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El presente trabajo plantea los lazos que a lo largo de toda la Edad Media han tenido la tradición del exemplum y la epistolar. Partiendo de una revisión de lo que estipulaban las artes dictaminis sobre el uso de proverbios y exemplay como rasgo de ciceronianismo, se observa que a lo largo de toda la tradición epistolar el relato breve fue un recurso retórico recurrente. No es necesario esperar al siglo XV –momento de mayor auge de la epistolografía– para hallar este cruce. Por tanto, se pasa revista tanto a la epistolografía del siglo XIV como a la del XV. La diferencia entre ambos períodos no está dada en la mayor o menos abundancia de esta técnica, sino en el tipo de relatos que se insertaron en las cartas. La tradición de Valerio Máximo o el relato histórico ganaron terreno en el siglo XV, mientras que la de la fábula fue más abundante en el período precedente. Lejos de agotar el tema, este artículo ofrece unos primeros lineamientos de una conexión que vale la pena explorar., This paper examines the links between the exemplum and epistolary traditions throughout the Middle Ages. Starting from a review of what the artes dictaminis stipulated about the use of proverbs and exempla and as a feature of Ciceronianism, it is observed that throughout the epistolary tradition the short story was a recurrent rhetorical device. It is not necessary to wait until the XVth century - the peak of epistolography - to find this crossover. Therefore, both XIVth and XVth century epistolography are reviewed. The difference between the two periods does not lie in the greater or lesser abundance of this technique, but in the type of narratives that were inserted into the letters. The tradition of Valerius Maximus or the historical story gained ground in the XVth century, while that of the fable was more abundant in the previus period. Far from exhausting the subject, this paper offers some first outlines of a connection worth exploring.

The discipline known as ars dictaminis was perhaps the most successful attempt to create an autonomous medieval doctrine of rhetoric. Emerging around 1080, it remained influential well into the fifteenth century. Although numerous studies have emphasised its importance in western communication, it is often described simply as a pragmatic art of writing letters, focussed on salutatio and social hierarchy. This paper tries to explain why, at its apogee (1180–1340) and even later, it was considered a total art of writing, with a complex ideology, a vast range of related textual forms, and a subtle balance between its literary potentialities and its political-administrative purposes. After abrief history of the development and evolution of the ars, we focus on its two most original characteristics: its distinctive deployment of metaphor and the technique of rhythmical ornamentation known as cursus rhythmicus. From there, we see how the expansion and dissemination of teaching material consisting of texts invented or recycled from chanceries led to the progressive development of a sort of medieval “database”, and to the invention of a subtle semi-formulaic art of writing, very different from the reputation of the dictamen for simple formulaic prose.

Courtholders presided over a variety of late medieval English courts. Like most courtholders before 1500, Geoffrey Spirleng, common clerk of Norwich, did not attend an inn of court or chancery. Nevertheless, his experiences as a courtholder and as common clerk qualified him as a legal professional. Because of the frequency of lawsuits, people of all backgrounds were impacted by courtholders’ actions. This article argues that courtholders played a crucial role in ensuring judicial efficiency and consistency.

This study argues for the importance of competitive discourse in placing the study of the ars dictaminis within the cosmopolitan tradition of humanistic Latin literature in the Middle Ages, particularly as it is expressed in the writing of Boncompagno da Signa and Guido Faba at Bologna in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Examining cultural links and similarities to the competitive literary culture of twelfth century humanism in France and northern Europe (especially the Goliardic poets), it also compares the function and relative prestige of ars dictaminis to other studies at Bologna, especally canon law. This comparison focuses in particular on the respective ways each discipline employs narrative fictions, and this comparison establishes the humanistic literary character of the cultivation of ars dictaminis. Ronald Witt has argued that the textual culture of Bologna in Boncompagno's day is dominated by a practical legal orientation, but this study would qualify that claim by exploring the literary copiousness of Boncompagno's writing and the literary character of several of his works, including the Rota Veneris; it likewise links this literary performance to a pattern of competitive discourse that elevates ars dictaminis above other disciplines, Bologna above other studia, and Boncompagno above other masters. The study then turns to the work of Guido Faba, especially the Summa dictaminis and Dictamina rhetorica to explore how Guido deepens and broadens Boncompagno's competitive discourse, especially through the epistolary narrative sequences of the Dictamina rhetorica.

