Ars Dictaminis Research Articles

Killing the Messenger in Richard Coer de Lyon

Abstract Reading the ars dictaminis as a medieval media theory that carefully accounts for the relationships the epistle generates between the text object and its users, this article examines the human body of the epistolary messenger as a locus of anxiety in both medieval rhetoricians’ theorizations of epistolarity and literary depictions of epistolarity. Letter-writing manuals—such as Guido Faba’s Summa dictaminis (ca. 1228–29), Thomas of Capua’s Ars dictandi (1216–20), and Conrad von Mure’s Summa de arte prosandi (1275–76)—emphasize the status of the letter as a material object, operating among and across human and nonhuman bodies in what is termed here the epistolary circuit. The messenger’s human body is a site of vulnerability to violence, particularly in romances, which often depict the subsumption of individual bodies into the machineries of statecraft. The titular hero of Richard Coer de Lyon (early fourteenth century) kills hostages and turns their bodies into pseudoepistles, parodying the complementary relationship between textual “body” and human body inherent in the epistolary circuit, as established in the reading offered here of the dictaminal treatises.

Neobjavljeni rukopis prepiske venecijanskog dužda Frančeska Donata podestadu grada Buje (XVI vek)

The 16th-century records produced by the office of the Venetian Doge comprise a rich collection of official documents. They were written according to the rules of ars dictaminis and represent important testimonies in the field of history, diplomacy, culture, and other related areas. One example of such documents is the ducal letter from the Venetian Doge Francesco Donato, dated to the 16th century and kept in the State Archives in Pazin. The paleographic characteristics of the manuscript make the text partially legible because it was written on parchment that has a missing part. On the other hand, when it comes to diplomatic features, it can be concluded that it is an official epistle, written in a formal register according to the rules of ars dictaminis and ars notariae, characteristic of Renaissance Italian documents. It is precisely for that reason that this source represents a valuable testimony within the framework of cultural heritage, history, and diplomacy.

Nicolaus De Sanctis, Clement IV and the Roman Curia in Search of Identity

This article deals with a less known Latin treatise, called Moral Rhetoric on the Functions of the Members of the Human Body. It is by the Capuan rhetorician Nicolaus de Sanctis, chaplain to several popes, and is dedicated to pope Clement IV (1265–1268). This unusual work has shown that it is perhaps a kind of mirror of Christian society as the Roman Curia wanted it to be, through the difficult times during the wars over the Sicilian succession, in which the Papacy was deeply involved. It is also an important link in the history of medieval organological literature and the rhetorical tradition associated with ars dictaminis cultivated in Southern Italy.

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.

Symmetry in the Ars Praedicandi and Dictaminis During Late Medieval Siena

Symmetry in the Ars Praedicandi and Dictaminis During Late Medieval Siena

ДОМ УЧЕНОСТИ, СЕМЕНА ЗНАНИЯ, СОКРОВИЩНИЦА НАУКИ: РИТОРИЧЕСКИЕ ОБРАЗЫ И СОЦИАЛЬНЫЕ МЕТАФОРЫ ЗАПАДНОЕВРОПЕЙСКИХ УНИВЕРСИТЕТСКИХ СООБЩЕСТВ В XIII–XIV ВВ.

The article scrutinizes the ideas about the academic communities typical for the Latin world of the 13th and 14th centuries. It focuses on the ‘metaphorical vocabulary’ of academic corporations that was formed at that time within the framework of the Ars Dictaminis and was widely used to substantiate the status of university communities. These metaphors significantly supplemented the vague legal concepts that described academic communities (studium/studium generale, universitas). The most widespread metaphors of higher education institutions included such images as house of scholarship, seeds of knowledge, and treasure. All of them had deep roots in the Holy Scripture, but became widespread thanks to ‘exemplary’ texts included in rhetorical manuals and summae. With their help, social reality was interpreted within the framework of rhetoric as an epistemic system, often overlapping with the spheres of law and theology. The paper considers these metaphors in the context of their distribution, within the networks of local political and cultural ties drawing on cases of two Iberian universities – those of Lisbon (founded between 1288 and 1290) and Lleida (founded in 1300).

