- Die Außenbeziehungen der römischen Kurie unter Paul V. Borghese (1605–1621)
This volume contains the texts of twenty-three papers (ten in German, nine in Italian, two in English, and one each in French and Spanish) given at a conference held in Rome in May, 2005, at the German Historical Institute on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the election of Camillo Borghese as pope on May 16, 1605. The identity of the host institution for the conference can come as no surprise to students of the early-modern papacy, since the institute has sponsored the publication of critical editions of the General Instructions given to papal diplomats (Hauptinstruktionen or Istruzioni generali) of Popes Gregory XIII, Clement VIII, and Paul V (the former two under the editorship of Klaus Jaitner, which appeared in 1984 and 1997) and the last under that of Silvio Giordano (2003), who is currently preparing a corresponding edition for the pontificate of Urban VIII. These volumes have been accompanied by a succession of conferences on related themes whose proceedings have now appeared as Nuntiarberichte und Nuntiaturforschung. Kritische Bestandsaufnahme und neue Perspectiven (Tübingen, 1976); Das Papstum, die Christenheit und die Staaten Europas, 1592–1605, ed. Georg Lutz (Tübingen, 1994); and Kurie und Politik. Stand und Perspectiven der Nuntiaturberichtsforschung, ed. Alexander Koller (Tübingen, 1998), of which the volume under the review is the latest in the series. After a somewhat generic introductory survey by Maria Teresa Fattori of the priorities of the Borghese pope that can be deduced from reading Giordano’s fine edition, the volume ranges broadly both in terms of theme and geography. Although there are six papers devoted to the traditional focus of the Holy Roman Empire (on Rudolf II’s last years by Jan Paul Niederkorn; Bohemia by Václav Bůžek; Inner Austria in the years running up to the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War by Alexander Koller; the closing of the Graz Nunciature by Elizabeth Zingerle; censorship and the Inquisition relating to the business of the Cologne Nunciature and Roman attitudes to the variants of Catholicism found in the correspondence of the Nunciature of Flanders by Bruno Boute), this is balanced by an equal number of papers on the Italian peninsula: two on Venice (by Anthony Wright and Stefano Andretta), and one each on the Savoyard presence at the Roman Curia (by Toby Osborne), Milan (by Julia Zunckel),Tuscany (by Christian Wieland), and Naples (by Guido Metzler). This selection also includes an unexpected analysis of the military policy of Paul V by Giampiero Brunelli. There are also single papers dedicated to Spain (by Bernard J. García García), Portugal (by Silvio Giordano), Poland (by Leszek [End Page 576] Jarmiński), France (by Olivier Poncet), and Malta (by Moritz Trebeljahr). Finally, in refreshing acknowledgment of the extra-European dimension to papal interests, there are two papers on the overseas missions as reflected in the diplomatic correspondence: a rather episodic narrative by Matteo Sanfilippo on missions in North America and a more wide-ranging, archivally informed, intellectually coherent, and stimulating account of missions to the Middle and Far East by Giovanni Pizzorusso. Taken together, this volume demonstrates eloquently the range of issues and themes that engagement with the archival traces generated by papal diplomacy can illuminate.