Lawrence of Aquilegia - Influence

Influence

While Lawrence is known for taking the ars dictaminis to its “mechanistic dead end” (Perelman 1991) and marking its decline, his pragmatic approach marks the corresponding rise of a new movement in Italy: the ars notaria. With the ars notaria, a new class of writers appeared, working as professional secretaries and scribes. These early notaries concerned themselves with documents’ forms and legal documents.

With his formulaic approach to the ars dictaminis, Lawrence introduced a pragmatic form in his Practica that “t the chartistic view to its ultimate point” (Murphy 1974). Furthermore, the Practica marks a shift from content- to form-based writing and emphasizes a “phatic rhetoric of personal and official relations” (Perelman 1991). Unlike the classical rhetorical style concerned with persuasion, Lawrence’s works concern writing for social purposes, as is clear from his extensive treatment of the salutation in his treatises on letter writing (Jensen 1973). Medieval rhetoric scholar, James J. Murphy, stresses the phatic approach characterized by Lawrence’s writing, noting “It is the addressee’s level which determines the nature of the letter, not the subject matter or the level of the writer, or the intentions of the writer” (1974).

Lawrence’s applied approach to letter writing also stands as an early ancestor to modern texts on business communication (Perelman 1991). Just as teachers today direct their students to examples of memos and reports in textbooks, Lawrence directed his students to his model letters and tables in the Practica and related texts (Perelman 1991).