Open AccessA Mediaeval Teaching Aid. An Analysis of One Page from the Manuscript by Jakub of Piotrków
Author(s) -
Dorota Masłej
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
terminus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2084-3844
pISSN - 2082-0984
DOI - 10.4467/20843844te.19.006.11114
Subject(s) - sequence (biology) , linguistics , orality , function (biology) , computer science , composition (language) , literature , history , art , sociology , philosophy , pedagogy , genetics , evolutionary biology , biology , literacy
The purpose of this paper is to characterise page 190v of the manuscript preserved in the Jagiellonian Library (shelfmark 1297). The foregoing research has considered the page as a separate item, while the present study poses new questions concerning the writer’s intention, the function of the page, and its possible status.The main part of the paper is an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of writing the elements of the layout, or page composition, paying special attention to the relations between them. Reconstructing the probable sequence of writing the texts on the analysed page allows the proposal of a hypothesis of how the author (known as Jakub of Piotrków, the Canon of Płock) worked on it. The analysis shows that the author’s intention could have changed as subsequent elements were being written on the page.Certain elements of the page were selected for use depending on the audience of the lecture and its purpose. The latest research that linguistic relics like this one, closely bound up with orality of the mediaeval language, are not (were not) complete works in their final shapes, but rather texts in statu nascendi. The text discussed is an example of a genuine teaching aid that served the writer, Jakub of Piotrków, and probably later clergymen in ministering.