Confessional Intelligence: Early Modern Papal Diplomats and Information-Gathering Regarding England and Poland

Abstract

This essay examines the information-gathering practices of papal nuncios and legates to argue that they performed much of the same intelligence work, and in a similar manner, as other diplomatic agents in the early modern Europe. It focuses in particular on papal diplomats’ efforts to gather information regarding two areas that proved especially challenging for the papacy – England and Poland-Lithuania – both of which were far from Rome and which contained large numbers of non-Catholics, who would understandably be wary of these diplomats’ intelligence work. The essay explores the mechanisms by which nuncios gathered information, including via ambassadors, members of religious orders, and informal networks of informants; their efforts to verify the information they received; and their methods to securely convey that information to their superiors in the Roman curia.