The Medieval Teaching Aid. The Analysis of One Page from the Manuscript by Jakub of Piotrków Cover Image

Średniowieczna pomoc dydaktyczna. Studium jednej karty z rękopisu Jakuba z Piotrkowa
The Medieval Teaching Aid. The Analysis of One Page from the Manuscript by Jakub of Piotrków

Author(s): Dorota Masłej
Subject(s): Cultural history, Polish Literature, 13th to 14th Centuries, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: macrostructure of the page; layout of prayers and commentaries; creative process; lecture in the Middle Ages; mnemonics; medieval didactics; Jakub of Piotrków; basic prayers and commentaries;

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to characterize page 190v of the manuscript preserved in the Jagiellonian Library (cat. number 1297). The page in question contains prayers and commentaries. Hitherto, researchers have neglected this page, so it has not been thoroughly described and some elements of the layout have not been identified or have indeed been misidentified (cf. A. Brückner, W.R. Rzepka and W. Wydra, C.K. Święcki et al.). The foregoing research has considered the page as a separate item disregarding the surrounding pages. In this paper, the author discusses the page as a whole. Th is allowed her to ask new questions concerning: the writer’s intention, the function of the page, and the possible status of this old-Polish text. In the main part of the paper, the author makes an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of writing the elements of the layout (page composition), paying special attention to the relations between the elements. According to the author, it is possible to reconstruct the probable sequence of the writer’s actions, and therefore to retrace the creative process of the scribe (known as Jakub of Piotrków, the Canon of Płock). The author assumes there were three stages of the writer’s work. In the first stage, he wrote Polish and Latin texts of Pater noster and Credo on the page. Then the page could have been used to lecture on the prayers or to teach how to memorize them.

  • Issue Year: 17/2015
  • Issue No: 2 (35)
  • Page Range: 219-240
  • Page Count: 22
  • Language: Polish