Actors and areas of a university’s reputation. The messengers of the University of Paris and information at the end of the Middle Ages
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Historiography traditionally conferred on the medieval University of Paris an early development of a network of messengers, covering a large European area. This network was meant to ensure the link between foreign students and their initial environment. While documentation, dating from the late thirteenth century, attests to the activity of messengers in the service of members of the Parisian university, it does not allow, however, to observe the existence of an institutionalized messaging board before the middle of the fifteenth century. Organized within university nations, the network of messengers included each diocese from which masters and scholars had originated, as well as some other major cities. The examination of the academic practice documentation leads us to suggest an anthropology of information that was attentive to actors, to their actions, and to the conditions under which they practiced their office. This allows us to draw the outlines of an oversized institution of the late Middle Ages, which became a power issue and an instrument of control for the university’s reputation.
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