Page 294 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Envoys and Political Communication,411–533

precipitates the following action. Gregory, predictably, gives precedence
to bishops as envoys, but he also presents sufficient data to indicate the
continued use of secular legates trained in traditional rhetorical skills. 217
Gregory’s writings are an early example of a medieval literary tradition
employing embassies as a narrative device. Whereas Procopius is con-
scious of the time-delay involved in the sending and return of embassies,
and the distinction between an embassy’s principal and its members,
Gregory sometimes (though not always) elides these distinctions. The
embassy thus becomes the voice of its principal, and receives a reply di-
rectly from the recipient. Scenes of the reception of embassies therefore
become dialogues between the two rulers. 218
Gregory’s seventh-century redactor and continuator Fredegar also fea-
tures prominent embassy narratives. As well as including embassies in that
partof his Chronicle composed by himself, covering the first half of the
seventh century, Fredegar improves upon several narratives in his sum-
mary of Gregory (though not in his summary of Hydatius, another of
Fredegar’s major sources, perhaps because none of Hydatius’ embassies
concern the Frankish kingdom). 219 More than Gregory, Fredegar’s em-
bassy narratives are literary constructs, not mere data. Fredegar is aware
of the confrontational drama inherent in scenes of audiences, which had
been exploited not only in classicising historiography such as Procopius’
works, but also in late antique hagiography and eulogy. 220 More distinctly
the work of Fredegar is his exploitation of the potential in embassy nar-
ratives for dramas of concealment and deceit. Embassies invest in a single
individual the transfer of confidential information over sometimes very
long distances; the legate is, by definition, an outsider at a foreign court,
privileged by virtue of the potential his presence bears for his princi-
pal’s displeasure and hostility. The envoy, therefore, can be a catalyst for
dramatic stories: by acting as a trickster, concealing or distorting his in-
formation; by intervening with impunity in local power struggles; and
by conveying news of exotica from afar. Fredegar’s embassy narratives are
linked by recurring motifs, arising either from the legations themselves or
from stories brought back by envoys from foreign climes: wronged queens

217
See above, nn. 46 and 49, and below, nn. 232–3.
218
Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, 94–5; Pizarro, Writing Ravenna, 88 n. 35, 118 n. 39.
219
Fredegar, Chron. ii, 53, though placed after lengthy extracts from Hydatius, in fact expands upon
a passage of Gregory of Tours, Hist. ii, 7. Other expansions of passages from Gregory: ii, 57;
iii, 11, 18–19, 58. Embassies in Fredegar’s own composition: iv, 9, 30, 31, 35, 37, 38 fin, 40, 45,
49, 51, 62, 68, 69, 71, 73, 85. On Fredegar: W. Goffart, ‘The Fredegar Problem Reconsidered’,
in his Rome’s Fall and After (London, 1989), 319–54; Roger Collins, Fredegar (Authors of the
Middle Ages: Historical and Religious Writers of the Latin West 4, Aldershot, 1996).
220
E.g. Fredegar, Chron. ii, 58: Clovis’ envoy to Alaric ii, Paternus (not in PLRE ii, probably rightly;
the name is used also for a seventh-century Frankish envoy at iv, 62).
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