Despite its limited resources, the Fraknói Research Group is actively involved in the academic life of Rome. In addition to the Vatican Archives, its active and creative contacts extend to several foreign institutes and universities in Rome. The result of almost two decades of collaboration is the newly published monograph in Italian by Giulio Merlani. The latest volume I/22 of the Collectanea Vaticana Hungariae is entitled: 'Papato e politica internazionale nel Seicento. Il nunzio Francesco Buonvisi alla corte di Leopoldo I d'Asburgo imperatore e re d'Ungheria' (Budapest–Rome 2023). The volume (downloadable here) focuses on the foreign policy activities of the Lucca-born papal diplomat Francesco Buonvisi until 1678, with particular reference to his early years at the imperial and royal court of the Holy Roman Emperor I. Leopold.
At the same time, through the prism of the nunciatures, it describes the aims and effects of the complex process of redefining the papacy in the second half of the seventeenth century, through the guidelines of the Secretariat of State. The Roman efforts that led to the liberation of almost all of Hungary from a century and a half of Ottoman rule in the 1680s and 1690s.
Giulio Merlani, author of the doctoral dissertation on which this monograph is based, which follows a fresh approach and excellent methodology, was defended in February 2020 at Sapienza Università di Roma. (Two previous dissertations, written at Università Pontificia Gregoriana, were published in either the Vatican–Hungarian History series: CVH II/2 and CVH I/6.