A Taste of Diplomacy: Food Gifts for the Muscovite Embassy in Venice (1582)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/LEGATIO.2017.05Keywords
Venice, hospitality, gift-giving, food gifts, diplomatic expenditureAbstract
A vital factor governing early modern diplomatic relations was the practice of hospitality. To assure that the embassy began amicably, ambassadors had to be received with generosity. The nature and extent of diplomatic hospitality differed according to the host state, but it often included the offer of housing and victuals. This critical edition of a primary source aims to shed new light on the characteristics of diplomatic hospitality by carefully examining a list of expenses drafted by the Venetian office of the Rason Vecchie. This archival document provides a detailed account of all the food that was supplied to host a Muscovite delegation that visited Venice in 1582. In the first place, the article unravels the qualities and dynamics of Venetian food gifts by contextualising and comparing the source with additional Venetian records. Furthermore, it argues that the type of foodstuffs offered, the amount of money spent on them, and the splendour of festive banquets all communicated strong symbolic and political messages. By focusing the analysis on lists of expenses, the relevance of these documents for the study of diplomatic practices is illustrated. Overviews of financial transactions might seem static and dry accounts at first sight, however, when analysed closely, they reveal a great deal about the day-to-day operation of early modern diplomacy.References
Archival Sources
Venice, Archivio di Stato di Venezia
Collegio, Cerimoniali
reg. 1, 3
Collegio, Esposizioni Principi
reg. 5
Senato, Deliberazioni, Terra
reg. 36–80
fz. 85
Ufficiali alle Rason Vecchie
b. 378, 379
Printed Primary Sources
Pamjatniki Diplomatičeskich Snoshenii Drevnej Rossii s Derzhavami Inostrannymi, 10 vols (1851–1871), I (St. Peterburg: Izdatel’stvo: Tip. II Otdeleniya Sobstvennoy Ye.I.V. Kantselyarii, 1851)
Possevino, Antonio, The Moscovia of Antonio Possevino, S.J., ed. and trans. by Hugh F. Graham (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh, 1977)
Sansovino, Francesco, Venetia Città Nobilissima et Singolare, con Aggiunta da D. Giustiniano Martinioni (Venice: Stefano Curti, 1663)
Sanudo, Marin, Diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. by Rinaldo Fulin and others, 58 volumes (Venice: Visentini, 1879–1903), XVII (1886)
Secondary Works
Albala, Ken, Food in Early Modern Europe (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003)
Bercusson, Sara, ‘Gift-Giving, Consumption and the Female Court in Sixteenth-Century Italy’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2009)
Bernstorff, Marieke von and Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, eds, L’Arte del Dono: Scambi Artistici e Diplomazia tra Italia e Spagna, 1550–1650 (Milan: Silvana Editoriale, 2013)
Boerio, Giuseppe, Dizionario del Dialetto Veneziano, 3rd edn (Venice: Reale Tipografia di Giovanni Cecchini Editore, 1867)
Brusegan, Marcello, ‘Cisame de Pesse Quale Tu Voy’: Il Pesce nelle Tavole Veneziane nei Secoli XIV–XVI (Venice: Centro Internazionale della Grafica di Venezia, 1992)
Carrio-Invernizzi, Diana, ‘Gift and Diplomacy in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Italy’, The Historical Journal, 51, no. 4 (2008), 881–99
Chatenet, Monique, ‘The King’s Space: The Etiquette of Interviews at the French Court in the Sixteenth Century’, in The Politics of Space: European Courts, ca. 1500–1750, ed. by Marcello Fantoni, George Gorse and Malcolm Smuts (Rome: Bulzoni, 2009), pp. 193–208
Cohen, Elizabeth S., ‘Miscarriages of Apothecary Injustice: Un-Separate Spaces of Work and Family in Early Modern Rome’, in Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine, ed. by Sandra Cavallo and David Gentilcore (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), pp. 8–32
Cossalter, Stefanie, ‘Dai Porti alle Isole: Cerimoniali di Accoglienza nella Serenissima’, in Spazi Veneziani: Topografie Culturali di una Città, ed. by Sabine Meine (Rome, Venice: Viella, 2014), pp. 125–48
Dubrovskiy, I.V., ‘Novyye Dokumenty po Istorii Otnosheniy Rossii i Italii pri Ivane Groznom’, in Russkiy Sbornik: Issledovaniya po Istorii Rossii, ed. by M. Jovanovic and others, 14 vols (Moscow: Regnum, 2004–2013), XIV (2013), pp. 7–72
Dursteler, Eric R., ‘Food and Politics’, in A Cultural History of Food, ed. by Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers (London: Berg, 2012), III: A Cultural History of Food in the Renaissance, ed. by Ken Albala (2012), pp. 83–100
———, ‘‘A Continual Tavern in My House’: Food and Diplomacy in Early Modern Constantinople’, in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph Connors, ed. by Machtelt Israëls and Louis A. Waldman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 166–71
Ferraro, Joanne Marie, Venice: History of the Floating City (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)
Fletcher, Catherine, ‘“Those Who Give Are Not All Generous”: Tips and Bribes at the Sixteenth-Century Papal Court’, EUI Working Papers MWP 2011/15, European University Institute, 2011, 1–10
Heal, Felicity, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)
———, ‘Food Gifts, the Household and the Politics of Exchange in Early Modern England’, Past & Present, 199.1 (2008), 41–70
Hosking, Geoffrey A., Russia and the Russians: A History (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2001)
Jansson, Maija, ‘Measured Reciprocity: English Ambassadorial Gift Exchange in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Journal of Early Modern History, 9, no. 3 (2005), 348–70
Jeanneret, Michel, A Feast of Words: Banquets and Table Talk in the Renaissance, trans. by Jeremy Whiteley and Emma Hughes (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991)
Komaroff, Linda, ed., Gifts of the Sultan: The Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011)
Martin, Russell E., ‘Gifts for the Bride: Dowries, Diplomacy, and Marriage Politics in Muscovy’, The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 38, no. 1 (2008), 119–46
Matalas, Antonia-Leda, Eleni Tourlouki and Chrystalleni Lazarou, ‘Fasting and Food Habits in the Eastern Orthodox Church’, in Food and Faith in Christian Culture, ed. by Ken Albala and Trudy Eden (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), pp. 189–204
Mesotten, Laura, ‘Behind the Curtains of Diplomacy: The Household, Material Culture and Networks of French Ambassadors in Venice (1550–1610)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, European University Institute, 2017)
Muir, Edward, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981)
Mund, Stéphane, ‘La Mission Diplomatique du Père Antonio Possevino (S.J.) chez Ivan le Terrible en 1581–1582 et les Premiers Écrits Jésuites sur la Russie Moscovite à la Fin du XVIe Siècle’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 45, no. 3–4 (2004), 407–40
Pedani, Maria Pia, In Nome del Gran Signore: Inviati Ottomani a Venezia dalla Caduta di Costantinopoli alla Guerra di Candia (Venice: Deputazione Editrice, 1994)
Shaw, James, and Evelyn Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011)
Urban, Lina, Banchetti Veneziani dal Rinascimento al 1797 (Belluno: Strategy & People, 2007)
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 302
Number of citations: 0