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Mediterranean Historical Review

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Paper:
Halikowski Smith, S. (2017). Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the
divergent dynamics of the Spanish and Portuguese world empires. Mediterranean Historical Review, 32(2), 189-235.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09518967.2017.1396764

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 1

Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione of November 1525 to the Venetian Senate on the divergent dynamics of the
Spanish and Portuguese world empires.

Abstract.

This contribution seeks to both present Gasparo Contarini’s diplomatic report (Relazione), made following three
years in Venetian service in Spain between 1522-25 to unfamiliar readers (pp. 15-28), and elucidate its contents
(pp. 1-14). It was a time when ground-breaking reports of the first global circumnavigation by Magellan/Elcano
and conquests in the New World undertaken by Hernán Cortés were filtering back to the Spanish ruler, Charles
V. Projects for the colonization of Brazil in neighbouring Portugal were afoot, as were attempts by other parties
to reach the contested Spiceries by new routes. International juries were constituted to decide upon the division
of the world’s spaces, culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa, and controversial maps were drawn up both to
make sense of potentially new continents like the Americas, and to plead different cases at the upcoming
tribunals. It is asked why such a polarized picture of successful Spanish and unsuccessful Portuguese imperial
fortunes is provided by Contarini, at a time of great rivalry between Spain and Portugal, and it is suggested that
Contarini – who did not personally travel to Portugal - may be simply following a rhetorical precedent fashioned
by previous diplomats like Ca’Masser, Vincenzo Quirini and Pietro Pasqualigo. Historical, personal and
documentary context (Contarini’s 400 dispacci, for example) is provided, and comparisons drawn to the letters
and reports of other contemporary observers like the Polish diplomat Jan Dantyszek at the Spanish court, as
well as contemporary travelers and businessmen like Jörg Pock in Lisbon.

Plate 1. Cardinal Gasparo Contarini, Museo Civico Correr, Venice.

The importance and authoritative tone to Venetian diplomatic reports from different European courts has been
widely recognized,even though the profession was actively evolving in Contarini’s period, and there were as yet
no permanent postings (ambassadors in ordinary), whilst many of the emissaries were not trained diplomats
but merely youthful city patricians in need of gainful employment. i The seriousness and application with which
these ambassadors went about their business at the peripatetic Iberian courts of Spain and Portugal, however,
renders their dispacci, or day-to-day correspondence, and relazioni, classified documents to be presented upon
completion of their office in front of the Venetian Senate, key sources on domestic and imperial developments
in this formative period, all the more so for the disasters afflicting domestic record-keeping, such as the
burning of the old Portuguese archives in the Castelo São Jorge following the Lisbon earthquake in 1775. As a
window from outside on to the unwinding of Iberian events, it is easier to establish the wider international and
even global context, and we can use these sources to move on in the historiography from gauging the
‘uncertain’ or of ‘blunted impact’ of the Discoveries to new questions regarding the connectivity of various
states and their institutions.ii The diverging fortunes of Spanish and Portuguese world empires prophesied by
Contarini is a particularly interesting point of discussion.

Iberia itself constituted a problematic proposition in the sixteenth century, remaining a battleground of
unifying and dividing voices. The period between 1580 and 1640, of course, was marked by the Union of the
Two Crowns, and historians like Jean Aubin have looked for the roots of this union amidst the connectedness of
Spanish and Portuguese fortunes via specific marriage strategies from the turn of the sixteenth century – ‘Les
arrangements [matrimoniales] ultérieurs vont enfermer le Portugal dans l’orbite espagnole’.iiiAt the same time,
Portuguese and Spanish imperial strategies appear to have remained strikingly different. This was not only in
terms of the different parts of the world they chose to engage with, be it eastern or western hemispheres, but
the physiognomies of empire they developed – the types of civic and ecclesiastical institutions that were built
up overseas, whether printing houses and universities, as well as Spanish and Portuguese approaches to city-
building, and the invasiveness of metropolitan powers from Lisbon and Madrid.iv

The diplomatic reports of the Venetian nuncios Domenico Pisani de Giovanni (June 1501), Pietro Pasqualigo
(August 1501), Ca’ Masser (1506), Andrea Navagero (1524-6), Federico Badoer (1557), Michele Suriano (1559),
Tron and Lippomani (1580), and Vincenzo Quirini (1506) have been used widely by historians alongside the
 2

famous diaries of Marino Sanudo and Girolamo Priuli to make sense of the changing world order and
challenges to centuries of Venetian dominance in the long-distance trades at the beginning of the sixteenth
century.v Gasparo Contarini’s Relazione,delivered in front of the Venetian Senate on 16 November 1525,stands
amongst these, and its author, belonging to one of Venice’s most illustrious patrician families, was celebrated
in a pen and ink portrait held in the Museo Civico Correr. Could we suggest he was overshadowed by
colleagues like Andrea Navagero, who was the subject of a full-sized oil painting by Raphael housed in the
Galleria Doria Pamphili in Rome, his diplomatic report became the subject of a posthumously published Viaggio
and his dispacci, rather than squirreled away, also sawthe light of day?vi It is, at any rate, the task here to
produce an annotated translation accompanied by a critical introduction in order to contextualize the report to
the complicated political circumstances of its day, and understand better the raison d’être for Contarini’s
dispatch and the Relazione’s fabrication. Contarini had been elected to the post on 24 September 1520 and
was to attach himself to Charles’s court, which followed the Emperor from his imperial coronation in Aix-la-
Chapelle on 23 October 1520 to the Diet of Worms over which he presided between January and May 1521.
These were climactic times, when Europe was torn into two rival political blocs reflecting the wars raging
between France and the Empire, whilst Luther was splitting the fabric of Catholic Christendom asunder with his
revolutionary pronouncements. Contarini’s secret commission instructed him to establish links with the French
ambassador at the imperial court as a counterweight to the treaty being negotiated between Charles and Pope
Leo X to help Charles gain Milan, while the Pope took Parma, Piacenza and Ferrara. vii For a diplomat just
starting out, whom the Mantuan ambassador Giambattista Malatesta described as ‘a very learned man, though
not very expert in matters of state’, Contarini did well to survive 56 months in Charles V’s train, three years of
which he spent in Spain. Other ambassadors like the Papal Legate Giovanni Salviati spent only 14 months at the
imperial court.viii

Set next to his predecessors’, Contarini’s is a worthy report, if frustrating to analyze for lack of dates, certain
omissions (for example, the provincial cities sending deputations to the Cortes, or the name of the leader of
the Manrique clan), and outright errors (the Victoria, the first ship to circumnavigate the globe between 1519-
22, is ascribed the Portuguese, rather than Castile on page 48). Elsewhere, Contarini’s analysis is a little general
and static, with regard to Navarre for example, whose future was far from ascertained. And his account of
revenues, which tallies extraordinarily closely with that gathered by historians like Ramón Carande, comprises
only those of Castile, which accounted for only 49% of subsidies raised (corrected for inflation). ix Yet Contarini,
despite his useful analysis of the domestic upheavals besetting the kingdom, is not used in key studies on the
Comuneros.xMany of his interesting interpretive slants, like his consideration of Velasco and Manrico factions
(fazioni) in Spain (p. 45) which are as if projecting ancient Italian Guelph and Ghibelline rivalries, are not
pursued by mainstream historians.

Plate 2. Photograph of one of Contarini’s sample dispacci.Source: ‘Lettere al Senato, 1521-5’, Ital. Cl .VII, 1009 ,
Biblioteca Marciana, Venice

Contarini’s Relazione among other contemporary narrative sources relating the impact of Spain’s new
worlds.

Contarini’s Relazione needs to be set against the 400 dispacci now in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice. Some
have been either excerpted (Rawdon Brown), or else published with a view to illuminating particular topics, like
the conquest of Mexico.xi While not part of the Esposizioni archive, thousands of ambassadorial speeches,
replies and subsequent conversations, assembled by secretaries of the Venetian Republic into 242 substantial
files of 400-600 paper leaves each, the dispacci were set down chronologically in a register of letters received
by the Senate.xii While serious scholars in the nineteenth century ploughed through the collection, often
complaining about the legibility of many of these documents, with a view to understanding the dynamics of
European international affairs between 1515-1530, as did F. Dittrich (‘der Gang der vielverzweigten
Verhandlungen und Intriguen, die sich am Hofe des Kaisers abspielten’), more recent scholars simply pass
them by in favour of the printed Relazioni from the nineteenth century.xiii More recently, in an important new
 3

book Davide Scruzzi dips in and out of Contarini’s correspondence in a bid to show an increasing disconnect
between Venetians’ perceptions of themselves as centre of geographic knowledge and the evolving sinews of
power.xiv Ideally, then, the two need to be used in conjunction with each other, juxtaposing the later Relazione
with Contarini’s earlier first-reaction dispatches informing the doge, Antonio Grimani, of Cortes's arrival in
Tenochtitlan. His letters, for example, are written in a more telegraphic style, and concentrate particularly on
the wealth of the newly discovered lands, a subject of great interest to the Signoria. On November 24, 1522, he
wrote, ‘Hernando Cortès reconquered the great city of Tenochtitlan . . . [H]e sends back in ships a present for
the emperor of pearls, jewels and other precious things from this land, which are worth 10,000 ducats’. xv This
immediate monetary assessment can also be detected in Contarini’s reaction to the return of the Magellan
expedition, where he promises the Doge to write more later and limits himself to relating that: ‘they brought
600 cantare of cloves and samples of every other kind of spice’.xvi There is, to be fair, a substantial amount of
repetition: the Pearl Islands in the Pacific, mentioned in the Relazione, are also brought up in the letter sent on
24 November 1522 from Valladolid. We need, furthermore, to be aware of what materials and what possible
sources were at Contarini’s disposal: whilst the ‘First Letter of Relation of Cortès’, or rather a letter dictated by
him and sent on by the new municipality of Vera Cruz, dated 10 July 1519, and which reached the Emperor at
Tordesillas in early March 1520, was digested and reported by Contarini, the first extracts of Gonzalo
Fernández de Oviedo y Valdes’sLa Natural hystoria de las Indias, published in Toledo in 1526, only come later
with Contarini’s replacement, Andrea Navagero, and are incorporated in books published in Venice like that of
Delicado.xvii Then there is the business of juxtaposing the overlap between Contarini’s dispatches and those of
his colleague Ser Francesco Corner, ambassador to Spain, who was the first to write of Cortes’s exploits in a
letter of March 26, 1520, reproduced in Sanudo.xviii

Many travelers to Iberia in this period seem to have been too busy with their allocated tasks, whether in the
service of education, like Clenardus, or in monastic reform, as with the case with Bronseval, to take stock of the
’Joyful news‘, to paraphrase John Frampton, of the New World. xix But there were also a good number, fellow
humanists and traveling diplomats, like the Polish envoy, Jan Dantyszek, who did produce similar sets of
observations from their experiences at the Spanish court. Dantyszek and Contarini do not appear to have
corresponded with each other, even though Dantyszek had precari like the Hebrew scholar from Louvain
Joannes Campensis in his train, who eventually found employment in Rome in Contarini’s household some time
between 1534-38.xx Both men, Dantyszek and Contarini, were fascinated in the world’s affairs, and both held
long conversations with Peter Martyr of Anghiera, busy writing up his Decadas in Madrid before his death in
Granada in September or October 1526. However, none of the many hundreds of letters published in his Opus
epistolarum were actually addressed to Dantyszek or Contarini, referring rather to the Venetians ‘orators’ and
diplomats Joannes Beduarium and Cornaro, and handling Venetian state dispatches destined for the eyes of
Vincenzo Quirini.xxi While Contarini reports on the deeds of ‘Fernando’ Cortes in the New World, Dantyszek had
the honour of actually meeting the man on his triumphal return to Spain in 1528, spending some pleasurable
evenings with him in Valladolid drinking and carousing, and forming what Jerzy Axer calls an ‘unusual
Renaissance friendship’.xxii

Dantyszek’s reports reflect his constant movement across Spain – Antonio Fontan points out how ‘per quinque
continuos annos fere totam paeninsulam peragravit, regium comitatum sectando per provincias et urbes
inquibus varii hispanorum regnorum Senatus’. xxiii Contarini, himself moving in synch with the peregrinations of
the Spanish court, nevertheless presents a far more static picture of Spain, less fixated on descriptions of places
as Navagero was to undertake with respect to Seville, and I think it would be fair to say was more interested in
people and the make-up of power.xxivIf, for example, we compare Contarini’s description of Charles V with that
of another Venetian nuncio, Badoer, while the latter fixates on physical attributes like his rotten teeth and
afflictions to his health, Contarini is interested in Charles’ handling of power, attitudes to work, and
prioritization of peace.xxv Navagero, on the other hand, undoubtedly played a greater role than Contarini in the
transmission and exchange of poetic styles and newly acquired plant lore from the Indies, which saw the light
of day both in Navagero’s translation of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, and in Francisco Delicado’s El modo de
adoperare el legno de India occidentale, 1529.xxvi

Another set of observers could only form their impressions from afar, armchair travellers like the Venetian
humanist Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), who tended to foresee the consequences of these recent geographic
discoveries in his Della historia Vinitiana, published posthumously in 1551, in negative terms, these new lands
 4

and trade routes constituting `a misfortune’ to Venice. He was in direct correspondence with the Spanish
geographer of American discovery, Oviedo, and devoted Book 6 to the discovery of the New World. However,
like Contarini, he characterized Tenochtitlan as a ‘distinguished city, in a lake of salt water’; it has been
suggested that the Aztec (or, as recent scholars seem to prefer, Mexica) capital fascinated Venetians, who saw
it – a great urban powerhouse in the middle of a great salt lake - as a paradigm for Venice itself, and that plans
were afoot on the Mexican model to construct aqueducts to bring sweet water to la Serenissima. xxvii

Then there are travelers like the Venetian Antonio Pigafetta who, having traveled with Magellan around the
globe, and having presented Charles V with ‘a book written by my hand treating of all things that had occurred
day by day on our voyage’, returned to his homeland and his home city of Vicenza, where he ‘established his
abode forever’, disseminating information on his return. xxviii Denis Cosgrove argues that Contarini was
responsible for securing Pigafetta’s place on the Magellanic circumnavigation of 1519-21, although Pigafetta’s
own Prologue obliges rather the papal pronotary or legate Monsignor Francesco Chieregati, with whom
Pigafetta originally travelled to Spain, as of direct instrumental importance. While it is unclear whether
Contarini and Pigafetta met on Pigafetta’s subsequent visit to the Spanish court in September-October 1522,
Contarini does reproduce a letter from Elcano, signed 24 September 1522, suggesting he had access to
privileged information regarding that voyage.xxix Pigafetta’s book was enormously important back home in
Italy; it has been established that it is thanks to him that the eastern coastline of the New World and
Magellan’s route was incorporated into the planisphere in oval projection of 1536 in the Museo Civico Correr,
and then the world atlas of 1542, of Battista Agnese working in Venice.xxx

Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna was another such, whose East Indian travels were depicted in the world map
of Sebastian Münster and Hans Holbein in 1532. xxxi The readership of such travelers was far wider than was the
case for diplomats, who produced semi-secret reports, but as honed politicians, they were able to often gauge
inside stories and rumours often from personal meetings with returning conquistadores or navigators that free-
wheeling trotamundos outside the spheres of power were not able to. In the case of Contarini, we can get
closer to the dazzlingly intriguing career of the ‘piloto mayor’ Sebastiano Cabot, and the shadowy plans that he
aired or which took shape under his wing. While Davide Scruzzi has recently speculated on Venetian plans to
bring Cabot back into league with his home city and launch voyages for the Spiceries from the Baltic by way of
the North-East passage, from Contarini’s Relazione it becomes rather clearer that he was wanted by the
Spaniards to conduct voyages of exploration down the east and west coasts of South America. This kind of
intrigue, or quite simply spying, was rife in the 1520s and ‘30s as states and maritime powers jostled to
capitalize on the new geographic realities and the opportunities they offered, and was not helped by Cabot’s
character, that of a ‘genial and cheerful liar’. xxxii Contarini’s ideas however were put into action almost thirty
years later when Cabot sailed with the English in search of a North-east passage, and it was ironically the
Venetian compilator Ramusio who provides one of the best sources as to these endeavours. xxxiii

Contarini’s vision of an imperial Spain in ascendance, and an imperial Portugal in decline.

