This chapter reconstructs Vicente Nogueira’s Inquisitorial trial, recovering the many political and religious motivations which lay behind it. Inquisitorial sources provide an opportunity to reflect on the interplay between Nogueira’s religious and sexual identities. Tried by the Inquisition for sodomy, Nogueira conceived his trial and subsequent exile as opportunities to reflect on his social statuses as someone who belonged to diverse intellectual, ecclesiastical, political and emotional communities. Despite the personal challenges posed by the trial and forced migration, these experiences ultimately provided Nogueira with more resources and greater public exposure as a mercenary of knowledge. Between his cell in Lisbon and the sugar mills of northern Brazil, Nogueira witnessed a set of conflicts that gave him access to the most unexpected spaces of the Republic of Letters.

This chapter sheds light on how mercenaries of knowledge contributed on behalf of the new King of Portugal’s sovereignty on the European and Mediterranean political stage. Alongside books and manuscripts, they used their access to Portuguese products, musical instruments, and luxury foods to improve their political leverage in Rome. In the hands and letters of mercenaries of knowledge, the diverse materials of bibliopolitics worked as the mute diplomats and political sweeteners of Baroque international relations. Vicente Nogueira’s desire to return to Portugal conditioned his troubled relations during the last part of his stay in Rome and his tormented advocacy on behalf of Portuguese affairs in the city after 1640.

Did the death of Vicente Nogueira in 1654 mark a turning point between a century of improvisation and a new age of absolutism? Scholars have often characterized the mid-seventeenth century as just such a radical change. Yet, when considering the contributions that mercenaries of knowledge made to the intellectual and political life of Late Renaissance and Baroque international relations, characterizing such a transition in stark terms becomes impossible. This final chapter uses three expressions of Nogueira’s memory to tell the story of Nogueira the plotter, who dabbled in scandals at the Roman curia in the early 1650s among Portuguese circles interested in defending oppressed religious minorities and same-sex emotional communities against the Portuguese Inquisition. Like many other mercenaries of knowledge, Nogueira took extreme care throughout his life to present himself as a pious and virtuous man despite being an inveterate nonconformist. Such positions were not incompatible. In fact, ambivalence was the key to navigating an age of improvisation and doubts which was here to stay.

Building on their training and contacts, Iberian men of letters such as Nogueira widened their intellectual horizons. Amid a period of relative peace known as the Pax Hispánica (1601–1621), the expertise of such figures in historical writing was solicited by members of the Republic of Letters interested in Iberian matters. Such intellectual correspondences gave way to debates on politics of conversion and tolerance and the relationship between royal and ecclesiastical power. In the meantime, someone like Nogueira specialized in historical matters and became a source of information for foreign intellectuals who worked on behalf of French, Italian, English, and other powers. This process of specialization fueled the critical political sense of Nogueira while bringing him increasing attention from admirers and critics. At the core of his self-fashioning strategy, Nogueira’s library became a proxy by which he and his critics came to define his status as a mercenary of knowledge. As this status started to become more evident, so too did a strengthening sense of belonging to a mercenary republic.

Late Renaissance conflicts drew mercenaries of knowledge to act as informal mediators in a wide range of diplomatic interests and territories located around the Holy See. Since the sixteenth century, Rome had become a refuge for foreign subjects, many of whom Romanized themselves while securing their patrimonies across and beyond the city. Nogueira offered his services from Rome to patrons and correspondents in Paris and Lisbon as well as in the Eternal City. This chapter discusses the multivalent position he occupied as a bibliopolitician in Rome after his return from Bologna in 1640 and the beginnings of his involvement with the politics of the Portuguese Restoration.

The introduction identifies a generation of men and women of letters whose activities strongly influenced politics in a time of conflict, but who do not fall neatly into the categories of either Renaissance humanist or philosophe. These actors moved on the edges of official diplomacy. Often marginalized, they developed practices of self-promotion and improvisation which helped them become multi-embedded across different societies and political spheres. Vicente Nogueira (1586–1654) was one such actor, who used this multi-embeddedness to ease political communication between different powers. His trajectory parallels that of many other imperial agents and literary figures who circulated in and out of the global territories of the Iberian monarchies and especially among other southern European powers.

Chapter 1 recovers the history of an Iberian family involved in royal service across Portugal and Spain during the first decades of the Iberian Union (1580–1640). It shows how family memory and political loyalty became professional assets for young, university-trained jurists. By moving back and forth between courtly and university stages across the two monarchies, some of these young letrados came to think of themselves as political polymaths. Ultimately, they found opportunities to reach out and receive support from transnational networks of neo-stoic thinkers and practitioners which was fundamental for articulating the composite social and political life of the Iberian monarchies within and beyond the Iberian Peninsula.

Following his return from Brazil to the Iberian Peninsula and then his journey to Rome, Nogueira continued to experience displacement while always looking for an opportunity to settle down. Upon arrival in Rome, he encountered a global city within which knowledge functioned as a currency to access patronage. In this highly competitive environment, populated by many other mercenaries of knowledge, Nogueira sought support across the city while trying his luck in other places such as the English monarchy. Aware of the difficulty of making a living in Rome, Nogueira followed a new patron to Bologna. There, he familiarized himself with the politics of the papal states in northern Italy, learned from the intense intellectual life around the university, and became involved in political negotiations between papal authorities, the Republic of Venice, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In the midst of these negotiations, he put his historical expertise to work by getting involved in an episode of forged Etruscan archaeology connected to rivalries between the Medici and Barberini families. As a ghostwriter for one of the reports concerning this forgery, he made a case for himself as someone who could serve back in Rome in a multitude of capacities, including legal courts and libraries.