La tesis se articula en las siguientes secciones: 1. Estudio preliminar: se concibe como una introducción destinada fundamentalmente a contextualizar al autor y su obra, dilucidar determinados aspectos críticos, estudiar las posibles fuentes del autor y analizar la tradición manuscrita. Se inicia con un repaso diacrónico de la evolución de la preceptiva epistolar desde la Antigüedad hasta la época de Arsegino; este capítulo introductorio permite ubicar la obra objeto de estudio dentro de la historia del género. 2. Edición crítica: constituye el eje en torno al que se articula la tesis. En la fijación del texto se ha primado la inteligibilidad del mismo, por lo que, teniendo en cuenta la corrupción del único manuscrito completo disponible, no se ha dudado en la corrección de aquellos pasajes en los que el texto presentaba lecciones inaceptables o indescifrables. Para ello ha sido necesario un profundo conocimiento de la tradición del género, de forma que los loci similes y las concurrencias doctrinales con otras obras han permitido en muchas ocasiones restituir con relativa certeza el texto original. 3. Notas al texto: son absolutamente necesarias para completar el estudio de la obra. La componen más de 600 anotaciones, que abarcan aclaraciones y justificaciones editoriales, análisis de aspectos doctrinales e identificación y, en su caso, comentario de citas y fuentes. 4. Traducción: la labor anterior se ha completado con la traducción del tratado. Consideramos que la versión del texto en nuestra lengua permite al editor penetrar en él hasta sus últimos matices, ayudando a detectar puntuales errores o defectos en el texto inicialmente presentado. La traducción, además, facilita el acceso a la obra a estudiosos de otras disciplinas no familiarizados con la lengua latina.

La discipline rhétorique médiévale de l’ars dictaminis est justement fameuse pour avoir été un quelque chose de différent de la rhétorique classique. Elle fut conçue et employée principalement pour l’écriture, non pas de discours, mais de lettres dont l’échange formait une part importante de la communication politique et personnelle aux XIe-XVe siècles. Dans la quasi-totalité des cas, les traités théoriques présentent les recettes pour écrire ces lettres en prose, et la grande masse des dictamina (textes obéissant aux lois de l’ars dictaminis) qui appliquèrent ces recettes conservées sont écrits en prose. Le Moyen Âge a bien sûr connu l’écriture des lettres en vers, selon le modèle des Héroïdes d’Ovide, mais la théorisation de l’écriture en vers aurait plutôt relevé de la discipline voisine de l’ars poetriae. Le présent article tente de faire le point sur la question des rapports entre l’ars dictaminis et la poésie, en montrant que les choses sont en fait beaucoup plus complexes. D’une part, les traités insistent très souvent sur le fait que le dictamen prosaïque n’est qu’un des trois rameaux des « genres rédactionnels » (genera dictandi), dont les deux autres sont la poésie métrique et la poésie rythmique. Or le rapport entre ces trois genres n’est pas seulement classificatoire : la prose de l’ars dictaminis était une prose rythmée, et son enseignement comme sa pratique dépendait de la connaissance de la poésie métrique et rythmique. D’autre part, de très nombreuses interconnections existent entre la pratique de la poésie et celle de l’ars dictaminis, tant d’un point de vue théorique que pratique. Il existe une large intersection entre les artes poetriae et les artes dictandi (traités théoriques), et de nombreux traités hybrides. La prose rythmée est parfois conceptualisée comme une sorte de poésie. Au niveau de la pratique, les rédacteurs créent souvent des lettres prosaïques qui entretiennent un rapport complexe avec la poésie, soit par l’insertion de citations de classiques poétiques, soit par des procédés (prose cadencée et assonancée, par exemple) qui rapprochent leurs textes de la poésie. En définitive, l’étude conjointe de la théorie et de la pratique de l’ars dictaminis suggère que pour ses inventeurs et ses praticiens, la prose rythmée de l’ars était plus proche de la poésie que de la « prose simple ».

Both the Renaissance and humanism have anachronistically taken on meanings today that betray their historical reality. Emerging from the peculiar lay professional culture of medieval Italy, humanism joined in the Renaissance with other elements of medieval Italian culture to dominate the educated world of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. The Renaissance humanists constituted, in the words of Paul Oskar Kristeller, “a characteristic phase in what may be called the rhetorical tradition in Western culture.” Renaissance humanism created not an ideology or philosophy, but a dynamic set of educated interests and methods dominated by rhetorical and literary interests and focused on imitation of classical eloquence and literature. The humanists would in time powerfully reshape European learning, education, and, ultimately, self-conception. A non-trivial residue of Renaissance humanism is our understanding of the disciplines that make up the humanities and that we view as essential to educated culture.

