Intercepted Love-Letters: Reporting the 1535 Apostolic Nunciature to Hungary

Abstract

Although interception has long been recognized as having played a disruptive role in Renaissance diplomatic communications, little systematic attention has been paid to its mechanisms or consequences for the interpretation of early modern letters or diplomatic papers. This article examines the interception of a set of letters sent by nuncio Girolamo Rorario (1485-1551) to his curial colleagues as well as to his mistress during his 1535 nunciature to Hungary. The letters’ interception enables them to be read for not only their memorialist qualities but also for the rhetorical strategies which diplomats such as Rorario employed to transmit information or maintain personal ties, as well as to negotiate complicated, even contradictory commissions, loyalties, and patronage relations. In cautioning historians against reading diplomatic reports as unembroidered reporting of factual events, the Rorario letters also suggest the value of intercepted correspondence for a broader conception of early modern diplomacy,...