There is the question why Contarini, who held such positive auguries for the New World which he thought
‘promises great things for the future’ (et prometeno gran cose et intrade per I'advenir), came away with such a
negative impression of Portugal’s imperial future, postulating inept leadership, bankruptcy, investment in the
wrong areas, and making themselves widely disliked overseas. Such early pessimism is both surprising and
worthy of investigation. Usually it is associated with the Portuguese at a later date, with the viragem structural
afflicting the empire from the 1550s; indeed, contemporaries were actively making parallels between the
'Queen of Cities' Seville and Lisbon in 1554, and we continue to find eulogies of the ‘grandezza et magnificenza’
of the city of Lisbon till the end of the sixteenth century and beyond xxxiv: It was a fact that Lisbon had become
the largest town in the Iberian peninsula from the reign of D. Manuel I, to the extent that demographics
constitute a yardstick of success.xxxv The triumphal embassy to Pope Leo X in 1514 had just been staged, a
showcasing of the manifold wealth of the Indies, and King João III had had himself portrayed as a new Jupiter
next to his wife Catherina in Bernard van Orley’s remarkable tapestry ‘Earth under the protection of Jupiter and
Juno’ (1525) which was set to accompany a similar tapestry entitled Hercules carrying the Heavenly Spheres
and which João had sent to Madrid probably as part of the double marriage celebrations and to reaffirm his
feeling of entitlement to the Moluccas after the inconclusive Badajoz negotiations. xxxvi
 5

Gasparo Contarini had of course not visited Portugal during his sojourn in the Emperor’s retinue, unlike his
family predecessor, the ambassador Giacomo Contarini, who proceeded from Barcelona to Portugal in July
1496 to congratulate King Manuel on his marriage to Isabella of Spain. Contarini was seen by the king at Torres
Vedras, where he was knighted and received a civet cat (gato di zibeto) and a gold medal as gifts.xxxvii Thus
Gasparo must have depended on hearsay for his report, specifically the uomini praticissimi he mentions in his
Relazione whoever they were.xxxviii While later Venetian diplomats like Suriano specifically avoided commentary
on the Portuguese Indies ‘which have nothing to do with this report’, Hillgarth has noted how in general
impressions of Portugal were negative, more so than foreigners’ impressions of Spain.xxxix Baldassare
Castiglione’s reports of the Portuguese who arrived in Seville for Charles V’s wedding to Isabella, by all accounts
a beautiful and virtuous lady, are marked by explicit racism for the small, swarthy Portuguese courtiers that
accompanied the trip, though the Portuguese side upholds both the beauty and the intelligence of their
princess, who was much loved by Charles V and the subject of a fine portrait by Titian (1548). xl Contarini,
admittedly, eschewed Castiglione’s explicit disdain for Isabella, describing her as ‘neither ugly, nor beautiful,
lacking the arrogance of Spanish women, an archetypical Fleming’, but criticized her brother João III’s lack of
‘diligence’, suggested the Portuguese were disliked in their empire, insisted on developing Brazil, which was a
colony ‘of little use’, and could not sustain the spiralling costs of her armadas and overseas forts. xli

Rivalry, of course, had been a primary conditioner of relations between Portugal and Venice. Venice had been
a yardstick against which Portugal repeatedly measured its commercial successes from the mid-fifteenth
century, and the famous words of Tomé Pires concerning the Portuguese taking of Malacca in 1511 as a means
of strangling Venetian long-distance trade ‘quem for Sor de Malaga tem a maao na garganta a Veneza’ must
have resonated with Contarini.xlii

Further ideas for the reasoning behind Contarini’s report are apparent from other sources. The papers of the
Venetian Council of Ten reported in 1521 how `various deals have been proposed, and to our great advantage
we have been asked to come and take spices from Portugal’.xliii It was interpreted then as an indication of
Portuguese weakness that it needed its old antagonist, the Republic of Venice, to help with the job of European
distribution, given the losses of shipping to piracy and avarias (damages) on the re-export route up to
Antwerp.xliv

In the international economy it was indeed a time when foreign merchant communities were re-assessing their
trading links with Portugal in light of capriciously shifting legislation and confiscations of private cargoes in the
wake of the 1505 decree, which redefined the conditions of Eurasian trade and set down the royal monopoly in
spices and other principal goods. Little previously, Venetian emissaries like Ca’ Masser had been quick to praise
the king for leaving ‘far la mercadanzia à marcadanti, che la sanno fare’ and thus allowing him to ‘a conserver el
suo stato’. The cargo carried by three privately owned vessels under the command of Baltasar Sprenger ,
whose participation in the Almeida fleet (which departed March 25, 1505) had been agreed by Lucas Rem, an
agent for the Welsers, had on the cargo’s return to be unconditionally re-sold to the King’s officials at the Casa
da India at a set price. An indemnity for the confiscated spices in the form of 12.000 arrobas of Madeiran sugar,
equivalent to 10.450 cruzados or 475 quintals of pepper, was offered them, but not immediately forthcoming;
in 1510, it appears that the King still owed them 6.693 arrobas. The German trading community sought redress
in civil proceedings, the documents from the Corpo Cronológico in the Arquivos Nacionais do Torre do Tombo,
Lisbon, suggesting that the payback was a slow and interrupted one.xlvFree-wheeling merchants like Giacomo
Tagliapietra, who went to Lisbon to petition Manuel to go on a Portuguese East Indies fleet were
refused.xlviThe problem of confiscations reoccurred when the Portuguese king froze the assets of the German
jewel trader in the Indies, Jörg Pock, upon his death, which led to another protracted law suit that raged during
the 1530s.xlvii But by this time the High Germans, for one, had shifted their interests to Spain and were in the
1520s busily engaged with seeking out market possibilities under the protective carapace of the Spanish Crown
in Venezuela, or ‘little Venice’ as it became known; they were helped by the rescinding of the exclusive rights
to American trade on Spanish nationals in 1524.xlviii The tone of Contarini’s account is that of a decline from the
times of Manuel I ‘the Fortunate’ – it was generally thought that his successor, John III, was not as capable, or
diligent (p. 49, ‘non usa la diligenza’) as his father. For someone to form these opinions without meeting the
individual concerned, however, begs the question as to where these ideas came from. Pock’s letters from
Lisbon between 1518-20 relate the disappearing horizons of the ‘great times’ of Albuquerque, and moral strain
in Portugal Índico: disloyalty, problems with discipline, covetousness, lies and cheating.xlix As a businessman,
 6

Pock reported on the poor returning cargo of pepper, which had to be priced down by as much as 70%. Pock
was himself obliged to keep his reports secret from other German factors, the point is whether and how they
widely circulated. But the defections of Fernão de Magalhães and Cristóbal de Haro, who was formerly involved
in the Portuguese trato de S. Lioa, can only have spread the gloom.l

By contrast, as Contarini elaborates in his Relazione, Spain and Venice were too far apart geographically and
with too little common history for there to have been strong mutual feelings, whether negative or positive. If
anything the symbiosis was a good one, Italian chroniclers such as Peter Martyr happy to proclaim a new
Spanish age, and Spaniards and Venetians sharing the tasks of combating the infidel on the frontiers of Europe
after the treaty of 23 July 1523 by which an alliance was formed between Charles, Ferdinand, Henry VIII, the
Pope and Venice. While Michael Jacob Levine has suggested Venice tended to disappoint the Spanish Habsburg
imperial plans for Italy, Charles V still exhorted his son to ‘keep good friendship [with the Venetians] favouring
them as good allies as much as possible’.li Commercial plans to exploit the New World were afoot which
involved both parties: by the end of 1530, Giovan Battista Ramusio and Fernández de Oviedo signed an
agreement to establish a company trading in American products funded by the Venetian merchant Antonio
Priuli.lii Flashpoint issues during Contarini’s embassy, such as the Venetian galleys impounded in Almazarón in
January 1525 on the indictment of the Inquisition with suspicions of harbouring heterodox books could be
speedily resolved, though for a free-thinking Venetian the Inquisition smacked of a terrible and perverted
institution.liii

As state matters of international importance, information regarding the New World also filtered through to
other European countries, as we find in the Report on the Old Records of the India Office.liv But secret
discussions between Contarini and the piloto mayor at the Casa de la Contratación, Sebastian Cabot, regarding
a new joint venture ‘circa le cose de le spezierie’, fell under the international radar and would indeed have
constituted high treason for the ex-Venetian at that time in Spanish employment. While historiography sees
these negotiations as centered on a purported voyage to the Americas, the plan may have been rather to forge
a North-East passage to the Indies.lv An awakening of Venetian interest in this part of the world is evidenced by
the publication of Olaus Magnus’s Charta marina (1539), the publication of the late fourteenth-century Zeno
brothers’ adventures in these northern regions in 1558, and Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s account of the
shipwrecked Pietro Querini from 1431 in his Delle Navigationi et Viaggi (1550). On this occasion, these plans
led to nothing, Scruzzi believes primarily due to the disinterest of the innately conservative Consiglio dei Dieci,
although Contarini himself can be seen to take a more progressive, ‘can do’ position, which may have been
part of a utopian side to his character and thought. In any case, his political position back home was not a
sufficiently strong one to drive change. lvi

If we turn to compare literary echoes and epistolary propaganda, it is clear that Spain was able to celebrate its
achievements somewhat earlier than was the case with Portugal. This is strange given that Portuguese
emergence on the world stage is usually thought to precede that of the Spanish. Peter Martyr’s De Orbe Novo
published the eight separate Decadas in 1530, but a volume of Opera including versions of the early Decadas
had already come out in 1511.lvii All comparable Portuguese works came out later in the 1550s at a time the
nation had started to question its way and major ‘structural changes’ were starting to afflict the economy: de
Gois’s Chronica de Dom Manuel (1555), Barros’s Decadas which come out in the 1550s, Castanheda’s Historia,
which came out in 1551, or Correia’s Lendas, which came out shortly after his death in 1563. lviii Duarte Galvano,
accredited with being the first to present a comprehensive report of all the leading voyages and explorers up to
1550, only had his manuscript published in 1563. lix While much of the triumphalism was cloaked in allegory
(Barros’s Clarimundo, set in a far-away kingdom in the distant past, which was published for the first time in
Coimbra in 1522) , a lot of the literary output prioritized social themes such as marriage strategies (António
Ferreira’s ‘comédia’, Bristo, for example) to a backdrop of one or two whiffs of the fumos da Índia, while some
explicitly incorporated a negative view on Empire, as we find in Sá de Miranda, or Gil Vicente’s Auto da Índia
(1509), where a wife abandoned during her husband’s absences on trading voyages to the East takes casual
lovers. The more triumphal or bombastic works like Gil Vicente’s Auto da Fama (1520) or Cortes de
Jupiter(1521)provided stridently positive impressions of empire, but were confined to the court milieu. Some
courtiers or literati like Garcia de Resende, however, commented on the performances in other contemporary
texts like his Cancioneiro Geral.lx
 7

In Contarini’s account, it is noteworthy how Brazil is referred to as ‘di poca utilità’, in contrast to places of
‘grande importanza’ like Malacca and the Moluccas, five islands which the Spanish were about to sail on to in
order to claim for the Spanish Crown from Corunna (La Coruña). It is interesting that this is not the line
contained in Pigafetta’s account which we might have expected Contarini to have relied on; for Pigafetta, while
a land of gentiles, ‘beasts’ and cannibals, Brazil nevertheless ‘abounds in all good things’. lxi Contarini’s negative
interpretation seems to reside on the slow start the Portuguese made to getting Brazilian colonization
underway (only from 1530 is it acknowledged to have started with the Pero Lopes de Sousa expedition), and
the negative press which circulated on the basis of hostile and barbarous Indians later popularised (from
around 1570) in the ditty ‘sem fé, sem rei, sem lei’. lxiiRecent expeditions such as that of Estevão Fróis, sent out
to scout the northern shores of Brazil in 1513, had failed in the face of hostile indígenas.lxiii We can presume
that a man of Contarini’s intelligence and outlook was less concerned than religiosos with supposed factors like
‘the baleful influence of the moon’.lxiv On the other hand, brazilwood and canafistula was being actively
gathered from 1511 (3rd expedition under Vespucci), although it was from 1502 contracted out to private
associations of merchants of the likes of the Marrano Loronha with family histories of commercial contact with
England and Flanders, where these goods could be conveniently sold on. lxv By 1516, the haphazard feitoria
system was considered to be in decline, and French (and Spanish) interloping was making a mockery of
Portuguese pretensions to dominion.lxvi These were the reasons, as Martim Afonso de Sousa relates in his
Autobiography of 1557, which led to the King braking with his predecessor’s policy and assembling ‘uma
armada pera o Brasil’ in 1530. lxvii

Contarini is generally hailed for the applicability of his geographic concepts – he accredits for example the East
and West Indies as two separate entities, which overturns the elisions of Java and Cuba, and thus of America
and Asia, in the maps by Giovanni Matteo Contarini (Florence 1506) and Johan Ruysch (Rome 1507), though of
course not the case with Martin Waldseemüller’s precocious map of 1507. As late as 1522, Alessandro
Geraldini thought Mexico was the Golden Chersonese. lxviii The historian Weiser (following Beccadelli) lauds
Contarini on the precocity with which he appeared to have recognized the date-line conundrum, although this
appears as evident in Pigafetta’s account.lxix Then there is the correct reference to the city of Tenochtitlan,
which as late as Battista Agnese (1536) went down as Timitistan.lxx

Contarini is a particularly useful aid in understanding the contortions surrounding the remarkable career of
Sebastiano Cabot, and particularly the motivations and changes made to his 1526 voyage. Contarini sees him
hunting for a straits across the Americas and into the Pacific, just as Hernando Cortés had been given
instructions to do on his departure from Cuba in February 1519, or Giovanni da Verrazzano was doing in 1524
albeit at a more northerly latitude. In many ways, this had been the inspirational problem of Spanish
exploration in the western hemisphere ever since Columbus, and one reinforced by cosmographers like Martin
Waldseemüller who consistently sketched a caesura in the north and south American landmasses as if to bait
further exploration in precisely that direction. Other mapmakers like Vesconte de Maggiolo did likewise as late
as 1527.lxxi Cabot then sailed a thousand miles up the River Plate and as far as its headwaters would allow
precisely to resolve this conundrum. David Loades is thus on the wrong track in thinking that the purpose of the
voyage was ‘to wrest the initiative from the Portuguese’, with the apparent founding of a fort at San Salvador
(above present-day Rosario on the western shore of the Paraná River) and a visit to the Amazon estuary. If it
was true that Cabot (Guaboto in Portuguese) had been sent by Charles V specifically to back-up García Joffre
de Loaísa’s missing expedition of 1525 to lay claim to the Moluccas for Spain following the Badajoz ‘conference‘
(junta) in 1524, Cabot clearly insisted on using this instruction to resolve some cosmographical issues in his own
mind.lxxii I also think there are complications with Filipe Fernández-Armesto’s ascribing Cabot primarily
pecuniary motivations and the claim that the three years ‘prospecting for precious metals’ he sees inland of
the River Plate followed a fortuitous meeting with the ill-fated Juan de Solís in which the myth of attainable
riches was strongly emphasized.lxxiii While the only thing Cabot may have come back with were some llamas to
entertain the royal court, his failure to bring back gold was of less importance in his ensuing captivity than his
failure to reach the Moluccas. Moreover, Solis (also dealt with here in footnote 120) is thought to have died in
1516; his ‘resurrection’ seems to have been a deliberate falsification as part of the protracted enquiry following
Cabot’s return to Europelxxiv

Some misunderstandings, however, also appear. Contarini argues, for example, that the coast from the Mar
Meridionale went up to the Yucatan peninsula (this is a confusion, Yucatan is on the eastern coast, but see
 8

Roukema’s point in footnote 142), and then there is a debate as to whether Yucatan was really an island or a
peninsula. This was a common source of perplexity at the time; the peninsula is depicted with an interrupted
coastline on the world chart of Gerolamo da Verrazano of 1529, for example, although Contarini had himself
asserted more confidently in a letter of November 10, 1522 that Yucatan, ‘which he had believed to be an
island, was joined to the mainland, which continued on the west’. lxxv Other places like Florida, or Brazil were
also considered in some quarters to be islands right up until 1565, the latter largely on the hopeful basis that
there might be a natural frontier between the rival empires separated by the Treaty of Tordesillas. lxxvi Contarini
also fails to provide details of the voyage of Alonso Álvarez de Pineda’s trip to Florida-Tampico in 1519, which
produced a map of the entire Gulf coast, lxxvii or Francisco Gordillo in 1521, and the Florentine in the service of
the French Giovanni da Verrazzano, who returned to France after his first voyage in July 1524, more than a year
before Contarini made his report to the Venetian Senate. lxxviii Much more was to be revealed shortly thereafter
in the Verrazzano world map of 1529, which also shows the Ecuadorian coast, and the so-called Ramusio map
of 1534, which depicted the north-western coast of South America and south-western South America albeit
with a gap still in between.lxxix

Although historical literature dwells on Contarini as an intellectual figure favoured for a life of otium, Bouwsma
typifying him as a ‘conservative idealist’, lxxx Contarini demonstrated some remarkable and radical plans, trying
on one occasion to recruit Sebastian Cabot to Venetian service for a planned expedition to America. lxxxi
Although this plan never came off, and may be part of a utopian side to his character and thought, lxxxii it reflects
a determined resistance on the part of Venice to simply accept an historical eclipsing by its Iberian competitor,
which Guido Detti had predicted twenty years earlier would lead to Venetians being reduced to `mere
fishermen’.lxxxiii Davide Scruzzi’s conclusions point to a hapless Venice unable to take stock of the opportunities
the discovery of New Worlds offered them, or rather more interestingly a Venice

which gave itself the illusion of being geographers, sea voyagers, discoverers, entangled in erudite
conversations about things which in reality had been clarified centuries before. Why not expose this
effort [Contarini’s plan] as ludic? A nice game, in order to wile away the time. A safe game, that also
catered for domination over the world’s seas, thanks to the representation of the world in word and
above all indeed in picture.lxxxiv

This picture needs to be countered by taking on board practical plans such as Contarini’s to keep Venice at the
heart of global strategies of commerce. These issued in conjunction with policies of deliberate abstention from
the Habsburg-Valois war for Italy, whilst using its forces to protect its own territories, and a generalised
Grittian renewal from 1523 until that doge’s retirement from civic life in 1538. lxxxv The revival of the Eurasian
overland spice trade and through the port of Venice, so widely observed from the 1530s, was not simply about
shortcomings in the running of the Portuguese oceanic commerce and a crisis in investor confidence in the
avarias and shipping lost on the Cape route. Venice shifted its chief colony in Syria from Damascus further
north to Aleppo, which was nearer the overland route to Baghdad and Basra. Then, in 1552 Venice obtained
permission to trade in Cairo, which gave them another trading advantage over other Mediterranean rivals.
Finally, freight switched from the merchant galleys of the fifteenth century to the round ships typified by
Alessandro Magno’s Crose in April 1561.lxxxvi Contarini’s vision of an active role for Venetian shipping beyond
the Mediterranean basin, of course, failed to materialise. The man Contarini had placed at the centre of the
scheme, Sebastian Cabot, was a notorious opportunist, turncoat and self-promoter, who probably tried to dupe
Venice on the basis of both his position and his ancestry.

