Book I. Choice of Words, Rhythmical Composition of Sentences

MEDIEVAL RHETORIC AND POETIC

MEDIEVAL

RHETORIC AND POETIC

(to 1400)

INTERPRETED FROM REPRESENTATIVE

WORKS

BY

CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Gloucester, Mass.

PETER SMITH

1959

COPYRIGHT, 1928

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

_Reprinted, 1959

by permission of_

MARSHALL W. BALDWIN

SANCTO THOMÆ AQVINATI

PHILOSOPHO POETÆ

ARTEM ILLIVS SÆCVLI

RHETORICAM ATQVE POETICAM

REDINTEGRATAM

COMMENDAT INTERPRES

PREFACE

The rhetoric and the poetic of any age, as the complementary theories of

composition, are indicative of its habits in education and in literature.

Thus their medieval history concerns all students of the middle age. For

consecutive interpretation in this single aspect both supplements the

more comprehensive surveys and adds significance to many special studies.

Whether for initiation, for review, or for suggestions of further

inquiry, medieval rhetoric and poetic offer a directly literary guide.

As in my preceding volume, _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, conciseness has

been sought by proportion. Space is given to those salient tendencies

which mark the literary course. Minor relations and collateral studies,

indicated no less carefully, are relegated to the notes, but included

in the index. Detailing the actual theory and the actual practise of

composition, often for the first time, I have tried no less to show their

bearing, to make medieval rhetoric and poetic available by interpreting

them in historical sequence. Thus are interpreted the tasks of the

schools, the poetic developments of and from the hymns, the habits of

prose rhythm, the encroachment of logic upon rhetoric and of rhetoric

upon poetic, the progress of verse narrative.

Ancient theory being eminent in a few cardinal texts long recognized as

representative, the former volume subordinates history to exposition.

Medieval theory, on the other hand, being best grasped as development

from an inheritance, the plan of the present volume is historical.

Though each aims at sufficiency within itself, the second refers again

and again to the first, and the two volumes together offer a history

down to 1400. Throughout this history rhetoric and poetic are seen to be

indeed complementary. Where they were distinguished, as where they were

confused, they are most fruitfully studied side by side. Each illuminates

the other because their relations are always significant historically.

Their medieval history must begin with those particular influences from

antiquity which were transmitted through the last schools of the Roman

Empire, especially through the schools of Gaul. It is a Latin history;

for contact with Greek was soon lost and was not widely reëstablished

till the Renaissance. But in the imperial centuries before the separation

East and West, Greek and Latin, agreed so far in literary ideals and

practise that the whole Mediterranean basin had a substantially common

system of education through rhetoric. An inert survival of what is known

historically as the second sophistic, this was sharply challenged by St.

Augustine’s reversion through Cicero to the elder tradition for authority

to direct the real oratory of preaching. Nevertheless the schools of Gaul

continued the sophistic tradition beyond the fall of Rome.

Nor were the large philosophy of rhetoric in Cicero’s _De oratore_, the

great survey of Quintilian, the later medieval guides. The prevalent

textbooks were Cicero’s youthful digest _De inventione_ and a second

book universally attributed to him, the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_. Though

the survival of these minor works may be due partly to the accidents

of manuscripts, their persistence has other causes. _De inventione_

reduces to summary what the middle age taught least, those counsels

of preparation and ordering which ancient teaching had progressively

adjusted to oral discourse, and for which the earlier middle age had less

opportunity. The _Rhetorica ad Herennium_, comparatively summary also

as to analysis and sequence, is devoted largely to style, and reduces

stylistic ornament to a list so conveniently specific that medieval

schools made it a ritual. Though the greater Cicero and Quintilian were

known to such original minds as Gerbert in the tenth century and John

of Salisbury in the twelfth, they were hardly available for the usual

course of teaching. Medieval rhetoric was generally a lore of style.

Here _rhetorica_ tended to coincide with that school study of Latin

poetry which was a recognized function of _grammatica_. The constant

quotation of Horace’s “Ars poetica” is one of the signs of the merging of

poetic with rhetoric. The conventional doctrine from both was largely of

descriptive dilation. Among the effects of this teaching which outlast

schooling and reach beyond Latin are certain conventions of vernacular

poetry. Conversely, poetic advance in the vernaculars is seen in breaking

away not only from school rhetoric, but from rhetoric altogether.

The main medieval fields proper to rhetoric were sermons and letters.

The former, exploring their rhetoric in the earlier centuries, continued

to feel the example, perhaps more than the precept, of St. Augustine.

Even the Dominicans had no need to seek a new lore of oral composition.

