Erasmus

Erasmus has an interesting history, as he was born the son of a priest, and expected to follow in the same footsteps. He grew up studying theology, but wished to escape this life to pursue humanist studies. However, his wishes to pursue other things were not fulfilled until later on in his life when the pope finally released him to remain in the world. I thought his history regarding religion is somewhat typical of clergymen of the time, since this was viewed by many as a mere profession, and often times one that was expected from sons who were not heirs. Few clergy men actually saw anything regarding Christianity, and few were even captured by it. Erasmus attended the very same school of theology that Martin Luther attended. Martin Luther was one of the few clergymen who experienced enlightenment from the Bible and did something with it, while Erasmus sort of seems to fall into the norm of the clergymen who were turned off by the deadness of the Catholic Church.

Although he was more interested in the humanities than religion, Erasmus learned Greek, he re-wrote the New Testament of the Bible into a textually accurate version of Greek, which is the language that the New Testament was originally in. His accomplishment in revising the New Testament encouraged the clergymen to learn more about the Church Fathers rather than just focusing on commentary to pass down to the clergymen in training. 

Renaissance Rhetoric

During the Renaissance, traditional establishments such as the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the way of thinking that accompanied such establishments. People began to look to science, and literature for answers and institutions that allowed more of the population to be educated were established. During this time, people began to look at the teachings of the ancient Greeks, and thus rhetoric became one of the things that was focused on during this time of scholarly expansion. During the Renaissance, it is hard to pinpoint the origin of rhetoric during this time, although it has been traced through certain scholars who have coupled rhetoric with philosophy and eloquence, rather than keeping keeping the scope of rhetoric focused on figures and tropes. Though rhetoric is hard to trace in the Renaissance by not being chronological or geographical, we do see some of the outcomes of rhetoric during this time. For example Ramus took the responsibility upon himself to simplify rhetoric. Rhetoric needed to be simplified due to what was going on with the times. Simplified rhetoric was necessary because more people were becoming literate, and they needed to be able to comprehend the rhetoric that they could now access. Also, in correlation with the printing press, books were becoming smaller because technology allowed for people to move more freely about the land and so books needed to be portable. The simplification of rhetoric allowed for the increasing literate population to bring books along with them.

Anonymous

The art of letter writing is explored in this piece by Anonymous. Ars dictaminis started out as any written text, but was later reduced to just letter writing. At first, letters were not taken so lightly as they are today since not everybody could read and write, and attaining literacy was expensive.  Cicero had listed six parts of speech that were later conformed to a model for writing letters. These six parts of speech consist of the exordium (introduction), narratio (background information), divisio (outline of the upcoming argument), confirmatio (argument or proof), refutatio (rebuttle), and peroratio (conclusion). After applying these six elements of speech to written text, specifically letters, the formula had to change because written text is entirely different than oration. For example, when applying these aspects of speech to letter writing, Alberic had to remove the one that focuses on argument because not all letters have an argument as much as they just relay facts or news from one person to the next. I  think that the formula for speech changed when it was applied to written letters because letters fulfill a different purpose than speech does.

Boethius and Invention

Boethius was a rhetorician who took Aristotle's rhetorical components of style, memory, invention, delivery, and disposition and applied them to his own work. Aristotle believed that each of these components held its own importance and that one should not be held above the other. However, when Boethius brings up these rhetorical elements in his own writings, he doesn't directly say that invention is above the rest of these elements, but he implies that invention is more important than style, memory, delivery, and disposition by talking about invention and the elements within invention for two and a half out of four of his books. The elements within invention are introduction, proof, argument, partition, refutation, and peroration. Boethius seems to justify spending the majority of his work on these elements of invention that he came up with himself by giving each one of the elements its own significance that seems to match the significance of the original five elements that Aristotle talked about. Aristotle focused on spoken rhetoric. By adding these new elements to invention, Boethius was focusing on written rhetoric. His argument for adding these elements to invention was that they each are something that needs to be invented while creating a written rhetorical work. For example, the introduction needs to be invented by the writer before it can be utilized. After the introduction is invented, the argument needs to be invented or else the piece of writing would be incomplete. This logic continues with each one of these elements.

I think the reason why Boethius added these elements to invention is because of the vastly different nature of writing in comparison to speech. Writing has a different level of organization than speech does, and thus requires more specific detail than just invention itself.