The factionalism of Venetian politics may be another way forward to understanding both the styling of
Contarini’s report, and its lack of enduring influence. The pro-imperial stance of Contarini’s notorious political
enemy Alvise Mocenigo may have affected Contarini’s report, who otherwise tended like Gritti to pro-French
positions.lxxxvii A further factor to consider is Contarini’s relationship with his secretary on the embassy.
Secretaries often filled in the lacunae in diplomatic reports, as was the case most glaringly with Giovanni
Matteo Camerino’s note announcing Cabral’s discovery of Brazil in a separate missive to the official report filed
by the ambassador Pisani.lxxxviii Here Contarini would have had to avoid his secretary Zuan Negro’s scathing
view upon Spaniards as a ‘rude and uncivilized nation’. Otherwise, comparative work may suggest that a lot of
Contarini’s discourse is merely following conventions of Italian diplomatic rhetoric, his belittlement of Portugal
stemming from rhetorical precedent, something we can already detect in Ca’ Masser when he had earlier
 9

referred to Portugal’s king as a `minucciolo Re’, or when Quirini commented on the fiscal unsustainability of the
Indies voyages.lxxxix This superciliousness, it has been suggested, may not even be specific to Portugal but a
generalised feature of Venetian diplomatic reports with regard to other nations, such as England, which went
described as underpopulated, the people slave-like, and with so many robbers that no one dared to go out
alone.xc

The text selected for translation covers about one quarter of the entire Relazione, as can be judged from the
summary box of contents here following. Contarini himself in the first paragraph of his Relazione offers a
tripartite structure: the first to do with the kingdoms and provinces subject to Charles; the second, his
councillors; and the third, the person of the Emperor, but in reality these are constant themes which colour the
entire text, so that even in the selection reproduced here we find a description of Spain’s constitutive kingdoms
and peoples, a description of the organs of central government, and Charles’ character and type of leadership,
before a section devoted to matters of overseas conquests and discoveries. These would have constituted the
backbone of the Geographia, a work produced by Contarini which has sadly been lost.xci It is in this last section
that the comparison between Spain’s and Portugal’s imperial futures is posited. Some textual amendments will
be necessary in the translation, like the artificial creation of paragraphs, to break the steady flow of text.

Plate 3. Gasparo's Contarini's embassy to Spain, 23 September 1520 - 16 November 1525.

 10

A full resumé of Contarini’s Relazione.

11. Author presents the structure of his Relazione, to be pursued in three parts.
Inheritances, and links(via Maximilian) to the House of Austria
12. General division of the Duchy of Austria (provinces, lords, prelates)
13. Charles’ donation of lands to Ferdinand.
14. Moves from the affairs of the Duchy of Austria to those of the Imperial Crown, Germany and Bohemia.
15. Duchies, their revenues, chief prelates and princes.
16. Free cities and barons. The Fuggers, and Augsburg.
17. Manner of ruling Germany as determined at the Imperial Diet of Worms.
18. Council of Justice.
19. Account of the Imperial Diet.
20. Swabian League. Lawlessness and measures to bring it to heel. Revenues of His Majesty from Germany.
21. German people and their characteristics. The German lands possessed by his Imperial Highness.
22. Cities of the Low Countries, and their characteristics.
23. Lords in the Low Countries and their revenues.
24. Governance in the Low Countries.
25. Revenues and political outlook [of the Low Countries]
26. Crown of Aragon [Ferdinand’s inheritance].
27. Lords and their position in Aragon.
28. Prelates, King, Viceroy.
29. Council of Aragon [peculiarities of Catalonia].
30. Cortes of Aragon, and their rights.
31. Possessions in Italy as part of the Aragonese inheritance [Sardinia, Sicily]
32. Naples
33. Attitudes of various subjects towards their king. Castile.
34. The military orders, their relationship with the Crown.
35 & 36. Bishops and Archbishops. The nobility and their revenue.
37 The responsibilities of the nobility.
38. Description of the kingdom.
39. The various councils.
[the intervening pages are translated in full in the course of this article]
54. Instruments through which the Emperor governs his realms. Their personalities.
55. How the Emperor handles state business and correspondence. Role of chancellery.
56. Personal affections towards the Duke of Milan, the Governor of Brescia (Bressa), Count of Nassau, the Viceroy,
Signore di Borbone [Carlo III di Borbone-Montpensier?].
57. Signor di Beaurain. View of French and the Italians. The Spanish oratore in Portugal negotiating Charles’
wedding. The Grand Master of the Order of St. James. Don Ugo di Moncada.
58. Account of the divided council and how its division plays out on policy towards France and Italy.
60. A description of the person of the emperor.
61. How the emperor spends his time. His opinions about the world and its peoples.
62. The emperor’s modesty. Relations with his family. Doesn’t forget injuries done him easily.
62-3. The Archduke his brother. His sisters and their marriages / revenues.
64. His aunts and mother.
65. Account of the two months spent with Contarini’s successor, Andrea Navagero and Lorenzo de’ Priuli, sent
after the Battle of Pavia.
66. Contarini’s return journey via Madrid, where he meets the Viceroy and the French king.
67. Saragossa, and meeting with the papal legate, Salviati. Discusses Italian wars.
68. Barcelona, where enforced wait for passport. Meets Beaurain, who exorts Contarini to confirm his alliance with
the Emperor. Perpignan – Avignon, where Contarini hears of twenty year peace between France and England.
Travels on up the River Rhône to the Dauphinate of Valence, where he meets Andrea Doria. In Lyon meets Sig.
Teodoro Trivulzio.
70. Meetings with Sig. di Prato, and Sig. di Vandomo.
71. Savoy, St. Jean de Maurienne, where meets with Duke of Ferrara.
71. Arrives in Turin, and visits Duchess of Savoy. On to Milan, where he meets up with the Venetian ambassador
there. Visits Marquis of Pescara.
72. Eulogy to Contarini’s secretary Trevisano. Thanks to His Excellent Lords and to God.
 11

Translation of relevant excerpts from a manuscript copy of Contarini’s Relazioneonce held at the Reale
Archivio di Corte di Torino, published in as part of the Relazioni degli ambasciatoria veneti al Senato, 1 st. ser.,
vol. 2 (Florence, 1840), pp. 1-73.

[p. 38] ‘The territory universally known as Spain, with the exception of Andalusia, which is renowned for its
fertility, is very arid, and has few people, with respect to the size of the country. xcii With respect to the
government of Castile, on top of the corregidores in each city, that is to say the officials of the king, or
otherwise those elected by the city, according to the privileges which they have been granted, and besides the
governors (adelantadi) and viceroys of the provinces, are two principal chancelleries: one of these resides in
Valladolid, to which pertains [jurisdiction for] the whole of Old Castile; the other resides in Granada, which is
responsible for New Castile, with the exception of the city of Seville, which manages its own justice. In Galicia
similarly, there is another chancellery specifically for its subjects, so that they are not constrained to travel long
distances to settle their grievances.xciii These chancelleries are called parliaments in France, and senates in
Milan. One can appeal all sentences issuing from lesser judges in these chancelleries provided the claims
amount to more than 16 ducats, and when there are two identical sentences from the chancelleries there is no
longer any possibility of appeal, other than to the general council of the realm.xciv In this case, the appellant
must deposit 1500 ducats, which if he loses the appeal, he then forfeits. The president of each chancellery is a
bishop, since in Spain many prelates become involved in the justice system and affairs of the realm.

Other than chancelleries, there are usually five councils in the Kingdom of Castile: one generally for matters of
justice and other issues that come up in the kingdom, the second is for war, the third for the Indies, the fourth
for the Inquisition, and the fifth for state matters. Of the latter, we will say more further on, where we will
speak of the instruments, in other words the councilors, through whom his Imperial Majesty governs his
realms.

The Council of Justice is the one appeals from the chancelleries are directed to, on deposit of 1500 ducats. The
president of the council is the Archbishop of St. James, who is currently of good standing (di buona vita).xcv The
second council, that of war, is constituted of five or six persons; that is to say, the Grand Master of the Order of
Santiago, who is the head [of the Council], Don Diego Vitado xcvi, Don Ugo [Hugo] de Moncadaxcvii, Don César
Fieramosca, the Deputy Viceroy of Naples, who [also] holds the office of Knight-in-Chief.xcviii The Chief
Majordomo also participates in this council, and together they are responsible for overseeing and providing for
all the things necessary for war.xcix

[p. 39] The President of the Council of the Indies c is the Bishop of Osma, the confessor to Charles V, a
Dominican friar, who was the head of that order at one time. ci He was elected to that episcopate by the
Emperor, he is [the Emperor’s] confessor, then he was made president of that council. He is a man of great
talent (ingegno).cii He had the reputation of being a worthy man of the cloth, nonetheless after having these
titles conferred upon him, he has shown himself to be very ambitious, and to have a rather restless spirit, such
that he has lost a lot of credit with all and sundry, and from what I have learnt, in the eyes of the Emperor he
has gained nothing.

The fourth council is that of the Inquisition, [set up] against heretical depravity. The president of this council is
the Archbishop of Seville, a man of noble blood, of the Manrico faction, and of a good reputation and good
mind.ciii This council is of such authority and such veneration that all fear it. In its way of doing things, it
proceeds with greater severity and means of terror than has been the tradition by the Council of Ten in our
most excellent republic. To my mind, it seems to exert a real tyranny upon those poor New Christians civ, against
whom they have inflicted such massacres that one cannot say more.

Other than these councils, three deputies always follow the royal court in order to see to petitions, which are
presented to the King. These are Doctor Caravagial cv, Don Giovanni di Padilla, now the Grand Master of the
Order of Calatravacvi, and the Secretary Covos.cvii
 12

The King also has his treasurers, and put together a council [to deliberate] monetary issues, which however no
longer exists.cviii

It remains for me to narrate the way the Cortes are summoned when His Imperial Majesty requires ‘services’
(servizj) from the kingdom.cix All of Castile, that is to say all the vassals of those particular gentlemen named
above, are linked to eighteen principal cities, with their districts(cittadi); and thus, when the king wants to
summon the Cortes of the kingdom, he writes to these eighteen cittadi, each one of which elects two
representatives (procuratori), and sends them to court with ample authority to pledge and to conclude affairs
according to the will of their respective cittadi. The cittadi are the following: Burgos, León, Valladolid, Cuenca,
Segovia, Cordoba, Granada, Seville, Toledocx; and up to this point no more needs to be said about the manner
in which Castile in governed.

Now I will relate the revenues (entrate), which His Imperial Majesty can count on from Castile, and his ordinary
outgoings.cxi The first revenue is the alcabala and the third of the decima. The alcabala is a duty which is paid
on the sale and purchase of transportable as well as immobile goods, as often as it is called for [toties quoties],
and is 10%, even though it is not collected very precisely, each city considering it pays a lot of alcabala.cxii The
third part of the decima was conceded the Kings of Castile by the Pope to finance the costs of the continuous
wars against the Moors. This [ordinary income] amounts to 1,040,000 ducats, but a lot of this has been
‘alienated’ in previous times, in other words conceded out to various lords, or else sold according to the King’s
needs, so that with the sums lost, the King now only has access to 586,000 ducats. cxiii From the domains of the
Grand Masters of the Orders of St. James of Calatrava and Alcantara, which are now annexed to the royal
crown,cxiv he receives around 100.000 ducats, which is usually cut down to 60.000 or 80.000. Then there are
extraordinary revenues, which are usually forthcoming ordinarily, from the ‘crusades’ cxv and [church] taxescxvi;
this amounts to 500.000 ducats every three years, or around 170.000 ducats each year. These are indulgences
and concessions similar to the confessionali here in Italy, and this was conceded for the wars against the
Moors. Now to be honest there is a great cruelty and tyranny involved in this towards the poor counties and
humble folk in that when these levies are declared all are required to go and hear their proclamation [and buy
these indulgences], although there are those who have to attend to their professions and earn a living, but they
are forced to go, having no option but to buy the indulgences, and in this way the money is raised. cxvii

Every three years the kingdom grants furthermore an income (servizio) of 400.000 ducats, which goes up every
year by about 130.000 [ducats]. The king also has a right to 20% of the gold that comes out of the Indies, which
can amount to about 100.000 ducats a year. All of this revenue amounts to approximately 1.100.000 ducats. cxviii

Now we will start on the costs. They previously wanted to keep 1300 armed men in Castile, but they were
badly paid and badly disciplined. Now they have been reduced to 1000; there are 1000 light cavalry. There used
to be 3000 infantrymen stationed on the French frontier, in the kingdom of Navarre, now they are reduced to a
small number, and are around 1000. All these expenses, inclusive of their uniform and everything else, was
purported to be 213.000 ducats a year. Then the costs of the guards to the fortresses of Castile amounted
33.000 ducats a year, and many of them have been thrown out, since many of the fortresses are useless, nor of
any profit whatsoever to the kingdom, but only to those who possess them. Then they spend 32.000 ducats on
the salaries of those of the council and on subsidies, which the king gives to many people, who incur greater
costs than their ordinary salary. In couriers and gifts, which are made to the ambassadors of the princes, who
wait upon the Emperor, 40.000 ducats are spent. The expenses of His Imperial Majesty’s household, including
the guard, the chapel, and chamberlains amount to 200.000 ducats a year. The cost of four light galleys, which
are kept armed so as to guard the coast from the Moors, even though it is not always galleys, but other types
of ship which are kept here, are said to cost 23.000 p.a. Then there are costs in maintaining Oran cxix, and the
other places in Africa, 67.000 ducats per annum. Then there are the so-called ‘continuous’ gentlemen of His
Imperial Majesty, who receive different amounts according to their rank, and they are 200 strong; altogether
the cost is 27.000 ducats. The King in Castile is also obliged to make certain gifts and concessions, as this is an
ancient custom of the realm; indeed, previous kings conceded so many grants that a great part of the royal
crown’s revenue has been lost. 40.000 ducats are caught up in these grants per annum. The king also makes
provision to many, the poor and the mediocre, the old and young alike, who are obliged to fulfill certain tasks
for the realm; and in these go 26.000 ducats. These are the ordinary expenses of the kingdom of Castile, which
 13

amount to 703.000 ducats; once you subtract the expenses from due revenue, around 380.000 ducats remains.
But the extraordinary expenditure, as anyone who runs a family will know, carries off all this excess, so that you
can say that at the beginning of the year he is at the beginning of his salary, most of all since that now matters
are no longer so orderly, indeed since the Emperor acquired these kingdoms, one disorder has followed on
from another, into civil war, and from civil wars into foreign wars. [44]

Of the nature of the Spaniards, who have had continuous dealings with Italy for many years, I think Your
Lordships (signorie) will be well aware.cxx They are of a melancholic disposition; everyone has a body apt for
exercising arms, and ready to suffer. They are ingenious men, moreover, and prize honour, something which
for them resides uniquely in the exercise of arms; however, they are naturally as apt as any other nation in the
exercise of arms.cxxi They are not many of them however in Castile, who are currently good at such endeavours,
nor any good captains. And this follows from not having been duly exercised, which is something we witnessed
two years ago, when his Imperial Majesty went in person to Pamplona in Navarre, where men of arms and
infantry made a procession in front of him, but were all out-of-shape and unsuitable.cxxii Nonetheless they are,
as I have said, disposed by nature to get into shape through training. They are men who are fairly reserved in
their speaking, but in their gestures and movements proud (altieri), and of little charity to their neighbours, and
full of envy. These are the good and bad sides to the Spaniards.