Ars amandi, ars dictandi – średniowieczna Pseudo-Ars amatoria i jej funkcje dydaktyczne w Akademii Krakowskiej

This essay aims at giving an account of some pedagogical and syntactical aspects of Francesco da buti’s (1324–1406) Regule grammaticales, a Latin grammar written in Central Italy in the second half of the 14th century. It occupies an important place in the history of positive grammar, providing an excellent example of Latin teaching in late medieval Italy. In fact, da Buti treatise deals not only with grammar, but also with rhetoric and Ars dictaminis, as was customary in the Italian tradition in the final centuries of the Middle Ages. This article analyzes the sections devoted to nouns and verbs, while also pointing out some pedagogical features, such as the exercises of the thèmata and the use of the vernacular as a tool for learning Latin composition.

Understanding how premodern letter-writers employed emotional scripts offers an additional lens with which to understand the socio-cultural context in which letters were produced. Letter-writing was almost entirely an elite affair in the late medieval centuries. The formulaic rules of the ars dictaminis guided the structure and general stylistic approach of the letters, the standard phrases associated with the expression of amity might be manipulated in subtly different ways by writers for a variety of purposes. Early modern epistolary culture might usefully be distinguished from its medieval counterpart as literacy and postal systems improved in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, permitted greater numbers of people to redress distance and maintain relationships by writing to each other. The convincing conveyance of sincerity continued to be of critical importance to correspondents, since, without the perceived presence of a writer’s emotional state, the letter’s contents were considered insignificant.

Medieval ars dictaminis or the art of correct letters writing represented one of key elements in medieval education. Although traditional correspondence takes a backseat today and is substituted by e-mails more and more, this skill is considered to be a part of the “equipment” that literates should possess even today. Topic of this paper is the comparison of medieval ars dictaminis handbooks with current manuals by comparing particular texts. Aim is to identify kinds of differences occurring in structure of medieval and nowadays handbooks, paper also focuses on changes of definition of letter during the time and how the role and function of letters in Middle Ages and today differs. Paper also considers how the rules of letter writing vary and how the approaches to ars dictaminis have changed over the time.

Aux XIVe et XVe siècles, les doctrines du style se rattachent aux traités (Artes praedicandi, Pontificale romanum de Guillaume Durand) qui réglementent le discours dans des situations diverses. Les œuvres de Machaut et de Deschamps s’en ressentent ; chez George Chastelain et Jean Molinet, l’influence des premiers humanistes italiens devient évidente., In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, doctrines pertaining to style are linked to the treatises (Artes praedicandi, Pontificale romanum by Guillaume Durand) that regulate discourse in various situations. The works of Machaut and Deschamps are impacted by them; in George Chastelain’s and Jean Molinet’s work, the influence of the first Italian humanists becomes obvious.

Since its 2006 debut, Twitter has emerged as the primary online space for communication between celebrity and audience. Yet scholars are conflicted on whether Twitter’s expanded interaction is actual or merely perceived. Some contend that the social media site represents a democratised public square in which the borders between ordinary and extraordinary are flattened, while others argue that Twitter encompasses synthetic personalisation: hierarchical power dynamics masked by simulated interconnection. Assuming that Twitter communication is an extension of traditions of letter-writing by fans and fan clubs, this study utilises a framework for rhetorical arrangement drawn from medieval work on the ars dictaminis, or the art of letter-writing. Informed by Cicero, the ars dictaminis divided the letter into five parts, including exordium (opening), captatio benevolentiae (capturing of goodwill), narratio (background), petitio (petition/request), and conclusio (conclusion). Tweets directed at the top five most...

This article presents some elements that compose the Jesuits' epistle practice in the old State of Maranhao and Grao-Para, using a particular example represented by a letter of Father Antonio Vieira. Stemming from observations by authors such as Alcir Pecora and Joao Adolfo Hansen, among others, the writing that proceeds attempts to demonstrate and to discuss the fact that the Jesuit letters are inserted in discursive practices current at the time of the missions in the territory of the colony, especially in the 17th century. The demonstration of the constituent elements of the Jesuit epistolography emphasizes more the edifying character of those letters than the factual one.

