Real, Fake or Megalomaniacs? Three Suspicious Ambassadors, 1450–1600

Abstract

Courts and rulers in pre-modern times, when reliable means of personal identification hardly existed, could not always verify whether a visitor from abroad claiming to be the envoy of a foreign sovereign was a genuine envoy or a swindler. Similarly, it was not always easy to determine if such a visitor — or for that matter one’s own returning ambassador — had loyally followed instructions or if he had overstepped the limits of his authority. Here I should like to examine three early modern envoys involved in the dangerous business of maintaining contact between Western Europe and Persia with the aim (or perhaps one should say, in the hope) of establishing a military alliance against the Ottoman Empire. The secrecy required by their missions, coupled with some of their personality traits and the practical problems posed by long- distance travel, made it particularly difficult for some courts at the time (and for certain modern scholars) to determine if and to what extent these men actually were who they claimed to be and did what they were supposed to do. A relateded issue is that of credibility, that is, the factors which led a ruler and his court to consider a certain person suitable and reliable enough to be sent on a mission or to be acknowledged as a foreign envoy and seriously listened to.