believed to be Lawrence’s pupil, but it was regular practice for dictatores to compose different versions of the same manuscript (Murphy 1974). Letters To model the epistolary style to students and to complement his treatises, Lawrence wrote many letters. The letters exist in two fourteenth-century collections in manuscript form. Influence While Lawrence is known for taking the ars dictaminis to its “mechanistic dead end” (Perelman 1991) and marking its decline, his pragmatic approach marks the corresponding rise of a new movement in Italy: the ars notaria. With the ars notaria, a new class of writers appeared, working as professional secretaries and scribes. These early notaries concerned themselves with documents’ forms and legal documents. With his formulaic approach to the ars dictaminis, Lawrence introduced a pragmatic form in his Practica that “t[ook] the chartistic view to its ultimate point” (Murphy 1974). Furthermore, the Practica marks a shift from content- to form-based writing and emphasizes a “phatic rhetoric of personal and official relations” (Perelman 1991). Unlike the classical rhetorical style concerned with persuasion, Lawrence’s works concern writing for social purposes, as is clear from his extensive treatment of the salutation in his treatises on letter writing (Jensen 1973). Medieval rhetoric scholar, James J. Murphy, stresses the phatic approach characterized by Lawrence’s writing, noting “It is the addressee’s level which determines the nature of the letter, not the subject matter or the level of the writer, or the intentions of the writer” (1974). Lawrence’s applied approach to letter writing also stands as an early ancestor to modern texts on business communication (Perelman 1991). Just as teachers today direct their students to examples of memos and reports in textbooks, Lawrence directed his students to his model letters and tables in the Practica and related texts (Perelman 1991). Further reading Camargo, Martin. Ars Dictaminis Ars Dictandi. Belgium: Brepols, 1991. ---. "The Waning of the Medieval Ars Dictaminis." Rhetorica XIX.2 (Spring 2001): 135-140. Capdevila, S. "'La Practica dictaminis' de Llorens de Aquileia, en un codex de Tarragona". Analecta sacra Tarraconensia 6 (1930): 207-29. An edition of the Practica. Murphy, James J. Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. References Murphy, James J. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974. Perelman, Les. "The Medieval Art of Letter Writing: Rhetoric as Institutional Expression." Textual Dynamics of the Professions: Historical and