In Spain, they make strong judgements, which tend to descend however into cruelty rather than any clemency.
Their attitudes towards His Imperial Majesty are not good, indeed I would do better to say they are terrible, as
much amongst the grandees as lower down the social hierarchy. The reason for this is primarily in the
competition that they have with the Flemish, whom they see as intimate with the Emperor. cxxiii The latter only
entrusts himself to the care of these people, who have free rein over the Emperor, and which is not the case
with the Spanish, whom they [the Spanish] cannot tolerate. cxxiv The other reason is the Emperor’s nature, who
does not know how to be tender with anyone, which is reason for few to love him. But their paths do cross in
that, even if they feel hatred towards him, on meeting him, his straightforwardness (natura) prevails, but their
ways of doing things tire him, even though he tries to dissimulate such a feeling. With respect to Your Serenity I
cannot say that they [the Spanish] are badly disposed, nor do they have, generally speaking, any particular
affection; on account of being far distant, and for not having been in competition with this state in the past,
and for having heard the arguments for our wars against the Turks, as happened to them against the Moors. In
short, as I have said, there is neither particular affection, nor the contrary.

In Castile there are two ancient factions, the one called Velasco, the other Manrico. The head of the Velascos is
the Constablecxxv; on the part of Manrico is the Duke of xxx cxxvi, who is one of those dukes with the smallest
income, although from an ancient noble family. Besides these, there are new factions amongst the populace,
and the nobility, which got worked up when the Emperor was in Spain for the first time with Lord Chièvres. cxxvii
As His Majesty reaped large sums of money, whether to have himself elected emperor, as well as to distribute
amongst his Flemings, the word got out that he wanted to make levies on the kingdom.cxxviii And when the
representatives got back from the Cortes, those from Segovia tore their representative to shreds, because he
had consented to providing him with more than their due. When the Toledan representative returned [from
the Cortes of Valladolid] he was greatly honoured, as he had constantly denied the petitions of the king. cxxix At
which point Antonio Fonseca wanted to punish Segovia [which rose up 29-30 May 1520 and murdered the
town representative Rodrigo de Tordesillas for having voted the servicio] by bringing in the king’s artillery,
which were in Medina del Campo [brought there by the gente de ordinanza].cxxx But the city of Medina did not
want to permit him their removal [out of fear of the Vulgo, the common people], so that he then set fire to a
part of the land, which caught on, and burned a large part of it, including merchants’ goods, which were at the
fair, and in this way the communities rose up. cxxxi In the beginning, the nobles detected the tumult against the
king, and remained quiet, but the populace, with their arms in hand, took it upon themselves to say candidly
that the king should help [himself to the finances of the] kingdom, and that these wanted to spend their
energies and their lives in honouring their king, when he had no honour of his own. It was right that the King
should help himself first of all, and recover so much of what was lost to the lords, and in this way they turned
their arms on the lords, who in turn rose up turning towards the king, and in this way there was large-scale
ruin, as is most pertinent to Your Greatness [the Venetian Doge], which only stopped with killing and damage
to the populace, and little remuneration to the nobles, amongst both of whom the Emperor was held in little
gratitude. One can say that because of the competition that exists between one and the other parties, the
 14

present Emperor Charles V has greater authority than any king ever had in Castile, because with one word he is
able to chase out all the lords from their lands, and thus obtain the benevolence of the populace. The lords are
subjugated and rendered impotent despite their desire for power (li signori stanno molto bassi contro il voler
loro). And with this we have said enough with regard to the kingdom of Castile.

[p. 46] Annexed to the Castilian Crown are the kingdoms of Navarre, which I have already explained is a part of
Castile, and the Indies. The kingdom of Navarre is a small kingdom situated in the Pyrenean mountains, and
descends into the French plain, situated between the kingdom of Aragon, Castile and France. cxxxii His Imperial
Majesty only has limited revenues from these kingdoms, and the little which he gains he spends on
[his]officials, that is to say Viceroy, and others, whom he keeps there, and on the fortress at Pamplona.
Nonetheless, the kingdom is of great importance, in that it is the key to Castile. The principal city is Pamplona,
which is to be counted amongst the Spanish cities [previously, Contarini explains how Navarre slopes down into
France], and is fairly good. Cardinal Cesarini holds the bishopric there cxxxiii; it used to be worth 5000 ducats, but
now it is worth more owing to the diligence of the cardinal’s aide (commesso).In this kingdom, there are two
factions, the Agramontese, at whose head is the Grand Marshal, and these are French; the other is that of the
Pamplonese, who favour the Castilians. The head of this faction is the Constable of Navarre, who is the Count
of Lerin.cxxxiv Without any exceptions, the populace of this kingdom hate the Spanish and desire their natural
king, the Lord of Albret. The Constable and Count of Lerin has a revenue of around 8000 ducats; the Marshal 4-
5000. The two Castilian factions are linked to the two in Navarre; the Agramontese faction with that of Velasco,
the head of which is the Constable of Castile; the Pamplonese with that of Manrico. Nothing else of note is
worth saying of Navarre.

[p. 47] The Indies are similarly annexed to the Crown of Castile. cxxxv There are two, the Oriental and the
Occidental.cxxxvi Regarding the East Indies there are now differences between the King of Portugal and that of
Castile, since some time ago, at the time of the Genoese Columbus, who rediscovered cxxxvii the lands of the
West Indies, with similar Portuguese navigations the world was divided with the authority of the Pope, now
Alexander VI, as your Excellencies already know, so that by drawing a line from our Arctic Pole to the Antarctic,
which is a meridian line, which passes through the Canary Islands, everything which lay inside the line was to
belong to the Portuguese King while all that lay to the other side belonged to the King of Castile. But now the
Portuguese, having sailed so far to the East that they have passed India and the Chinas (Cini), which they today
call China,cxxxviii and the Moluccan Islands, and having had their ship the Vittoria (Victoria) circumnavigate the
world, as I wrote to Your Holinesses [celsitudini] three years ago,cxxxix they have come to dispute not only the
Moluccan Islands, and China, but equally Malaccacxl, which is Aurea-Chersonesus of the Ancients, as to whether
[these places] fall to Portuguese jurisdiction or to Castile, that meridian line completing a finite circle according
to the geography of Ptolemy, as to which controversy I do not expect ever to see an end, or it fully verified. cxli
But the King of Portugal, wanting the land of Brazil, which is of little use, has placed those which are of great
importance in difficulty, especially Malacca, which is a port city, and principal emporium of the whole Aurea-
Chersonesus.cxlii Of the Moluccan islands, which are five, and on them, but in no other place, grow cloves,
which is of great importance; and already at la Coruña an armada of five ships has been put together to sail off
there to claim them for the Castilians, though, given the preparations for the marriage between the Emperor
and the Infanta of Portugal, the departure of the said armada has been suspended. cxliii

At this point, I do not want to fall silent if only because of the information I have gleaned regarding the affairs
of the Portuguese [p. 49]. First of all, I believe, as has been affirmed by skilled men (uomini praticissimi) of that
realm, that their king has but a fraction of the money that is generally believed, since he spends a fortune in
maintaining those Indies voyages, and he needs to uphold various fortresses, and various armadas, which cost
him a heap (pozzo) of gold. Furthermore, I believe that his Indies voyages are about to diminish rather than
grow. Despite this massive expense, as I have outlined, the Portuguese are disliked across the East Indies, with
the natives watching [the Portuguese] fortifying themselves little by little, and making themselves lords of the
land.cxliv From credible sources I know that two years ago five Portuguese ships were ruined (rovinate), and
taken by Chinese, who constructed themselves an armada from these. cxlv Thus, being despised and emigrating
from their motherland and getting themselves employed in navigating and in fighting, I think that every day the
problem only gets worse. Furthermore, this new young king does not possess the perseverance (diligenza) that
his father didcxlvi, and already his captains, who are in the Indies, start to compete amongst themselves, and
start fights.cxlvii And this is enough as regards the East Indies.
 15

Then there are the West Indies. This is a huge territory, at least what has been discovered hitherto, and every
day as the boundaries are pushed farther back, still more is revealed. These [Indies] are divided into islands and
terra firma. The smaller islands are numerous, but three are sizeable. The first and principal one is Hispaniola
[Isola Spagnuola], situated almost underneath the Tropic of Cancer, almost two thousand miles away from
Spain, and is huge. Some [scholars] contend it is a little smaller than Spain; it has mountains and many rivers.
The Spanish have built three settlements on this island, the largest of which is called S. Domenico (Santo
Domingo), in which the Admiral lives, and the royal council. This admiral is the son of the Genoese Columbus,
and great jurisdictions were conceded to his father, even though many have been usurped, and others are
continuously usurped even now.cxlviii I left him at the court, where he went to vindicate himself (per espedirsi).
This island used to be highly populated, so much that Peter Martyr, who is Milanese and on the Council of the
Indies, and has undertaken to write the history of these lands and the journeys to them, cxlix assures me that
between Hispaniola and Jamaica, which is not far, there used to be, on their discovery by Columbus, a million
souls or more; now, following the cruel treatment at the hands of the Spaniards whether through the great
labours they have imposed upon those poor men to mine for gold, or from death out of despair, which was
such an issue that mothers have been found who have murdered their own children, the place is quite empty. cl
So that now on Hispaniola there are not even 7000 souls, and now they purchase black slaves from Barbary,
and send them to the mines, of whom many, just shortly before I left court, joined together with some natives,
and fled together into the mountains.cli

The other principal island, which is to the west of Hispaniola, is the island of Cuba. Here there is a governor
who [rules] in the name of the emperorclii, and [it was] from here that Fernando Cortes set off, who
rediscovered Yucatan, as I will explain below. Of this island, not as much is to be said as of Hispaniola, from
which as I have omitted to state, flows besides gold, a great quantity of cassia, cliii of sugars, liquors, and
similarly good quality horses, something which did not originate in that island, but the Spaniards brought them
there, and now are bred to perfection. Only wheat does not grow well, it comes out really big due to the
thickness of the earth, and is soft, which is lost as grass (che si perde in erba). The island of Cuba is not as fertile
as Hispaniola.cliv The third island, that of Jamaica, is not so large when compared with these, but even it is fairly
large and fertile. Further to this there are innumerable small islands, many of which are inhabited by cannibals,
proud men, who not only eat men but hunt for men, just as one goes to hunt for wild beasts. clv

The terraferma is otherwise a huge territory, which starts at a cape, called Cape St. Augustine, clvi which is about
150 miles from Spain (Hispaniola?), or a little more, and which is beyond the 4 th parallel from the equator.
From this cape, the coast leads in two directions. One coast leads towards the Antarctic pole, [or rather
towards the equinoctial],clvii declining however a little towards the west, and this coast proceeds until 52
degrees, or rather, 54 degrees from the equinoctial, at which point the ship Vittoria found that strait, which is
500 miles long from east to west.clviii Beyond it is not known how much further the coast continues towards the
Antarctic.clix In the first section of this coastline is the land of Brazil, possessed by the Portuguese. Then further
southward live the Patagonians, proud men, and a good size larger than men like us, as those of the ship
Vittoria have related.clx The other coast begins from Cape St. Augustine, and proceeds somewhere between the
west and the north, along which 5000 miles of coast have been navigated. Of this coast, part is inhabited by
anthropophagous cannibals, as I have said, and part by more tame (mansueti) men. It is worth knowing that
this territory, almost in the middle faces up to Hispaniola and then squeezes round so much that from this
northern Ocean Sea to the southern Ocean Sea is not more than around fifty miles. In this Spanish strait two
towns have already been built, one on the this northern sea, named Hombre de Dios, and the other on the
southern sea called Panama, where it is to be noted that halfway along this land of Panama there is an island
not far from the terra fira called the Island of Pearls (which are brought to Seville, as many of our merchants
know, who have bought them)clxi and in this way the coast carries on to Yucatan, which is a peninsula like that
of the Morea, although many affirm it is an island, clxii but the sea between it and the terra firma is so low that
you cannot cross it, except in very small boats. clxiii

From this Yucatan on to more favourable land a little further to the west, Fernando Cortes disembarked five
years ago, and penetrated inland, where he found many different peoples and many cities, amongst which one
province called Tolteche, which was staunchly hostile to the King of Tenochtitlan, over which with many wars
and many false promises, he has become lord.clxiv This city is marvelous for its size and site and man-made
achievement, situated in the middle of a lake of saltwater, with a circumference of around two hundred miles,
 16

and from one end it is joined to another lake of sweet water. It is not, however, very deep, and the water rises
and falls every day twice, just as it does in Venice. From the dry land to the city some roads are built across
(fondate) the lake. The inhabitants are idolatrous, like everyone in these lands, they eat men, but not all, they
only eat their enemies who are captured in battle. In this way, they sacrifice men to their idols.clxv They are
more industrious in producing things, and I have seen several vases of gold, and others which have come from
there, very beautiful and very well worked. clxvi Nor do they have iron, but work certain stones in place of iron. I
have seen of such like mirrors made of stone. They work further birds’ feathers, which are miraculous. clxvii To be
sure, I have not seen any embroidery, nor any work of particular subtlety, to rate with their craftsmanship on
the feathers and quills, which is particularly in demand, by which they seem to be of different colours,
according to the type of light, as we can perceive in the necks of doves. clxviii

Now this Fernando Cortes is penetrating even deeper, and has already discovered around 200 miles from
Yucatan in a southerly direction the southern sea, and many other cities, and he has discovered a very
abundant stretch of sweet water, between which and the southern sea there is a land, only two miles wide,
and it is thus hoped that this sweet water will lead also shortly to this other northern sea, which, when it is
found, it is thought can lead with great ease those navigating to the Moluccan islands, and other places in the
East Indies to access the spices without mixing with the Portuguese. Then, from Panama towards the south,
where that strait mentioned above, discovered by the Vittoria (Victoria) is to be found, nothing is to be
known.clxix And now His Royal Highness has put together an armada of five ships in Sicily, clxx and made Captain
Sebastian Cabot his pilot major, who is of Venetian origin, to go and investigate that entire stretch of coast, so
that he may continue to the Indies, which, as I have said, are annexed to the Castilian crown. clxxiAnd I have
already arrived at the end of the first part proposed to me, which was to talk of the realms in the possession of
his Imperial Majesty. [54]
 17

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Weinstein, Donald. Ambassador from Venice, Pietro Pasqualigo in Lisbon, 1501, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1960.
 20

Weiser, F. `Ein Bericht des Gasparo Contarini über die Heimkehr der Victoria von der Magalhaes’schen
Expedition’, in Mitteilungen der Institut für österreichischer Geschichtforschung, 5 (1884): 446-50.

