Girolamo Zorzi's manuscript is kept in the British Library. It is a paper register measuring 319 x 215 mm, consisting of 72 folios, almost all numbered on the front at the time of writing and written in one hand, in cursive Italian script, from beginning to end. It contains 80 letters, most of them sent by Zorzi to the Venetian government, between 13 September 1485 and 26 September 1487. The last part of letter 80, written after 26 September 1487, is missing. As Zorzi remained in France at least until January 1488, it is likely that other letters copied by the ambassador were also included in the missing final part of the manuscript. These letters are a unique document, as no other letter between Venice and France was known to exist before 1500. The manuscript also predates the series of the Ambassadors’ Private Archives in the State Archives of Venice, which only begins in 1489. The introduction to the volume, in Italian and French, is the fruit of the collaboration of the three editors and reflects their varying expertise.
Girolamo Zorzi came from an important Venetian aristocratic family, owner of one of the greatest Venetian Renaissance palaces, designed by Mauro Codussi and now the Venetian seat of UNESCO. A member of the Senate, he had already been ambassador to the sultan in 1475 and had held other important posts in his homeland. He was the Serenissima's ambassador in Milan when, in 1485, he was ordered to go quickly to France to ask for the restitution of the four Venetian galleys bound for Flanders that had been captured, on 20 August 1485, off the coast of Cabo de Sāo Vicente, in the Algarve, by the son of “Columbo” (Guillaume Casenove) and Zorzi Greco, two privateers in the service of the French Crown. The first reason for Zorzi's trip to France was an attempt to resolve a diplomatic-commercial crisis. The use of privateers by states against the commercial ships of other countries was legitimate in the event of war, but Venice and France had peaceful relations of collaboration at the time, so this was a particularly embarrassing affair, not least because the galleys were extremely richly laden (210,000–220,000 ducats).
But Zorzi was faced with a complicated political situation in France: the king was a minor and under the de facto—but not de jure—guardianship of his sister, Anne de Beaujeu, which provoked the revolt of part of the French nobility, intolerant of Anne's rule (the “Guerre folle”). Despite the positive reception and the king's appointment as a knight, Zorzi's task was more difficult than expected, also because of the financial problems of the French monarchy. Another issue of international politics, the affair of Djem, the sultan's brother, held in France, and involving the pope and the king of Hungary, Matthias Corvinus, required Zorzi's diplomatic work. But apart from the more strictly political and diplomatic aspects, the letters are interesting as an autobiographical account, on the one hand, and as a source of psychological observations, on the other. Accustomed to diplomatic language, Zorzi also knows the half-truths, codes, and lies—on the whole, his portrait of the French monarchy is anything but flattering.
Last but not least, Zorzi's letters are a direct testimony to the economic system set up by the great Italian families. Through his remarks, information, and testimonies, the ambassador evokes the organization of international trade and its main actors, the merchant-bankers of the most important Italian cities, such as Venice, Florence, and Genoa. The document vividly illustrates the functioning of one of the fundamental axes of European trade, the link between the Mediterranean and Northwestern Europe. In fact, the urgent choice of Girolamo Zorzi as ambassador was no coincidence: he and members of his family were frequently found operating in the West of Europe during the fifteenth century.
The publication of Girolamo Zorzi's letters offers scholars exceptional historical documentation that touches the whole of Europe; there is no doubt that these texts will form the basis of important new research.
