THE SECONDARY SYLLABUS AS AN INTEGRATED CURRICULUM

In the three preceding chapters, an attempt has been made to analyse the secondary grammar curriculum in Italian schools during the middle ages and earlier Renaissance. The emphasis has been on identifying the constituent elements of the syllabus: formal grammar rules, vocabularies, composition exercises, mnemonic verses, synonyms/homonyms, orthographies, minor and major authors. It is well established that there was a progression from the auctores minores to the maiores, but otherwise it is not always evident in what order the rest of the curriculum was presented.

Fortunately, some insight into the manner and order in which the theoretical, practical and literary elements of the grammar syllabus were integrated in early fifteenth-century Florence is offered by a schoolbook now preserved as manuscript BNCF Landau Fin. 202. This paper codex, the work of a group of Florentine schoolboys, contains four texts (Statius's Achilleis (1r–15r), Cartula (16r–24r), Disticha Catonis (24v-31v) and the opening two books of Alexander of Villedieu's Doctrinale (32v-47v)), followed by a series of grammatical exercises (48r-118r, 138r-144r). The first thirteen folios were written by a young member of the Florentine lite, Antoniotto di Giovanni di Paolo Morelli (hand A), who left his note of possession on the inside back cover (I'): ‘Iste liber est mei Antoniotti Johannis Pauli de Morellis’.