The oldest known courtesy book from Italy around 1215/16 is the Der Wälsche Gast by Thomasin von Zirclaere, speaking to a German audience.
Three sixteenth century Italian texts on courtly manners and morals – Baldassarre Castiglione's Il Cortegiano (1528); Giovanni della Casa's Il Galateo (1558) and Stefano Guazzo's La Civil Conversazione (1574) in four volumes – had an especially wide influence both south and north of the Alps.
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, apparently had at his bedside three books: the Bible, Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, and Il Cortegiano (The Courtier ).
[8] The norms for personal boundaries and social proxemics established by figures such as della Casa still influence the Western world almost a half millennium later.
[10] Courtesy books continued to be written into the 1700s, the last traditional English one being Lord Chesterfield's Letters to His Son[11] – memorably described by Samuel Johnson as teaching "the morals of a whore and the manners of a dancing-master".