| Sumario: | The correspondence of German humanists and reformers has long been used to shed light on political, intellectual and religious developments in the early sixteenth century. These letters conformed to patterns and expectations established by humanist letter-writing manuals, which gave extensive treatment to the formal elements of a letter—the address, salutation, and conclusion. Scholars have ignored these elements precisely because of their formulaic nature, and in older editions of correspondence they are sometimes omitted entirely. For those familiar with the conventions of sixteenth-century epistolography, however, the addresses, salutations and conclusions reveal more about the relationship between sender and recipient than the flowery attestations of friendship found in the body of the letter. Epistolary formulae can therefore be seen as loose ends overlooked in the construction of narrative yet capable of providing new insight into the relative status and changing relationships within a network. The insights that can be gained from an analysis of a letter's formal elements are demonstrated through an examination of the early correspondence of eight humanists who become leaders of the evangelical movement in Zurich, Basel, and Strasbourg. Their letters reveal a careful choice of adjectives and epithets in addresses and salutations that reflect the differences in status between sender and recipient. They also attest to a shift in identity from membership in a humanist network to a more explicit adoption of evangelical activism and apostolic vocation in the face of opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.
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