The Relations of the Republic of Venice and the Marquises D'este in the Mid-Fourteenth to Mid-Fifteeenth Century based on the Lettere Ducali frm the Western European Section of the Historical Archive of the Saint Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences

Abstract

This study is devoted to research into a set of the Venetian lettere ducali to the Marquises d’Este of the 14th and 15th centuries, collected by N.P. Likhachev (1862-1936), a Member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and stored in the Western European section of the Saint Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences (The Archive) and the preparation of their full-text critical publication. The lettere ducali are an excellent source to study the Serenissima and its continental and overseas domains. The source material of the Venetian lettere ducali have long, and not without reason, been considered and actively investigated by researchers as one of the most important sources on the economic, social, political, legal, environmental, cultural, and ethnic history of Venice. In addition, Venetian sources often provide researchers with important material on the history of other states of the Italian Peninsula, including, in our case, the domains of d’Este. This explains the exceptional importance of studying lettere ducali as the most important source on the history of the Western European Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. This study reveals historical material on the specific cities and regions of Italy (Venice, Treviso, Ferrara, Verona, Padua, the Po Delta), the Venetian colonies in the Mediterranean (Crete, Cyprus) and the Adriatic (Shkodra, the Dalmatian Coast), as well as the history of international relations, the history of economic relations, the history of everyday life, the history of state institutions and international law, the history of medieval documents, and the history of Latin writing