ABSTRACT
As Bishop of Ferrara, Archbishop of Auch and cardinal protector of France, Luigi d'Este enjoyed an enormous income, amounting to 96000 scudi d'oro a year; even so, it fell short of the princely luxury to which he was accustomed. Luigi d'Este, too, would probably have been glad to renounce the cardinal's purple in exchange for the throne of Ferrara. It is difficult to understand what, in an age dominated by dissimulation, the communis opinio was with regard to Cardinal d'Este. Cardinale Luigi d'Este, by virtue of his authority at the heart of the papal court, is one of the figures most frequently cited in the Avvisi. Thus observed the chronicler in the 1584 Avvisi di Roma, a series of manuscript news dispatches sent from Rome to the court of Urbino. This source, still not exhaustively utilized by music historians, provides a taste of the more worldly side of life in the papal city during the late Renaissance.
