Notae, sedulae, paginae: Mnemotechnical and Memorial Devices in the Corpus Christi Proclamation Banns and in York’s Ordo paginarum

Middle English drama was variously summarized in the cycles’ proclamation banns and in archival lists such as York’s Ordo paginarum. This essay analyses and proposes innovative readings of the at times enigmatic forms some of these summae took. Based on renewed readings of a few of the Medieval Latin terms (sedula, pagina) employed to describe the plays and on the investigation of the surfacing in these texts of rhetorical strategies such as brevitas, amplificatio, allusion, and imagines agentes, I suggest that the entries might be used practically as mnemotechnical devices and as instruments of communal, typological memoria.