‘Having one little wolf at the papal court is not enough’

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This chapter – which is based on the analysis of the rich and often encrypted dispatches written by the Milanese ambassadors resident in Renaissance Rome – demonstrates that the papal court as a place of decision-making and the pope as decision-maker and ‘man of action’ attracted a lot of attention in Milanese politics and diplomacy in the second half of the fifteenth century. As the central fulcrum of political communication in Renaissance Italy, and as a place where decisions were produced which were of great relevance for the whole Christian world, the papal court was comparable to a magnet. The Milanese dispatches from the curia illustrate very clearly the attempts, sometimes successful, at other times futile, of the duke of Milan and of his envoys to influence and sway papal decisions. The authority of the papacy as a ‘global’ institution according to the understanding at that time is rendered quite tangible thanks to the Milanese correspondence.