The king and the sultan reflecting one another

Nicholas Sagundinus’ “Oratio ad Alphonsum regem” and “Aragonese Humanism“

Abstract

Neglected sources from diverse provenance show that Nicholas Sagundinus (ca. 1402-1464) played a much appreciated role within the network of diplomatic and cultural relations that developed between Italy and the Levant in the years preceding and following the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. Sagundinus’ multifaceted personal experience offers the opportunity to investigate the activities of a Greek refugee as cultural broker between the Eastern Mediterranean and the Italian States: on the one side, as diplomat operating within the framework of the connections between Byzantium and Italy – especially Venice and Naples – on the eve of the Ottoman conquest; on the other side, as scholar involved in the cultural policy of Aragonese Humanism and in its project to amalgamate crusading ideology into the laudatory image of Alfonso the Magnanimous.