i
Ammirato, Discorsi sopra Cornelio Tacito, 235;Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy. Mattingly explains
how the tradition of using churchmen for diplomatic tasks almost entirely disappeared by the end of the
sixteenth century. Recent historiographical attention has dwelled on the connections between the orality of
diplomatic practice and its transcription, de Vivo, ‘Archives of Speech’; cf. the author’s earlier book Information
and Communication in Venice. Lazzarini’s Communication and Conflict. Italian Diplomacy in the Early
Renaissance has been billed as ‘the first overall study of diplomacy in Early Renaissance Italy since Garrett
Mattingly's pioneering work in 1955’, attempting to sidestep the 'grand narrative' of the birth of resident
embassies while asking how it was that specifically Italian forms of diplomacy came to play such a central role,
not only in the development of international relations at the European level. It is also worth drawing attention
to Frigo’s edition of collected essays Politics and Diplomacy in Early Modern Italy. The structure of diplomatic
practice, which tries to shift the discussion away from Venice and the role of figures like the papal nuncio to
smaller statelets on the peninsula like Modena and Mantua.
ii
‘Between 1492 and 1650, Europeans had discovered something about the world around them, and a
good deal more about themselves. Ironically, the impact of this discovery was blunted by the very extent and
completeness of their successes overseas. These successes ministered to the vanity of Europe, or at least of the
official Europe of sovereign nation-states, which placed a high premium on the virtues of political and social
stability, and conformity. Such a Europe was unlikely to show itself unduly receptive to new impressions and
experiences.’, Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-1650, 104. Subrahmanyam takes the new view
in`Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500–1640’,
expanded into Impérios em Concorrência: Histórias conectadas nos séculos XVI e XVII, a collection of essays on
the comparative historical trajectories of Timurid India and Índia Portuguesa.
iii
Aubin, ‘Le Portugal dans l’Europe des années 1500’, 220. The researcher is aided here by Piot’s
publication of ‘La correspondence politique entre Charles V et le Portugal de 1521 à 1522’.
iv
The most systematic comparison hitherto remains that of Lyle N. McAlister, and confined to the
Americas. Spain and Portugal in the New World, 1492-1700. But there are also some informative reflections in
Lynn Smith, ‘The Changing Function of Latin American Cities’, 72-6.
v
‘Copia et sumario di una letera di dier Domenego Pixani, el cavalier, orator nostro in Spagna, a la
Signoria’, in Fulin et al. eds., I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, 1496-1533, vol. 4, 99-102; Ca’Masser, ‘Relazione di
Leonardo da C.M. alla Serenissima Repubblica di Venezia sopra il commercio dei’ Portoghesi nell’India dopo la
scoperta del Capo di Buona Speranza (1497-1506)’; Vincenzo Quirini, ‘Relazione delle Indie Orientali’, in Le
Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti, ed. E. Alberi; Weinstein, Ambassador from Venice, Pietro Pasqualigo in
Lisbon, 1501; Suriano ‘Relazione di Filippo II, Re di Spagna’ of 1559; Tron and Lippomani’s report is in
Herculano’s Opúsculos, vol 6, pp. 119-133; Federico Badoer’s ‘Relazione delle persone, governo e stati di Carlo
V e di Filippo II’ is in Alberi, Le relazioni degli ambasciatori, 174-330; s. 2, V, ibid. 1858, pp. 377-406 ;Fulin,Diarii
di Marino Sanuto, 1496-1533.Extracts have been published by Labalme, Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections
from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo;Priuli, I Diarii,1494-1512. Two recent anthologies of primary
documents by Symcox, Italian Reports on America, 1493-1522 , the first dedicated to letters, dispatched and
papal bulls, the second accounts by contemporary observers, encompass some of these texts. Contarini’s
diplomatic missions have been studied by Ferrara, Gasparo Contarini et ses missions, although the end result
dismissed as a work of ‘vulgarization’ by its English reviewer, who also indicates numerous errors, H.O.
Evennett, The English Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 282 (Jan. 1957): 165-166.
vi
Delicado, Viaggio fatto in Spagna et in Francia; Dispacci di Andrea Navagero.
vii
Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Collegio, Secreta, Commissioni, 1513-59, fol. 53r.
viii
There is no biography of Salviati but his movements from this mission to Spain can be traced from his
seven letters in the Bibliothèque Nationale, some of which are reproduced in Fraikin, Nonciatures de Clément
VII, esp. in vol. I.
ix
Carande, Carlos y sus Bánqueros: specifically, rents ordinaries vol. II, 91; services, vol. II, 536-7;
maestrazgos, vol. II, 378-425; subsidies, vol. II, 466-86; the crusade, vol. II, 435-64. Carande’s figures are used
by James Tracy in ‘War, Finance and Fiscal Devolution in Charles V’s realms’.
 21

x
Pérez, La Révolution des Comunidades de Castille.
xi
Harrisse, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, ‘Additions’, xxxiv ff.; Brown, Calendar of State Papers
and manuscripts relating to English affairs existing in the archives and collections of Venice, vols. III and IV.
There are three dispatches by Contarini from 1522 in Geoffrey Symcox et al., Italian reports on America, 1493-
1522: letters, dispatches and papal bulls, 136-9 (and in translation, 84-8).
xii
‘Lettere al Senato, 1521-5’, Ital. Cl .VII, 1009 , Biblioteca Marciana, Venice.
xiii
Dittrich, Gasparo Contarini, 1483-1542; Gleason, Gasparo Contarini is one of the recent historians
tending to avoid manuscript sources. Harrisse complains about ‘the almost illegible volume of manuscript
epistles bequeathed to the Marciana by Signore Girolamo Contarini in 1843’, Bibliotheca Americana
Vetustissima, xxxiv-xl. Contarini’s Relazione was published in a systematic 15 volume collection of Venetian
ambassadorial reportsby Eugenio Alberi, which was divided into three series (1) European states outside Italy
(2) Italian relazioni (3) reports from the Ottoman empire. in 1840. The original manuscript copy was once kept
in the Reale Archivio di Corte di Torino, Alberi ed. Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 1st ser., vol. 2,
1-73.
xiv
Scruzzi, Eine Stadt denkt sich die Welt.
xv
Fulin, Diarii di Marino Sanuto, 1496-1533, vol. 33, col. 557: `Fernando Cortese ha recuperate la gran
cita di Temistitan, con tutti quelli paesi et provincie che vi ho mandate in nota . . . Manda su in queste nave un
presente a l'Imperator, di perle, gioie et alter cose precise de quell paese’. Cited in Symcox ed., Italian Reports
on America, 1493-1522, Letters, Dispatches, and Papal Bulls. There are various spelling variations of
Tesmistitan, including Tenuscitan and Tenusitan, while the Fulin edition of Sanudo’s Diarii printed Temiscitan.
xvi
‘Letter of September 24, 1522, in Valladolid’, reproduced in Marino Sanudo, I Diarii, vol. 33, col. 501-3.
xvii
Cortés, Letters from Mexico; Delicado, Viaggio fatto in Spagna et in Francia, dal Magnifico M. Andrea
Navagiero (Venezia: Domenico Farri, 1563).
xviii
Marino Sanudo, I Diarii, vol. 28, pp. 375-6, repr. in Labalme et al., Venice, Cità Excelentissima, 198.
xix
Correspondence de Nicholas Clénard, ed. A. Roersch, (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1940), vol. 1;
Bronseval, Peregrinatio hispanica (1531-3); John Frampton, Ioyfull newes out of the newe founde worlde.
xx
M. De Wit, ‘Dantiscus and the Netherlands’, in Jozef Isewijn & Wouter Bracke, Joannes Dantiscus
(1485-1548): Polish ambassador and humanist, 34-5.
xxi
Petrus Martyr Anglerius und sein Opus Epistolarum, ed. Heinrich Heidenheimer (Berlin: Oswald
Seehagen, 1881).
xxii
Jerzy Axer & R. Tomicki, ‘Joannes Dantiscus and Hernán Cortés’, in Isewijn et al., Joannes Dantiscus
(1485-1548): Polish ambassador and humanist, 68. One of Dantyszek’s retinue was the Augsburg medal-maker
Christoph Weidlitz, who produced detailed ethnographic testimony of the Aztecs Cortés brought back to Spain
with him, Christoph Weiditz. El códice de trajes. Cortes had decided to return to Spain to clear himself of
accusations surrounding the death of Ponce de León, Tomás Ortiz and the Duke of Béjar, to present himself to
the King ‘a cara descubierta’, and to remarry and produce legitimate offspring to whom he could leave his
inheritance, Bennassar, Hernán Cortes, el conquistador de lo imposible, 170-78.
xxiii
A. Fontan, ‘Ioannis Dantiscus et Hispaniae optimates’, in Joannes Dantiscus (1485-1548): Polish
ambassador and humanist, 63.
xxiv
Navagero, Viaje a España.
xxv
Textual extracts presented in Charles Dufay, Un érudit du XIXe siècle, 81.
xxvi
López de Meneses, ‘A. Navagero, traductor de G.F. de Oviedo’, 63-71; Antonello Gerbi, `Oviedo and
Italy’ in idem, Nature in the New World, section XV.
xxvii
Cf. Opere del cardinale Pietro Bembo, 347: ‘Alla città, da cotali incomodi percossa, un maie non
pensato da lontane genti e regioni eziandio le venne’. Ibid., p. 359: ‘Con que'popoli, che di sopra detti abbiamo,
Messico, nella contrada Temistiana città egregia, in un laco di salsa acqua’. One can see the plans afoot in
‘Riconstruzione di Venezia Cinta da Mura in acqua secondo la proposta di Alvise Cornaro’, repr. in Tafuri,
Venezia e il Rinascimento, Plate 117.
xxviii
Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage. A Narrative Account of the First Navigation, 158-9.
xxix
Symcox, Italian Reports on America, 1493-152, Letters, Dispatches, and Papal Bulls; Denis Cosgrove
‘Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice’, 72; Antonio Pigafetta,
Magellan’s Voyage, 27.
xxx
Piero Falchetta ed., Battista Agnese’s Atlante (1554-1556) (Italy: Canal Multimedia, 1996).
xxxi
This two-page woodcut was published in S. Grynaeus and J. Huttich. Novus Orbis Regionum ac
Insularum Veteribus Incognitarum, 1532 [the map ‘Nova et Integra Universi Orbis Descriptio’ is at pages 54-55
 22

of a digital version at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k52509z ]; The travels of Ludovico di Varthema in

Egypt, Syria, Arabia Deserta and Arabia Felix, in Persia, India, and Ethiopia, A.D. 1503 to 1508.
xxxii
‘To the New World’, Times Literary Supplement, Friday 16 July 1971, 1. On this genre of intrigue, see
Giancarlo Casale’s analysis of the double-dealing of the once thought to be Venetian spy and intermediary,
‘Duarte Catanho (Cattaneo)’, The Ottoman Age of Exploration, 63-8, drawing on Dejanirah Couto, ‘L’itinéraire
d’un marginal: la deuxième vie de Diogo de Mesquita’. Arquivos do Centro Cultural Calouste Gulbenkian, 39
(2000): 9-35. Antonio de Silva Rego’s understanding of the stakes here has been substantially overhauled,
‘Duarte Catanho: Espião e Embaixador’, Anais (second series), 4 (1953): 123-40. Dejanirah Couto has elsewhere
studied spying from the perspective of the linguas, or translators, ‘The Role of Interpreters, or Linguas, in the
Portuguese Empire during the sixteenth century’, E-Journal of Portuguese History, vol. 1, no. 2 (Winter 2003)
[online]. The Rijeka exhibition ‘Piri Reis – Kartograf Sulejmana Vel’ (closed 30 August 2013) prioritised how
news of the Discoveries was avidly sought after across the Ottoman world .
xxxiii
Ramusio. Navigazioni e Viaggi, vol. 4.
xxxiv
The ‘structural crisis’ is set out by V.M. Godinho, ‘Flutuações económicas e devir estrutural do século
XV ao século XVII’, 189. The eulogy of Lisbon is by Damião de Góis, Urbis Olisiponis Descriptio Eborae: apud
Andream Burge[n]sem, 1554. See also Giovanni Battista Confalonieri. Grandezza et magnificenza della città di
Lisbona (1593-6).
xxxv
‘Lisboa em fins do reinado de D. Manuel’, V. M. Godinho, Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial,
508-9.
xxxvi
Brussels tapestry from The Spheres series, Royal Palace of Madrid. Note that while Jerry Brotton dates
the tapestry to João III’s marriage to Catherine of Austria in 1525, A History of the World in Twelve Maps,
London: Allen Lane, 2012, Figure 29, Thomas Campbell prefers 1530-35, Tapestry in the Renaissance: art and
magnificence, Metropolitan Museum of Art / Yale University Press, 2002, 268. This would alter the explanation
for the tapestry’s presence in Madrid, which Campbell sees anyway as having been commissioned by João’s
wife Catherine rather to emulate the collection of Catherine’s elder brother, Charles V. This concurs with
Annemarie Jordan’s view that ‘although not recorded in contemporary inventories, this series probably hung in
the Paço de Ribeira palace, and was later removed by either Philip II or Philip III and taken to Spain between
1580 and 1619’, ‘Portuguese Royal Collecting after 1521: The Choice Between Flanders and Italy’, in Kate Lowe
ed., Cultural Links between Portugal and Italy in the Renaissance, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, 290.
More generally, see Buescu, D. Joaõ III.
xxxvii
Sanudo, Diarii, I, cols 261, 418. This meeting at Torres Vedras is also mentioned by Damião de Góis,
Crónica do Felícissimo Rei D. Manuel, I, 36-7.
xxxviii
Alberi, Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato,ser. I, vol. II, 49.
xxxix
Michele Suriano, in Davis, Pursuit of Power. Venetian Ambassadors Reports, 43; J..N. Hillgarth, The
Mirror of Spain, 1500-1700: the formation of a myth, Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2000, 40.
xl
Abate Perantonio Serassi’, Lettere dei negozi del Conte Baldassare Castiglione, Padova: Comino, 1769-
71. More generally, Julia Cartwright, The Perfect Courtier, Baldassare Castiglione; his life and letters, 1478-
1529, New York: Dutton, 1927. The Titian portrait was painted after Isabella’s death, in Augsburg.
xli
Manuel Fernández Alvarez, ‘La Emperatriz Isabel’ is an obsequious paper made on the occasion of his
appointment to the Portuguese Academy, and anyway turns on Charles V’s love for his wife rather than what
outsiders made of her.
xlii
Prospero Peragallo ed. ,‘Copia de uma carta de el-Rei de Portugal enviada ao Rei de Castella acerca da
viagem e successo da India’, 13; Tomé Pires, The Suma oriental, ed. Armando Cortesão, London: Hakluyt
Society, 2nd series, no. LXXXIX, 1944, vol. II, 285.
xliii
Archivio di Stato di Venezia, Consiglio dei Dieci, reg. XXX, f. 49; published in Samuele Romanini, Storia
documentata di Venezia, Venezia: P. Naratovich (1853-61), vol. IV, 538.
xliv
`Estatística da Carga e dos Barcos Portugueses Entrados com Avarias no Porto de Antuérpia, de 1535 a
1551’, taken from Livro no. 209, feitoria de Flandres and published by V. Rau, Apêndice H, p. I, Exploração e
Comércio do Sal de Setúbal (1951). If we turn to Portuguese sources, however, here the chronicle of Dom
Manuel’s reign (1495-1521) written by the humanist Damião de Góis, we find opposing interpretations of these
deals, where the whole tone of the passage seems intended to underline Venetian subservience.Chapter 81,
`De quomo hos Venezeanos mandaram çinquo galeaças ha çidade de Lisboa, & da commisam que ho Capitam
dellas trazia', Chronica do Rey Emanuel, fol. 338 ff, Lisbon (Francisco Correia: 1566-67). There is a further
version of this episode in a parallel chronicle of the period by Osorius, De rebus Emmanuelis. ., 366.Apparently,
a Venetian general, Alexandro da Pesaro, leading five galeasses on the Flanders mude, was given written
 23

instructions (comissam) to stop in Lisbon to discuss the eventuality of a spice contract for the supply of the
European market through the traditional mechanisms at Venice. The upshot was polite refusal, if accompanied
by a show of great courtesy and, perhaps with some irony, even modest gifts of those very goods the Venetians
had hoped to contract. What we are to make of this may come from corroborating accounts copied into the
diary of Marino Sanudo, where details of public discussions held in the Collegio are detailed and letters of
instruction to commanders of the Flanders-bound mude reproduced word for word.Sanudo, I Diarii, ed. R. Fulin
(1879 edition), vol. XXX, cols. 116-7, 198, 282-3.
xlv
Fernanda Jasmins Pereira, Documentos de Madeira no Corpo Cronologico. Analise documental, Lisbon:
Arquivos do Torre do Tombo, 1990. Cf. the overblown positions taken in the jingoistic monograph by F.
Hümmerich, Die erste deutsche Handelsfahrt nach Indien, Munich, 1922.
xlvi
Tagliapietra returned to Venice in February 1518, see Sanudo, Diarii, t. XXV, 164.
xlvii
For details, see Christine Johnson, The German Discovery of the World. Renaissance Encounters,
University of Virginia Press, p. 180.See also Christa Schaper, ‘Die Hirschvogel von Nürnberg und ihre Faktoren in
Lissabon und Sevilla’, in Fremde Kaufleute auf der Iberischen Halbinsel.Köln ; Wien [u.a.] : Böhlau 1970.
xlviii
Enrique Otte, ‘Die Welser in Santo Domingo’, in Festschrift für Johannes Vincke, 2, pp. 475-518,
Madrid, 1963. For a recent summary of German involvement in the Spanish New World, see Felix Hinz,
‘Venezuela – the search for El Dorado’ in The Routledge History of Western Empires, Abingdon: 2014, p 22-24.
xlix
Hedwig Fitzler, ‘Jorg Pock’s Briefen aus Lissabon, 1518-20’, Mitteilungen des Vereins für Geschichte der
Stadt Nürnberg, 1968, v. 55, pp. 137-84.
l
Many of the problems in the Portuguese East are also related by Barros in the third Decada, and by
Damião de Gois in his Chronica, but these were works which only came out in the 1550s.
li
Levine, Agents of Empire, ch. 1; Stübel, ‘Die Instruktion Karls V für Philipp II vom 25 Oktober 1555’,
248.
lii
see José Pardo Tomás, ‘Obras españolas sobre historia natural y material médica’, Asclepio, vol. 43
(1991): 51-84. It is interesting that Dantyszek, Tomicki believes, was interested by the prospect of a trading
career at around this time.
liii
Gleason, Gasparo Contarini, pp. 32, 35-6.
liv
Sanudo, I Diarii, vol. XXIX, cols. 337-8; Report on the Old Records of the India Office, London & Calcutta
(1891), p. 174.
lv
G. Fragnito, `Gasparo Contarini’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 28, pp. 172-192; Charles
Hayward, `Life of Sebastian Cabot’, in Library of American Biography, vol. 9, p. 89-162; Ugo Tucci, `Sebastiano
Caboto’, in Dizionario degli italiani, t. XV, Rome 1971. See also Marcantonio Contarini’s report to the Senate on
Sebastian Cabot’s Voyage (1536), repr, in James Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under
Henry VII, London: Hakluyt Society, 1962, Document 55, p. 270..
lvi
For this side to his character, see Elisabeth Gleason, `Reading between the lines of Gasparo Contarini's
Treatise on the Venetian State’, in Historical Reflections 1988 15(1): 251-270; F. Tarducci, Di Giovanni e
Sebastiano Caboto, Venezia: Visentini, 1892, 156.
lvii
Erich Woldan, Opera: Legatio Babyonica, De Orbe Novo decades octo, opus epistolarum, Graz: 1966,
Vorwort.
lviii
Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães, ‘Flutuações económicas e devir estrutural do século XV ao século XVII’,
in Ensaios, Lisbon: Sà de Costa, 1978, t. II, 245-80.
lix
Tratado que compôs o nobre & notauel capitão Antonio Galuão, dos diuersos & desuayrados caminhos,
por onde nos tempos passados a pimenta & especearia veyo da India às nossas partes, & assi de todos os
descobrimentos antigos & modernos, que são feitos até a era de mil & quinhentos & cincoenta, Lisboa 1563
[digital copy provided by Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal Digital].
lx
João de Barros, Clarimundo, ed.by Prof. Marques Braga, Lisbon: Clássicos Sá da Costa, 1953, 3 vols;
Adrien Roïg, La comédie de Bristo, 1973; Jack Horace Parker’s survey of the lyric dramatic poet, Gil Vicente,
New York: Twayne, 1967, covers each of his plays, but is rather cursory, pp. 76-7, 134.
lxi
Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage, Chapter VII.
lxii
Scholars have borne witness to how the early Edenic visions of the Vaz da Caminha letter (where the
locals were presented as a povo docil and if without religion, then fodder for conversion) , were replaced by
issues of diversidade and estranheza, as found in Gabriel Soares de Souza’sTratado Descritivo do Brasil,
published in 1587, to hostile ‘imagotypes’ to be found in texts like that of Pêro Magalhães de Gândavo from
1570 , História da Província de Santa Cruz. In Luís Albuquerque ed., O Reconhecimento do Brasil. Lisboa:
Publicações Alfa, pp. 67-130. Cf. Maria Cecília Guirado, ‘Primeiros Confrontos entre Portugal e Brasil: o Diario
 24

