New Approaches to Medieval Communication?1

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18 MARCO MOSTERTCommunicationIt is common knowledge that without communication human society isinconceivable. A society presupposes collaboration, and to enable this, communication,the exchange of information, is essential. Information comprisesboth statements (knowledge, ideas, beliefs) and instructions (purposes, valuesand norms). Thanks to the exchange of information people may influence oneanother’s hearts and minds. Without that influence no durable society is feasible;nor would it be possible for human individuals to hold their own biologicallyor psychologically. Communication aids the satisfaction of biologicalneeds: obtaining food and drink, protection, safety and procreation. Not onlyin his physical growth, also in his psychological development man depends oncommunication. It also plays a role in the development and satisfaction ofinterpersonal needs: recognition, status, affection, building the image that anindividual has of himself and of his (social and physical) environment.Some fifty ways in which human beings may communicate among themselveshave been distinguished, and dozens of disciplines study communication.It is therefore not surprising that many definitions have been proposed,most of which go back to the theory which the electrical engineer ClaudeShannon developed for the American Bell company. Shannon published hisMathematical Theory of Communication in 1948. 15 To understand this theory,profound mathematical knowledge is necessary. Yet Shannon’s outline hasproven influential outside the physical sciences. He distinguishes (1) a sourceof information, (2) a sender which encodes the message, (3) a channel whichconveys the encoded message from the sender to the receiver, (4) a receiverwhich decodes the message, (5) the destination of the message, and (6) interferencewhich causes the signal produced by the sender not to be receivedintact by the receiver. This outline applies to all forms of communication. Inthe case of human speech, for instance the source is the person who wants toimpart a message, the sender is his voice which encodes the message in certainvibrations of the air, the channel is the air through which the sound wavestravel, the receiver is the human ear which decodes the vibrations of the humanvoice, the destination is the listener (or listeners), and the interference is causedby all sorts of more or less fortuitous circumstances (such as air vibrationsproduced by others than the speaker) which disturb the transmission of information.Shannon was interested in the maximum of information that could betransmitted per unit of time, with the minimum of interference. He was not15 No. 28 (SHANNON, 1949).
New Approaches to Medieval Communication?19interested in the message as such. Nor did he devote attention to the process ofcommunication in which the ‘destination’, the person for whom the informationis intended, answers a message and thus becomes a ‘source’, while theoriginal ‘source’ becomes the ‘destination’ of the answer. Many have tinkeredwith Shannon’s elegant model in order to address its limitations. In the “processmodel of communication” of Oomkes, to take a random example, attentionis paid to the contents of messages and the interaction which takes placewhen two human beings communicate. 16 He defines communication as follows:Communication is the exchange of symbolic information which takes place betweenhuman beings who are conscious of one another’s immediate or mediatedpresence. This information is given, received and interpreted partially consciously,partly unconsciously. 17This definition, too, does not seem to be wholly adequate. Although weobtain much information from the unconscious behaviour of the people wemeet, such signals are quite different from consciously encoded messages. Thesender must be conscious that he is providing information before we can speakof communication. An example may explain this. In the Early Middle Ages itwas possible to indicate social status by hair-dress. The long hair of theMerovingian kings signified their royal blood. Those whom one wanted toexclude from royal succession were shorn. Hair-dress could therefore be usedas a ‘medium’ for the transmission of messages. When king Chilperic I wasmurdered at Chelles under mysterious circumstances, his body was recognizedby its copious shock of hair. 18 However, Chilperic was no longer conscious ofthe message he sent: he no longer had the possibility not to send this signal, forinstance by covering up his long hair. A dead man does not himself ‘communicate’.In the study of medieval communication the exchange of consciouslyencoded messages is privileged.The Forms of Medieval CommunicationAny attempt to reduce the fullness of medieval communicative behaviourto a rigid scheme risks to be both banal and soporific. Such a scheme has to16 No. 26 (OOMKES, 1986), p. 32.17No. 26 (OOMKES, 1986), p. 44.18 J.M. WALLACE-HADRILL, The Long-Haired Kings and other Studies in Frankish History(London, 1962), pp. 148-248, esp. pp. 156-158, 162, 232, 245.
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