Girolamo Lagomarsini and the heritage of Antonio Maria Graziani

This article is based on the research conducted by a jesuit, Girolamo Lagomarsino (1698-1773), on the papers of a sixteenth-century cardinal and diplomat, Antonio Maria Graziani (1537-1611), who had been a secretary of Giovanni Francesco Com-mendone in the crucial years of the Council of Trent and of the latter’s introduction into the German Empire and eastern Europe. The main emphasis falls on the methods employed by the jesuit author in his research work, and on the new light this throws on the nature and progress of eighteenth century scholarship. The material history of the archive thus becomes a key to explore the scholar’s world and his strategies to under-line the extraordinary interest of this insight into a personality of great interest.