ABSTRACT
Since the late Middle Ages, Northern Italy had a number of early mail services. Universities, banks, and cities often ran messengers on foot or horseback. A postal system depended upon the establishment of staffed waystations for couriers to change horses or pick up or distribute mail. The Tassis family of Bergamo worked as postmasters and key developers of postal lines for the Venetian, papal, imperial, and Spanish posts. After 1608, Codogno’s Nuovo itinerario appeared in at least six more editions published in Milan and Venice across the next century. Where Codogno saw only bandits and spies, Pallavicino developed another vision entirely of the combatants in the battle for information control. As many historians of espionage, illicit publishing, and smuggling have found, writing an institutional history from official documents often provides an incomplete picture at best.
