This volume brings together ten essays, which contribute to our knowledge of the teaching of Latin in late medieval grammar schools and universities in various parts of Europe. Medieval education consisted of three stages, all of which involved instruction in some aspects of literacy and language skills in Latin. Elementary education introduced the pupils to the very basics of literacy and learning. Starting with the alphabet and syllables, the pupils would gradually progress to apply their skills to easy reading texts, such as the principal prayers of the Christian church, including Pater Noster, the Credo and the Psalms. At the secondary level of education, the pupils studied the basics of Latin grammar, as presented in Donatus’s Ars minor (mid-4th cent. A.D.) or one of its medieval adaptations, which helped him to acquire and gradually master the basic rules by which well-formed speech could be achieved. The pupils who progressed further to the third level of instruction had to learn to approach grammar as a highly theoretical university subject, which raised questions of the relationship between language, reality and the human mind. The principal authority for the advanced study of grammar was Priscian’s Institutiones grammaticae (c.500 A.D.), which also included the only theory of syntax inherited from Antiquity. The first sixteen books containing a theory of the parts of speech, known as the Priscian maior, began to be studied as soon as it became widely available in the Carolingian reform (see, e.g., Law 2003: 143–197), whereas the syntactical theory contained in the last two books, the Priscian minor, became a major object of interest from the 12th century onwards, being pursued in intimate association with Aristotelian philosophy especially in the Northern schools.

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Gerson, Jean (Johannes)

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Henry of Avranches

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Bland, Cynthia Renée

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Hunt, Tony

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Ising, Erika

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Marenbon, John

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