Estudio de la Summa dictaminis composita iuxta doctrinam Tullii de Lorenzo de Aquileya

Despite being recognized as one of the most renowned masters of ars dictaminis of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the figure of Laurentius de Aquilegia has not received the attention that the importance of his work requires. Of his varied production as a master of dictamen, it has been his synoptic treatises that have aroused the most interest among scholars, to the point that his two great summae have lacked monographic studies so far. This essay focuses on one of them, the Summa dictaminis composita iuxta doctrinam Tullii. It proposes an update of the state of the question, provides new evidence on the manuscript tradition and analyzes its most relevant doctrinal aspects. This approach to the author’s work should serve as a first step to a future critical edition of the Summa.

Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain by Sol Miguel-Prendes

Reviewed by: Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain by Sol Miguel-Prendes Loreto Romero Miguel-Prendes, Sol. Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain. U of North Carolina P, 2019. ISBN: 978-1-4696-5195-8. Narrating Desire: Moral Consolation and Sentimental Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Spain brings forth a new framework against which to explore the rise, techniques, and momentum of sentimental fiction. Sol Miguel-Prendes traces the origins of this uniquely Iberian genre to the ars dictaminis, Franciscan contemplative practices, and Catalan penitential consolations, which developed from the former two in the Crown of Aragon. Contrary to a general tendency amongst critics to read sentimental fictions against a courtly background and the materia de amore tradition, Miguel-Prendes highlights their Christian discursive fabric, first noticed by Deyermond. Building on her seminal article "Reimagining Diego de San Pedro's Readers at Work: Cárcel de amor" (2004), she proposes that sentimental fictions participated in a prayer-book mentality that stemmed from the reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council. Narrating Desire unearths a genealogy that goes back to Augustine's Confessions and Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, both of which were at the core of monastic practices of reading as affective meditation and moral conversion. At a time when the spread of literacy had begun to provide a more private and intimate connection with the written letter, these practices reached the laity through the liberal arts curriculum and the evangelizing efforts of the Franciscan order. In their distortion of the rhetoric of consolation due to the force of imagination, Sol Miguel-Prendes concludes, sentimental fictions came to life heralding the modern novel. The book consists of three lengthy chapters, which in their turn are divided into in several sections. Throughout each chapter and its subdivisions, Miguel-Prendes uncovers the intellectual and literary roots of sentimental fiction. She delineates the genre's boundaries, cultural contexts, and motives in light of contemplative lay practices as they translated into Catalan and Castilian literature. Although she doesn't substantially alter the types of narratives traditionally considered as works of sentimental fictions, she redefines the parameters of the genre distancing it from the influence of the Italian triad—Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio—and bringing it closer to late-medieval educational works on virtuous living. Narrating Desire accounts for the uses and recasting of dictaminal compositional techniques (dream vision, pseudo-autobiography, the debate of Reason and Will, among [End Page 240] others) and motives (such as maritime metaphors to signify the violence of desire) in Catalan and Castilian fictions and it traces a multilingual network of influence and exchange. Miguel-Prendes underscores the productivity of allegory, which—in her opinion—allows for the emergence of desire and individuality. In narratives of consolation, the blind seer Tiresias and Lady Philosophy have a therapeutic role, whereas the lovesick Orpheus, like the Muses, stands for the inspired madness of the poetic imagination. As Tiresias is displaced by Orpheus and Lady Philosophy and the Muses by a woman, the balance of desire and conversion tilts towards desire and imagination in ways crucial to the development of sentimental fictions and to the novel in general terms. Drawing from Bakhtin, Miguel-Prendes situates the precursory status of works of sentimental fiction in their disassociation of the moral gaze from the curious glance. Chapter 1, "The Consolation of Schoolmen," focuses on the adaptation of classical authors to Christian ethics in the homosocial school environment, where the Augustinian-Boethian philosophy of contemptus mundi clashed with the violent eroticism of Ovidian and Pseudo-Ovidian narratives. Miguel-Prendes argues that the genre of the lover's consolation came into being as a result of the confrontation between a stoic model of masculinity that championed the rational man's power over his natural impulses and the lurid imagery of classical texts, which most likely prompted young minds towards the delights of carnal reading and of reading for entertainment. This chapter is key to her main thesis that sentimental fiction skewed the ethical reading practices proffered by their school environment. The author explores a wide variety of Peninsular literary consolations rooted in Boethius: among them, Petrus Compostellanus's De...

Competition, Narrative, and Literary Copia in the Works of Boncompagno da Signa and Guido Faba

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.

