victory in the Low
Countries seemed to be within his grasp.
However, over the careful strategy of Alessandro Farnese,
matured during the course of ten years of warfare against
the Dutch, there hung the shadow of the Spanish Armada
just now being fitted out by Philip II. From his point
of view, Philip’s Great Enterprise (as it was called
within the Spanish court) could be an obstacle as well as
a boon.14 According to the plan, Farnese was not just a
brilliant condottiere leading the Catholic forces from
victory to victory. He was a key piece in a vast and
intricate machine of destruction that would carry huge
numbers of fighting men across the waters into England.
The current version of Philip’s evolving vision had
Farnese leading his own force across the Channel under
cover of the armada being fitted out now in Portugal
under Admiral Don Alvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz.
Further conquests in Flanders would thus have to be
postponed while acquiring ships, cannon and munitions.
Don Giovanni, both for duty’s sake and to ensure
9
financial support for his small contribution to the
events, kept the Medici court informed.
Keywords “Armada,” “fleet” and “Spanish” in the Medici
Archive Project database, coordinated with a calendar of
all entries relating to the years 1587-88, introduce us
to several hundred documents relating to the Armada and
Giovanni’s reporting of it.
By March, with Armada preparations in a lull due to the
death of Don Alvaro the previous month and the assumption
of command by Alonso Pérez de Guzmán, the duke of Medina
Sidonia, a great general of land forces but untried as an
admiral. Newsletters differed greatly in kind and value.
On March 19, 1588, it was reported that 100 Spaniards had
landed in England and taken over a port near the border
with Scotland.15 The newsletter writer claimed the
landing had occurred at a place called “Baldras.” Whether
or not the place intended was in fact Berwick-upon-Tweed
or some other place makes little difference, since as far
as we know the story was a pure invention. By May,
reports had identified the actual armada and its port of
departure: “The first flight will be in the port of
Corignia [La Coruña] in Galitia near the cape of Finis di
Torre; nothing else is known for certain except that it
can only be directed to England.”16
Other documents show Don Giovanni already knew about the
difficulties that were emerging behind the scenes. “A
courier from Spain arrived three days ago,” he reported
on May 13, “whom it was said brought news that the armada
was ready to set out.” The king, so said the news, “was
unhappy with the Signor Duke [Alessandro Farnese], who
during all these past months was still unprepared” for
the supposed rendez-vous of the Army of Flanders with the
naval invasion force. Yet the king’s own logistical
contribution, so the news went on, appeared to be limited
to “the religious side,” of imploring divine assistance.
Farnese was still under orders from the king to conclude
a peace with the English representatives; but the news
suggested that this move was a pure formality conceded on
request by Farnese.17
After a series of contretemps, in the month of July the
fleet was within sight of Dunkirk. Don Giovanni sent
detailed reports back to Florence, based on what he heard
from a Captain Alvise Morosini, who detoured away from
the main fleet to recruit two Flemish pilots for the
approach to the coast. The Captain’s own ship took on
10
water at the first attempt to ferry the pilots across, so
the operation had to be repeated. Then, the pilots
disagreed “concerning the security of the canal for
conducting the armada” especially because of some
“dangerous” shoals in the area where the fleet would have
to pass.18 He discounted “rumors” that Medina Sidonia
planned to keep the fleet out of danger at Calais, or
that he had given up hope after the “persecutions” of
Francis Drake. A separate sheet containing Don
Giovanni’s own report on “the vessels and the gentlemen
in command or joining the operation” has been lost.
On 5 August, Giovanni was doubtful that the fleet could
make the approach, considering the rough coastline, the
irregular canal and the shifting shallows, although, as
he reported on the 7th, the Army of Flanders was ready to
embark on rafts. The rapid succession of events soon
overtook all preparations. On 12 August, Giovanni
reported the famous chase along the coastline, with
Francis Drake in hot pursuit of the fleet, which headed
for the outer shores of the Orkneys, and a route that
would take what was left of it down past the windward
side of Ireland.
