ABSTRACT
Scholars have long used postal summaries like Andrea de Burgo’s to ascertain the frequency and speed with which information travelled in early modern times, and to show that information’s consequent utility in foreign policy decision-making. This chapter draws on archivally preserved diplomatic dispatches and financial accounts related to the crucial Rome-(Venice/Mantua)-Trent-Innsbruck post road of the early sixteenth century to examine how diplomats negotiated the secure transfer of sensitive political information in the early years of Roman resident diplomacy. The expansion of postal networks and of ‘permanent’ diplomacy were complementary. Diplomatic historians generally agree that the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries saw an extensification and intensification of diplomatic traffic and communications in Europe. Diplomacy’s new written reporting practices were in no small part attributable to the late medieval spread of paper across Europe. Paper offered a durable yet pliable, affordable, and accessible medium for the often daily communications between ambassadors and their distant principals.