In the two decades since these observations were first published, scholars have mined the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries for the theater of the letter. Dramatic interruptions, staged moments of reading, and manipulations of handwritten documents have all been scrutinized for what they reveal about the complex relationship between dramatic fiction and epistolary practice in early modern England. 2 The culture of the ars dictaminis (the art of writing letters for political, social, amorous, and intellectual commerce) has been explored for insight into new forms of friendship, new ideals of literacy, and new institutions of learning in the sixteenth century. 3 The annotations to the books and manuscripts of early modern readers have been exhumed for their information about social practices of textual engagement. 4 And in the habits of the playhouse—where documents themselves would be held in the prop-store and where, on occasion, the words that the characters read out would not be written out in scripts or published volumes—we may see evidence of not just a social but a theatrical literacy. 5

This article examines the medieval ars dictaminis, or art of letter-writing, focusing on socio-cultural aspects, especially as taught at Oxford c. 1370–1432. Ars dictaminis participated in and contributed to a structural transformation in the production of written communications and administrative records in later medieval Europe. Two aspects of this transformation were the recruitment and educational formation of a class of domestic literate servants, and a diversification in the field of educational alternatives. Teachers of ars dictaminis recognized and responded to these aspects of their pragmatic situation: in addition to providing technical instruction, the ars dictaminis provided its students and practitioners with normative representations of their location within a stratified social world. In several textbooks of English provenance, instruction in cursus, or prose rhythm, became an occasion for working out this discipline’s contested status within the symbolic economies of education and patronage.

Focusing on the confluence of mirrors, manners, and ars dictaminis in the late Middle Ages, I argue that thirteenth-century civic engagement organized itself as a decorous spectacle: a well-mannered, highly codified visual performance that reflected and reinforced the structure of medieval Europe's stratified society. Marked by display, courtesy, and participation, decorous spectacle evolved from a groundswell of cultural factors including the emergence of mirror-making technologies, politesse, and, especially, ars dictaminis. Exploring this groundswell provides a way to understand the evolution of late Medieval decorous spectacle and a template for understanding the nature of civic engagement in any era.

Phishing e-mails deceive individuals into giving out personal information which may then be utilized for identity theft. One particular type, the Personal Solicitation E-mail (PSE) mimics personal letters—modern perversions of ars dictaminis (the classical art of letter writing). In this article, I determine and discuss 19 appeals common to the PSE. These appeals were established first by conducting generative rhetorical analysis, then by volunteer coding, on 170 e-mails collected over a 12-month period. After defining these categories, I show how these letters are excellent twenty-first century teaching tools for pathos-based argumentation, logical appeals, the creation of ethos, and kairos in the development of perceived exigency.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide corporate communication educators and practitioners with historical information about the origins of their field, so that they may have a greater understanding of their own roles in the continuum of communication theory and practice.Design/methodology/approach – Research into secondary and primary literature on the development of the medieval art of letter‐writing, ars dictaminis, frames an analysis of the career and influence of Thomas Sampson, a fourteenth‐century teacher of ars dictaminis and other business subjects. Sampson's textbook, Method of Letter‐writing, is compared to another example of the genre, The Principles of Letter‐writing, written some 250 years earlier by Anonymous of Bologna and published in a widely available current textbook.Findings – Compared to The Principles of Letter‐writing, Sampson's text is direct, concrete, and demonstrates a high degree of audience awareness. Instead of separating theory from practice, Sampson integrates t...

This article examines the character and sources of the many complaints about money heard in the dispatches of ambassadors in the second half of the fifteenth century in Italy. In a period when ambassadors increasingly served for long periods of time as residents in a single locale, infrequency of regular remuneration became commonplace, as Italian states, with their lengthening list of pecuniary obligations, were notoriously unreliable paymasters. This article suggests that the language of complaint reflected the dynamics of Renaissance patron-client relationships and the rhetorical conventions that were shaped both by the medieval ars dictaminis and humanistic topoi. While the laments could reflect real deprivation, ambassadorial service often provided a real path to office, influence and enrichment. It also demonstrates that the financial concerns of ambassadors differed whether they were short-term or long-term ambassadors, and whether they were sent by princely or republican regimes. Based on diplomatic correspondence of ambassadors from several Italian states, the essay argues that the economic situation of these diplomatic envoys is analogous to that of condottieri: both served the cash-strapped Renaissance territorial state in areas of activity where institutions were becoming permanent.

