ABSTRACT
During the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth century, the period when dictamen achieved its greatest acceptance in the English Chancery, formal instruction in the art of letter writing was based on collections of models and on manuals imported from France and Italy. Among the French treatises, Bernard of Meung's was by far the most popular in England. Model letters like Bernard's were too general and too far removed from the immediate circumstances with which an Englishman trained in dictamen might be expected to deal to suit the purposes of teachers like Thomas Sampson or William Kingsmill. B. N. lat. 14193, probably the oldest English manuscript, most nearly replicates the format of the best French and German exemplars, with which it is B. N. lat. 14193 is a composite manuscript. Among its heterogeneous and entirely unrelated contents is part of a summa dictaminis, written on eleven parchment leaves in a single hand.
