Appreciation of History in its Immediate Sources: The Sack of Rome, the Carteggio by Francesco Guicciardini and the Diarii by Marino Sanudo

Abstract

The Sack of Rome shook the Western world’s confidence in the intangibility of Vatican territories. In a comparison exercise several sources, focused on the points of view of two authors who contributed to the writing of history during the Renaissance, this paper disarms the mechanism through which both authors built their narrations, to account for the exactions of imperial troops, undesirable invaders of the Italian Peninsula. With specific emphasis in the diachronic relation between Guicciardini’s epistolary, his apologetic speeches and the underlying considerations of the writing of his Historia de Italia, this article enhances the view of the slow development of a writing destined to reasonably explain the decisions taken to demarcate responsibilities for the facts narrated, and the importance of letters written in the heat of the moment. The abundance of sources and the patent rejection of its hermeneutic approach in the case of the Diarios, a work by Marino Sanudo, are read here as a testimony of the confusión experienced by the Italian population in the aftermath of the event, the negative image of the soldiers and their cruelty. These contested visions represent an example of how a synchronic sources analysis during their development process provides new light and interpretations on the writing of History.