In this article I first discuss a genre of writing, the Ars Dictaminis, which became popular in Europe from the 11th century and which flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. In particular I consider the arrangement of letters as advised in Ars Dictaminis treatises and show its influence from Cicero. I then briefly review key tenets of Chinese rhetoric and compare the arrangement of Ars Dictaminis letters with the arrangement of Chinese letters of request recently written by Mainland Chinese. The remarkable similarities in the arrangement of these two sets of letters are noted. Given these similarities I conclude by arguing that the relative status and power of writer and recipient exerts at least as strong an influence on the arrangement of texts as any cultural tradition.

This essay brings to light a previously untranslated Latin medieval rhetorical treatise from Castile and León—Juan Gil de Zamora's letter writing manual Dictaminis Epithalamium, or The Marriage Song of Letter-Writing (c. 1277). Juan Gil (c. 1240–c. 1318) was among the first writers in Castile and León to compose a rhetorical treatise on the technical elements of composition. I outline the theoretical and technical elements of Juan Gil's ars dictaminis. Following an explication of his theory, I historicize the Dictaminis Epithalamium within the western European rhetorical tradition and within the established dictaminal genre. I argue that Juan Gil develops a new rhetoric for letter writing—one incorporating innovations as well as compilations of ideas from the Italian and French schools of letter-writing.

Turcan-Verkerk Anne-Marie. Le Prosimetrum des Artes Dictaminis médiévales (XIIe-XIIIe s.). In: Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi, tome 61, 2003. pp. 111-174.

This paper treats the rhetorical strategy of securing the addressee’s goodwill, also known as captatio benevolentiae. Following the postulation in Brown and Levinson (1987), I examine its possible pragmatic properties and effect, and its politeness value in the face wants of the addressees, taking into consideration the social distance and relative power of the correspondents. Captatio benevolentiae passages have been selected from the Cely Letters on the basis of their rhetorical properties, their intended use and also their position in the letter; captatio benevolentiae occurs not only at the beginning of the letter, as was traditionally dictated in the original ars dictaminis manuals, but also throughout the body of the text.

