«La salute di Roma e la gloria del papa»: la peste del 1656–57 nei dispacci di Palazzo Venezia

The article examines the plague-diplomacy nexus in relation to what occurred within and around Palazzo Venezia, the oldest embassy in Rome, during the 1658-1657 infection. As pope Alexander VII Chigi (1655-1667) struggled to keep the epidemic in check, Venetian cardinals Marcantonio Bragadin, Pietro Ottoboni, and Cristoforo Vidman sought to minimize the situation: Palazzo Venezia had itself become a focus of infection, the ambassador Girolamo Giustinian too caught the plague, was confined to his quarters and eventually died, in August 1656. Meanwhile, the Congregazione di Sanità (Rome’s emergency unit during the health crisis) had Palazzo Venezia quarantined and guarded by soldiers. The worsening of the epidemic could have irreparably compromised the image of the Pope (la gloria del Papa, that is) in the same way that the death of Giustinian was of grave prejudice to the reputation of the Serenissima