ABSTRACT
In late medieval diplomacy oral and written discourse was interdependent, and the boundary between the modes of communication was permeable in both directions. In diplomacy, the envoy's supplementary oral message could help avoid the pitfalls of writing. Texts served to create the framework within which oral negotiations could be conducted; 'diplomatic orality' performed its functions within a system of graphic representation for language. One of the most powerful reasons for sending clergy on embassies was that they, almost alone, spoke and wrote Latin, Europe's lingua franca and the formal language of diplomatic intercourse until well into the early modern period. The rarity of letters of procuration for English envoys dispatched to Avignon in the mid-fourteenth century is a reflection of the nature of Anglo-papal relations in this particular period. The post-Conquest generations of the English nobility learned English in infancy from nurses and servants, and later in their lives it remained the language of their converse with social inferiors.
