The Disputatio puerorum: A Ninth-Century Monastic Instructional Text

A school dialogue most likely composed in southeastern Germany in the early ninth century, the Disputatio puerorum offers a vivid and direct glimpse into the sort of instruction received by monastic novices and oblates in abbey schools of the Carolingian and Holy Roman Empires. Its question-and-answer format between students and master deploys an elementary Latin that would have consolidated linguistic skills at the same time as offering instruction on the nature of body and soul, the books...