In Hans Jakob Fuggers’s Service

Abstract

Strada’s first contacts with Hans Jakob Fugger, his chief patron for well over a decade, certainly took place before the middle of the 1540s. As suggested earlier, the possibility remains that Strada had already met this gifted scion of the most illustrious German banking dynasty, his exact contemporary, in Italy. Fugger [Fig. 3.1], born at Augsburg on 23 December 1516, was the eldest surviving son of Raymund Fugger and Catharina Thurzo von Bethlenfalva. He had already followed part of the studious curriculum which was de rigueur in his family even before arriving in Bologna: this included travel and study at foreign, rather than German universities.1 Hans Jakob, accompanied on his trip by his preceptor Christoph Hager, first studied in Bourges, where he heard the courses of Andrea Alciati, and then followed Alciati to Bologna [Fig. 1.12]. Doubtless partly because of the exceptional standing of his family—the gold of Hans Jakob’s great-uncle, Jakob ‘der Reiche’, had obtained the Empire for Charles v—but certainly also because of his personal talents, Fugger met and befriended a host of people of particular political, ecclesiastical or cultural eminence—such as Viglius van Aytta van Zwichem, whom he met in Bourges and again in Bologna—or later would ascend to high civil or ecclesiastical rank. His friends included both Germans, such as the companion of his travels and studies, Georg Sigmund Seld, afterwards Reichsvizekanzler, his compatriot Otto Truchsess von Waldburg, afterwards Cardinal and Prince-Bishop of Augsburg [Fig. 1.14], and Wigulaeus Hund, later Chancellor of the Duke of Bavaria. Among the Italians he met we find the young Alessandro Farnese, the future Cardinal [Fig. 1.15], and Cristoforo Madruzzo, afterwards Prince-Bishop of Trent; another fellow student was Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, afterwards Bishop of Arras, Cardinal, secretary of state of Emperor Charles v and King Philip ii of Spain and Viceroy of Naples [Fig. 1.13].2