| Summary/Abstract |
This analysis considers some of the methods and purposes of gathering intelligence in sixteenth-century diplomacy. Regular despatches from ambassadors provided a steady stream of information, but of particular importance was the development of the formal relation, the relazione, pioneered in Venice and subsequently imitated elsewhere. Two imitations by English authors – Robert Beale and Daniel Rogers – are evaluated, one with a critical relationship to the evolution of an emerging genre of advice literature on travel, the ars apodemica. By the close of the century, the aspects to which the private traveller was to direct their attention mirrored the information to be contained in relazioni for the purposes of the state.
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