The edition Dispacci sforzeschi da Napoli

directed by Mario Del Treppo, supervisors Francesco Senatore and Francesco Storti

english abstract

The purpose of the edition is to increase our knowledge of the kingdom and city of Naples, of the king and his court in the Aragonese period, through the Sforzesco correspondence from Naples, a source from outside the kingdom, whose own archival patrimony was greatly depleted in 1943. The collection, planned by Del Treppo in 1987 (‘Napoli aragonese nella corrispondenza degli ambasciatori milanesi e fiorentini’, in L’Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici e la Scuola Superiore in Napoli, special issue of La Provincia di Napoli, 9, 1987, n. 3/4, pp. 47-8), was inaugurated in 1997 with Vol. I of the Dispacci, edited by Senatore, and has been continued by Vols. IV and II, edited by Storti and by Senatore respectively in 1998 and 2004).
In the volumes are published a selection of documents, from and to a range of senders and recipients, from the Napoli series of the Archivio Sforzesco of the Archivio di Stato di Milano (together with some codices from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France that contain Sforzesco letters): these range from the letters of the Milanese ambassadors in Naples to the drafts of the duke’s letters, to letters sent by numerous other correspondents who wrote regularly or occasionally from the kingdom for various reasons (the members of the royal family, courtiers, condottieri, soldiers, barons, cities, ambassadors from other states), intercepted letters, and documents of all kinds of which copies were sent to Milan (the internal and external correspondence of the king, lists of soldiers, terms of agreements etc.). The selected letters, chosen on the criterion of interest for the history of Naples, have been integrated with letters and documents from other series of the Archivio Sforzesco, and from other Italian sources. The full apparatus of notes is founded on information from published and unpublished correspondence from all the Italian states and the kingdom of Naples, and on some series of the Archivio di Stato di Napoli, as well as on the available secondary literature. Consequently, the Dispacci are not so much the publication of a particular correspondence, which would have meant sacrificing an enormous mass of information, as a ‘narration through documents’ of the history of Naples in those years, that naturally is also of interest for the history of international relations.
The character of the documentation, which includes numerous letters in cipher, and the editing criteria necessitate considerable preparatory work, which not only enriches the information in the volumes but stimulates further research. For example, one outcome has been the publication of the itinerary of Ferrante by Senatore and Storti (Salerno, 2002), with an introductory study of military and political history; another has been the interdisciplinary research on King Ferrante’s autograph letters, by Senatore and Francesco Montuori, another member of the research team (the first fruit of this is their essay on ‘Lettere autografe di Ferrante d’Aragona’, in A.M. Compagna, A. De Benedetto and N. Puigdevall i Balafuy (eds), Momenti di cultura catalana in un millenio (Naples, 2003), I, pp. 368-88).
The collection will also include a two-volume Inventario delle corrispondenze sforzesche di Napoli, 1451-1465, of all the documents in boxes 195-215 of the Naples series of the Archivio Sforzesco, around 6,400 pieces, of which only 1,280 will be edited in full.
The Dispacci have been very well received, being reviewed in prestigious national and international journals, and frequently cited in scholarly studies, such as the essay of Corrado Vivanti in Vol. XIX of the Annali of the Einaudi Storia d’Italia (2002). The project has stimulated much scholarly work, from which have been derived numerous publications by Senatore and Storti, who were trained in historical research, under the guidance of Del Treppo, by their work for this edition.

 Index

Volumes:

• vol. I: 1444-2 luglio 1458, a cura di Francesco Senatore, p. XXIV, 707 – published in 1997
• vol. II: 4 luglio 1458-30 dicembre 1459, a cura di Francesco Senatore, p. XXXII, 485 – published in 2004
• vol. III: 1460, a cura di Francesco Storti
• vol. IV: 1° gennaio-26 dicembre 1461, a cura di Francesco Storti, p. XXIII, 459 – published in 1998
• vol. V: 1462-1463, a cura di Emanuele Catone, Armando Miranda, Elvira Vittozzi – to be published in 2007
• vol. VI: 1464-1465, a cura di Emilia di Maio
• vol. VII: Inventario delle corrispondenze sforzesche da Napoli, 1451-1465, a cura di Francesco Senatore e Francesco Storti

Criteria of edition

Name index of the published vols (downloadbe file)

Index and summaries of diplomatic letters from the kingdom of Naples contained in the ms Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Italien, 1588 (years 1458-1460) and 1589 (year 1464)