On the 18th, Don Giovanni was already explaining why
Alessandro had refused to move his defenseless rafts with
the army on them to the rendez-vous with the fleet as
long as the latter was in peril. “According to the view
of the experts, there was great danger that we would all
be drowned by the enemy before we crossed,” especially
because “the English were in such complete control of the
seas, and had vessels so agile that they were able to
navigate between the huge [hulks] of the Catholic
Armada,” so that “they could undo us, who were on certain
unarmed low-lying rafts.”19 Farnese in his view needed a
victory to offset the popular rumors about his
reponsibility for the loss of the Armada, although this
was solely due to the misfortunes of the duke of Medina
Sidonia.20
Meanwhile, the Roman newsletter dated 13 August was still
reporting on storms that had scattered the fleet and
destroyed eleven vessels back in June. The Spanish
Ambassador, it noted, had informed Pope Sixtus V of the
event, adding that the remnants of the fleet had retired
to La Coruña to regroup and wait for better weather. The
pope was seen to “be greatly afflicted and sad” about
this news, which was only mitigated by the Ambassador’s
reassurance that the fleet would soon resume its course.21
11
As late as the 3rd of September, a newsletter from
Antwerp gave an entirely different story. The Spanish
had won a major battle against the English, it was said,
and had actually landed on one of the Orkney Islands,
called Hylandia--possibly a corruption of the word
“Highlands”, which is not an island, although there is an
Orkney island called Hoy. “According to highly reliable
sources,” it went on, “the men were given provisions and
other refreshments; and when word reached the king [James
VI of Scotland] some say he decreed the death penalty for
anyone who gave them anything.” Hoping to regain the
advantage, the newsletter continued, Francis Drake and
the Admiral Charles Lord Howard of Effingham consulted
with Queen Elizabeth. Eager for another engagement they
had already embarked with 180 ships.22
A newsletter from Lyons dated the 6th of September brought
the story to a close: Drake was a prisoner and peace had
been declared: “The Spanish Armada has landed in
Scotland in the province of Heslanda, although previous
news was that it was already returned to Spain; and they
say it will winter in that ocean, and that the English
had been more badly damaged than was previously reported;
and many say that Drake the Englishman has been taken.”23
A veritable newsletter war ensued, giving rise to a
pamphlet war based on the newsletter information.
According to an English pamphlet, news emanating from the
Spanish side promised “The true relation of the success
of the Catholic Army against their enemies, by letters of
the Postmaster of Logrono of the 4 of September, and by
letters from Rouen of 31 August, and by letters from
Paris of the king’s ambassador there, wherein he
declareth the imprisonment of Francis Drake and other
great nobles of England, and how the Queen is in the
field with an army; and of a certain mutiny which was
amongst the Queen’s army.”24
This story was met, on the English side, so the pamphlet
claimed, with “It is well known to all the world, how
false all this relation is, and either falsely colored by
the letters remembered, or else both the postmaster of
Logrono and the writers from Rouen ought to be waged as
intelligencers for the Devil the father of lies, whom
they have herein truly served; and if they so continue in
maintenance thereof against the known truth, their
damnation is certain, and hell is open to them.”
12
Already at the end of August, Camillo Guidi remarked to
Grand Duke Ferdinand that many avvisi reported the
successes of the Spanish armada, but that they contained
so much contradictory information as to render extremely
difficult any attempt at discovering what truly took
place. Newsletters accompanied by prints, written and
published by Bernardo de Mendozza, were particularly at
fault. In the first such newsletter, Mendoza reported a
successful battle in the English Channel and the
capturing of Francis Drake. However, after newsletters
by other writers contradicted this version of the events,
Mendoza wrote another much more moderate newsletter. Nor
was Mendoza alone among the Spaniards whose newsletters
were particularly misleading, since there was also one
Antonio de Leyva.25
Don Giovanni and anyone in Florence who read his detailed
dispatches knew by August 18 that all had been lost.
Giovanni’s secret hope was for Philip II to remount the
expedition; but this could not happen immediately. For a
time, he despaired of seeing any military action in the
1588 season as a member of Alessandro Farnese’s
entourage. The only thought that sustained him was that
fear of disgrace would induce the feisty Farnese to try
something risky. Sure enough, Farnese turned his
attention to yet another enterprise, destined to enjoy
somewhat less renown than the Spanish Armada: namely,
the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom.
