and what was then called pronuntiatio , which was and 
remained the fifth major division of standard rhetorical study. 
Just why delivery or pronuntiatio  was taken so seriously in the 
ancient and medieval worlds, gets new meaning from Hajnal’s 
work: “The art of writing was held in great esteem because they 
saw in it the proof of a solid oral training.”

     The story of writing as oral training helps to explain the 
early age of entry to the medieval university. For the proper 
study of the development of writing we must consider that the 
students began their course at the university at the age of 
twelve or fourteen. “In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the 
necessity of knowing Latin grammar, as well as material 
obstacles like the rarity of parchment, could push back the age 
at which writing might acquire its definitive form.”