de Navegação de Pero Lopes de Sousa (1530-1532)’, Anais de Historia de Alem-Mar, December 2000, Vol. 1,
p221-232. As a general survey, see Rogério Miguel Puga, ‘O Olhar através do Género: A Imagem do Índio
Brasileiro na Literatura Portuguesa de Quinhentos’, in Fernando Cristóvãoed. O Olhar do Viajante. Dos
Navegadores aos Exploradores. Coimbra: Livraria Almedina-Centro de Literaturas de Expressão Portuguesa da
Universidade de Lisboa, pp. 177-230.
lxiii
Fróis wrote a letter back to D. Manuel from Porto Rico in 1514, where he was captured by Spanish
authorities for having touched Spanish land. Together with his crewmen he was transported to Seville, but was
duly released in 1517. F. Contente Domingues Dicionário de História dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, Lisboa:
Caminho, 1994, vol. 2, p. 971.
lxiv
Fernão Cardim, S.J. Tratados da Terra e gente do Brasil ed. Capistrano de Abreu et al., Rio de Janeiro,
1950 (transl, in Samuel Purchas, Pilgrimes, pp. 1289-1325 of the 1625 edition.
lxv
Marcondes de Souza, Amérigo Vespucci e suas viagens, São Paulo 1949, 270. Fernão de Loronha was
the largest importer of spices and foodstuffs to the Feitoria de Flandres over the period August 1488-March
1494, A.N.T.T., Cartas de quitação de D. João III, no 221.
lxvi
King Manuel’s alvará of 1516, in the Arquivos Nacionais do Torre do Tombo, Livro das Reformações da
Casa da India, fol. 25v. More generally, John L. Vogt Jr., Portuguese Exploration in Brazil and the Feitoria
System, 1500-1530: the first economic cycle of Brazilian history, University of Virginia, Ph.D., 1967; Regina
Tomlinson, The Struggle for Brazil. Portugal and the French Interlopers (1500-1550), 1970. Spanish interloping
was haphazard, often a result of trading voyages heading for the Caribbean which got blown off course through
navigational error or the weather, see for example the expedition of Alonso Vélez de Mendoza, in L.A. Vigneras
ed., The Discovery of South America and the Andalusian Voyages, Chicago 1976. Other abortive attempts were
made by explorers like Diego de Ortaz to establish colonies along the River Amazon in 1531 but Pinzon, who
had been given the rights to land to the south of the Amazon by Ferdinand of Aragon in 1501, did not follow up
on this opportunity.
lxvii
Luís de Albuquerque, Martim Afonso de Sousa, Lisboa: Alfa, 1989.
lxviii
Geraldini,’ Itinerary to the Regions Located Below the Equator’, 1522 (repr. in Symcox)
lxix
F. Weiser, ‘Ein Bericht des Gasparo Contarini über die Heimkehr der Victoria von der magalhaes’schen
Expedition‘, in Mitteilungen der Institut für österreichischer Geschichtforschung, 5, 1884, pp. 446-50; Lodovico
Beccadelli, Vita del Cardinale Gasparo Contarini,Brescia: Rizzardi, 1746, pp. 6-7.
lxx
Agnese is reproduced in S. Biadene ed., Carte da navigar: portolani e carte nautiche del Museo Correr
1318-1732 (Venezia: Marsilio, 1990).
lxxi
Repr. in The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, Pierpoint Morgan Library, 1970, Plate 19.
lxxii
Loades, ‘Sebastian Cabot, explorer and cartographer’, in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
[online edition], URL consulted 4 June 2013, 6pp. There is a good summary of proceedings at the Badajoz
conference in Jerry Brotton, A History of the World in Twelve Maps, Penguin Books, 2012, pp. 199-201
lxxiii
Felipe Fernández-Armesto, The Times Atlas of World Exploration, London (1991), p. 133.
lxxiv
José Toribio Medina, El Veneciano Sebastián Caboto al servicio de España, Santiago de Chile, 1908, vol.
1, 182.
lxxv
Letter reproduced in Marino Sanudo, I Diarii, vol. 33, cols. 501-3.
lxxvi
Christian Brannstrom, 'The river of silver and the island of Brazil', Terrae Incognitae 27: 1-14.
lxxvii
Robert S. Weddle, ‘Alonso Alvarezde Pineda,’Handbook of Texas Online
(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fal72), accessed June 13, 2013. Published by the Texas
State Historical Association.
lxxviii
Lawrence Wroth, The Voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano, 1524-8, New Haven: Yale University Press.
lxxix
See Marica Milanesi, ‘Arsarot oder Anian? Identität und Unterscheidung zwischen Asien und der
Neuen Welt in der Kartographie des 16. Jahrhunderts (1500-1570)‘, in Adriano Prosperi, Wolfgang Reinhard
eds. Die Neue Welt im Bewußtsein der Italiener und Deutschen des 16. Jahrhunderts, Berlin: Duncker &
Humblot, 1991, pp 15-69.
lxxx
Bouwsma, Venice and the Defence of Republican Liberty, pp. 144-53; Stephen Bowd, Reform before the
Reformation. Vincenzo Quirini and the Religious Renaissance in Italy, Leiden: Brill (2002) reminds us that both
Contarini and Quirini were intellectuals, slow to enter public service.
lxxxi
G. Fragnito, `Gasparo Contarini’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 28, pp. 172-192; Charles
Hayward, `Life of Sebastian Cabot’, in Library of American Biography, vol. 9, p. 89-162; Ugo Tucci, `Sebastiano
Caboto’, in Dizionario degli italiani, t. XV, Rome 1971.
 25

lxxxii
For this side to his character, see Elisabeth Gleason, `Reading between the lines of Gasparo Contarini's
Treatise on the Venetian State, in Historical Reflections 1988 15(1): 251-270.
lxxxiii
‘Letter of 10 August, 1499’, reproduced in Voyages de Vasco da Gama. Relations des expeditions de
1497-99, & 1502-3, ed. Paul Teyssier & Paul Valentin, Paris: Chandeigne (1995), pp. 183-8.
lxxxiv
Scruzzi, 239. See also the discussion in a review written by Achim Landwehr, in Sehepunkte, Ausgabe
10 (2010), Nr. 5 [www.sehepunkte.de/2010/05/17819.html].
lxxxv
There is amazingly no monograph on this powerful (tending to authoritarian) political figure.
Manfredo Tafuri, Venezia e il Rinascimento: religione, scienza, architettura, §2 ‘La renovatio di Andrea Gritti:
auctoritas, tecniche, architettura’, Torino: Einaudi, 1985, pp. 162-9. The political and intellectual life of the city
under Gritti is explored in Achille Olivieri, ‘Il Principe e la formazione del concenso sociale: intellettuali e
architetti alla ‘corte’ di Andrea Gritti’, Annali della Facolta di Scienze Politiche: Materiali di Storia. 1980, Vol. 17
Issue 5, p37-55. Robert Finlay, ‘Fabius Maximus in Venice: Doge Andrea Gritti, the War of Cambrai and the Rise
of Hapsburg Hegemony, 1509-30, Renaissance Quarterly, December 2000, Issue 4, pp. 988-1031 looks at
Grittian policy for the survivalof Venice in the midst of the Italian Wars.
lxxxvi
Frederic Lane, ‘The Mediterranean Spice Trade. Further Evidence of its Revival in the sixteenth
century’, American Historical Review, 45, 3, (1940), pp. 581-90.
lxxxvii
William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defence of Republican Liberty, Berkeley, University of California
Press, 1968, pp. 144-53.
lxxxviii
‘Carta de João Matteo Crético, 27 junho de 1501’ in Amado & Figueiredo, Brasil 1500, pp. 177-8. For
more context, see Alida Metcalf, Go-betweens and the colonization of Brazil, Texas 2005, p. 39.
lxxxix
Ca’ Masser’s report is in the Biblioteca Nazional Marciana, Venice, MS ital., cl. VII. 877 (=8,651), fos.
308r-314v. Alongside the Archivio Storico Italiano 1845 edition, his text has been reproduced as an Appendix to
D.S. Chambers, ‘Venetian Perceptions of Portugal, c. 1500’, in Kate Lowe, Cultural links between Portugal and
Italy in the Renaissance, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 39. Overall, Manuel was presented by Ca’
Masser as a ‘suspicious, irresolute, avaricious and bigoted king’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 17, p.
86 (cf. the abridged biography of Manuel I provide in ‘Carta de el-Rei D. Manuel ao Rei Catholico narrando-ilhe
as viagens portugezas a India desde 1500 ate 1505’, in Christian-Muslim Relations 1500 - 1900, vol. 6, ed. David
Thomas). Quirini’s comments are in Le relazioni, p. 13.
xc
See here C. A. Sneyd ed., A Relation of the Island of England with sundry particulars of the customs of
these people, and the royal revenues under King Henry the Seventh, about the year 1500.(Camden Society:
London, 1847), esp. 31, 34-6.
xci
See Paola Mildonian, ‘La conquista dello spazio Americano nelle prime raccolte venete’, in L’impatto
della scoperta dell’America nella cultura veneziana, ed. Angela Caracciolo Arico, Rome: Bulzoni, 1990, p. 118,
no. 9.
xcii
The Polish magnate, Jakub Sobieski, who visited Spain in 1611, amazed at the vast spaces of forest,
olive groves, orange orchards and cypress trees in Andalusia, see García Mercadal, Viajes de extranjeros por
España y Portugal, Madrid: 1959, vol. II, 330. Andalusia was sparsely inhabited for its size, but outstripped the
general population rise over the first half of the sixteenth century as to be observed in Spanish cities like
Barcelona and Toledo. Seville’s population, for example, close to trebled to 120.000 by the time of the census
of 1597.
xciii
Galicia, both distant and tribal, was always poorly integrated into the rest of the peninsula, see Pierre
Chaunu, L’Espagne de Charles Quint, vol. 1, p. 201.
xciv
This is not the Royal Council and Cabinet of Castile, but the Council of Justice (see further on)
xcv
Known in Spanish as the Real y Supremo Consejo de Castilla, or more simply, and in an earlier period,
as the Consejo Real. By St. James, Contarini means Santiago de Compostela. He refers to Juan Pardo de
Tavera(1472–1545), who was acardinal(from 1531) and wasArchbishop of ToledoandPrimate of Spain(1534-
1545),Grand InquisitorofSpain(1539-1545),Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela(1524-1534),Bishop of
Osma(1523-1524), andBishop of Ciudad Rodrigo(1514-1523).
xcvi
Vitado de Mendoza, imperial ambassador to Venice, later Rome and then in 1547 appointed Governor
of the Republic of Siena until the Spanish garrison was expelled from the city up an uprising of the town’s
citizens in league with the French in 1552.
xcvii
Moncada (1476-1528) was General of Ocean and Land, fighting in many campaigns such as at Tournai,
Toulon, Hyères and Fréjus, then Viceroy of Sicily (1509-17) and of Naples (1527-28).
xcviii
Fieramosc, or Ferramosca, was Deputy Viceroy of Naples between 1524-6.
 26

xcix
This might have been Pedro González de Mendoza, who was recorded as majordomo and chief
accountant of rents for the Holy Roman Emperor in a royal cedula of April 1528, Archivo del Monasterio
Cisterciense de Santo Domingo de Silos ‘El Antiguo’, leg. 3/9. A general survey of this council exists, see Juan
Carlos Dominguez Nafría, El consejo real y supremo de guerra (siglos XVI-XVIII), Madrid: Centro de Estudos
Políticos y Constitucionales, 2001, but I have not been able to consult it.
c
The Council of the Indies was a privy council which some historians date back to 1510, which Charles V
was referring to already in 1519, although only formally created on August 1, 1524. See Ernesto Schäfer, El
Consejo real y supremo de las Indias: su historia, organización y labor administrativa hasta la terminación de la
casa de Austria, Seville: 1935-47, vol. I, 43 ff.; Juan de Solórzano y Pereyra, Política Indiana, Madrid: M.
Sacristan, 1648, lib. V, cap. 15.
ci
Eugenio Albèri appears to have made a mistake here. Contarini is referring to Garcia de Loaisa (Loaysa)
(c.1495-1546), who was General of the Dominicans, was nominated President of the Consejo de Indias, and
was Bishop of the cathedral city of Burgo de Osma, not Osuna (Ossuna). Martín de Salinas, Cartas, pp. 131-9 in
Rodríguez Villa, El Emperador Carlos V y su Corte, Madrid 1903. It is not Fray Francisco de Osuna who wrote the
Ley de Amor (published in Seville in 1530), with a Prólogo dedicated to Charles’ secretary, Francisco de los
Cobos. Loaisa’s star in the council rose just as that of Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos, waned (he
died at the end of 1524).
cii
Machiavelli prefers the word virtù for talent, Ch. 21 ‘How a ruler should act to gain reputation’.
ciii
Alonso Manrique de Lara (1476-1538), Bishop of Córdoba between 1516-23, Archbishop of Seville
from 1523 and who held the position of Gran Inquisidor from 1523 until his death. Rodrigo Manrique was
another prominent member of this family, a member of the Consejo de Guerra.
civ
Alberi seems to think Contarini means to say Protestants here, but I do not agree. If you look at ‘Les
cibles principales’ for the Inquisition of Toledo, as computed by Bartolomé Bennassar, then Protestantism only
became a target with more than ten cases over a five-year period after 1555, while ‘Judaism’ was regularly the
subject of 70-80 trials for the five-year period of 1481-5, if declining a little thereafter, L’Inquisition Espagnole,
XVe-XIXe siècle, Hachette, 1979, p. 23.
cv
Dr. Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal (doctor iuris), an old Castillian councillor of Ferdinand and author of
Avisos de lo que convendria hacerse para evitar algunos abusos en el gobierno, in Coleccion de Documentos
Inéditos para la Historia de España, Madrid: Miguel Ginesta, 1887, vol. LXXXVIII, pp. 504-6.There is a digital
copy of this rare work here: http://www.heuristiek.ugent.be/sites/default/files/codoin/codoin.88.pdf. He is
also author of ‘Parecer del doctor Carvajal sobre lo que el Emperador deve hacer para ausentarse y cómo debe
quedar lo de los consejos y quién yrá con el Emperador’, Egerton MS. 307, fols. 159-163, British Library,
London.
cvi
Hugh Thomas prefers ‘President’ to ‘Grand Master’. Don García de Padilla, another former councillor
of Ferdinand and patron of de los Cobos, also held the position of advisor to the King between 1523-42. Padilla
was instrumental on the Spanish side in the negotiations for the Saragossa Treaty in 1529.
cvii
Francisco de los Cobos, also Secretary of the Council of State between 1528-46, and Secretary of the
Council of the Indies, 1518-47. Hayward Kenniston, Francisco de los Cobos, secretary of the emperor Charles V,
Pittsburgh University Press, 1959, p. 126.
cviii
A Council of Finance was formally put together in 1523. Authors like Kenniston insist that finance
increasingly ‘became a matter for the secretaries to straighten out’, 1959 ed., p. 333.
cix
Contarini draws from the Spanish term servicios here.
cx
The manuscript fails to mention the other nine. At the Cortes of 1566, 13 contadi participated,
including Murcia, Jaén, Salamanca, Ávila, Toro, Zamora and Madrid, see ‘Legislation and Consent to Taxation in
the ‘Cortes’ of 1566’, Document VI, dated 15 June 1567, in G. Griffiths, Representative Government in Western
Europe in the Sixteenth Century, Oxford U.P, 1968, p. 41. The two remaining unaccounted for are Soria and
Guadalajara. This representation is somewhat archaic in that only five of these cities are from the South or in
territories acquired after 1225.
cxi
Cf. ‘Revenue Structure of Charles V’s lands’, James D. Tracy, ‘War Finance and Fiscal Devolution in
Charles V’s Realms’, in Wim Blockmans & Nicolette Mout eds., The World of Emperor Charles V, Amsterdam
2004, 73.
cxii
The suggestion here is that the low rate of collection reflects the perception on the part of the cittadi
that the levy was a high one. Prior to the Catholic Kings, the alcabala was a 5% levy.
cxiii
This is explained by Ramón Carande ‘Déficit chronique et injustice fiscale’, in Pérez, L’Espagne du XVIe
Siècle, Paris: Armand Colin, 1973, fn. 1, p. 204, and by Wim Blockmans & Nicolette Mout, who see this
 27

