Page 295 - Envoys and Political Communication in the Late Antique West 411 - 533

Negotium agendum

restored to their rightful places through the intervention of envoys; new
‘instructions’ improvised by envoys to trick their hosts or intervene in
conflicts; duels; fantastic elements including a magic potion and astrol-
ogy; the frequent occurrence of the figure twelve; and in almost all of
Fredegar’s embassy narratives, deceit of one form or another, usually per-
petuated by envoys on their hosts. 221 Procopius too presents a number of
embassy narratives with strong elements of fabulae; these are set safely in
the past. 222 By contrast, Fredegar’s motifs occur somewhat more often in
the part of the Chronicle which he composed himself, covering more re-
cent history, than in his interpolations into earlier works. They suggest the
influence of romance fiction on Fredegar’s approach to historiography.

Municipal embassies in the sixth century
There is sufficientevidence for formal embassies among western rulers
during the later sixth and seventh centuries, given the decline of extant
evidence from the latter part of this period, to indicate that patterns of
communication between heads of state were maintained. 223 Municipal
and provincial legations are also attested, though far less clearly. In part
this reflects changing sources. Secular eulogies for provincial magnates or
court servants, such as appear in the letters of Sidonius and Cassiodorus,
are lacking for this latter period (though, even in the writings of Gregory
of Tours, there are indications of the status which accrued to palatine
envoys, described in Gregory’s characteristically deprecating manner 224 ).
The encomiastic image of bishop as envoy, developed in the Vitae of
Germanus of Auxerre and Epiphanius of Pavia, seems no longer to have
attracted hagiographers by the late sixth century. 225 When fifth-century
texts were reworked in later centuries, references to embassies were often
omitted. In the active cycle of hagiographical texts produced at Auxerre,

221 Queens: Fredegar, Chron. iv, 51, 71 (cf. Cass., Variae ix, 1; Gregory of Tours, Hist. iii, 31 for
the precarious position of princesses married to foreign courts), cf. iv, 9 (the Christian queen
of Persia in hiding at Constantinople). Improvised instructions: iv, 51, 68, 71. Duels: iv, 51, 64.
Magic potion and astrology: iv, 49, 65. Figure twelve: ii, 62 (Gelimer flees Belisarius with twelve
followers, and kills twelve youths in combats), iv, 45 (twelve Lombard dukes each send envoys
to the emperor Maurice, and to the Frankish kings). Deceit: ii, 53 (Aetius, Theoderic II, Attila;
expanding an already folkloristic story found in Gregory of Tours, Hist. ii, 7), 57; iii, 11; iv, 45,
49, 68, 69.
222
Procopius, Wars i, 2.12–15, 3.8–14 (envoy as privileged outsider; cf. 3.15–4.35 for further oriental
fabulae); iii, 7.6–10, 22.3–12; cf. Scott, ‘Classical Tradition in Byzantine Historiography’, 73.
223 224
Cf. Barnwell, ‘War and Peace’. Gregory of Tours, Hist. iii, 33 (Secundinus).
225
E.g. no embassy narratives in Gregory of Tours’ Miracula or the hagiographic chapters of the
Historiae, though he often mentions bishops as envoys in the Historia. In his brief accountof
Germanus of Auxerre, Gregory (or his source) transforms the bishop’s journey to Italy into a
pilgrimage; above, chapter 4,n. 89.
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