Bartolomeo Bruti

Bartolomeo Bruti, Barthélemy Bruto or Bartholomeo Brutti (b. 1557 – d. 1591) was an Albanian postelnic (chamberlain), diplomat, merchant, spy, agent, translator and a multilingual trader, part of the Bruti family from Dulcigno (Ulcinj), Venetian Albania. He worked for the Venetians, Philip II of Portugal, Habsburg Spain, the Queen of England, the Principality of Moldavia, Zygmund III Vasa and the Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha to whom he was related. He was the son of a cavalry captain in the Venetian employ. Bartolomeo Bruti married Maria de Pleba, a relative of the imperial Matthias del Faro. Their son, Antonio was born in 1578. In 1573 Bartolomeo Bruti, aged 16, sent a petition to Venice after having been trained in Istanbul to become a giovane de lingo, or a Venetian agent. In 1575 he returned to Rome after having learned the Ottoman-Turkish language. Between 1574 and 1579, he worked for the Spanish on a mission to establish a truce in the Mediterranean between the two great powers Venice and the Ottoman Empire. He also worked as a spy for the Venetians fixing deals with the Ottoman Grand Vizier Sinan Pasha to whom he worked for.

After the Battle of Lepanto, Mehmed Bey Paşa, governor of Algeria (1567–1568), was captured by the Venetians. He was released after Bruti negotiated a deal. Together with Sokollu who gave him secret information, Bruti made a deal with the Habsburg authorities to spy on Ottoman military activity. Bartolomeo proposed a new deal; if Philip II of Portugal could offer Sokollu 30,000 ducats then they could bribe Ottoman officials to eventually create an anti-Ottoman alliance in North Africa, particularly in Algeria. In 1575, he traveled to Rome as part of a mission to exchange 34 Ottoman prisoners of war between the forces of the league that had participated in the Battle of Lepanto and the Ottoman Empire. First he traveled to Fermo, then to Ragusa where the Ottomans were to surrender the Christian prisoners. In 1576, he offered to send letters via Cattaro and Ragusa rather than Corfu and change the Greek couriers with Slavs. He also notified Sinan Pasha of a Spanish agent named Antonio Sanz who arrived in Constantinople in 1582. Luckily for Sanz, he had a salvoconducto given by Uluç Ali. Yet he still had to leave the city and his wife and children in it immediately.

The unofficial Habsburg ambassador named Giovanni Margliani offered to the Viceroy of Naples to send two assassins named Sinan and Haydar to kill Bartolomeo Bruti for his double game. The offer was declined as Bruti was neither a vassal nor a renegade. Bruti met his end in 1591 after the Moldavian prince Aron the Tyrant (1591–1595) strangled Bruti who at the time was around 30 years old. Aaron the Tyrant had borrowed money from Bruti and refused to pay it back. Bruti was a Machiavelian type who played on many sides simultaneously.