Viduramžių epistoliniai tekstai buvo rašomi pagal laiškų rašymo mokslo ir meno taisykles – ars dicta­minis. Tai ilgaamžės retorikos tradicijos tąsa, pako­reguota konkrečios epochos visuomeninių, politinių, socialinių, kultūrinių realijų. Ars dictaminis pirmiau­sia pradėtas naudoti bažnyčios hierarchų bei pasau­lietinių valdovų raštuose, vėliau perimtas ir naudotas Lietuvos Didžiosios Kunigaištystės valdovų kance­liarijoje rengiant dokumentus ir laiškus. Dažniau­siai laiškas buvo suprantamas kaip klausyti skirtas tekstas, kaip retorinė kalba, pateikta raštu, taip pat kaip tinkamai sutvarkytas tekstas arba pokalbis, perduodamas gyvu balsu ir raštu. Straipsnyje, pa­rengtame pranešimo Cultural Translation: Specific of the Transaltion of Medieval Latin Epistolary Text, skaityto tarptautinėje konferencijoje Rhetoric across Cultures (Tübingen, 2015 m. liepos 28–31 d.), pa­grindu aptariama viduramžių valdovo laiškų specifi­ka. Tyrimo šaltiniai – Lietuvos kunigaikščio Vytauto Didžiojo (apie 1350–1430) ir jo korespondentų laiš­kai, išleisti Antonio Prochaskos sudarytame rinkiny­je Codex epistolaris Vitoldi Magni Ducis Lithuaniae 1376–1430 (Cracoviae, 1882). Į lietuvių kalbą yra išversti tik 4 lotyniški Vytauto laiškai, nors yra iš­likę apie 450 jo laiškų skaičiuojant kartu su rašytais kitomis kalbomis. Nėra ir mokslinių darbų, kuriuose būtų analizuojamos lotyniškų šio valdovo laiškų ver­timo į lietuvių kalbą ypatybės. Šis straipsnis skirtas daugiau iškelti problemas, nei jas galutinai išspręsti, nes tam reikia detalesnių ir platesnių tyrimų, skai­tlingesnių vertimų. Straipsniu siekiama parodyti, kokio pobūdžio yra viduramžių epistoliniai tekstai, konkrečiai lotyniškoji Vytauto korespondencija, į ką reikia kreipti ypatingą dėmesį juos verčiant ir tiriant.Epistola regia (royal letters) – sudėtingas dari­nys. Vienas valdovo epistolikos tikslų – ne nešališ­kos informacijos pateikimas, bet politinis efektyvu­mas, kurio siekiama įvairiais būdais, joje realizuoja­ma valdžios reprezentacija, egzistuojančių politinės komunikacijos taisyklių samprata, siekis kurti apie save teigiamą opiniją. Jai būdinga dalykinė argu­mentacija, emocinga retorika, bandymas manipu­liuoti adresatu, jį įtikinti, užimti dominuojančią poziciją adresato atžvilgiu, ir kartu tam tikras sti­listinis neutralumas. Valdovo laiškuose esama spe­cifinio teksto ritmo (cursus), kuriuo buvo siekiama palengvinti skaitomo ar sakomo teksto supratimą ir pajautimą, labai atidžiai parenkant ir išdėstant žodžius, frazes, net žodžių skiemenų ilgumą sa­kinio ar frazės pradžioje ar pabaigoje. Čia svarbi kiekviena, iš pirmo žvilgsnio atrodanti nereikšmin­ga detalė, pvz., vardų eiliškumas, žodžių, epitetų, kreipimosi frazių parinkimas, specifinis išdėsty­mas ir jų vartojimo dažnumas ir t. t. Tai yra tam tikri semantiniai ženklai, kurie kartais prarandami verčiant laišką į kitą kalbą.Įdomi ir svarbi tyrėjui, vertėjui yra ne vien na­ratyvinė laiškų dalis, kurią diktuodavo valdovas, bet ir kitos dalys, kurios unifikuotai išreiškia tam tikrą siuntėjo emocinę nuostatą adresato atžvilgiu, kurios gali nurodyti įtemptus ar draugiškus koresponduo­jančių santykius ir kt. Straipsnyje atkreipiamas dė­mesys į pasveikinimų, kreipinių, epitetų ypatumus, taip pat į literatūrinių, stilistinių, lingvistinių priemo­nių – kontrasto, kartojimo, sinonimijos, viduramži­nių emocijų raiškos formulių, teksto ritmo cursus, dažno jungtuko et kartojimo, taip pat epistolinių for­mulių svarbą viduramžių laiškuose ir jų kai kuriuos niuansus. Tyrinėjant per laiką nutolusius laiškus rei­kia išskirtinio tikslumo ir atidumo, kad sugebėtume „teisingai“ suprasti ne tik parašytas, bet ir paslėptas laiško prasmes.

© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XIX, Number 2 (Spring 2001). Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223,USA T he Žve essays in this special issue grew out of papers presented at the Twelfth Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Amsterdam, July 1999), at the session entitled “What Killed the Ars Dictaminis? and When?” four of them ably chaired by Emil Polak. That session originated in a conversation I had with Malcolm Richardson in1997, at the previous ISHR conference, in Saskatoon. We had just discovered that his research on practitioners of vernacular letter writing and mine on teachers of Latin letter writing in late-medieval England independently suggested that in England the ars dictaminis had experienced something like what paleontologists call an “extinction event” around 1470. We wondered whether the suddenness of the demise was unique to England. Beyond that, we wondered why the mostwidely diffused and inuential variety of practical rhetoric during the later Middle Ages, an art thatwas highly teachable, adaptable to almost any institutional setting, aligned with key disciplines such as grammar and the law, should have disappeared at all. Having served the communication needs of a broad range of professionals throughout Europe since the late eleventh century, had the ars dictaminis simply worn itself out or had new needs arisen to which it could no longer respond? With good reason, more scholarship has focused on the origins of the ars dictaminis than on its demise. It is much simpler to identify the Žrst medieval treatise that teaches how to compose letters than to decide which letter-writing treatise is the last in that tradition. Few of the surviving ancient treatises on rhetoric provide any explicit instructionon letters: in theLatin tradition, the brief chapter on letters that concludes the Ars rhetorica of Julius Victor (fourth century AD) is virtually unique. While some such pedagogy clearly existed in

The influence of dictaminal treatises in England was weak throughout the Middle Ages and largely restricted to a limited number of royal clerks and a few academics. Most practitioners were royal chancery clerks who dealt with foreign and ecclesiastical powers. This article focuses chiefly on the use of dictaminal letters by middle class English citizens in the fifteenth and earlier sixteenth centuries. These letters show little significant influence of continental or English dictaminal theory but are chiefly either sprawling news bulletins like the Paston letters or, more commonly, imitations of the royal missives from the Signet or Privy Seal offices. As the fifteenth century ended even these vestigial dictaminal forms were replaced among the middles classes by business formats, such as the letter of credit, although they retained some use among the upper classes into the sixteenth century and in some royal missives into the eighteenth century. The article concludes with suggestions on ways contemporary genre theory might be usefully applied to analyze the rise and decline of the ars dictaminis.