alienation in terms of returns on loans provided by banking-houses at the time of Charles V’s election to Holy
Roman Emperor in 1519, The World of Emperor Charles V, 5. This alienated income was referred to as situados.
‘Ordinary income’ also comprised tolls and agrarian dues.
cxiv
Charles V was recognized as ‘perpetual administrator’ of the three orders by his erstwhile tutor, Pope
Adrian VI, see Hermann Kellenbenz, Die Fuggersche Maestrazgopacht (1525-42), Tübingen 1967, 2-6. In
practice, this meant that Cobos acted as secretary for the orders of Calatrava and Alcántara, while Juan
Bázquez de Molina, Comendador de Guadalcanal was nominated by Charles V to run the Order of Santiago,
María Jesús Álvarez-Coca González,‘El Consejo de las Ordenes Militares’, in Cuadernos de historia moderna,Nº
15, 1994, p. 303.
cxv
The cruzada, a tax established in 1484 and authorised by the Pope, to grant plenary indulgences in
return for financial contributions to the war against infidel Granada. See Alberi, vol. I, p. 39, note. In Italy,
indulgences were usually authorised, and their winnings distributed by the Pope, for such ends as maintaining
the hospital of Gesù Cristo at Sant’Antonio, Venice, 22 July 1487, ASV Procuratori di San Marco de Supra,
Chiesa, b.107, processo 255. The cruzada was still being levied at the time of Suriano’s report in 1559.
cxvi
Castile’s clergy was constrained to pay an annual tax or subsidio to the crown, with the amount to be
determined by negotiation.
cxvii
Contarini reverts to Venetian here, particularly with the phrase ‘quelli che colle buone non le vogliono
torre’."Torre" apparently means "prendere" in Venetian. For the questione della lingua, whether Venetian was
a language or mere dialect (a straightforward answer for which she evades), see Anna Lepschy, ‘The Language
of Sanudo’s Diarii’, in War, Culture and Society in Renaissance Venice, London: Hambledon Press, 1993, pp.
199-212. The shift of the cittadi’s fiscal provisions from alcabala to servicios derived also benefited the wealthy
trading class and rentiers to the detriment of the common people.
cxviii
By 1559, Suriano reported a rise in ordinary revenues to 1.500.000 ducats (in gold). The largest share
of this increase in revenue (500.000) was borne by gold from the Indies, in Davis, p. 42. Silver from Potosí
revolutionised fiscal arrangements in the second half of the sixteenth century.
cxix
Captured by an army of 10.000 men in May 1509, and held until 1732. In 1559, 59.272 ducats were
spent on soldiers’ salaries; taxes on trade raised less than half that amount. Andrew C. Hess, The Forgotten
Frontier, a history of the sixteenth century Ibero-African frontier, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 38-
9, 43.
cxx
Refers to the Italian wars, culminating in the infamous Sack of Rome (1527).
cxxi
Cf. the comments of Pierre de Brantôme observing the tercios on their way up the Spanish Road
(1566). He commented on ‘this kind troupe of brave and valliant soldiers.. all old and war-hardened, so well
kitted out in uniform and arms that one would mistake them for captains rather than plain soldiers.. and [one]
would have said they were princes, they were such rogues, marching arrogantly and with grace’, in Marcelin
Defourneaux, La Vie Quotidienne en Espagne au siècle d’or, Hachette, 1964, ‘La Vie Militaire’, p. 219. This sense
of honour can be discerned in many of the writings produced by the conquistadores. Bernal Díaz del Castillo,
for example, author of Verdadera Historia de los sucesos de la conquista de Nueva España, writes in ch. ccxii
how he was motivated ‘by the pride his children and descendants would feel from his heroism’.
cxxii
This visit followed an unsuccessful French invasion of Navarre in April/May 1521, defeated by
Aragonese troops, but French pretensions to the area remained, see Nicolas de Bordenave, Histoire de Béarn et
Navarre, 17.
cxxiii
This sentiment culminated in the Comuneros’ demand that ‘Offices in the royal house must be given
to persons born and baptized in Castile, and the king, while he is in Castile, cannot make use of persons who
are not born in Castile’, Don Martín Fernández Navarrete, Don Miguel Salvá and Don Pedro Sainz de Baranda
eds., Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, vol. I, Madrid: Imprenta de la Viuda de
Calero, 1842, pp. 272-83. The chronicler Nicolas de Bordenave refers to the ‘inhumanité de ses sangsues
estrangères’, Histoire de Béarn et Navarre, ed. Paris: chez Mme. Ve. Jules Renouard, 1873, p. 5.
cxxiv
Note the text’s address for Charles V as ‘Cesare’. Italians were quick to move on to familiar forms of
address, even first-name terms (in Italian Cesare is a first name), as oppose to the Germans, as we can see from
correspondence with King Manuel I of Portugal (1495-1521), or even the Spanish, who preferred an address
reflective of the political distance between subject and ruler. Cortés and Charles’ own brother Ferdinand, for
example, addressed their letters to Charles as ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Your Majesty’ (V.M.), Charles’ ambassador
Lope Hurtado as S.C.C.M. For the Portuguese case, see Stefan Halikowski Smith, Portugal and the European
Spice Trade, 1480-1580, Ph.D. thesis of 2001 (European University Institute, Italy), p. 176.
 28

cxxv
The Constable of Castile, a powerful position that became hereditary. In Contarini’s day it was held by
Don Iñigo Fernández de Velasco (1462-1528), who was promoted to the three-headed government of June
1520 alongside Cardinal Adrian and Admiral Fadique Enriquez de Cabrera.
cxxvi
Left empty In the manuscript, but should be filled with ‘Duke of Nájera’. The famous boast of the
family went ‘we do not descend from kings, but kings descend from us’.
cxxvii
Guillaume de Cröy, Sieur de Chièvres (1458 – 28 May 1521), chief tutor and First Chamberlain to
Charles V. The purpose of this first visit (autumn 1517-1520) was a tour of Charles’ kingdoms and a collection of
servicios at the Cortes of Valladolid.
cxxviii
There was the problem that the encabezamientos were not rising in line with price inflation, despite a
freeze agreed at the Cortes of Valladolid. The King proposed to scrap them and replace them by putting the
alcabalas to auction.
cxxix
On Toledo’s protests in October and November 1519 against the puja of Barcelona (putting up the
alcabalas for auction), run-in with the Chancellery on the (re-)wording of the king’s title, and plans on what to
do if the king left Spain and got himself crowned in Aachen, see Joseph Peréz, L’Espagne du XVIe siècle, 1973,
pp. 47-9. The corregidor ultimately had to abandon the city on 31 May, 1520, see Chaunu, L’Espagne de Charles
Quint, I, 235, after Toledo had boycotted the Cortes opened at Santiago de Compostela on 26 March 1520.
cxxx
In the 1520s, Fonseca was leader of the royal army, here operating alongside the commander
Ronquillo. Later member of the Council of State between 1554-6; President of the Royal Council and Cabinet of
Castile, 1553-6. Be careful not to confuse him, as Chaunu does in his L’Espagne de Charles Quint, with Juan
Rodriguez de Fonseca, Bishop of Burgos. For detail on the Segovian uprising, see Pérez, La Révolution des
Comunidades de Castille, 168-9.
cxxxi
Chaunu writes of the campaign against Medina which took place 21-22 April 1520 as ‘une operation
conduite correctement au plan technique, mais psychologiquement d’une manière désastreuse’, vol. I, p. 239.
Fonseca fled to Portugal, and the royal army was disbanded.
cxxxii
An army under Federico of Toledo, Duke of Alba, invaded Navarre in 1512; the kingdom of which
Contarini speaks, based around the city of Pamplona, was annexed (what Elliott would call ‘accessory union’,
the example by which Wales was incorporated into the English legal system by the Acts of Union of 1536 and
1543, John Elliott, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past and Present, no. 137 (November 1992), pp. 52 &
60) in the Treaty of Noyon in 1516. A rump ‘kingdom’ to the north remained under the sovereign lords of
Béarn, the counts of Foix. initially Henri d’Albret (1502-1555). He organised an attack on Navarre in 1521 under
André de Foix, seigneur d’Esparros, hoping the Comuneros would serve as a pretext for a general uprising.
cxxxiii
The Italian Alessandro Cesarini was appointed Apostolic Administrator to Pamplona between 1520-38.
cxxxiv
Don Louis de Beaumont, d. 1529. See Nicolas de Bordenave, Histoire de Béarn et Navarre, Paris:
Renouard, 1873, p. 7.Gregorio Monreal; Roldan Jimeno. Conquista e Incorporación de Navarra a Castilla.
Pamplona-Iruña: Pamiela, 2012.
cxxxv
This is another example of ‘accessory’ union, see fn. 127.
cxxxvi
This interpretation of the separateness of the two Indies was still very new, although shared by some
contemporary observers like Jan Dantyszek, see R. Tomicki, ‘Wczesne Zrodla Wiedzy o Ameryce w Polsce‘,
Etnografia Polska, t. XXXIX, 1995, issue 1-2, p. 79, fn. 5. Older interpretations were much more hazy, indeed
Beckingham has written of the ‘extraordinary confusion’ which persisted throughout the 14 th and 15th centuries
by which ‘Anywhere vaguely south of the Muslim countries was liable to be called India’, ‘The Quest for Prester
John’, repr. In Felipe Fernández-Armesto ed., The European Opportunity, Aldershot: Variorum, 1995, pp. 183-4.
More highly evolved concepts, like ‘South America’, we find only later, Harrisse tracing it back to a gloss on
Pigafetta’s manuscript presented to Charles V, Bibliotheca Americana Vetustissima, p. xxxiv.
cxxxvii
Note the formulation ‘rediscover’
cxxxviii
Contarini’s qualification shows that George Percy Badger, editor of The Travels of Ludovico di
Varthema,London: Hakluyt Society, 1863, p. 224, fn. 1 is quite wrong to equate Cini with Siam.
cxxxix
This letter has been unearthed and published by F. Weiser, `Ein Bericht des Gasparo Contarini über
die Heimkehr der Victoria von der Magalhaes’schen Expedition’, in Mitteilungen der Institut für österreichischer
Geschichtforschung, 5, 1884, pp. 446-50.
cxl
The navigator João Dias de Solis sailed for Malacca on behalf of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512, see the
letter from D. Manuel to D. Fernando, 20 September 1513, A.N.T.T. gaveta 2, m. 10, n. 12, which speaks of the
‘armada que me foy dito que se faziq em Sevilha de certos navios que emviaveys ha Malacca’. For context, A.A.
Banha de Andrade, Mundos novos do mundo:panorama da difusão, pela Europa, de noticias dos
descobrimentos geograficos portugueses, Lisbon: Junta de investigacoes de ultramar, 1972, p. 867. The
 29

negotiations culminating in the Treaty of Saragossa (1529) set the meridian far to the east of Malacca at 17
degrees east of the Molucca archipelago, see Giménez Fernández, Las Bulas Divisorias, 1944; Manuel Hidalgo
Nieto, ‘La Cuestión Hispano-Portuguesa en torno a las Islas Molucas’, in Revista de Indias, Madrid, 1943; A.
Teixeira da Mota, ‘A Viagem de Fernão de Magalhães e a Questão das Molucas’, in Actas do Colóquio Luso-
Espanhol de História Ultramarina, Lisboa: CECA, 1975.
cxli
Spain claimed that those islands were within its western hemisphere. In 1523, the Treaty of Vitoria
called for the Badajoz Junta to meet in 1524, at which the two countries tried to reach an agreement on the
anti-meridian, but failed. They finally agreed in a treaty signed at Zaragoza (April 22, 1529) that Spain would
relinquish its claims to the Moluccas upon the payment of 350,000 ducats of gold by Portugal to Spain. To
prevent Spain from encroaching upon Portugal's Moluccas, the anti-meridian was to be 297.5 leagues or 17° to
the east of the Moluccas, passing through the islands of Las Velas and Santo Thome. In the year of the treaty,
the cosmographer at the Casa de la Contratación in Seville, Diogo Ribeiro, was still producing planispheres
depicting contested sovereignty over the Moluccas, see his ‘Carta Uniuersal En que Se contiene todo lo que del
mundo..’ [a.k.a. the Borgia chart], Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Borgiano III.
cxlii
Aurea Chersonesus was a construct worked out by Josephus in his Antiquities of the Jews (second half
of the first century), and one of the key features of the vision of the world as per Ptolemy’s Geography. While
it was still depicted by Sebastian Münster on the 1538 map from an edition of Solinus’ Polyhistory, Giacomo
Gastaldi did without the myth in his map of Southeast Asia ‘India Tercera Nova Tabula’ published in 1548. It is
interesting that Contarini neglects the conflation of the Moluccan Islands with biblical Ophir, mentioned in
Genesis 10.
cxliii
Not true. The marriage took place on 10 March 1526, while theseven-ship Garcia Jofre de Loaísa
expedition departed from Corunna on 24 July 1525 both to rescue the Trinidad, the flagship of the Magellan
expedition, and to colonize the Spice Islands. Only Urdaneta and 24 other men survived to land in the Spice
Islands. They were returned to Spain under Portuguese guard in 1536.
cxliv
Witness the untitled Malay text from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century describing the
Portuguese arrival at the great Southeast Asian port-city of Melaka, Luís Filipe F. R. Thomaz, ‘La prise de Malaca
par les Portugais vue par les Malais (d’après le manuscript Raffles 32 de la Royal Asiatic Society), in Studies on
Cultural Contact and Textual Interpretation, Leiden KTLV, 1986.
cxlv
Probably the two ships lost in the Luso-Chinese 1522 naval encounter after the breakdown of
Portuguese trading initiatives ashore. Details vary according to the source, but China also captured some
artillery later duplicated for her war junks, Roderich Ptak, ‘Sino-Portuguese Relations circa 1513/14 until the
1550s’, in idem, China, the Portuguese and the Nanyang, Aldershot: Variorum, 2004, p. 24. Tonio Andrade has
recently analysed this so-called Sino-Portuguese war for what it tells us about military change: ‘Cannibals with
Cannons. The Sino-Portuguese Clashes of 1521-2’, Journal of Early Modern History, 19 (2015), pp. 311-35.
cxlvi
Traditional biographies of João III celebrate the ‘milhares de cartas sôbre os mais variados assuntos’ he
wrote and which are still to be found in the Gavetas and Corpo Cronológico series of the Torre do Tombo
archives, Alfredo Pimenta, João III, Livraria Tavares Martins, 1936, p. 332, while Aude Viaud, Correspondance
d’un ambassadeur castellan au Portugal dans les années 1530: Lope Hurtado de Mendoza, Paris: Publications
du Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, 2001 andLettres des souverains portugais à Charles Quint et à
l'Impératrice (1528-1532) : suivies en annexe de lettres de D. Maria de Velasco e du Duc de Bragance :
conservées aux archives de Simancas, Paris/Lisbon 1994 points out that John’s letters are ‘souvent brèves et
concises’ and generally ‘de faible nombre’, p. 57. This, however, is a result of the ‘refroidissement des relations
diplomatiques’, especially with Spain, p. 21. Diplomatic reports on João may be more astute (Monsieur de la
Xaus [the Fleming Charles de Poupet, Seigneur de La Chaulx], who was sent by Charles as ambassador in 1522,
Juan de Zuñiga (1524-6), the imperial secretary Christophe Barroso,, or D. Sancho de Córdova, sent by the same
on 1 December 1556). Alonso Enríquez de Guzmán, a courtier sent by Charles to Lisbon to arrange the
wedding, reported that he met a ‘fat monarch, rather short, with a very small beard, youthful and not very
discreet’, Libro de la vida de Alonson Enriquez de Guzmán, ed. Howard Keniston, Madrid 1960, p. 72.
cxlvii
this refers to the breakdown of royal authority and discipline under the governorship of Dom Duarte
de Meneses (1521-4), of whom Correia writes ‘the King was very indignant with him for his evil deeds’, the
dispatch of Vasco da Gama to replace him, and the ensuing ‘luta’ of 1526, see Henry E.J. Stanley ed., The Three
Voyages of Vasco da Gama, and his Viceroyalty from the Lendas da India of Gaspar Correia: accompanied by
original documents, Ashgate: Hakluyt Society series, 2010, 385. H.V. Livermore, ‘The Crisis in Portuguese India
of 1526’, in Essays on Iberian History and Literature, Aldershot: Ashgate / Variorum, repr. 2000, chap. IX.
 30

