The Fifth Medieval Workshop in Rijeka (Croatia) at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
Rijeka (September 9 – 10, 2022).
I presented and discussed this project.
My intervention aimed to present and open to the debate the post-doctoral research project I am currently coordinating. The project addresses the role played by lesser-known agents of the Venetian diplomacy in negotiating with the Ottoman neighbor during the 16th century. The concept of lower-ranked agents (shadowy faces) brings in discussion three key elements for the research trends promoted nowadays: individuals without high ranked positions, but involved in diplomatic matters, unpublished sources and new methodological approaches. The project inventories state functionaries, diplomats, envoys, translators, ambassadors, and ordinary people and aims to analyze the sources mentioning them and the sources they produce. Within this project my focus is concentrated on three moments of diplomatic interactions aiming to analyze the insertion of a specific episode in the greater context of the Venetian-Ottoman relations. The analysis focusses on the sources covering the time frame between 1503 and 1617 and the geographical space limited by the Uskok territory in North Dalmatia and the Southern Adriatic (the area surrounding the Cephalonia Island). The investigation’s goal is to discuss the trans- or cross- frontier agents interacting with the Ottomans in the name of Venice in three different political contexts: the Habsburg territories with the Uskok problem, the Venetian Dalmatia and the „unsettled border” and the „fluid frontiers” of the Southern Adriatic Sea, within the interesting case of the Venetian captain Gabriele Emo, accused of piracy.