Renaissance humanists modified rather than rejected the medieval adaptation of classical rhetoric to letter writing, but they came to scorn the “barbaric” grammar of the ars dictaminis. This development followed the widespread dissemination through printing, beginning in 1471, of the Elegantiae of Lorenzo Valla and its imitators. Niccolò Perotti incorporated Valla's approach to language in a section on epistolography of his Rudimenta grammatices, and soon letter writing and elegantiae became closely associated in textbooks. By about 1500, not only medieval writers but even humanist pioneers of an earlier generation and contemporary professionals who dared to defend established epistolary etiquette were under attack. By 1522, when Erasmus published his De conscribendis epistolis, medieval formulas had become merely comic.

The preface by Ælfric occurs in complete form in two manuscripts and in part in a third. Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Miscellany 509 (s. xi2) contains the preface (fols. 1–3, headed with the wordsIncipit prefatio genesis anglice), together with the Old EnglishHexateuch(fols. 3–107) and Ælfric's selections from Judges (fols. 108–15). Cambridge, University Library, Ii. 1. 33 (s. xii2) has the preface, without tide, followed by Ælfric's partial translation of Genesis (fols. 2–24). London, British Library, Cotton Claudius B. iv (St Augustine's, Canterbury, s. xi1), having lost its first leaf, now preserves only the second half of the preface followed by an illustrated text of the Old EnglishHexateuch, but a sixteenth-century transcript by Robert Talbot, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 379, preserves some of its missing text, along with the same tide as Laud 509. Both Laud 509 and Claudius B. iv give slightly different compilations of the translations by Ælfric with the more extensive work of the anonymous scriptural translator (or translators). The differing rubrics and contents of the manuscripts affect the way we read the preface that they share: the Cambridge manuscript presents it as a preface to half of Genesis only, Laud 509 and the transcript label it a preface at least to the whole of Genesis. If, however, theincipitis scribal, it could be taken as a prologue to theHexateuch. Was the preface, then, intended by Ælfric to introduce just the first half of Genesis, or a larger work? Sisam is of the first view: ‘no preface to the Pentateuch (or Hexateuch) survives, and evidendy the compiler of the extant Old English version did not know of one, since he used Ælfric's inappropriate English preface to the first part ofGenesis.’

The later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Italy saw a marked new interest in the study of Ciceronian rhetorical theory, in both Latin and vernacular contexts. This reflects the increasing prominence within the civic culture of the Italian communes of practices of oral and adversarial rhetoric which the dominant instrument of rhetorical instruction in this period, the ars dictaminis, was ill-equipped to teach. While the utility of the strategies of argument taught by Roman rhetorical theory was widely recognised in this period, the ethical attitudes implicit in that theory represented a challenge to prevailing Christian constructions of the moral decorum of speech. Classical rhetorical theory may thus be seen to have constituted a destabilising presence within late medieval ethical discourse: a situation which presisted, to some extent, even after the political and cultural changes of the later Trecento had displaced rhetoric in Italy from a primary to a secondary, literary and educational, role.

