Snatching Victory from the Jaws of Defeat: History and Imagination in Baroque Italy

That modern historiographical methods emerged from the depths of late seventeenth- century Pyrrhonism has long been well known. In his 1950 article on 'Ancient History and the Antiquarian', Arnaldo Momigliano showed how an avalanche of diatribes against the historians, culminating in those of La Mothe Le Vayer and Pierre Bayle, inspired Jean Mabillon and Bernard de Montfaucon to formulate more rigorous paleographical techniques and, following the Bollandists, to initiate some of the most ambitious projects in modern times for the editing and publishing of historical documents.1 Meanwhile, the likes of Ezechiel Spanheim and Jacob Spon turned away entirely from fallacious documentary sources and toward what they regarded as the much more certain traces of the past in non-literary evidence, joining the discipline of erudite antiquities to that of historiography for the first time. So far, this trend of scepticism has been treated as the byproduct of an intellectual tradition dating to the humanist recovery of the texts of Sextus Empiricus and Diogenes Laertius, reinforced by three half-centuries of religious disputation. In order to destroy the very foundations of the Protestant position, it is argued, Roman Catholic apologists put in doubt the accomplishments of all the arts and sciences, urging believers to repose their trust unquestioningly in the truths of faith. Learned writers of every persuasion, seeking a firmer footing in the shifting sands of religious doubt, agreed.2 And when Bayle complained that 'there is no mischief so great as what can be exercised upon the monuments of history', he was chiefly referring to bias and distortion due to religious enthusiasm.3What has not yet been examined in sufficient detail is the role played by sheer historical charlatanry in creating the climate of scepticism against which the critics railed. What is more, the charlatanry that exercised the most profound impact during the course of the century did not circulate in the realm of pure erudition, where it might more properly be incorporated into the history of forgery.4 It circulated in the realm of political commentary and contemporary history. And among the places in Europe where this charlatanry was to be found perhaps in the greatest abundance was Italy. This article is a preliminary attempt to restore the lost connection between hired political historiography and Pyrrhonism.Indeed, from the preliminary episodes of the Thirty Years' War to the conclusion of the War of Castro, from the revolt of Palermo to the revolt of Fermo, from the negotiations between the dukes of Savoy and the Spanish monarchy in 1617 to the negotiations between the Venetians and the Turks in 1699, seventeenth-century Italy afforded to the aspiring historian an extraordinary spectacle. However, what brought the attention of a new group of writers to the momentous events of the time was more than mere curiosity. The parties in the conflicts demanded interpretations calculated to shore up damaged loyalties, repair breaches of trust and impress foreign powers. Upon any writer who could provide the necessary material they were disposed to lavish money and favours, including preferment to the most exclusive court circles. Writers who were attracted to this high-stakes game included professional historians as well as charlatans; former diplomats as well as blackmailers. They based their work on eyewitness reports and diplomatic correspondence as well as on newsletters, news books, newspapers, and simple hearsay. By freely mixing historiography with adulation, deceit, sensationalism and pure fantasy, these writers turned hired historiography from an occasional strategy into a cultural industry and set the formation of public myths on an entirely new footing. In doing so, they provoked a reaction that was eventually to shake the emerging discipline to its foundations.Careful cultivation of a particularly edifying view of the recent or remote past, capable of inspiring patriotism and loyalty among the forty percent or so of urban dwellers who could read, and flattering the vanity of the exalted was, of course, nothing new in the mid-seventeenth century. …