Gender and the language of politics in thirteenth‐century queens’ letters

This article examines how the ars dictaminis, the conventions which governed medieval letter writing, was used within a selection of thirteenth-century royal letters written in the names of Berenguela of Castile, Blanche of Castile, Violant of Hungary, Marguerite of Provence, Eleanor of Provence, Blanche of Navarre and some of the men with whom they most frequently corresponded. In setting out contemporary usage of the ars dictaminis within this selection, this article proffers an examination of formal and public expression of power (both female and male) in thirteenth-century letters – an expression which was articulated surprisingly similarly – and highlights the complexities of female political dialogue.

Tra storiografia e retorica: prospettive nel basso medioevo italiano

This monographic section assembles in a widely re-elaborated way the reports presented during the workshop The trade of Writing History: the Birth and Evolution of the Historiographic Job between 13 th and15 th Century that took place in Potenza in April 2016. In the following essays it is recalled a wide chronological period focusing on three moments where a meeting between high cultural education of the writers and historiographical works took place. The path starts at the beginning of the 13 th Century with the analysis of the chronicle of Boncompagno da Signa, magister of ars dictaminis who wrote when the secular chroniclers of the same years had a professional education that included the rhetoric study. In the second stage attention is given to the writings of Albertino Mussato, crowned poet and historian in the Padua University, who tried to use in the historiographical contest the renewed knowledge of the Latin literature reached at the threshold of the 14 th Century. The arrival point is made by the analysis of historiography writend in the Neapolitan court of Alfonso il Magnanimo during the forties of the 15 th Century, when Lorenzo Valla and Bartolomeo Facio, beyond composing the historiographical works, clashed in a harsh controversy that had as its object in the correct way of writing history

Al servicio del rey. Sobre la carta real diplomática de la Corona de Aragón (1336-1458)

El objetivo de este artículo es reconstruir la evolución morfológica de la carta real diplomática catalanoaragonesa entre los reinados de Pedro el Ceremonioso y Alfonso el Magnánimo. A lo largo de este período, esta tipología documental, siguiendo los principios del Ars dictaminis, adaptó sus características externas e internas a las acciones jurídicas que contenía y a sus destinatarios, sin renunciar por ello a su simplicidad material y textual. Con su adecuación a las necesidades comunicativas de la monarquía, la carta real diplomática se convirtió en un instrumento de gobierno que contribuyó al fortalecimiento del poder real y anticipó formas que alcanzarán su pleno desarrollo en época moderna.

Ars dictaminis im Mittelalter und in der gegenwart

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.

Diffusion et réception du Somnium morale pharaonis de Jean de Limoges : pour une meilleure connaissance des pratiques dictaminales

This study tries to demonstrate the incredible diffusion of John of Limoges’s manuscript of the Somnium morale pharaonis, diffusion until now widely unknown by the research world. By a systematic study of the manuscript corpus, rich in 86 codices, this article underlines the plurality in practices of John’s work, with a particular focus on the relation that unites the Somnium with the ars dictaminis field. Far from being restricted to a single use, John’s work shines by its typological plasticity, as demonstrated by the study of the textual collections in which it fits. The analysis of the diffusion environment, combined with the codicological clues, also underlines the deep anchorage of the text within university environments.

