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Grammar, dialectics, rhetoric - works from the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek

Grammar, rhetoric and dialectics formed part of the so-called Seven Liberal Arts (Septem artes liberales) in (late) antiquity and the Middle Ages. A distinction was made between the trivium, which consisted of these three subjects focused on linguistics and logic reasoning, and the advanced quadrivium of the mathematical subjects arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. In medieval educational practices, this canon of subjects was regarded as preparation for the higher faculties of theology, jurisprudence and medicine. These texts were correspondingly important and widespread.

bavarikon presents some historical manuscripts and prints of the classical trivium, including, for example, a collective manuscript on grammar (Clm 6411) from the 2nd third of the 9th century and the mnemonics (Cgm 4413) created around 1475 in the Nördlingen area, which can certainly be considered part of rhetoric – the art of free speech. The speeches by Ephraem Graecus (Cod.graec. 319) and the original Greek sermons by Origenes (Cod.graec. 314), only identified as such in 2012, can also be understood as being part of the trivium. The manuscript of Jean Robertets (died 1492) work Les douze dames de rhétorique (Cod.gall. 15) is particularly impressive in its visual design.

Further collections of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek on the subject in bavarikon

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