present
article is alone concerned, it is that of the methods and spirit of
diplomatic intercourse and of the character and status of diplomatic
agents. Earlier writers on the office and functions of ambassadors, such
as Gentilis or Archbishop Germonius, conscientiously trace their origin
to God himself, who created the angels to be his legates; and they
fortify their arguments by copious examples drawn from ancient history,
sacred and profane. But, whatever the influence upon it of earlier
practice, modern diplomacy really dates from the rise of permanent
missions, and the consequent development of the diplomatic hierarchy as
an international institution. Of this the first beginnings are traceable
to the 15th century and to Italy. There had, of course, during the
middle ages been embassies and negotiations; but the embassies had been
no more than temporary missions directed to a particular end and
conducted by ecclesiastics or nobles of a dignity appropriate to each
occasion; there were neither permanent diplomatic agents nor a
professional diplomatic class. To the evolution of such a class the
Italy of the Renaissance, the nursing-ground of modern statecraft, gave
the first impetus. This was but natural; for Italy, with its numerous
independent states, between which there existed a lively intercourse and
a yet livelier rivalry, anticipated in miniature the modern states'
system of Europe. In feudal Europe there had been little room for
diplomacy; but in northern and central Italy feudalism had never taken
root, and in the struggles of the peninsula diplomacy had early played a
part as great as, or greater than, war. Where all were struggling for
the mastery, the existence of each depended upon alliances and
counter-alliances, of which the object was the maintenance of the
balance of power. In this school there was trained a notable succession
of men of affairs. Thus, in the 13th and 14th centuries Florence counted
among her envoys Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, and later on could boast
of agents such as Capponi, Vettori, Guicciardini and Machiavelli. Papal
Rome, too, as was to be expected, had always been a fruitful
nursing-mother of diplomatists; and some authorities have traced the
beginnings of modern diplomacy to a conscious imitation of her legatine
system.[5]

It is, however, in Venice, that the origins of modern diplomacy are to
be sought.[6] So early as the 13th century the republic, with a view to
safeguard