Introduction

Introduction Linda C. Mitchell more than a decade ago, several articles on letter writing were accepted for publication in the Huntington Library Quarterly. Susan Green, then the editor of the journal, knew that I was working on the subject, along with some of my colleagues. We proceeded to assemble a group of articles for a double issue of the journal (vol. 66, nos. 3 and 4, now available on JSTOR). Like the articles in the present issue, those in that double issue ranged over about five centuries and examined materials of differing nature and purpose. The earlier issue, published in 2003, reflected a sense that the varying generic contexts of letter writing deserved investigation within the compass of a single volume. The richness of epistolary forms has since been treated in many books and articles, including Cultures of Correspondence in Early Modern Britain (2016), edited by James Daybell and Andrew Gordon, reviewed in the current issue by Jason Scott-Warren. Lines of inquiry pursued in literary studies have brought greater attention to letters, as scholars have extensively researched the material aspects of the transmission of manuscripts. In the current issue, essays by Daybell and Graham Williams address these concerns in particular. Many recent studies have called attention to the inter-section of manuscript and print as forms of dissemination in the early modern period. Letters, because they typically originated as manuscripts but were then circulated and collected in a variety of ways, have proved important sources for these investigations. Rachael Scarborough King’s essay on newsletters in this issue is one such study. Yet the articles in both issues lead collectively to an appreciation of epistolary form as a lens through which many other kinds of discourse, in both manuscript and print, can be viewed. The basic rhetorical situation of an exchange between individuals, regardless of how avowedly public or private, shares intriguing boundaries with various genres. In some of the best-known early novels, epistolary form links the rhetorical convention of reliability to persuasive fiction (and both Daniel Defoe and Samuel Richardson published letter-writing manuals, which Victoria Myers discusses [End Page 343] in the earlier issue). As Daybell notes in the current issue, “the letter acted as a kind of textual or cultural portmanteau, facilitating the broader transmission of other manuscript texts (prose, verse, libels, and recipes) as well as the wider dissemination of news, information, scientific knowledge, and ideas.” One of the most important roles of letters in the early modern period was communication across formidable distances. Bill Sherman, in an essay published in the earlier issue, surveys documents dispatched from the American continent to Europe, but sometimes not recognized as epistolary. Though strongly linked, rhetorically, to reportage, this material was subject to editorial intervention and frequently failed to reach its intended destination. A few examples Sherman points to originated among the Jesuits. Grant Boswell’s article in the same issue urges that, despite the longstanding reputation of Jesuit correspondence among scholars for inaccuracy and inconsistency, the Society’s establishment of hierarchical epistolary networks led to the efficient transmission of news, once the order expanded exponentially. The ars dictaminis derived from classical practice blended literary, political, and juridical modes of discourse, ultimately reflected in the publication of a great many prescriptive letter-writing manuals in the early modern period. The impact on medieval pedagogical practice is exemplified in Martin Camargo’s essay in this issue. Letter-writing manuals included both general instruction and model letters for nearly every social and business purpose, and they linked epistolary norms to proper behavior in surprisingly specific ways. I provide a brief bibliography of letter-writing manuals in my article in the earlier volume, which has been revised for this issue. Full of admonition, and designed to influence behavior even more than to demonstrate letter-writing etiquette, such manuals were highly conventional and quite literally redundant—and they were nearly as popular as Bibles. But despite didactic purposes in common with scripture, the sample letters in these volumes narrate harrowing predicaments in the kind of detail that invites comparison with epistolary fiction. Each of the two issues contains an article focused on a pair of correspondents of whom only one was...

Les frontières du 'dictamen.' Structuration et dynamiques d’un espace textuel médiéval (XIIIe–XVe s.)

A study of the practice of dictamen among the schools and chanceries of Late medieval Europe (13th–15th c.) offers a broad range of perspectives in order to map neglected dimensions of late medieval textual cultures. It is well known that Ars dictaminis was a set of rhetorical doctrines, mostly devised for and used in the world of chanceries and for the redaction of letters and charters. But how exactly did the process of translation of a sophisticated rhetoric in an epistolary, mostly political practice, work? This paper focuses on the coalescence and the impact of the rhetoric ‘database’ constituted by the great collections of dictamina traditionally called summae dictaminis . This material served as a matrix to create an immense array of rhetorically and rhythmically similar texts throughout Europe during at least two centuries. This process transcends the disciplinary frontiers between literary and politico-administrative studies. Not only had classical ars dictaminis developed into a sort of semi-formulaic logic, a combinatory technique that was in some ways more akin to poetry than to what we would imagine under the heading of ‘letter writing,’ but the variety of texts impacted by these techniques also cancelled every genetic barrier between ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’ textual production.

Herrschaftslegitimation im Diskurs

Abstract In the course of the 11th century, the economic and demographic growth within the Italian cities and its consequential social problems led to an increasing tension between the aristocratic vassal milieu comprising the bishop on one side and the urban elites on the other. Amongst others, one consequence was the takeover of domination by communal institutions resulting in an independent political participation of the citizens. However, these new communes suffered from a lack of legitimacy. The contemporaries were well aware of the contingency of the communes. The communal discourse as taught in the rhetoric system of the ars dictaminis reveals how domination was conceptualized in the 12th century.