Forms and models have always been a basic component of business communication. How we fit our language to various format choices has an impact on message effectiveness, which may be why business writers instinctively stretch and often ignore accepted rules and guidelines for business writing. Reviewing the origins of our present business writing practices can help us understand why we do what we do and why our attempts to fit substance to form are often frustrating and ineffective. In "Studying the History of Business Communication," Locker, Miller, Richardson, Tebeaux, and Yates (1996) discuss the value of historical research: "Understanding the historical, political, social, and material context in which earlier documents were created also helps us be more aware of the web of influences and constraints that affect business communication today and thus helps us to be better able to assess, and if need be, work to change them" (p. 123). The medieval business documents studied in English thus far follow the set of rules and codes termed the ars dictaminis, or art of letter writing (Richardson, 1984, 1985). In the Renaissance, this formula disappears. Why and exactly when did this apparently much-used formula fall out of fashion? Previous studies of business and administrative documents have focused on the legal discourse of the Chancery court (Burchfield, 1985; Gorlach, 1991; Clanchy, 1979; McIntosh, Samuels, & Benskin, 1986). Studies of literacy in England (Cressy, 1975; 1980) have enlarged our picture of how ordinary men and women communicated just after the medieval period. Davis' work on the Paston papers (c. 1420-1520/1971) as well as early editions of the Plumpton (1461-1552/Stapleton, 1839) and Stonor (1420-1483/Kingsford, 1919) correspondence have contributed primary data for study. Other materials from the medieval period now in print include the collection of royal writs and letters and guild documents of London English from 1384 to 1425 (Chambers & Daunt, 1967). The most important work on Chancery English - and, by extension, on business writing in the late medieval period - has been done by Fisher (1977), Fisher, Richardson, and Fisher (1984), and Richardson (1980, 1984, 1985, 1997). Both Richardson and Fisher suggest that the dictamen was the base for all business writing in the medieval period and that it was "universally accepted for public and private correspondence" (Richardson, 1997, p. 136). This conclusion regarding business writing is based on a study of important primary materials, such as the Paston papers and the mass of Chancery documents in the Public Record Office in London. However, I will argue in this paper that the dictamen was not universally accepted by business writers of English and that it did not suddenly disappear in the English Renaissance. Instead, I claim, the old formulas for letter writing were gradually discarded by business people in the hundred or more years prior to 1500. My support for these conclusions emerges from the language of the Cely letters and papers, language that, except for my dissertation (Thomas, 1994), has not been studied closely and that provides evidence for reconsidering some of our established views on the development of business writing. The Cely papers are particularly appropriate for a historical study of business writing for three reasons. First, the Celys were a London family, and although they owned property in Essex, their primary residence was in London, and their business affairs were concentrated there. In contrast, the Pastons, Plumptons, and Stonors ran their affairs from their country estates. London was England's business center; London English fed into Chancery English and into what later became standard English (Fisher, 1977). Second, the Celys are firmly based in the middle class. They were never part of the aristocracy or gentry during the span of the letters or later, although they achieved significant economic success and cultivated friends and associates among the aristocracy. …

L’Epistola Manfredi ad Romanos, integralement conservee dans le seul ms. Fitalia de Palerme, est un texte fondamental pour comprendre la culture politique et l’ideologie des derniers Hohenstaufen, a la veille de l’invasion angevine. Ce texte ou le fils de Frederic II revendique l’empire contient en particulier une redefinition des rapports entre Rome et le concept imperial qui en fait un jalon important dans l’histoire politique medievale. A la veille d’une nouvelle edition, une relecture des differentes tentatives d’edition-commentaire operees en Allemagne et en Italie, et en particulier de l’edition classique d’Arsenio Frugoni, permet de poser une serie de questions sur le poids des historiographies et des methodologies de travail nationales dans l’interpretation de ce qui reste peut-etre le dictamen politique du XIIIe siecle le plus difficile a analyser.

Letters represent one of the most common forms of women s writing that survives for the late-medieval period, and thus an important source for re-examining levels of lay female literacy and for exploring the lives and experiences of a range of women: royal, aristocratic, and mercantile. Perhaps the most probing question that confronts scholars of women s epistolary writing is that of composition. Most medieval women s letters appear not to have been penned in the woman s own hand, raising interesting issues relating to female literacy. Yet, the fact that a woman did not write a letter herself is not necessarily indicative of her inability to write: it is highly likely that medieval tradition dictated use of an amanuensis rather than a pen.1 Allied to the question of scribal status are issues of female authorship, and the degree to which varying forms of collaboration inflected and mediated women’s writing. In exploring the category of medieval women s authorship, this essay argues for the relative fluidity of the letter-writing process, the reconstruction of which demands attention to material, scribal, stylistic, intertextual, and historical concerns. It also investigates other issues relating to female epistolarity, assessing the degree to which letters were influenced by the ars dictaminis and other conventions, and how far epistolary modes were gendered or marked by social differences. Finally, the essay interrogates the question of ‘personal’ and ‘private in women’s letters, and outlines the nature of correspondence, sketching the uses women made of letters, and the light these documents shed on female activities and relationships.