Purtătorii de scrisori. Agenții corespondenței dintre doamna Ecaterina Salvaresso şi Maria Valarga Adorno
The Men who Carried the Letters. Agents of the Correspondence between Chaterine Salvaresso and Maria Valarga Adorno

Summary/Abstract: This paper analyses the correspondence between Catherine Salvaresso, wife of the Wallachian prince Alexandru II Mircea (1568 -1577) and mother of Mihnea II Turcitul (prince of Wallachia between 1577-1583; 1584) and her sister Maria Adorno Valarga established at the monastery San Maffio on Murano Island. The paper emphasises the networks used by the two sisters in order to communicate, to exchange gifts or to send money. Developed mostly to provide a safety journey for this personal correspondence the networks reconstructed in this study involve merchants from Wallachia, Ragusa/Dubrovnik, Venice and Constantinople. They proved to be trustworthy individuals, good connoisseurs of the Balkan roads and of the languages spoken in this pluri-linguistic space of the Eastern Mediterranean. The messengers of this network of correspondence, members of the families Gagliano, Lucari and Marini Poli, were also influent and rich individuals that managed during their life style to develop strong personal commercial and political networks.This study is based on new archival materials and challenges new methodologic approaches. The main goal of the paper is to (re)analyse traditional working hypothesis and to correct or complete them where the new sources allowed. Within this framework the paper discusses different aspects of the social, political, commercial and personal encounters across the lands limiting Eastern Mediterranean.

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