Michael Allman Conrad
(University of Saint Gallen)
“When Mail Became Snail:
The First Postal Contracts
and the Circulation of Information
Between Spain and the Holy Roman Empire”
Abstract of Paper
presented at the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(Kalamazoo, 2024)
Session on
“Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices:
Mail in the Medieval World”
Co-Sponsored by Postal History at Kalamazoo
and the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Organized by David W. Sorenson
2024 Congress Program
Abstract:
The so-called ‘Postal Contracts’ (Post·ver·trä·ge) of 1505, 1516, and 1517, between members of the Thurn and Taxis family and Habsburg rulers are considered milestones in the history of courier and postal services. For the first time, these contracts clearly regulate the times that the transport of letters and other documents must take for standard distances, as well as how to control that deliveries would follow these new guidelines. The correct execution of these first postal services was supervised by France of Taxis / Francesco de Tasso (1621 [baptized] – 1676), whom Philip I of Castile, the father of Emperor Charles V, had appointed as his first post officer (capitaine et maistre de nos postes) on March 1, 1501.
Of course, these postal contracts were based on earlier experiences in respect to messenger services. The first take will therefore be to analyze these documents as traces of earlier messenger practices. What can we learn from them about how the work of messengers was organized in the late Middle Ages, what routes were considered best, what roads the safest?
For this purpose, we are going to compare earlier postal/courier services, such as the Compagnia dei Corrieri in Milan and Venice, the Confraternities of Couriers in Castile and Catalonia, and the older system of messengers at the University of Paris. In this way, we can better assess the importance not only of these postal and courier services for bridging different territories in Europe, but also of the acceleration that the new postal system meant for spreading new ideas across different geographies, especially in the era of Humanism, when viewed from the perspective of medieval media history.
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Note: We warmly thank Michael for his many contributions to RGME Sessions at the ICMS, to our Symposia, and to Episodes in our online series “The Research Group Speaks”.
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