Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe

John Jeffries Martin is a historian of early modern Europe, with particular interests in social, cultural, and intellectual history. His current project is a book in progress: The Oracle and the Architect: Transforming Europe, 1400-1800, an interpretative history of Europe from the Renaissance to the French Revolution. He also has a lively interest in the history of torture and in Renaissance notions of friendship. His published works include Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (1993), winner of the Herbert Baxter Adams Prize of the American Historical Association, Myths of Renaissance Individualism (2004), and A Beautiful Ending: The Apocalyptic Imagination and the Making of the Modern World (2022), recipient of the Pelikan Award from Yale University Press, as well as some 60 articles and essays. In addition, he is the editor or co-editor of several volumes: Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City State (2002); The Renaissance: Italy and Abroad (2002); Heresy, Culture and Religion in Early Modern Italy: Contexts and Contestations (2006); and The Renaissance World (2007).

Martin has been a fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, twice of the National Endowment of the Humanities, and has received support for his research from the American Philosophical Association, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, and the Renaissance Society of America. He has lectured, as the Alphonse Dupront Chair, at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and, as Distinguished Visiting Scholar, at Victoria College, the University of Toronto. He also lectures frequently to broader publics.

With Richard Newhauser, Martin is editor of the series Vices & Virtues for Yale University Press.

Martin teaches courses in Italian and European history. His most recent courses include a seminar on Christopher Columbus and a undergraduate discussion-class entitled Histories of the Future in which participants examine ways in which individuals and communities have imagined the future both today and in past times.

Before joining the history faculty at Duke in 2007, Martin taught at Trinity University in San Antonio, where he also served as Chair of the History Department. Martin grew up on St. Simons Island, Georgia, attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Harvard.