Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe

Roberta Anderson, Charlotte Backerra, Roberta Anderson, Charlotte Backerra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000246322
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: History

Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe examines the role of religion in early modern European diplomacy. In the period following the Reformations, Europe became divided: all over the continent, princes and their peoples split over theological, liturgical, and spiritual matters. At the same time, diplomacy rose as a means of communication and policy, and all powers established long- or short-term embassies and sent envoys to other courts and capitals. The book addresses three critical areas where questions of religion or confession played a role: papal diplomacy, priests and other clerics as diplomatic agents, and religion as a question for diplomatic debate, especially concerning embassy chapels.

1 Confessional diplomacy

A short introduction

Roberta Anderson and Charlotte Backerra

In the period following the Reformations, Europe became divided: no longer connected by Rome and its orthodoxy, all over Europe, princes and their people polarised along confessional lines.¹ At the same time, diplomacy rose as a means of communication and policy, so all powers, monarchies as well as republics, established long- or short-term embassies and sent envoys to other courts and capitals.² Diplomatic links expanded to incorporate Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Morocco, and several South Asian polities.³ Strategic concerns encouraged states to forge alliances that cut across confessional boundaries, engaging in cross-confessional diplomacy with polities that observed several different Christian and Muslim confessions, many of which were considered heretics or infidels.⁴ Fundamental problems also arose when each ruler or state sought to protect the interests of its co-religionists who formed a minority living under the rule of another.⁵

Our book argues that the confessional and religious divide was a key element in the diplomatic affairs of premodern Europe, and as such should be addressed accordingly. Building on the ‘new diplomatic history,’ the essays included here focus on intermediaries in European cross-confessional diplomacy.⁶

Based on the recent historiography of early modern confessional diplomacy, this analysis demonstrates the importance of religion in defining not only the collective identity of international actors, but also their foreign policies, choice of alliances, and more generally their international outlook.⁷ The present volume engages with the recent shift in focus of diplomatic history from high politics and the figure of the ambassador to a diverse range of individuals who engaged in diplomatic relations on the ground.

We are therefore addressing the following questions: Did clerics act differently in comparison to other diplomats in the period? What did their personal preconceptions as confessors and ministers add to their role as diplomats, and could these roles interfere with one another? How did lay diplomats address questions of, and conflicts over, religion, especially in differing confessional settings? Can we see a change in these following the religious settlements of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries? The essays collected here confront these questions by bringing together established and young researchers in diplomatic history, most of whom are connected by the Premodern Diplomats Network (PDN), and for the most part the chapters are based on papers presented at the Splendid Encounters conferences.

Confessional Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe is separated into three parts. The first part is concerned with papal diplomacy, focusing on the relations and diplomatic aims of this decidedly confessional power. Moving on from the confessional ruler or state, the second part is concerned with clerics as diplomats. The chapters analyse to what extent a background as priest, chaplain, or otherwise spiritual professional changed an actor’s approach to diplomacy. The third part looks at religion, confessional strife, and places of worship as matters of international relations.

In Part I, Dorota Gregorowicz will illustrate the confessional politics of papal diplomats in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the periods of interregna in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Based on the diplomatic dispatches of the apostolic nuncios and their instructions, she will demonstrate the evolution of the confessional aims of the papacy in Poland–Lithuania and explain its origins.

Béla Vilmos Mihalik moves us to the anti-Ottoman Holy League organised by Innocent XI (1676–1689) and how it played a decisive role in the expulsion of the Ottoman Empire from Central Europe, especially from the Kingdom of Hungary. His chapter examines the way the papal and the imperial diplomatic networks interacted in this complex situation: how the victories over the Ottomans influenced decisions in Rome and how the Ottoman Empire tried to hinder financial support, and finally how confessional concerns appear in the argument.