‘I love you, please notice me’: the hierarchical rhetoric of Twitter fandom

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-followed Twitter accounts (Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Barack Obama, Rihanna, and Taylor Swift) are classified by which of the ars dictaminis elements they accomplish. The findings suggest that, given the limitations of the medium, Twitter users focus on captatio benevolentiae and petitio in addressing stars. It is particularly startling that users often construct their Twitter handles as a reference to the star, thereby soliciting goodwill in the rhetorical space of message sender rather than content. The apparent emphasis on captatio benevolentiae – or facework – suggests a maintenance of hierarchical borders among Twitter addressers and addressees in line with synthetic personalisation. Implications are discussed for the future study of the rhetoric of fandom and parasocial interaction online.

The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy by Ronald G. Witt (review)

Reviewed by: The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy by Ronald G. Witt Charles M. Radding The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy. By Ronald G. Witt. (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2012. Pp. xii, 604. $120.00. ISBN 978-0-521-76474-2.) As Ronald Witt explains at the beginning of this book, he began his research into Italian culture in 1977 with the idea of studying language, literature, and education in the kingdom of Italy from the Carolingian period until the fifteenth century. It was only later that he decided to divide his initial project into two parts and to publish first the book that dealt specifically with the (much better studied) first 150 years of the humanist movement; that book turned out to be the monumental “In the Footsteps of the Ancients”: The Origins of Italian Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Boston, 2000). Indeed, the historiography of the earlier period has been a mess, with studies of varying quality on single localities, authors, or texts but nothing to provide a general overview. But Witt never lost sight of his original plan, and now we have the book to fill the gap in the historiography that originally stymied him. This will be an essential work for historians of medieval culture and not just in Italy, for in addition to sifting the wheat from the abundant chaff of earlier research, Witt’s deep familiarity with the original sources permits him to arrive at a comprehensive picture of Italian culture and education from the eighth to the thirteen centuries. Witt introduces the concept of the dual Latin cultures of medieval Italy in part I, covering the period between the Carolingians and the late-eleventh century. Although the first of these cultures, focused on studying books and centered in ecclesiastical schools, is familiar to all scholars of medieval Europe, Italy was unique in possessing a second strata of education and culture largely in the hands of laymen, especially the legal professionals—notaries and judges—of northern Italy. Not only does this second culture, focused on law and expressed by the production and use of documents, [End Page 781] have no parallel elsewhere in Europe, but Witt shows in parts II and III that it grew in importance in the later eleventh and twelfth centuries as it expanded to include ars dictaminis, the study of Roman law, and eventually canon law. But the growing importance of legal studies had the effect of greatly restricting the role in Italian cul-ture of other kinds of literary activities. Little poetry was written in the twelfth-century kingdom of Italy, and what there was usually took as its subject local, civic concerns. The same was true of history, and even hagiography—often a subject that inspired more ambitious Latin prose—rarely achieved anything of literary interest. In parts IV and V Witt turns his attention to the thirteenth century, beginning with an explicit comparison with the literary culture of twelfth-century France, where by the later part of the century the elements of Italian ars dictaminis merged into a broader study of rhetoric and composition, including manuals for composing sermons. By the thirteenth century, these influences fed back into Italy as they were taken up both by the papal initiatives in favor of preaching and in the education and practice of the growing class of notaries. Although still overwhelmingly laymen, these notaries were now educated at Bologna and elsewhere to an increasingly sophisticated mastery of Latin, and they put those skills to use as authors of histories, defenders of the active life of the towns, and eventually pioneers in returning to classical norms of eloquence. With this last development, seen in Lovato de’ Lovati, a notary of Padua, and his disciple and successor Albertino Mussato, we arrive at the starting point of “In the Footsteps of the Ancients.” In this book, therefore, Witt demonstrates how the unique culture of the Italian humanism grew out of the unique culture of medieval Italy. Charles M. Radding Michigan State University Copyright © 2013 The Catholic University of America Press

A Switch of Language: Elizabeth I's Use of the Vernacular as a Key to her Early Protestantism

AbstractFrom childhood Elizabeth was trained in the ‘New Learning’ and brought up under Protestant influences. Her juvenilia attest to this immersion in Protestant and humanist education. The youthful Elizabeth often wrote formal Latin letters in the style of the mediaeval ars dictaminis replete with humanist and Protestant imagery. She continued this style of writing throughout her brother's reign. However, after Parliament passed the Act of Uniformity of 1549, Elizabeth stopped writing formal Latin letters to her brother and switched to formal English ones instead. This essay will argue that this switch was intentional on the part of Elizabeth; and set within the context of the time gives an early clue to Elizabeth's solidarity with her brother's Protestant efforts in England.