The pontificate of Paul v, Camillo Borghese (1605–21), has attracted unusual attention in the last three decades. Wolfgang Reinhard and his students have devoted a number of publications especially to its social and economic aspects, making use of the rich holdings in the Vatican's Fondo Borghese. More recently Silvano Giordano has published in a magnificent edition Le istruzioni generali di Paolo V ai diplomatici pontifici, 1605–1621 (Tübingen 2003). The volume under review contains the papers given at a conference in Rome conducted by the German Historical Institute from 18 to 20 May 2005, on the four-hundredth anniversary of the election of Borghese to the papal office. The German Historical Institute has long been associated with the publication of the correspondence of the papal nuncios, and this marks the fourth conference that it has sponsored on the general topic of the nuncios and papal foreign relations, the others having taken place in 1971, 1985 and 1996.

The volume's twenty-three papers, most in German or Italian, of uneven quality, draw heavily on the instructions published by Giordano; four deal with general issues, seven with papal relations with European countries outside Italy, six with relations with the Italian states, two with mission areas across the seas, and the final four with the ‘reform’ nunciatures in Graz, Cologne, Lucerne and Brussels. One significant theme that runs through a number of the contributions has long been central to the studies of Reinhard and his students, the relationship between what he has called micropolitics (Mikropolitik) and macropolitics (Macropolitik); the conference combined this theme with the German Historical Institute's long-time interest in the system of nuncios and papal foreign policy. Reinhard defines micropolitics as ‘the more or less systematic application of a network of informal personal relationships for political purposes, where the filling of a position and the rank of its occupant is generally more important than the task he is to undertake’ (p. 68). Macropolitics is oriented toward institutions not persons, toward the common good of the community or country not toward the benefit of a family or private group, and it is concerned not only with the placement of a person in a position but with the effective functioning of that person in the position. Reinhard himself judges, not completely persuasively, that in papal foreign policy micropolitics or advancement of Borghese family or clients' interests prevailed over the common good of the Church and the papal state. To ascertain this, he writes, one must look beyond the instructions to the regular and private correspondence with the nuncios. Maria Teresa Fattori shows that the instructions regularly urged the tactful implementation of the decrees of the Council of Trent but that the pope did not apply them to the Curia itself. Olivier Poncet and Bernard J. Garcia Garcia, discussing papal relations with France and Spain, respectively see as one of Paul's main goals peace and a balance of power between the two Catholic states. Giordano himself provides an overview of papal relations with Portugal for much of the sixteenth and seventeenth century when issues of ecclesiastical jurisdiction stood out as they did in dealings with other states. The volume is also valuable for the extensive literature that is cited in the footnotes.