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Sebastian Giustinian

Venice, 1460 - 1543, Venice

Biographyno LCNAF record
Giustinian, Sebastian (1460–1543), diplomat, was born in Venice, the son of Marino Giustinian of a patrician family associated with Istria, and his wife, the daughter of Piero Gradenigo. Sebastian married first a daughter of Doge Francesco Foscari, and second a relative of Agostino Agostini, Thomas Wolsey's physician. The Christian names of his wives are unrecorded. He had three sons. As Venetian ambassador to Hungary (1500–03) he delivered a Latin oration, later published, urging King Ladislaus to attack Sultan Bajazet. He was briefly ambassador to Poland in 1505, was governor of Brescia when it fell to the French in 1509, and in July 1511 became governor of Illyria, where he successfully subdued factional violence and rebellions.

In December 1514, by now holding the rank of eques, Giustinian was appointed ambassador to England, a crucial post with twin tasks of developing commercial links and, more urgently, discouraging the forthcoming Anglo-Habsburg alliance against France and Venice, and promoting Anglo-Venetian-French relations. His diplomatic style was highly personal, involving frequent meetings with the king, Wolsey, and influential people, and being generously hospitable. He cultivated Richard Fox, who opposed the imperial alliance, and used the papal nuncio Francesco Chieregati as his principal source of confidential information. Giustinian's dispatches of June 1515 praise Henry VIII, but later and more secret letters to the council of ten express wariness. His dispatches document the increasing tension between François I and the emperor Maximilian and England's fluctuating position. After 1516, when the League of Cambrai weakened, the dispatches concentrate on his efforts towards peacemaking between France, England, and Venice.

Giustinian's elegant prose style contains abundant social observation. He describes the nobility's genealogies and conspicuous displays of tapestries and gold plate, especially noting Wolsey's theatrical show of power and wealth. He skilfully wove diplomatic news into social contexts: a single dispatch of February 1516 reports the death of Ferdinand of Aragon, and tells how the news was kept from Queen Katherine, then in labour, and how Giustinian delayed formal congratulations by a few hours because her child was a daughter. A letter to Erasmus in March 1517 distinguishes between the ‘elegant foolery’ of humanist literary style and the serious business which it serves.

Giustinian's 226 consecutive letters from England reflect a complex and manipulative world of diplomacy. A connoisseur of paradox, he assesses Wolsey with mixed antagonism and admiration, describing him in January 1516 as ‘rex et autor omnium’, accurately indicating his importance but misjudging other political forces. Giustinian also describes Wolsey's efforts to intimidate and upset him, Henry's cynical opinion of Franco-Venetian relations, and his own suspicions of other ambassadors.

Giustinian returned from ‘exile’ to Venice in October 1519, after receiving from Henry and Wolsey the customary gold chain amid congratulatory speeches on his efforts towards the Anglo-French treaty of London (1518). He became councillor superior in 1519, and ambassador to France in 1526, a post later filled by his son Marino. The signory made him procurator of St Mark in 1540. He died at Venice on 13 March 1543, aged eighty-three, and was buried there.

Barry Collett
Sources

S. Giustinian, letter books, 12 Jan 1515–26 July 1519, Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, MS It. VII 1119 (7449) · CSP Venice, 1509–19, 219–563 · Four years at the court of Henry VIII: selection of despatches written by the Venetian ambassador Sebastian Giustinian, and addressed to the signory of Venice, January 12th 1515, to July 26th 1519, ed. and trans. R. Brown, 2 vols. (1854) · Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, MS It. VII, 228–286 [diaries of Marin Sanuto] · I diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. F. Stefani and others, 19–28: 1514–1519 (Venice, 1887–90) · Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, MS It. VII 1233, fols. 114–21 [Giustinian's report to the senate, 1519] · The correspondence of Erasmus, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors and others, 22 vols. (1974–94), vol. 4, no. 559, pp. 294–8 · La oration del Magnifico ... Misier S. Justiniano orator Veneto: facta Al Serenissimo Signor Verladislao Re di Ongaria ... Adi cinque de Aprile. M.CCCCC, 1 (Venice, 1500) [repr. in F. Sansovino, Delle orationi volgarmente scritte (Venice, 1562), a 44–9] · E. Gurney Salter, Tudor England through Venetian eyes (1930) · ‘Venetian dispatches’, QR, 96 (1854–5), 354–93
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Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, MS It. VII 1119 (7449)

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Barry Collett, ‘Giustinian, Sebastian (1460–1543)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/70789, accessed 18 Oct 2017]

Sebastian Giustinian (1460–1543): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/70789

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Last Updated8/7/24

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