Don Giovanni and the Siege of Ostende
But we will not follow Giovanni’s actions as a soldier
and informer at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom. Instead, we
shift directly to the stage of his full development in
1604.26 Once again he found himself in the midst of the
seemingly interminable Low Countries wars, this time as
part of the entourage of Archduke Albert of Austria. To
regain an important strategic base against Dutch
shipping, Archduke Albert focused his efforts on the port
of Ostende, recently occupied by the Dutch. The latest
fiscal crisis in Spain, accompanied by plague and famine,
significantly limited the funds available for the
enterprise, and supply lines were blocked by the French
invasion of Savoy.
Description of the enterprise at Ostende was rendered all
the more challenging by the presence of a radically new
contraption devised by the Roman engineer Pompeo Targone,
incorporating a moving turret and several cannons for
13
breaking a wall. “It is built on boats which, at high
tide, will be directed into the canal. It has the form
of a large barrel, and the platform for the soldiers is
37 feet [wide]; and between that space and its parapet
there will be 35 feet, all filled with sausages [sic!] to
resist cannon fire. The other part facing the sea is not
so filled, but it is made of wood, and above this will be
six cannons that will shoot at coming boats; it will take
a few more days to put together.”27 In fact, when Don
Giovanni sent his first drawing of the contraption to
Ferdinand I, the latter responded that he had no idea
what Don Giovanni was intending to convey.28
Gaining accurate information was as difficult for
Giovanni, who was in the midst of the fray, as it was for
his half-brother the grand duke--simply because he could
not be in every corner of the battlefield at once.29
“Matters here, as far as I can see, are conveyed with . .
. passion and partiality,” he noted; yet “it seems
reasonable that Your Highness should know the truth about
every detail.” He committed himself to communicating
only what he was able to verify: “I assure you that what
I write I have seem myself or have received on report
from disinterested persons whom I trust.” His narrative
strategy, in order to confirm the veracity of his
accounts, was to delve into the most minute details:
“Your Highness should not be amazed if I bore you with so
many particulars.”
To ensure a constant supply of material to communicate to
the grand duke, Don Giovanni organized friends and
acquaintances, including the field marshal Lodovico
Melzi, into a veritable news bureau for producing the
newsletters of Antwerp that now appear in the volumes of
his correpondence in the big round unmistakable hand of
his faithful amenuensis, Cosimo Baroncelli.30 He explained
the pattern of composition thus: “Your Highness will find
the news about Ostende in the accompanying sheet, which
is compiled from various letters that Cav. Melzi and
other friends are constantly writing to me.” And so the
news continued throughout 1604.
In his own dispatches to the Medici court, Don Giovanni
simply paraphrased the newsletter he sent accompanying
his own letter. Just one example, where the wording is
almost identical:
Antwerp Newsletter:
Don Giovanni dispatch:
The enemy, taking the
As far as the news of these
14
opportunity of a fair that
was being held in Arlon, in
the country of Luxemburg,
sent about 40 footsoldiers
and horse dressed as
peasants, and well armed
underneath, who took the
portal; and in an instant
there appeared four hundred
horse who entered and sacked
whatever there was, and took
as prisoners about thirty of
the principal townsmen in
the city and it was, so they
say, the greatest booty
ever
taken in these parts.31
parts are concerned, I can
only tell you that the enemy
taking the opportunity of a
fair that was being held in
Arlon, in the country of
Luxemburg, sent about 50
soldiers dressed as
peasants, with good arms
underneath, to take the
portal of the town; and with
four hundred horse entered
and sacked everything, and
besides taking the greatest
booty ever taken in these
parts, took as prisoners as
about thirty of the
principal townsmen who will
pay the ransom for
themselves and