The mission of Fr Bonaventure de Burgo, by Cristina Bravo Luzano, examines the priest’s function as interlocutor of the pope and representative of Irish Catholic interests, which reveal the prominent role he played in the defence of Catholicism in eighteenth-century Ireland. Owing to his profuse correspondence with various exiled bishops, he was well informed about religious conditions in his homeland. His privileged position at the papal court also gave him the opportunity to mediate with the pope, Clement XI. The new pope took advantage of the political tensions prevailing in Ireland to emphasise the papacy’s peacemaking role and, at the same time, to promote the Catholic faith in territories where the Reformation had been successful.

Part II opens with a chapter in which Katharina Beiergrößlein introduces the diplomatic missions of the runaway heretic Friar Robert Barnes to the Schmalkaldic League and Denmark, in which he sought support for Henry VIII’s ‘Great Matter’: the annulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon. She discusses how Robert Barnes qualified in ways that outweighed the specific shortcoming of being regarded as a heretic, exploring how contemporary writings on diplomacy dealt with heresy.

Ernesto Oyarbide Magaña focuses on a usually disregarded figure at the Spanish embassy who nonetheless played an important role in Anglo-Spanish relations: the embassy’s confessor, Friar Diego de la Fuente, and his role as chargé d’affaires, ad interim, during the Spanish ambassador Diego Sarmiento d’Acuna’s leave of absence to Spain from 1618 to 1620. By using Friar Diego’s letters, still held in Madrid’s Royal Library, Magaña will narrate this Dominican friar’s dealings with James VI & I and many others, including the Archbishop of Canterbury.

The role of confessor-ambassador in Habsburg politics is discussed by Rubén González Cuerva in his chapter on the Capuchin Diego de Quiroga in his role as confessor to the future Empress, Maria Anna of Austria. In 1630, he travelled from Madrid to Vienna with Maria Anna, remaining with her until her death in 1649. Quiroga’s spiritual prestige and political talent enabled him to develop a double role as theologian and diplomat: while Spanish ambassadors came and went, Quiroga represented a stable and reliable agent with privileged access to the imperial entourage. This analysis will be reinforced by diplomatic sources from Spain, Austria, and Italy in order to consider which were the benefits and limits of this type of agency, and which confessional implications had this double role to develop an orthodox Catholic policy in the House of Austria.

In Part III, Roberta Anderson examines the problems attached to being a Catholic ambassador at the Protestant English court during the reign of James VI & I (1603–1625). In the aftermath of the Reformation, rulers almost invariably chose men of their own religion to represent them and their states abroad. This presented problems whenever the embassy was to a state practising a different religion. With no church in which to practise their faith, ambassadors provided for their own spiritual needs and those of their entourage by establishing chapels inside their residences and appointing a chaplain to conduct services there. This rested on the notion, which was becoming recognised by all of Europe’s rulers, that the embassy was transformed into foreign soil by the presence of the ambassador, and so was inviolate, and that the host government did not merely have no right to intervene, but was actually obliged to protect the ambassador and his staff. This chapter will examine the embassy chapel question, the ambassador’s support for his English co-religionists and the Catholic cause in England, and the ways in which Catholic ambassadors to Protestant England did this, both within and without the Court of James VI & I.

As a fully Lutheran confessional state, the entrusting of sensitive diplomatic duties to Calvinist diplomats, ambassadors, clergymen, and spies might seem anomalous. After all, it remains a commonly held belief that it was against the law to be anything other than a Lutheran to live and work in Sweden during the reigns of Sigismund Vasa (r. 1592–1599), Karl IX (r. 1604–1611), or Gustav II Adolf (r. 1611–1632). Steve Murdoch, in his chapter, examines the curious case of a ‘special dispensation’ being given for the Calvinist Sir James Spens to be allowed to serve as an ambassador for Lutheran Sweden, and for this dispensation to continue to allow him to be elevated into the Swedish House of Nobility.

Even after the centuries marked by the so-called wars of religion, religious factors played a role in international relations, writes Charlotte Backerra in her examination of religion and diplomacy in London and Vienna in the period 1700–1745. This chapter will illustrate the differences in the daily lives of diplomats in foreign countries, especially for those posted in territories with a religious majority not their own, taking examples from the relations between the courts of London and Vienna in the early eighteenth century. Chapels, clerics and services will be analysed as part of a diplomat’s daily life. In a second part, the actions of two imperial diplomats and of a British envoy will serve as case studies for the practical implications of confessional diplomacy in the 1730s and 1740s.

