By Brendan DooleyTrouble in Rome! The Rome newsletter of 23 October 1582 informs:“The Congregation responsible for the reform and intercalation of the year has heard from Naples about a serious error in the printed version, such that the pope having…
Author: wp_11035540
by Davide Limatola The appearance of handwritten news sheets known as avvisi in Italian, circulating through the chanceries and streets of European cities, even before the invention of printed newspapers, raises several important questions. One of these is what were…
Less than three months before the battle of Lepanto, famously won by the Holy League against the Turks on October 7, 1571 in the Gulf of Patras, passions in the Mediterranean are already running high. Bit by bit, the Venetian…
In the words of the Florentine resident, Amerigo Salvetti: “It is confirmed that on the 6th of this month this new tribunal of Westminster pronounced the death sentence against their king, and on the 9th had this carried out by…
Argentoratum, Argentina, Argentum, Argentaria, Argentoria, Strateburgis, Stradburgo (Strasburgensis, Straceburgensis), Straßburg (Elsaß, Alsace).Our handwritten newsletter from Argentina, (Archivio di Stato, Florence, MdP 4170, img 6531) is not from South America.But let’s take a closer look. We learn,“The five companies of Zurich…
The Irish were making trouble again, or so it seemed. The year was 1666, and relations between the Irish and the English, only recently becalmed following the close of the tumultuous Cromwellian period, were being roiled by a new crisis,…
A pretender to the Ottoman sultanate; A Greek priest seeking to drum up support for Christian interests in the Levant; a travel account bearing descriptions of songs sung on the streets of Constantinople regarding current events……. but let’s back up…
Sometimes the wrapping is almost as curious as the item itself. In the case of vol. 4028a of the Mediceo del Principato collection at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, the 700 or so folios of handwritten newsletters stored here, mostly…