ABSTRACT

Night time in Venice, May 1495. A man in disguise was stealthily leaving the Benedictine Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore, on the island of the same name situated at the mouth of the Giudecca canal. This used to be the dwelling place of foreign ambassadors, entertained honorifice by the Signoria ('a spexe de San Marco'). One needed a barca to get there. It was not the first time that this man was walking, at night, through the city of the doges in order to meet important representatives of international diplomacy. That particular night, he met the ambassador from Ferrara, a skillful and energetic agent ('de ingenio'). Our stravestito man (we are not told what sort of disguise he had chosen on that night) was Commynes - a character the Italians knew well. He had been spotted and shadowed by the henchmen of the Signoria long ago, but so far his movements had not given rise to much emotion in Venice. As a matter of fact, the city of the doges was full of excitement since that night of 1 April when the League was signed; diplomats from all over Europe and from the Levant were staying there at the same time, organising many more or less unofficial contacts and exchanges. But at that very moment, the situation was considered serious enough by the Milanese ambassador in Venice for him to report to his chancery about the sinistre pratiche of Commynes.l

This was the beginning of one of the most extraordinary episodes in the diplomatic career of Commynes, an episode so far uncommented upon by critics

1 Archivio di Stato di Milan, Sforzesco Potenze Estere [hereafter ASMi, SPE], Venezia, b. 383 (Antonio Trivulzio, Bernardo Visconti and Taddeo Vimercati to Sforza, 4th May 1495, extracts in A. Segre, 'I prodomi della ritirata di Carlo VIII, re di Francia, da Napoli', Archivio storico italiano, 5th ser., 33 (1904), 351.