What is distinctive in sermon composition of the twelfth century is

oftener poetic than rhetoric. Letters, on the other hand, are at once a

legitimate application of ancient rhetoric and a distinctively medieval

development. They practically comprehend the medieval rhetoric of written

prose. Though ordinary routine was largely content, as in any other time,

with correctness, and therefore with recipe and formulary, serious study

of both composition and style is evident in the better manuals, and

conspicuous in those achievements which are part of medieval literature.

The teaching of _poetica_, from of old a part of _grammatica_, included

extensive practise in Latin verse. This had early to take account of that

dominance of stress which had gradually supplanted the ancient control

by time. The characteristic medieval achievements in Latin lyric are

the hymns. Radiating into other songs, even into humorous and satirical

verse, the hymns were the common lyric fund of medieval Latin. As early

as St. Ambrose they had created a new Latin poetry; and the beauty of

their various art was not exhausted with Adam of St. Victor. Meantime

they opened to the vernaculars those poetic possibilities of stanza

which arise from the development of rime. Medieval poetic theory, on

the contrary, went but a little way. Mainly pedagogical formulation, it

lagged far behind the most characteristic medieval poetic advance, which

was in verse narrative. Here is a sharp contrast with the Renaissance.

The fifteenth century opens a long series of critical inquiries into

poetic. The middle age, merging poetic with rhetoric in the schoolroom,

was little concerned to make it tally with vernacular achievement. With

the death in 1400 of Chaucer, whose criticism exposed this lack, the

poetic of medieval narrative reaches its term.

I owe to the unstinted courtesy and scholarly interest of a trustee

of Barnard College, Mr. George A. Plimpton, the privilege of studying

at leisure his manuscript of one of the most important Bolognese

_dictamina_, the thirteenth-century _Candelabrum_. Far better than

Boncompagno or Thomas of Capua, better even than Conrad, this unprinted

manual exhibits _dictamen_ in both scope and method. My other debts are

too manifold to rehearse. The bibliographical notes, if they recorded the

reading of years, would defeat their proper object of serving further

study. Therefore they have been made, as in the former volume, at once

specific and strictly selective, applied to each chapter separately,

and further indicated both in the index and on a page of recurring

abbreviations after the table of contents.

As I record gratefully my obligation for generous help with the proofs to

my colleagues Professors Ayres, Clark, Krapp, McCrea, Moore, Perry, and

Van Hook, and to my old friend, the Jesuit scholar Dr. Donnelly, I see

further in such coöperation great promise for the progress of medieval

studies.

