The Wax Tabula in Alfredian England: A Discussion in Two Acts
Was tablets, a perishable and inexpensive alternative to vellum or papyrus writing surfaces, were important in the maintenance and spread of learning in Classical and Medieval periods. This writing surface, inherited from the Latins who acquired it from the Greeks, used by students and scholars alike, was a fundamental element or education and the composition process. The scarcity and expense of vellum or prchment made wax tablets an essential part of pedagogy and everyday communications in Anglo-Saxon England. Wax tabula, or ‘pugillares, as Aldhelm called them, provided this society with their version of a modern-day spiral bound notebook, which, though the OE culture even at its highest levels possessed more ‘orality’ commonly than our own era, were used for correspondence, teaching, official record keeping, aids to memory, and were a necessity of monastic life. Tracing the origin of wax tablets to show its influence on the medieval period sharpens our pricture of the sophisticated culture constructed by Alfred and his disciples, eroded by the ascent of the Normans, though wax tablets continued in use until reliable sources of paper were developed. These diptychs, or tabula, were in continuous use throughout Europe at least until the late fifteenth century.
Paper will outline the origin of the wax tablet; its survival and use in the medieval world, the common types and their construction, with particular attention to its literary and pedagogical function in pre-Conqest England during the Alfredian program of literacy of the ninth century in West Sussex.
Keywords: Wax Tablets, Writing Surfaces, Alfredian England, Literacy, Latin and Greek Examples of Tabula, Contruction of Wax Tablets, England, Role of Wax Tablet in Monastic Life, Everyday and Scholarly Use of Wax Tablets
Lee David Engdahl
Independent Scholar, Independent Scholar
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Ref: B06P0130