Letter-writing and the exercise of power

Letters were an important tool in exercising power in the medieval West. They were closely connected to the networks of elite sociability and opportunities for legal personhood that underpinned all power relations. They enabled administration, governance, and diplomacy to take place over considerable distances. They also served a representative function, standing for the sender’s physical presence. The structure, rhetoric, material features, archiving, and circumstances of exchange of letters all provided opportunities for power to be declared or invoked.