Ralph W. Mathiesen
(University of Illinois — Urbana–Champaign)
Paper
presented at the 60th International Congress on Medieval Studies
(Kalamazoo, 2025)
Session on
“Moving the Mail: Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices in the Medieval World”
Sponsored by
Postal History at Kalamazoo
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Organized by David W. Sorenson (Independent Scholar)
2025 Congress Program
“Institutionalized Mail Delivery Networks
in Early Medieval Europe
from the Fourth to the Seventh Century”
Abstract
Nearly all the evidence for the long-distance forwarding and delivery of mail and other items in western Europe for the period from the fourth through the seventh centuries involves what one could call “personal transmission,” with senders arranging for their own ad hoc forms of delivery. This kind of letter delivery was primarily for the wealthy, who could afford to send a letter carrier on a specific mission, and has been heavily debated in the scholarship.
This paper, however, will be concerned with another, not nearly so well discussed, kind of letter delivery that provided a more institutionalized form of “mail service,” one that had more established routes, offered a more dependable schedule, and provided a variety of services in addition to just letters. As of the late fifth century, some letter carriers turn up regularly in the sources and seem to have had regular routes. Such as the merchant Amantius, who in the 470s traveled regularly between Marseille and Clermont. Especially common were clerical letter carriers. Such as the Capillutus who traveled regularly between Arles and Aquitania. Or another priest, Candidus, who spent a lot of time delivering letters back and forth to Rome during the 590s. Or a whole laundry list of abbots attested delivering letters from and to Desiderius of Cahors in the 630s and 640s. Indeed, it looks like there is a pattern here: it seems it was felt that clerics made dependable letter carriers.
This paper will distill out of the mass of attested letter carriers those who, rather than being sent on an errand by someone or volunteering or a one-time mission, seem to have made letter carrying part of a business, and thus can be said to have maintained an unofficial “mail” service.
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