everyone else
who remained.32
Other Antwerp newsletters in Baroncelli’s hand included
last-minute handwritten corrections by Don Giovanni
himself, which were also reported in the dispatch
(although, as we see below, leaving certain equivocations
to be resolved by the reader):
Antwerp Newsletter:
Don Giovanni Dispatch:
Il giorno de 27 partì
l’Arciduca e l’Infanta di
Bruselles per la volta di
Gantes dove si vermerà
l’infanta e l’arciduca
agevolmente si avanzerà
verso l’Inclusa o forse
verso Ostenden per dubbio
che il nemico non vadia a
soccorrere quella piazza
essendo sbarcato nell’Isola
di Cassante e per opporsegli
e impedirgli il suo disegno
si son cavati tutti i
presidii che erano nelle
guarnigioni di Mastrich,
Rommond, Strale, Gheller e
Venlò, che saranno in tutto
circa a 5m soldati, e con
questi e con 12m paisani e
con la cavalleria d’huomini
Hebbi un lacchè di
Brusselles con nuova che
l'Arciduca inteso lo sbarco
del nimico in Fiandra
nell'Isola di Cassante
[Cadzand] si moveva il
giorno appresso con la
Ser.ma Infanta per la volta
di Gantes, dove si fermerà
l'Infanta; e S. A. si
trasferirà, o a Ostenden o
all'Inclusa [Sluis], dove si
vedrà che il nemico si volti
[. . .] Per opporsi al
nemico si è cavato tutta la
gente che era ne' presidi di
Erental [Herentals] Mastrich
Gheller Strale e Venelò, che
in tutto saranno circa a 5m
fanti e con questi e con 12m
15
d0’arme, si potrebbe forse
33
far qualcosa di buono.
villani e con la cavalleria
degli huomini d'arme del
paese e con la leggiera che
ci è che arriverà vicino a
mille cavalli si vedrà di
impedire i disegni del
34
nemico
Did Don Giovanni in fact dictate the contents of the
newsletters taken down in Baroncelli’s hand, basing
himself on what the members of the news bureau were
whispering in his ear? Indeed, was Giovanni in effect
the author of these newsletters? If so, he would not be
the only princely ghostwriter personally involved in the
early information media, supposing we believe, for
instance, that Louis XIII actually authored some stories
published later in the Gazette de Paris. 35 However, if
our hypothesis is correct, Giovanni would have been the
only Italian of his rank to be involved in the newsletter
business.
How many copies were made of the Antwerp newsletter?
None others besides the Medici copies so far have
surfaced; but this research has only just begun. There is
no telling what Melzi and his associates might have done
with the material they helped to produce. We must
imagine that Don Giovanni was no more able to seal the
precincts of his secretariat than were the many
ambassadors to foreign courts, which elsewhere gave rise
to a lively cottage industry merchandising diplomatic
dispatches and reports and the newsletters based on them.
The Politics of Information
Products, of course, gained value by their uniqueness,
and the single copy from the artist’s hand was more
highly regarded than a reproduction. Even while print
continued to gain ground as the preferred medium for
conveying large amounts of information to numbers of
readers, newsletters retained a special appeal.
Already in the sixteenth century, an informal distinction
was made between the so-called "secret" and the so-called
"public" sheets. And the main difference between the
"public" and "secret" sheets appears to have lain in the
reporting of embarrassing news. And when Francesco Maria
Vialardi, a writer of "secret" newsletters, specified
that "I leave the minutiae of Rome to the newsletter
16
writers," he meant that the standard term "newsletter"
was far too banal for the sort of deep background he
provided to an exclusive audience of high-paying
customers.36 All the newsletters, of whatever sort,
justified their price, with respect to print
publications, on the basis of their authors’ newsgathering efforts. Said one writer, "you have
to
37
understand that it costs me money and risk."
Especially targeting the more mordant examples, efforts
were made to censor the contents of 38the newsletters, and
even, as in Rome, to prohibit them.
That all such
efforts proved to be unenforceable only added to their
attractiveness.
By designing a newsletter ostensibly for the eyes of the
Medici court alone, Don Giovanni offered a gift truly
worthy of a prince.
