We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
This chapter studies the letters of Bishop Agobard of Lyon (d. 840), who was dismissed from the court of Louis the Pious in 822, after having delivered what appears to have been an inappropriate speech. It explores the ways in which Agobard adopted different voices of admonition and speaker positions to advise and criticise his emperor. This chapter mainly focusses on Agobard’s letters of admonition addressed to the emperor and his courtiers in the years during which he was shunned by the court. It addresses the question of whether Agobard was really an outsider, or merely styled himself as such in his letters to get his message across more effectively. A second question is the one that has informed every chapter of this book: that of the extent to which these letters can be situated in the framework of the rhetorical tradition of free speech.