cxlviii
‘Diego Columbus held the title of governor. The affairs of the Indies, however, were directed by
Fonseca and the King through their own men overseas, the royal treasurer Pasamonte, the Audiencia of Santo
Domingo and officials in other islands and of Tierra Firme’, Carl Sauer, The early Spanish Main, 1966, p. 292.
cxlix
This is De orbe novo Decades III written in Latin and an extremely rare work. It was translated into
French and printed in Paris in 1532 by Simon de Collines.
cl
While Peter Martyr would recur to the first explanation for the depopulation (Enchiridion de nuper
sub D. Carolo repertis insulis, Basel: Adam Peters, 1521, p.42), Contarini’s is still an early text to speak so
explicitly of ‘cruelty’ prior to the New Laws of the Indies in 1542-3. The figures Contarini presents are clearly
drawn from the second chapter of Martyr’s Third Decade, which Las Casas corroborates. Colonists and even
viceroys emphasised other reasons for the ‘great turmoil and need in this land’; however, rather than shortage
of labour, they argued that the king should ‘send away part of the Spanish population and the mestizos and the
Negroes, of whom there is such an excessive number here, on some conquest somewhere’, Viceroy Luis de
Velasco, Letter to King Charles, 1553 in Cartas de Indias, Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel G. Hernández, 1977, pp.
263-69. For some general description, see Carl Sauer, The Early Spanish Main, Berkeley: 1966, pp. 206-7.
cli
In 1518, Pedro de Cordóba, Dominican Provincial, reported there to be 10 or 12.000 Indians, male and
female [‘on these islands’]. By common consent, there will be none left in four or five years’, in Colección de
documentos inéditos relativos al descubrimiento, conquista y organización de las antiguas posesiones españoles
de America y Oceanía, Madrid, 1864-84, vol. XI (of 42), pp. 217-20. The slave insurrection Contarini writes of
happened in December 1522 on the Isabela River sugar plantation (ingenio) of Diego Colón. Columbus himself
rode out to Nizao to bring them to heel and hung the most comprometidos, see Carlos Larrazaibal Blanco,
Manual de Historia de Santo Domingo y otros temas históricos, Archivo General de la Nación, vol. CCXXXIX, p.
139. López de Velasco, in his Descripción y demarcación de las Indias Occidentales (1574) reported 12-13.000
blacks and 1000 Spaniards, quoted in Carl Sauer, The Early Spanish Main, p. 295. Cf. Mario J. Sturla, The
Forgotten Colony: Spanish Colonial Challenges on the Island of Hispaniola, 1516-1586,Brown University M.A.
thesis, 2003.
clii
Diego Vélazquez de Cuéllar (1465-1524).
cliii
A false cinnamon, introduced from the mainland. For more on this plant, see Halikowski Smith,
‘History of Spices Known and Used in Europe during the 16 th Century’, in Reinterpreting Indian Ocean Worlds,
ch. 8, p. 171-2. Cuban cassia (‘of absolute perfection’) was much praised by Agostino Giustiniani, a Genoese
prelate and scholar who published annals of Genoa (Castigatissimi Annali di Genova) posthumously in 1537,
repr. In Symcox.
cliv
The abundance of Hispaniola was much commented upon, see for example the report otherwise on
judicial reform by Alonso de Zauzo, ‘Real Cédula a los oficiales de la Isla Española’, May 7, 1519, Barcelona, AGI,
Panamá 233, L. 1, f. 230r; Father Bernabé Cobo was another one, Obras, Madrid: Atlas, 1964, vol. 1, 11 ff.
clv
This sounds like the famous passage from Vespucci’s letterMundus novus, published in Augsburg
1505, which describes how, ‘among other kinds of meat, human flesh is a common article of diet’ among the
peoples he discovered on his second voyage down the east coast of South America between Guyana and Cape
São Roque,returning via Hispaniola, The Mundus Novus in Translation, ed. George Tyler Northup, Princeton
University Press: 1916, p. 5. Also, Hans Wolff and Susi Colin eds., America: Das frühe Bild der Neuen Welt,
Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1992.
clvi
Cabo de São Roque, at 5 degrees, 28 minutes south is today considered the ‘bend’ in the South
American coastline, and the point in South America closest to Africa. Sixteenth-century navigators plotted Cape
St. Augustine at 8¼ degrees south. The Spanish Cabo de San Agustín, originally christened Cabo de Santa María
de la Consolación, and today the Cabo de Santo Agostinho in Pernambuco, which was the place Vicente Yáñez
Pinzón arrived at in Brazil on 26 January 1500, three months before Cabral, is the place referred to here. His
voyage was commemorated in Peter Martyr’s ‘Libretto de tutta la navigatione de re de Spagna de le isole et
terreni novamente trovati’, Venice 1504, ch. 29 (repr. with intro. by Lawrence C. Wroth, Paris, 1929). See also
‘El primer viaje de Vicente Yáñez al Brail (1499-1500) in Décadas del Nuevo Mundo del milanés Pedro Martír de
Angleria’, in Juan Manzano Manzano, Los Pinzones y el Descubrimiento de América,Madrid: Ediciones de
Cultura Hispánica, 1989, vol. 3, pp. 39-44. There is an entry for Cabo de Santo Agostinho in F. Contente
Domingues Dicionário de História dos Descobrimentos Portugueses, Lisboa: Caminho, 1994, vol. 2, p. 971.
clvii
This interjection needs to be disregarded.
clviii
This is of course the Magellan Straits. The measurements Contarini reports are of great accuracy; the
straits are 350 miles long, and situated at around 53 degrees south.
 31

clix
Cf. ‘In passing alongst wee plainly discovered that the same terra australis, left or sett down to bee
terra incognita before we came there, to bee no Continent (and therefore no Streight), but broken Islands and
large passages amongst them’ (1578), in World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake : Being his next voyage to
that to Nombre de Dios. Collated with an unpublished manuscript of Francis Fletcher, chaplain to the
expedition, ed. Vaux, William Sandys Wright, Hakluyt Society, First Series, Volume 16, Farnham: Ashgate
Publishing Group, 2010, p 72.
clx
Antonio Pigafetta, Magellan’s Voyage. A Narrative Account of the First Navigation, London: Folio
Society, 1975, Chapter XI, including a Glossary entitled ‘Words of the Patagonian Giants’.
clxi
Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert suggests unhelpfully that while pearls constituted ‘one of the principal
pillars of the Indies trade’, they were farmed principally off the Venezuelan coast (island of Cubagua, 1504-late
1520s, and then the Marguerita islands, 1535-1600s), ‘Pearls’ (Bell Library, University of Minnesota), URL no
longer in service. The problem is that he relies on Sanford A. Mosk, ‘Spanish Pearl-Fishing Operations on the
Pearl Coast in the 16th century’, Hispanic American Historical Review, vol. 18, no. 3 (August 1938). Here,
however, it clearly refers to the Islas de las Perlas, over one hundred islands in the Gulf of Panama, discovered
by Nunez de Balboa in 1513, and whose Indian population was largely exterminated by Gaspar de Morales
with African pearl divers being brought in subsequently. The fisheries became prey to pirates like Oxenham,
Scarles, Sawkins, Swan, Davis and Harris, see Peter Gerhard, Pirates on the west coast of New Spain, 1575-
1742, 1960.
clxii
The 1521 Basel edition of Peter Martyr refers to ‘insulam ingentem’, which in the De orbo nouo (Alcalá
de Henares: M. de Equia, 1530) edition becomes ‘terram amplissimam’. Contarini ignores the contentious
origin of the toponym Yucatan, which was apparently ‘I do not understand you’ in the native tongue.
clxiii
It is conventionally held that Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, supported by the Governor of Cuba,
organized an expedition commanded by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba to explore the seas west of Cuba
departing February 1517, and duly discovered the Yucatan. The 1508 Vicente Pinzon and Díaz de Solís
expedition, once attributed this accolade by the Argentinian historian Torre Revello, is thought now not to have
arrived that far north, David W. Tilton, ‘Latitudes, errors and the northern limit of the 1508 Pinzón and Solis
voyage’, Terrae Incognitae, January 1993, vol. 25, pp. 25-40. However, Edzer Roukema brings the date of
Yucatan’s discovery forward to one prior to 1503 on the basis that the land on the extreme upper left of the
Cantino planisphere and on following maps is Yucatan and the Gulf of Honduras, ‘A discovery of Yucatan prior
to 1503’, Imago Mundi, vol. XIII13 (1956): 30-3.
clxiv
This province is written Tasalteca (Tlaxcola) in Cortès’s Second Letter, but there is no mistake: ‘the
province of Tasalteca, whose inhabitants were Montezuma’s enemies and were always at war with him’ (pp.
57-8); ‘Finally, they offered themselves as vassals in the Royal Service of your Majesty and offered their persons
and fortunes and so they have remained until today’ (p. 67), Letters from Mexico, Grossman publishers (1971).
Contarini himself mentions Tlascala (actually transcribed as Scalteza by his editor, Sanudo) in a letter of
November 10, 1522, which he describes as a ‘very large city’ and ‘governed communally’, repr. in sanudo, vol.
33, cols. 501-3. The Toltecs were of course a pre-Aztec civilisation that merged before the close of the seventh
century, and whose chief city was at Tula, north of the Mexican Valley, see William H. Prescott, The World of
the Aztecs, London: John Gifford, 1970, 10-11.
clxv
While there is universal agreement that some Mesoamerican people practiced human sacrifice, there
is a lack of scholarly consensus as to whether cannibalism in pre-Columbian America was widespread. At one
extreme anthropologist Marvin Harris, author of Cannibals and Kings: the origins of cultures, London: Fontana,
1978, has suggested that the flesh of the victims was a part of an aristocratic diet as a reward, since the Aztec
diet was lacking in proteins. According to Harris, the Aztec economy would not support feeding them as slaves
and the columns of prisoners were "marching meat". At the other extreme, William Arens doubts whether
there was ever any systematic cannibalism, see Arens, The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and
Anthropophagy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.. Contarini’s report, although extremely cursory, does
seem accurate.
clxvi
Cf. Martyr ‘I do not marvel at the gold and the jewels, but I stand amazed at the skills and flair /
training demonstrated in the way the object marks the material. I have seen a thousand shapes and figures,
which I am unable to describe. In my judgement, I have never seen anything whose beauty had the same
power to attract men’s gaze’ (1521 ed., 37). Some of these vases were so large a man could not encircle them
with his arms; they often imitated the figures of animals and could combine gold and silver in working very
small details.
 32

clxvii
It is probable that Contarini saw Montezuma’s head-dress (quetzalapanecáyotl) during the 1520
exhibition of Montezuma’s treasures in Valladolid alongside Las Casa and Peter Martyr. It later made its way to
Brussels where Albrecht Dürer saw it and wrote ‘And I never saw anything my whole life which pleased my
heart as much as this thing’, quoted in Elisabeth Scheicher, Die Kunst- und Wunderkamern der Habsburger,
Wien-Munich-Zürich:Molden Edition, 1979. The head-dress went on to the Kunstkammer of Count Ulrich von
Montfort in 1575 and thence to a home in Archduke Ferdinand’s castle of Ambras near Innsbruck. The object is
now in Vienna’s Ethnology Museum (Museum für Völkerkunde), Inv. 10.402. It is 116cm high, and composed of
quetzal and other feathers mounted on a base of gold and studded with precious stones. Charles V is reputed
to have worn it, or at least shown it to Henry VIII at their meeting in 1520 as a symbol of his universal
monarchy, Karl Brandi, Kaiser Karl V,Munich: F. Bruckmann Verlag, 1937, p. 148. Aztec featherwork (plumaje)
generally was widely cultivated and greatly admired. According to Ana Elena González-Treviño, ‘the airiness of
certain plumes also represented the worth of the wearer by endowing him with a spiritual halo through the
connection to a superior realm in which birds and trees were recognised as inhabiting physically higher spaces’,
“Kings and their Crowns”. Signs of Monarchy and the Spectacle of New World Otherness in Heroic Drama and
Public Pageantry’, in Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 2013, vol. 42, pp. 103-21. Indian head-dresses were
generally a commonly brought home memento from the Americas, often displayed in European fêtes and
festivities such as that put on for Pope Leo X in Florence on his way to Bologna in 1515 and which may have
formed the inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s famous drawing of a ‘Young Man in a Festival Costume’ currently
in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, W. 12575. For this dating and interpretation, see Kenneth Clark &
Carlo Pedretti, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Drawings in the Royal Library at Windor Castle, Phaidon, 1969 (2nd edition),
I, p. 112; II, W12575. Alongside headdresses were feather shields given as presents by the Aztec King
Monteczuma, presumably to please his conquerors, a good example of which can be found today in the
Museum für Völkerkunde, Vienna.
clxviii
Elsewhere, In a letter of November 10, 1522, copied by Sanudo (vol. 33, cols. 501-3), Contarini writes
of the Mexican homes as ‘comfortable and nicely decorated with cloths’, describes the use of small rare fruit as
currency for barter, discusses their food (‘they eat bread made of Indian grain and meat and drink a potion
similar to beer’), their alphabet (‘they write the most important things with pictures of animals or other things,
in the manner used by the ancient Egyptians. These characters, however, are not adequate for all matters’),
and goes on to call the Mexica ‘very civilized’.
clxix
The discovery of the Inca world followed that of the Aztecs, with Pedro Pizarro’s expedition leaving
Panamanian waters in December 1530, and amounting to conquest in 1543. For a recent account, see Hugh
Thomas, Golden Age. The Spanish Empire of Charles V, Penguin 2011, Book II, pp. 217-360. One of the vessels
on the Loaísa expedition, sent out in July 1525, the Santiago, sailed north from the Magellan Straits up the west
coast of America, arriving in Mexican waters in July 1526.
clxx
This must be a slip for Seville? There is no reason why Sicily should have served as the point of
departure for this voyage, indeed in one of his letters copied by Sanudo Seville is written ‘Sybillia’. Between this
and ‘Sicilia’, one can imagine that it would have been easy to make a mistake.There was no Spanish
shipbuilding to speak of in Sicily, see Abbott Usher, ‘Spanish Ships and Shipping in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries’, in E.F. Gay, Facts and Fiction in Economic History, Harvard U.P, 1932, pp. 189-213.
clxxi
Cabot was piloto mayor at the Casa de la Contratación in Seville. Davide Scruzzi has recently analysed
the correspondence surrounding discussions held between Contarini and Cabot between September 1522 and
March 1523 for some undertaking on behalf of the Serenissima. Scruzzi thinks this had to do with a far-fetched
scheme to forge a North-East passage to India and China, with shipping setting out from a safe harbour in the
Baltic. Scruzzi’s primary evidence for this is the fact that Cabot turned his attentions to this scheme when
working for the English in 1548. It came to nothing, if only for the low esteem Cabot was held in official
Venetian circles. Davide Scruzzi, Eine Stadt denkt sich die Welt. Wahrnehmung, geographische Räumung
undund Globalisierung in Venedig von 1490 bis um 1600 , Oldenbourg Akademieverlag (13. Januar 2010),
Chapter 4.3 ‘Sebastiano Caboto’s Angebot’. What actually transpired from all these plans was that Cabot left
Spain in 1526 as chief pilot of an expedition to the Moluccas. Among the 67 merchants who financed the
expedition was Robert Thorne, originally from Bristol but at the time a resident of Seville, having inherited his
father’s home there. Two other English pilots, Henry Latimer and Roger Barlow, accompanied Cabot, see Boies
Penrose, Tudor and Early Stuart Voyaging and R.C.D. Baldwin,entry on Robert Thorne in the Dictionary of
National Biography[online edition]. Cabot’s expedition, however, never reached the Moluccas; instead he
explored the Río de la Plata in South America. When he returned he was put in jail and later (1532) condemned
to exile in Morocco for four years.