«Siati per le mille fiate el ben venuto…»: la prassi dell’arrivo e dell’accoglienza di un ambasciatore (Napoli 1471-Venezia 1473)

Abstract

It was during the 15th century, the golden age of Italian diplomacy, that the role of resident ambassadors was gradually codified. They were sent by the Italian powers and they had the delicate task of being correspondents of the complex diplomatic relations between states for their masters. Starting with the study of the letters that the ambassadors used to sent to their masters during their missions, the main objective of this paper is to illustrate practices and customs that ruled their arrival and reception in the host state. The three delegations examined here, Francesco Maletta’s and Zaccaria Barbaro’s in Naples and Leonardo Botta’s in Venice, offer the chance to discover and see through the eyes of a fifteenth-century emissary a fundamental part of the Italian medieval diplomacy practice.