ABSTRACT
Stanford Libraries’ Special Collections houses a short letter dated June 25, 1507. The executive council responsible for Florence’s foreign policy, the Dieci di liberta e balia , drafted the missive and dispatched it to one “Francesco Vettori”. Vettori’s mandato, which specified the scope and limits of his mandate abroad, charged him with two tasks. The Vettori family’s wealth derived from nearly a century of involvement in the wool trade. Francesco’s father was a soldier and was entrusted with important assignments and offices under both the Medici and the Republic. When his father died in office in 1495, the Ten appointed Francesco to complete his term as Captain of Pistoia. The mission entrusted to Francesco Vettori was anything but simple and straightforward and the shifting priorities of that mission, coupled with the continuous amplification of his authority in the German court, serve as a good example of the essentially fluid nature of Renaissance diplomacy.
