Citation
Ann Blair, "Textbooks and Methods of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe," in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, ed. Emidio Campi, Simone de Angelis, Anja-Silvia Goeing and Anthony Grafton (Geneva: Droz, 2008), pp. 39-73. Harvard DASH repository.
Overview
Blair surveys the practices by which students and listeners in ancient, medieval, and early modern Europe generated written records from oral events (lectures, sermons, disputations). The central claim: "textbooks" in this period frequently originated as student notes, and the practices that produced those notes — reportatio, dictation, manuscript copying, and team-based transcription — were themselves sophisticated knowledge-management technologies grounded in the pedagogical conviction that writing aids retention.
Key Takeaways
- Note-taking from oral events is multi-stage: first-order messy notes (Mitschriften) taken live, then clean copies (Reinschriften / Nachschriften) produced from memory, team pooling, or a second hearing. First-order notes rarely survive; almost all extant "student notes" are clean copies.
- Reportatio was the standard medieval term for note-taking at speech speed. Reporters identified the gist and divisions of an argument, not full text, often in Latin even when the speech was vernacular, and supplemented personal abbreviations with standard ones.
- Dictation (legere ad pennam, modo pronuntiantium) was simultaneously forbidden and widely practiced in medieval universities. Paris banned it in 1355 but reinstated it by 1452. It dominated arts faculties and colleges in the 16th-17th centuries, especially for younger students and for courses where exemplars were unaffordable. It was cheaper than renting stationer exemplars and let poor students recover attendance costs by selling copies.
- Many early modern "textbooks" are posthumous publications of student notes: e.g., Jean Crassot's six courses (1616-1619, up to 2800 pages), Francois Le Rees's Cursus philosophicus (1642), Jean-Cecile Frey's Opera (1645) and Opuscula varia (1646). Editors assembled these by working from multiple sets of student notes, rearranging material.
- Harvard College (1680-1730) preserved a related but distinct practice: students copied full-text manuscript textbooks (Charles Morton's Compendium physicae, William Brattle's Compendium logicae, Judah Monis's Hebrew grammar) from tutor-supplied exemplars into purchased 500-page blank books. 28 copies of the Morton survive. Manuscript copying persisted because enrollments were too small to justify print runs; it also let tutors enforce a conservative curriculum.
- Team-based note-taking (Schreibechor, "writing chorus"): August Hermann Francke in Halle (reported 1700) coordinated 8-16 "studiosi" to transcribe his sermons collectively, each taking down 8-10 words on lettered half-sheets in rotation. A single Reinschrift of a 1698 Ascension sermon spanned 133 pages in 12 "decades" and required ~160 sheets of Mitschriften. The Francke archives hold 103 volumes of sermons and 16 of lectures produced this way. The technique later spread to Kant's Königsberg lectures (1772, published 1798) and Hegel's Berlin lectures on philosophy of religion (1820s).
- Visual pedagogy problem: philosophy teaching included Ramist charts, branching diagrams, and (with Frey) the Copernican system. How these transmitted to students taking dictation is unresolved — likely via circulated sheets, broadsheet illustrations, or early erasable blackboards (documented in 16th-17th c. music instruction, but not arts/sciences before the 18th c.).
- The underlying principle: note-taking aids memory twice — once as an external record to return to, and once by forcing the mind to dwell on material during inscription. Sacchini and Drexel (the two most reprinted Jesuit note-taking manuals) repeatedly cite this. Vives: copying keeps "light or scabrous thoughts" at bay. Richard Steele (1682): "the very writing of any thing fixes it deeper in the mind."
- Memorization was the expected downstream use: Crassot's Institutiones (670pp) explicitly promises to aid memory; Prudent Constant advises "Learn by memorizing, even if you do not understand." Harvard tutors required students to memorize complete works. Textbook format (numbered axioms, Q&A catechism form) signals intent for rote memorization.
Concepts and Entities
Concepts
- Reportatio / reportationes — medieval note-taking from speech-speed oral events
- Mitschrift vs Reinschrift / Nachschrift — first-order vs clean-copy notes (German distinction)
- Dictation as pedagogy — legere ad pennam, modo pronuntiantium
- Modo notabiliorum — sketchy-notes style, filled in later from memory
- Schreibechor (Writing Chorus) — Francke's team transcription method
- Pecia copying — medieval practice of renting exemplar sections from stationers
- Tironian notes — ancient/early-medieval shorthand (lapsed by 12th c.)
- Student-manuscript textbook — textbook originating in classroom transcription
- Marginalia and interleaved blank pages (Sammelbände) — annotated classroom editions
- Full-text manuscript coursebook — Harvard-style student transcription
- Writing-aids-retention principle — pedagogical rationale across the tradition
Entities (People, Places, Works)
- Ann Blair (author)
- Aristotle's Metaphysics and Physics (likely student-note origins, per Werner Jaeger)
- Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), 377 extant sermons via secretaries
- August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) — Halle pietist, invented Schreibechor
- Franckesche Stiftungen archives (Halle) — 103 sermon volumes
- Jean Crassot ("prince of philosophers") — Paris, d. 1616
- Francois Le Rees — Sorbonne, Cursus philosophicus 1642
- Jean-Cecile Frey (1607-1631 active) — Paris, ~20 pedagogical works
- Gabriel Naude — copied Frey's works without attending
- Michel de Marolles — sent substitute to take notes while sick
- Charles Morton (1627-98) — Harvard Compendium physicae
- William Brattle (1662-1717) — Harvard Compendium logicae
- Judah Monis (1683-1764) — Harvard Hebrew grammar
- Increase Mather, Cotton Mather — Harvard memorization complaints
- Immanuel Kant — Königsberg anthropology lectures (1772, published 1798)
- G.W.F. Hegel — Berlin philosophy of religion lectures (1820s)
- Francesco Sacchini, Jeremias Drexel — Jesuit note-taking manuals
- Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540), Richard Steele (1682) — writing-as-retention advocates
Why This Matters for PKM
Contemporary PKM claims about "active note-taking," "writing as thinking," and "tools for thought" have a deep pre-digital lineage. The reportator rewriting messy live notes into a clean layout is the ancestor of fleeting-to-permanent pipelines. The Schreibechor is an early instance of coordinated collaborative knowledge capture. Harvard's manuscript textbooks prefigure the "coursepack" and the custom-compiled study artifact. The persistent tension between dictation (exact transmission) and reportatio (sketchy-plus-reconstruction) maps directly onto contemporary debates about transcription vs. synthesis.