C. S. B.

BARNARD COLLEGE

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

JANUARY, 1928.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE SOPHISTIC TREND IN ANCIENT RHETORIC 1

A. THE TWO HISTORIC CONCEPTIONS OF RHETORIC 2

B. THE SECOND SOPHISTIC 8

1. Philostratus, _Lives of the Sophists_ 8

2. The Character of Sophistic 9

a. virtuosity 9

(1) _declamatio_ 10

(2) improvisation and memory 13

(3) delivery 16

b. dilation 17

(1) ecphrasis 17

c. pattern 20

(1) the elementary exercises of Hermogenes 23

d. elaboration of style 39

(1) literary allusion and archaism 40

(2) decorative imagery 41

(3) balance 42

(4) _clausula_ 48

(5) vehemence 49

II. ST. AUGUSTINE ON PREACHING (_DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA_, IV) 51

III. THE LAST ROMAN SCHOOLS AND THE COMPENDS (FIFTH TO SEVENTH

CENTURIES) 74

A. THE SCHOOLS OF GAUL 75

1. Ausonius 75

2. Sidonius Apollinaris 78

3. Textbooks 87

a. _grammatica_ and _dialectica_ 87

b. _rhetorica_ 89

B. THE TRIVIUM IN COMPENDS OF THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS 90

1. Martianus Capella 91

2. Cassiodorus 95

3. Isidore 95

IV. POETIC, OLD AND NEW (FIFTH TO SEVENTH CENTURIES) 99

A. CLAUDIAN AND BOETHIUS 100

B. PRUDENTIUS, SEDULIUS, FORTUNATUS 103

C. THE EARLIER LATIN HYMNS 107

1. Iambic 116

2. Trochaic 119

3. Other Measures 121

4. Poetic Conceptions 123

V. THE CAROLINGIANS AND THE TENTH CENTURY 126

A. THE TRIVIUM IN THE GREATER MONASTERIES 127

B. _GRAMMATICA_ 130

1. _Poetica_ 130

2. Hymns 132

a. iambic 132

b. trochaic 134

c. other measures 136

3. Narrative Hexameters and Elegiacs 140

C. _DIALECTICA_ 141

D. _RHETORICA_ 142

E. THE POETIC OF GERMANIC EPIC 145

VI. RHETORIC AND LOGIC IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES 150

A. THE TRIVIUM AT CHARTRES, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES 151

B. THE TRIVIUM IN HUGH OF ST. VICTOR 153

C. THE _METALOGICUS_ OF JOHN OF SALISBURY 156

D. THIRTEENTH-CENTURY SURVEYS 172

1. Alain de Lille, _Anticlaudianus_ 172

2. Vincent de Beauvais, _Speculum doctrinale_ 174

3. St. Bonaventure, _De reductione artium ad theologiam_ 176

4. Brunetto Latini, _Trésor_ 178

VII. LATIN POETIC IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES 183

A. _DOCTRINALE_ AND _GRÆCISMUS_ 184

B. _POETRIA_ 185

1. Matthieu de Vendôme, _Ars versificatoria_ 185

2. Geoffroi de Vinsauf, _Poetria nova_ 187

3. Évrard, _Laborintus_ 189

4. Johannes de Garlandia, _Poetria_ 191

5. Common Traits 195

C. HYMNS 197

1. Progress of Rimed Accentual Verse 197

2. Variations in Trochaic Stanza 201

3. Symbolism 203

VIII. _DICTAMEN_ 206

A. THE RHETORIC OF _DICTAMEN_ 213

B. DIGEST OF _CANDELABRUM_ I-V 216

C. _CURSUS_ 223

IX. PREACHING 228

A. VERNACULAR TO THE PEOPLE, LATIN TO THE CLERGY 232

B. COLLECTIONS 233

C. MANUALS 236

D. SYMBOLISM 239

E. COMPOSITION 245

1. Imaginative Method 245

2. Logical Method 247

F. STYLE 250

1. Rhythm 250

2. Balance and Rime 251

3. Refrain 254

X. POETIC ACHIEVEMENT IN VERNACULAR 258

A. LYRIC AND EPIC 258

B. EXPERIMENT AND CONVENTION IN ROMANCE 260

1. Romance in Latin and in Vernacular 260

2. Walter Map and Marie 261

3. Chrétien de Troyes 264

4. Conventional Composition 267

C. THE POETIC COMPOSITION OF THE _DIVINA COMMEDIA_ 269

D. THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL VERSE NARRATIVE IN CHAUCER 280

1. Poetic Conventions in the Earlier Poems 281

2. Poetic Innovation in the _Troilus and Criseyde_ 284

3. Criticism of the _Poetriæ_ 289

4. The Poetic of the _Canterbury Tales_ 296

SYNOPTIC INDEX 303

INDEX 307

ABBREVIATIONS RECURRING IN THE NOTES

[The abbreviations used in each chapter will be found with the list of

references below the chapter heading.]

AH Dreves and Blume, _Analecta hymnica medii ævi_,

Leipzig, 1886-1911 (cited by volume and page).

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, New

York, 1924.

Clerval Clerval (l’Abbé A.), _Les écoles de Chartres au moyen

âge, du Ve au XVIe siècle_, Chartres, 1895.

CSE _Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum_, Vienna.

F Faral (E.), _Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe

siècle_, recherches et documents sur la technique

littéraire du moyen âge, Paris, 1924.

Halm Halm (K.), _Rhetores latini minores_, Leipzig, 1863.

Keil Keil (H.), _Grammatici latini_, Leipzig, 1870-1880

(cited by volume and page).

Manacorda Manacorda (G.), _Storia della scuola in Italia_,

volume I, _Il medio evo_, Milan, 1913 (2 parts in

separate volumes).

Manitius Manitius (M.), _Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur

des Mittelalters_, Munich, 1911, 2 vols. (in Von

Mueller’s Handbuch der klassischen Alterthums-Wissenschaft,

IX, ii).

Mearns Mearns (J.), _Early Latin hymnaries_, an index of

hymns in hymnaries before 1100, Cambridge (University

Press), 1913.

MGH _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_ (cited by page of

the appropriate volume).

NE _Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque

Nationale ..._ (cited by volume, part, and page).

PL _Patrologia latina_ (Migne, cited by volume and column).

CHAPTER I

THE SOPHISTIC TREND IN ANCIENT RHETORIC

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Ameringer Ameringer (T. E.), _The stylistic influence of the second

sophistic on the panegyrical sermons of St. John

Chrysostom_, Washington, 1921 (Catholic University

of America Patristic Studies).

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, New

York, 1924.

