Envoy

Derived from Old French envoy(e) and designating someone or something ‘sent forth’, ‘envoy’ and closely related words such as ‘emissary’ or ‘mediator’ were often used by early modern diplomats and bureaucrats to designate different types of diplomatic agents charged with temporary missions. ¹ While the appointments of resident ambassadors and the formation of a professional diplomatic corps were gradually adopted across Europe throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there were significant financial costs associated with maintaining a permanent embassy in a foreign court. That, along with reasons of political strategy and symbolic communication, led many polities to preserve some of the ad hoc diplomatic practices that predominated between antiquity and the late fifteenth century. Indeed, the diplomatic terminology inherited from Roman and medieval eras persisted in the designation of temporary agents who were regularly identified with titles such as nuntius, orator, procurator, legatus, or missus. ² The fact that many of the holders of these titles shared similar functions with resident ambassadors contributed to a terminological confusion which lasted well into the early eighteenth century. François de Callières, the author of the influential De la manière de négocier avec les Souverains (1716), for instance, did not differentiate between envoy and negotiator when describing the function of the ambassador. ³