Try as he might, Don Giovanni never moved up to the next
level within the Florentine government machinery. He was
never involved in any of the real negotiations that were
the daily duties of the official ambassadors. As an
information broker, he was a valuable asset to the Medici
court; but he never rose from information broker to power
broker. And apart from his illegitimate birth, there are
many other reasons that help explain why. Set up in life
with a princely income and official recognition by his
father Cosimo, he was far too independent, both in body
and in spirit, for the dynasty to rely on him completely
and unequivocally. Unlike Belisario Vinta, Antonio
Sebregondi, Curzio Piccheno and the other eminences
grises within the Medici household, whom we find one day
negotiating in Spain and another day in France or in
Prague, he did not entirely depend on the present grand
duke for his livelihood, his prestige or his honor.
Although his originality and creativity were no doubt to
some degree functions of his unassailable position, his
unassailable position made him structurally more adapted
to leadership than to followership. But in the Medici
world, there was room for one leader alone. Not by
chance, Giovanni eventually drifted away to the Venetian
world where this was not so, and where he encountered a
kind of success that always eluded him in Florence—not to
mention, a more friendly burial place.
Information, we may conclude, played an overwhelming role
in the political economy of the early modern state of
Tuscany.
Information bound Grand Duke Ferdinando I not
only to his own territory but to his web of influences
throughout Europe; information bound Don Giovanni de’
17
Medici to his brothers. The quality of information
confirmed the quality of the individual and not viceversa, contrary to the English case examined in some
recent scholarship.39 And whether accurate or not, the
Medici had the best. This was of course not the only
reason why the grand duchy was able to endure, and even
to secure precedence over Mantua and Savoy in the
diplomatic ceremonial of the time. But it was an
important feature that merits all the attention that the
new research tools allow us to devote to it.
NOTES
1
Avviso from Venice, 19 March 1588 (Florence,
Archivio di Stato, Archivio Mediceo del Principato
[hereafter, Archivio Mediceo], filza 3085, fol. 584r.
2
Ibid., fol. 584v.
3
The bibliography is considerable. I only mention
Franco Borsi, Firenze del Cinquecento (Rome: Editalia,
1974), chap. 18; and Aurelio Fara, Bernardo Buontalenti
(Milan: Electa, 1995), pp. 147-78. Still useful is
Domenico Moreni, Descrizione della gran cappella delle
pietre dure e della sagrestia vecchia eretta da filippo
di ser Brunellesco, situate ambedue nell’imp. basilica di
S. Lorenzo di Firenze (Firenze: Carli, 1813).
Concerning the transportation of marble, numerous
documents in the Medici Archive Project Documentary
Sources database [hereafter, M.A.P.] attest to this. For
instance: doc. 8711 doc. 8749; doc. 8603. Concerning
Giovanni’s patronage activities, see my “Le battaglie
perse del principe Don Giovanni,” Quaderni storici,
forthcoming.
4
In general, Gaetano Pieraccini, La stirpe de’
Medici di Cafaggiolo, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Florence:
Vallecchi, 1947), vol. 1, pp. 222ff; G. Sommi Picenardi,
“Don Giovanni de’ Medici, governatore dell’esercito
veneto in Friuli,” Nuovo archivio veneto, n.s. 7, 25
(1907): 104-42; 26 (1907): 94-136. Concerning Giovanni
de’ Medici’s cultural interests, Domenica Landolfi, “Don
Giovanni de’ Medici, ‘principe intendente in vari
scienze,’” Studi seicenteschi 29 (1988): 125-62. The
biography of Don Giovanni written by his secretary Cosimo
Baroncelli is still fundamental, and it exists in
18
numerous copies in Florence, among which, Archivio di
Stato, Miscellanea Medicea, filza 833bis, insert no. 20;
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Codici Capponi, no.
cccxiii, fols. 180-212.
5
Here and below: Alessandra Contini, “Aspects of
Medicean Diplomacy in the Sixteenth Century,” in Politics
and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy: the Structure of
Diplomatic Practice, 1450-1800, ed. Daniela Frigo, tr.
Adrian Belton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000); and Idem, “Dinastia, patriziato e politica estera:
Ambasciatori e segretari medicei nel Cinquecento,”
Cheiron, special issue entitled Ambasciatori e nunzi:
figure della diplomazia in età moderna, vol. (2001): 57131. Concerning the general context, Franco Angiolini,
“Diplomazia e politica dell’Italia non spagnola nell’età
di Filippo II,” Rivista storica italiana 92 (1980): 432469; Giorgio Spini, Cosimo I e l’indipendenza del
Principato, 2nd ed. (Florence: Vallecchi, 1980).