The study by Martin Bakeš and Jiří Kubeš has two main parts. First, it sums up the latest research focused on the chapels of the Emperor’s envoys in Lutheran Saxony and the Scandinavian kingdoms during the reign of Leopold I. This will indicate not only the spatial possibilities and material furnishings of the embassy chapels, but the number of clashes between the foreign element and local clergy, municipal authorities, or king’s and elector’s servants. The second part focuses on the particular Catholic embassy chaplains and their activities. Most of them were known to have been members of the Austrian and Bohemian provinces of the Society of Jesus. Thus, this chapter will summarise and compare some typical strategies that were used by Catholic chaplains during their illegal activities. It will also introduce the network of contacts among several chosen imperial diplomats’ chaplains and the local Catholic community alongside postal connections with Czech and Austrian patrons.

The final chapter, by Gábor Kármán, examines the legitimation strategies of the political endeavours of Prince Ferenc Rákóczi II, the leader of the Hungarian uprising in the 1700s. In his communication with European courts, he emphasised political rather than religious grievances. One of his most important addressees, Charles XII of Sweden, was keen to see himself as an important promoter of his Protestant co-religionists, repeatedly reminding the Emperor, Leopold I, to respect the rights of Hungarian Protestants, while at the same time offering no military or financial help to the Hungarian prince. Thus, through the discussion of Rákóczi’s various legitimation strategies and Charles XII’s responses, this chapter illustrates the surviving legacy of the common Protestant cause as a factor determining foreign policy decisions until the early eighteenth century.

The concluding remarks will first address the role of clerics as diplomats and their distinct view of diplomacy and diplomatic behaviour. Second, it will place papal diplomacy in the context of the diplomatic relations of other powers in the early modern period. Furthermore, the case studies for diplomats at courts with a different confessional majority will be compared over time and place to help come to a better understanding of the vital role of religion for early modern diplomacy even after the so-called ‘age of confessionalisation’ and into the eighteenth century.

Notes

1 Heinz Schilling, Konfessionalisierung und Staatsinteressen: Internationale Beziehungen 1559–1660 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007).

2 Matthew Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450–1919 (London: Longman, 1993).

3 See, for example, Jan Hennings, Russia and Courtly Europe: Ritual and the Culture of Diplomacy, 1648–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Harriet Rudolph, ‘The Ottoman Empire and the Institutionalization of European Diplomacy, 1500–1700,’ in Islam and International Law: Engaging Self-Centrism from a Plurality of Perspectives, ed. Marie Luisa Frick and Andreas Th. Müller (Leiden and Boston: Nijhoff, 2013), 161–83; Erica Heinsen-Roach, Consuls and Captives: Dutch-North African Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Woodbridge and Suffolk, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2019); Sabina Brevaglieri, ‘Japan in Rom: Wissensräume der Keichô-Gesandtschaft zwischen Diplomatie und Mission (1615–1617),’ in Diplomatische Wissenskulturen der Frühen Neuzeit: Erfahrungsräume und Orte der Wissensproduktion, ed. Guido Braun (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2018), 235–64.

4 Christine Isom-Verhaaren, Allies with the Infidel: The Ottoman and French Alliance in the Sixteenth Century (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011); Maartije van Gelder and Krstić Tijana, ‘Introduction: Cross-Confessional Diplomacy and Diplomatic Intermediaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean,’ in Journal of Early Modern History 19/2–3 (2015), 93–105, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342452.

5 David Scott Gehring, Anglo-German Relations and the Protestant Cause: Elizabethan Foreign Policy and Pan-Protestantism (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).

6 John Watkins, ‘Toward ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Foreword
• 1. Confessional diplomacy: a short introduction
• PART I: Papal diplomacy
• PART II: Clerics as diplomats
• PART III: Religion as a matter of diplomacy
• Index