Fabio Chigi’s Literary Patronage as Nunzio in Cologne

• In Event: Obviating Isolation in the Caput Mundi: Rome as Center and Periphery in the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Alongside Chigi’s very visible role in Church and European affairs during his residence in Germany (1639-51), notably in the negotiations at Münster to end the Thirty Years War, the future pope Alexander VII sponsored in a more concealed fashion the publication of works by some of his close Roman friends in Amsterdam. The fact that arguably the most important books by Gian Vittorio Rossi (Erythraeus) and Leone Allacci that appeared with Cologne imprints were produced by the Blaeus was an open secret for contemporaries, and has long been recognized as a bibliographic curiosity. Chigi’s sponsorship of such works can be understood as part of a larger, conscious response to the increasing marginalization of Roman intellectuals by mid century, also evident in Francesco Barberini’s efforts, during his exile in Paris in 1646-48, to find publishers for protégés and to purchase books for his library.

Author

• Thomas Cerbu, University of Georgia