6
For Italy, still fundamental are Salvatore Bonghi,
“Le prime gazzette in Italia,” Nuova antologia ser. 1,
vol. 11 (1869): 311-46 and R. Ancel, “Étude critique sur
quelques recueils d’avvisi,” École Française de Rome:
Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 28 (1908): 115-39.
Enrico Stumpo has recently published an entire year of a
1588 avviso: La gazzetta de l’anno 1588 (Florence:
Giunti, 1988). The prehistory of the avvisi is the
subject of Pierre Sardella, Nouvelles et speculations à
Venise au debut du XVIe siècle, Cahiers des Annales, 1
(Paris, A. Colin, 1948) and Federigo Melis, “Intensità e
regolarità nella diffusione dell’informazione economica
generale nel Mediterranea e in Occidente alla fine del
Medioevo,” Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel, 2
vols. 1: Histoire économique du monde mediterranéan,
1450-1650 (Toulouse: Privat, 1973), pp. 389-424a, who
limit their discussion to the economic sphere. In
addition, chapters by S. Baron and Mario Infelise in B.
Dooley and Sabrina Baron, eds., The Politics of
Information in Early Modern Europe (Routledge: 2001); and
B. Dooley, “De bonne main: la circulation des actualités
a Rome au dix-septième siècle,” Annales. Histoire,
Sciences Sociales no. 6 (Nov-Déc 1999): 1317-44.
7
Quoted in A. Van Houtte, “Un journal manuscrit
interessant: 1554-1648. Les avvisi du fonds Urbinat et
d’autres fonds de la Bibliothèque Vaticain,” Bulletin de
la Commission Royale d’Histoire, Belgique 89 (1925): 361.
8
Quoted in Bonghi, “Le prime gazzette in Italia,” p.
322.
9
Ginifacio Spironcini [=Ferrante Pallavicino], Il
corriero svaligiato (Norimberga [=Venice], s.d. [1641]),
19
ed. Armando Marchi (Parma: Università di Parma, 1984),
pp. 95-99. I provide a selection from this work by
Pallavicino in my Italy in the Baroque: Selected
Readings (NY: Garland, 1995), pp. 337-41.
10
The project’s website is available at the URL
www.medici.org. That the Archivio Mediceo, as stated in
a National Public Radio broadcast cited on the site, was
actually discovered by Edward Goldberg, the director of
the Medici Archive Project, may be something of an
exaggeration.
11
See my “From Literary Criticism to Systems Theory:
Twenty Years of Journalism History,” Journal of the
History of Ideas, 51 (1990): 461-86.
12
Note a partial list of the contents of Archivio
Mediceo filza 2357a. All but one are dated as coming out
of Milan:
Milan, 16 October 1641, indicated as sent to “Siena”
Milan, 31 October 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections
Milan, 9 October 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections which are incorporated in previous avviso on
this date
Milan, 16 October 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections which are incorporated in previous avviso on
this date
Milan, 23 October 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections which are incorporated in previous avviso on
this date
Milan, 6 November 1641
Pavia, 26 November 1641
Milan, 11 December 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections
Milan, 25 December 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections
Milan, 4 December 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections
Milan, 18 December 1641, numerous crossouts and
corrections
Milan, 4 December 1641, same as previous on this
date, incorporating corrections
Milan, 25 December 1641, same as previous on this
date, incorporating corrections
Milan, 25 December 1641, same as previous on this
date
Milan, 18 December 1641, same as previous on this
date, incorporating corrections, same as previous on this
date, incorporating corrections
Milan, 11 December 1641, same as previous on this
date, incorporating corrections
20
13
In general, Leon van der Essen, Alexandre Farnèse,
prince de Parme, gouverneur général des Pays-Bas (15451592), vol. 5 (1585-1592), (Bruxelles, Nouvelle Société
d’Editions, 1937); B. De Groof, Alexander Farnese and the
origins of modern Belgium (Leuven 1995); Geoffrey Parker,
The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road revised ed.
