“Christian Correspondences: The Secrets of Letter-Writers and
 Letter-Bearers in Late Antiquity”

Date: Tuesday 23 October 2012
Time: 12:30-13:30
Venue: Humanities Building 7-14
RSVP: [email protected] by Monday 22 October

Presented by Prof Pauline Allen, Director, Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University

Letters were the main mode of information transfer and diplomacy in late antiquity. Although originally only certain ranks of the clergy were engaged as couriers for bishops in late antiquity, in fact we find a large range of private and lay individuals, female and male, carrying letters and gifts to and from their bishops and performing other favours. The Apparent explosion of epistolary practice in late antiquity has been noted recently together with the fact that our most substantial evidence for Greek and Latin letter-writing and collection practices is late-antiquity. The epistolary activity is all the more surprising given that in the Classical period only eminent and politically active people like Cicero, Seneca and Pliny the younger could afford a private postal service. In a world where the letter was the primary vehicle of information transfer, the bearer played a vital role in the conduct of both private and public correspondence. Not only the letter-writer but also the bearer could have secrets, and both parties were susceptible to various kinds of censorship. In this paper I consider the private/public nature of late-antique letters, verbal communication by the bearer, freedom of speech in political hotspots, religious controversy and censorship, the censorship of personal information, and strategies for straight talking and avoiding censorship, concentrating for the most part on the fifth- and sixth-century evidence provided by bishops’ letters.