Making Diplomacy through Culture: Mikołaj Sękowski, the Polish Envoy to Naples and Madrid in the Late Sixteenth Century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the little known but interesting Polish diplomat Mikołaj Sękowski, the envoy to Naples and Madrid in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. The main purpose of the text is to complete Sękowski’s biography with new details, and to shed a different light on his activity, placing it within the context of the beginnings of public diplomacy. Through the analysis of documental and literary sources comprised principally between 1576 and 1588, the author argues that Mikołaj Sękowski had, for more than a decade, remained a stable and active source of information about Poland in Italy in Spain. Thus, he provided an additional and unusual element of ‘soft diplomacy’ to the Polish foreign service actions in Naples and Madrid, aimed principally at recovering the Neapolitan sums.