(Cambridge: Cambrdige University Press, 1990); Idem, The
Dutch Revolt, revised ed. (London: Penguin, 2002). For
the more theoretical aspects, Martin van Gelderen, The
Political Thought of the Dutch Revolt, 1555-1590
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
14
In general here, Garrett Mattingly, The Armada
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959); David Howarth, The
Voyage of the Armada. The Spanish Story (New York:
Viking, 1981); Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Spanish
Armada: The Experience of War (Oxford University Press,
1988); Anita Hitchings ed., The Armada campaign 1588: the
great enterprise against England (Oxford 2001).
15
M.A.P., doc. 11123, filza 3085, fol. 621.
16
M.A.P., doc. 11432, filza 4851 fol. 97, dated 11
May 1588.
17
M.A.P., doc. 12300, filza 5151, fol. 117, dated 13
May 1588.
18
Archivio Mediceo, filza 5151, fol. 141, dated 2
July 1588. Giovanni to Ferdinando I.
19
Archivio Mediceo, filza 5151, fol. 166, dated 18
August 1588.
20
M.A.P., doc. 12319: Archivo Mediceo filza 5151,
fol. 166, dated 18 August 1588.
21
M.A.P., doc. 11147: Archivio Mediceo, filza 3085,
fol. 663, dated 13 August 1588.
22
Archivio Mediceo, filza 3085, fol. 669.
23
M.A.P., doc. 11425: Archivio Mediceo, filza 4851,
fol. 101, dated 6 September 1588: Avisano [. ..] che
l’armata di Spagna ha tolto porto in Scotia nella
provintia di Heslanda dove si pensava che fosse già
ritornata in Spagna; et si doveva invernare in quel mare,
et che Inglesi havevano nauto più danno che non era stato
scritto, et voglano molti che il Drac [Francis Drake]
Inglese sia preso, et che vi sia seguito disordine nella
armata del duca di Parma, mentre si doveva mettersi in
ordine per andar a congiongersi in quella di Spagna, la
quale per quello danno, la lasciarano in pace la regina
d’Inghilterra et forse in tanto succederà la pace che
ella di nuovo ricerca dal duca di Parma; a lui ha mandato
un primo suo barone per tal effetto con molti presenti.
[. . .]
21
24
Bertrand T. Whitehead, Brags and Boasts: Propaganda
in the Year of the Armada (Dover, NH : Alan Sutton Pub,
1994).
25
Archivio Mediceo, filza 4919, fol. 465, dated 31
August 31, 1588: [...] Vanno tanto segrete et incerte
come ogni altra cosa, le notizie di questa armata, che
pare che nessuno si possa promettere di dirne la verità
se non chi dica di non ne saper verità. [...] Prima si
disse della vittoria per la parte nostra così favorevole
et fortunata come io scrissi con l’ordinario per lettera
di XX. Et fu questa voce fondata su una relazione di Don
Bernardo de Mendozza, il quale non solo ne scrisse, ma ne
mandò alcune stampe che sopra ciò haveva fatto imprimere.
Poi si pubblicò che l’armata nostra haveva pacificamente
passato il Canale, et preso porto a Cales con havere
veduto Drach [Francis Drake], et l’almirante inglese
senz’alcun motivo loro, non che contrasto. Et questo
presupposto con la verità degli altri scritti da me a
V.A. per lettera di XXVII et in particolare di quello
^oro in Francia^ diede luogo a quelle considerazioni che
in essa scrivevo. Ultimamente per due corrieri ci sono
due avvisi uno del medesimo Don Bernardo dove si va
moderando et limitando. L’altro del Principe d’ Ascoli,
del quale sendovi assai male nuove, se ne sono vedute
copie difficilmente, et quelle poche con poco gusto di
questo Cons.re di Guerra il quale si dice che per sopirle
habbiano immediatamente fatto pubblicare più prosperi
avvisi della sconfitta di Drach, et dell’armata inglese,
che sono più desiderati, che creduti per molte ragioni,
ch’io reputo superfluo numerare a V.A. ben informata
d’ogni successo. Ben ho voluto mandarle le copie de
detti avvisi acciò vegga come qua si dicono et variano le
cose.
