News from Venice: a digital analysis of Cosimo Bartoli’s correspondence and newsletters (1562–1572)

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dc.contributor.advisorDooley, Brendan
dc.contributor.advisorCosgrave, Michael
dc.contributor.authorMansutti, Saraen
dc.contributor.funderIrish Research Councilen
dc.date.accessioned2025-05-13T10:31:11Z
dc.date.available2025-05-13T10:31:11Z
dc.date.issued2025en
dc.date.submitted2025
dc.description.abstractThe aim of this study is to analyse Cosimo Bartoli’s contribution to Venice’s news production and circulation in the second half of the sixteenth century. From 1562 to 1572, Bartoli served as the Medici’s official agent in Venice. Like other resident diplomats, his primary responsibility was to gather news and send it to Florence, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany Cosimo I de’ Medici, his son Francesco de’ Medici and the various secretaries read it. This activity resulted in more than 700 letters and 500 newsletters written by Bartoli that are today kept in the Mediceo del Principato collection at the State Archives in Florence. The complex figure of Bartoli has so far only been studied from a biographical perspective and for his widespread intellectual and technical interests and production. What is lacking, that this thesis aims to address, is an analysis of Bartoli’s Venetian years by examining his role as an informant within the complex framework of European news circulation and the relevant network, which was evolving in a new way during that time due to the development of periodic handwritten newsletters, called avvisi in Italian, and the emergence of new professional figures, the newswriters. The study investigates how and from whom Bartoli obtained the news, what part he played in writing the newsletters he sent to Florence, and the relationship between the letter and newsletter, which were originally sent as one dispatch but were later separated and bound in different volumes. It also examines the Medici’s attitude, interest and reading habits regarding the news they received from Venice, as well as how Bartoli assessed the reliability of the information he obtained. These questions are answered by analysing Bartoli’s letters and newsletters using digital methods. The documents are automatically transcribed using Handwritten Text Recognition and Transkribus, while the automatic transcriptions are corrected by volunteers as part of a crowdsourcing project. The outcome is a semi-automated digital edition published online and available to everyone. Using the transcriptions and metadata collected, Bartoli’s network in Venice is reconstructed and visualisations are created to identify trends. The findings of the study demonstrate that Bartoli had close relationships with three groups from which he obtained the majority of his information: foreign diplomats residing in Venice, in particular the apostolic nuncio and the Imperial ambassador; institutions of the Republic of Venice, specifically the Collegio, the Senate and the Doge; and Venetian patricians. Despite the fact that newsletters were already in circulation at the time, Bartoli relied entirely on letters as his main source of news. He composed the newsletters himself, combining information from a variety of official and unofficial correspondence. To Bartoli, the letters and newsletters he sent were complementary documents and he expected that the Medici or their secretaries would read both with equal attention, which was the case. Practical considerations dictated how the news items were divided between the newsletters and the letters. If Bartoli had managed to obtain the actual letter or a copy of it, the news was summarised in the newsletter; if he had only heard about it or had read it himself but it was not possessed by him, he reported it in the letter. Finally, this study demonstrates that Handwritten Text Recognition is a helpful tool to automatically transcribe vast volumes of handwritten primary sources with a high degree of accuracy, 96% in Bartoli’s case, making the documents searchable and allowing historians to pose new research questions.en
dc.description.statusNot peer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationMansutti, S. 2025. News from Venice: a digital analysis of Cosimo Bartoli’s correspondence and newsletters (1562–1572). PhD Thesis, University College Cork.
dc.identifier.endpage450
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/17470
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherUniversity College Corken
dc.relation.projectIrish Research Council (Grant no. IRCLA/2019/41)
dc.rights© 2025, Sara Mansutti.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
dc.subjectDigital Humanities
dc.subjectHandwritten Text Recognition
dc.subjectHTR
dc.subjectCrowdsourcing
dc.subjectDigital edition
dc.subjectHistory
dc.subjectNewsletters
dc.subjectNews
dc.subjectEarly modern
dc.subjectVenice
dc.subjectCosimo Bartoli
dc.titleNews from Venice: a digital analysis of Cosimo Bartoli’s correspondence and newsletters (1562–1572)
dc.typeDoctoral thesisen
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen
dc.type.qualificationnamePhD - Doctor of Philosophyen
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