Princes, ambassadors and lost choirbooks of early Tudor England

Abstract

Giovanni Gioachino da Passano (1465–1551) was a Genoese-born French ambassador who served on three diplomatic missions to the court of Henry VIII between 1524 and 1532. Gioachino worked closely with the king and court, and was successful in his task in gaining French support for Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The Genoese Passano line flourished well into the 20th century, and the last marquis, Marcello da Passano, died in 1960 (although several branches of the family survive today). His father, Manfredo da Passano (d.1922), still possessed many treasures from his family’s history including, among other things, supposed items from Giovanni Gioachino’s time in England. These included a silver-gilt chalice (which, reputedly, Gioachino won in a chess match with Henry VIII), an eagle lectern and no fewer than ten ‘choir books’ (now known to be a luxury set of liturgical chant books), described in English and Italian sources as being superbly bound in silver and illuminated in the most elaborate fashion; one source claims that one of the books had the ‘arms of the Abbey of Westminster ... in the frontispiece’, while another describes them as the ‘Arms of England’ and a third simply states that the books are from London. The family tradition is that all were given by Henry VIII to Gioachino for his good works in diplomatic matters. The chalice survives in Liguria and is famously known as ‘Henry VIII’s chalice’; a photograph of the eagle lectern has been found in the archives of Westminster Abbey. A full, detailed description of the choirbooks was made in 1866 by the noted Italian historian Luigi Tommaso Belgrano. It is hoped that the publication of the article, along with Belgrano’s list, might facilitate the rediscovery of some or all of the lost Passano volumes.