Antonio Foscarini
Ten months later, the same council rehabilitated Antonio Foscarini and explicitly informed the European courts of his posthumous exoneration, and the revocation of the guilty verdict and death sentence.
Notwithstanding the about turn, mystery still remains as to why an art-loving nobleman was embroiled in a Venetian tale of political intrigue, that involved factional infighting, institutional disputes between Church and State, and religious hostilities over Protestantism and Catholicism at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, that led to the death of an innocent man.
The Foscarini family lost a substantial part of their wealth, from the Ottoman–Venetian War (1570–1573) and only the sons received financial support.
Foscarini began his political career as an envoy to the court of Henry IV of France in 1601 and was present at the king's marriage to Maria de Medici.
[1] She gave the outgoing Venetian ambassador Marc' Antonio Correr a box with pearls, a diamond ring with the royal portraits, and jewels to his son Vincenzo.
[4] Anne of Denmark and Honora, Lady Hay enjoyed the company of Foscarini's secretary Giulio Muscorno, an accomplished musician who joined him in England in June 1612.
[7] Foscarini attended the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate on 14 February 1613 at Whitehall Palace and a wrote a full description.
He returned to King James at Theobalds on 10 October full of enthusiasm for the beauty and strength of the northern kingdom.
Foscarini met the Queen again in a gallery at Greenwich on 4 December for a more private audience, accompanied only by the Mistress of the Robes, Audrey Walsingham, and his secretary, Giovanni Rizzardo.
King James allowed him to add the lion of England to his coat of arms and gave him some silver gilt plate.
A manuscript the Sayings and Doings of Antonio Foscarini circulated in London damaging his character, which was thought to be the work of Muscorno and Giovanni Francesco Biondi.
[16] He seems to have sided with Foscarini and reported that Anne of Denmark and Lady Hay had helped their friend Muscarno to cast shade on the ambassador.
In London between January 1616 and June 1617 his successor as ambassador to England, Gregorio Barbarigo, and his secretary Lionello, had searched in vain for evidence against him.
Foscarini was a friend of the art-loving couple from London and visited the pair at the Palazzo Mocenigo on the Grand Canal where they were staying.
The Council of Ten accused him of meeting with ministers of foreign powers, both in Venice and abroad, and of betraying in words and in writing the most intimate secrets of the Republic.
Foscarini was accused of disclosing state secrets to the secretary of Emperor Ferdinand II and to the nuncio of the Pope at the Arundel residence.
Sir Henry Wotton, England's ambassador to Venice, wrote to Arundel that the Senate would declare her an 'unwanted person' and advised her to leave the city immediately.
In fact, she was not only admitted to the Doge, but he assured her that no one wanted to banish her, and promised to restore the honor of Foscarini by writing to London.
[20] The account of the advocate Andrea Querini:[21] The case against Foscarini was preceded by about twelve processes of small consequence that began with letters from England in 1605 written to the Supreme Tribunal by his secretary Giulio Muscorno.
Subsequently, Foscarini was accused of corresponding with foreigners, and the greater part of the process turned upon this, but in the absence of real proof, only a caution was issued.
Giovan Battista Nani describes these events in his Historia della Republica Veneta,[22] published in the latter half of the century, but his account contains inaccuracies, as Foscarini's arrival in England was after the beginning of May 1611 and Muscorno's letters were sent in 1613.
He was strangled in jail and his body was, in the manner usual for those convicted of high treason, hung head down between the pillars in the Piazzetta.
The Doge Marco Foscarini (1762-1763), a descendant of Antonio's brother Alvise, praised the Council of Ten for revoking its earlier judgment.
Antonio Foscarini was a follower of the so-called 'Giovani', a group in the Venetian nobility with sympathy for the Protestant rulers who supported them during the Thirty Years' War.
The Habsburgs, leaders of the Counter-Reformation forces, involved Venice in a war under the leadership of Archduke Ferdinand, who in 1617 entered into the Treaty of Madrid.
While his ships attacked Venetian merchants in the Adriatic, rumors circulated in Venice that the Spanish embassy was forming a core of supporters against the city.
Significantly Giambattista Bragadino, a member of the impoverished nobility, the so-called Barnabotti, having confessed to contact with the Spanish ambassador, was also executed.
Foscarini's second denunciation in 1622 may have arisen from first indictment, his Protestant sympathies, the antipathy of his secretary Muscarno, or the general fear of Spain's intrigue, but which of these, is impossible to ascertain.
