Italian Visitors

Abstract

It is impossible to know how many non-Italians paid visits to Italy between the fourteenth and the seventeenth century or how many Italians visited states beyond the peninsula during the same period. It is equally impossible to say that such travels must have been of a minimum or maximum duration to count as “visits.” The pilgrim was perhaps the archetypal visitor, and the greatest quantity of pilgrim traffic was generated by jubilees or holy years, which were celebrated in Rome in 1300, 1350, 1390, 1400, 1423, 1450, 1475, 1500, 1525, 1550, 1575, 1600, 1625, and 1650, but clerics, diplomats, scholars, artists, soldiers, and merchants also had cause to travel, to pay visits, and to record what they saw and whom they met. The most obvious change in the course of the period was the decline in pilgrim traffic as a consequence of the Reformation and the gradual emergence of what became known as the grand tour, but the schism also resulted in a changed international profile among the clerical communities of Rome’s national colleges and elite households. In this bibliography visitors to and from Italy are not divided by their motives for travel but in terms of their geographical origins and destinations. After considering reference resources (see Reference Resources) that can be used to research the lives and works of the relevant individuals, the bibliography traces an arc from Byzantium and beyond (see Byzantium and Beyond), through eastern Europe (see Eastern Europe), the German-speaking lands (see German-Speaking Lands), the Low Countries (see Low Countries), the British Isles (see British Isles), France (see France), and Iberia (see Iberia). In most cases, primary and secondary sources are considered together, but in the case of the British Isles (British Isles) and France (France) the sheer quantity of material means that the selection of works has been divided into primary sources and studies.