The Papal Navy, Volume VII

The Papal Navy, Volume VII: The Permanent Squadron of the Roman Navy, 1573-1644. This bilingual Warships & Navies edition preserves 476 original-language facsimile pages from Storia della marina pontificia, then frames the volume in English for collectors, researchers, and naval-history readers. This volume restores an important segment of Storia della marina pontificia, one of the major documentary works in non-English naval historiography.

It also provides scholarly back-of-book indexes of persons, places, events, and ships, turning the facsimile into a practical research tool for tracing actors, theaters, campaigns, and vessels.

This edition also includes Most Important Passages Translated, a curated set of twenty substantial excerpts rendered into modern English with a trace of period flavor, so readers can enter Storia della marina pontificia through its decisive scenes, arguments, and descriptions before or alongside the facsimile.

The publication of Alberto Guglielmotti's Storia della marina Pontificia stands as a foundational moment in modern Mediterranean naval historiography. Yet, for over a century, this monumental work has remained largely inaccessible to the anglophone world. With this edition of Volume VII, covering the permanent Roman squadron of the seventeenth century, we begin to rectify that oversight. Guglielmotti's exacting scholarship provides an unparalleled account of the Papal Navy's organization, operations, and role in the complex maritime geopolitics of the era. Its republication is not merely a matter of historical curiosity; it is an essential contribution to a more complete understanding of galley warfare and the projection of sovereign power in the early modern Mediterranean.

Our decision to present this volume as a high-fidelity facsimile, rather than a full translation, is deliberate. A translation, however scrupulous, inevitably introduces an interpretive filter between the reader and the source. By preserving the original Italian text, we offer direct access to Guglielmotti's precise language, argumentation, and the distinct nineteenth-century scholarly conventions in which his work is situated. This approach respects the integrity of the original document and provides a more authentic resource for researchers, specialists, and serious collectors who wish to engage with the text as it was first conceived.

This edition is not, however, a simple reprint. It has been framed with new English-language apparatus designed to make the original Italian navigable and contextually clear. A new bibliographic introduction situates the work and its author, while our primary contribution is a comprehensive analytical index. Developed after careful optical character recognition and normalization, this index unlocks the dense primary text for the non-fluent reader, allowing for targeted research on specific vessels, individuals, engagements, and administrative matters. The English apparatus serves as a key to the original, enhancing its utility without altering its form.