26
Carla Sodini, L'Ercole tirreno : guerra e dinastia
medicea nella prima metà del '600 (Florence: Olschki,
2001). Occasionally for some details I still found
useful Guido Bentivoglio, Storia delle guerre di Fiandra
(Milan: Bettoni, 1833), part 3, bk. vii; as well as Hugo
Grotius, De rebus belgicis, read in the English
translation by Thomas Manley, published in London, 1665,
books 10 and 11.
27
M.A.P. doc. no. 9243: Archivio Mediceo, filza 5155,
fol. 499, dated 3 July, 1603.
28
M.A.P., doc. 11686: [. ..] Quanto a quella machina
del Ponte del [Pompeo] Targone non vi bisognava punto
meno che mandarne il duplicato, perchè quel primo disegno
si durava una gran fatica a capirlo. [. . .](10 January
1603.
29
M.A.P., doc. 8738: Archivio Mediceo, filza 5157,
fol. 243, dated 14 September 1604.
30
M.A.P., doc. 8659: Archivio Mediceo, filza 5157,
fol. 99, dated 23 April 1604: “Le nuove di Ostenden le
22
vedrà V. A. nell’aggiunto foglio che è cavato da più
lettere che il Cav. Melzi et altri amici mi scrivono di
là continovamente; nè più di questo saprei dirle cosa
alcuna poi che non si ragiona d’altro che di quest’
espugnazione, la quale va veramente a buon cammino.”
31
Archivio Mediceo, filza 4256, dated 18 November 1604:
“Il nemico presa il tempo d’una fiera che si faceva in
Arlon nel paese di Luzemburgh mandò circa 40 fra a piedi
et a cavallo vestiti da villani e bon armati sotto i
quali presero la porta e in un istante comparsero
quattrocento cavalli che entrorno dentro e sacheggiorno e
svaligiorno, quanto vi era, e presero prigioni circa a 30
dei principali borgesi della vialla et è stato dicono il
maggior bottino che già mai si sia fatto in questa
parte.”
32
M.A.P. 8763: Archivio Mediceo, filz. 5157 fol. 279:
18 November 1604: “Quanto a nuove di queste parti posso
sol dirle come, il nemico preso il tempo di una fiera che
si faceva in Arlon nel paese di Luzenburghi mandò
cinquanta soldati vestiti da villano con buon arme sotto
a pigliar la porta della villa e con 400 cavalli entrò
poi dentro e svaligiò e saccheggiò ogni cosa e hanno
fatto un de maggior bottini e de più ricchi che si sia
fatto da un tempo in qua in questi paesi, et oltre alla
preda delle robbe migliori che erano in quella villa
hanno condotto prigioni una trentina di quei borgesi
principali che pagheranno la ranzone per loro e tutti gli
altri
che sono restati.”
33
Archivio Mediceo, filza 4256, fol. 270, dated 28
April
1604.
34
M.A.P., doc. 8660: filza 5157 fol. 100, dated 28
April,
1604.
35
Howard M. Solomon, Public Welfare, Science and
Propaganda in Seventeenth-Century France: the
Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 149.
36
Quoted in Luigi Firpo, “In margine al processo di
Giordano Bruno. Francesco Maria Vialardi,” Rivista
storica
italiana 68 (1956): 341.
37
Achille Neri, “Curiose avventure di Luca Assarino,
genovese, storico, romanziere e giornalista del secolo
XVII,” Giornale ligustico di archeologia, storia e belle
arti
2 (1875): 14.
38
Concerning the Roman prohibitions, Prospero Farinacci,
Praxis et theoricae criminalis, 4 vols. (Venice: Giunti,
1603-14), ii, bk. 3, chaps. 10-11; iii, bk. 4, quaest.
112.
39
Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility
and Science in Seventeenth-Century England (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994). But see also
Mordechai Feingold, “When Facts Matter,” Isis 87 (1996):
pp 131-9.