The Forgotten Empire of Ars dictaminis (Eleventh-Fifteenth Centuries)

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.