Boulanger Boulanger (A.), _Ælius Aristide et la sophistique dans

la province d’Asie au ii siècle de notre ère_, Paris, 1923.

Burgess Burgess (T. C.), _Epideictic literature_, University of

Chicago Studies in Classical Philology III (1902), 89-251.

Campbell Campbell (J. M.), _The influence of the second sophistic

on the style of the sermons of St. Basil the Great_,

Washington, 1922.

Guignet Guignet (M.), _St. Grégoire de Nazianze, orateur et

épistolier_, Paris, 1911.

Hubbell Hubbell (H. M.), _The influence of Isocrates on Cicero,

Dionysius, and Aristides_, New Haven (Yale dissertation),

1914.

Méridier Méridier (L.), _L’influence de la seconde sophistique

sur l’œuvre de Grégoire de Nysse_, Paris, 1906.

Wright Wright (W. C), _Philostratus and Eunapius, the

lives of the sophists_, with an English translation,

London and New York, Loeb Library, 1922.

A. THE TWO HISTORIC CONCEPTIONS OF RHETORIC

Plato’s distrust of rhetoric is a permanent reminder. It is so

significantly typical that it recurs throughout the history of education,

and must recur. Again and again educational practise has found that

it cannot do without rhetoric; again and again educational theory has

grudgingly inquired what to do with it. For distrust of rhetoric may

be more than the impatience of the philosopher with the orator, of

speculation with ordered presentation, of the quest for truth with

persuasion. This is involved too; for philosophers have often been

impatient of presentation. They have wished to think aloud, or to

question and answer, or merely to analyze for themselves, without being

held to consecutive explanation. Plato himself falls short of discerning

the importance of making truth available and effective for the mass of

men incapable of scientific analysis; and this is the ground of Cicero’s

rejoinder.[1] But Plato’s distrust is more deeply of rhetoric as he heard

it taught. Even in his day Greek rhetoric was largely sophistic, the

rhetoric of personal display and triumph. In the _Gorgias_[2] Socrates

admits the function of a nobler rhetoric, but cannot find it in use. In

the _Protagoras_[3] he asks the vital question, “_About what_ does the

sophist make a man more eloquent?” In the _Phædrus_, which discusses

rhetoric more specifically, his satire is most evidently of sophistic.

To this the ultimate objection is moral. A man should train himself “not

with a view to speaking and acting before the world, but for the sake

of making himself able ... to please the gods.”[4] Plato challenges not

merely the method of the sophists, but their ideal. Since rhetoric has

almost always had some part in education, and since it always ultimately

involves morality, Plato raises a leading question.

The ultimate, the only final answer to Plato’s challenge is the

_Rhetoric_ of Aristotle. This proceeds from a conception not only larger

than the sophistic of Gorgias and Protagoras, but also significantly

divergent in aim. The true theory of rhetoric as the energizing

of knowledge, the bringing of truth to bear upon men,[5] is there

established for all time. Aristotle amply vindicated rhetoric by defining

its place among studies, its necessary correlation with inquiry and with

policy, its permanent function. He settled the question of rhetoric

philosophically. He established its theory. But this theory was oftener

accepted than followed. The sophists had, indeed, been put in their place

more surely by Aristotle than by Plato; but they continued to thrive,

until ancient rhetoric became more and more sophistic.

The conception animating the practise and the teaching of sophistic,

far from being limited to antiquity, is medieval as well, and modern.

Apparently it is permanent. Rhetoric is conceived by Aristotle as the art

of giving effectiveness to truth; it is conceived alike by the earlier

and the later sophists and by their successors as the art of giving

effectiveness to the speaker. The conceptions are not contradictory.

The second may be theoretically included within the first; and actually

Demosthenes may learn something from Isocrates. But to embody them in

educational procedure, to carry out either as the controlling idea of

a course of study, is to discover that sooner or later they become

practically incompatible. Ingenuous youth will be devoted either to

energizing truth or to exploiting itself. There will come a parting of

the ways; for the two conceptions are divergent. What Aristotle discerned

as differentiating is differentiating still. The flaw in sophistic is

moral. It may not impair technical training; but by deviating motive it

tends to impair education.

For Aristotle’s theory is a touchstone. To recall rhetoric to the true

function discerned by him has repeatedly been the object of reform

in teaching. What has intervened to deviate rhetoric and frustrate

its best use has again and again been the preoccupation with giving

effectiveness not to the message, but to the speaker. Ancient sophistic

is thus typical. It is not merely historical; it is historic. The

false conception divined by Plato, and exposed finally by Aristotle’s

demonstration of the true conception, led ancient rhetoric through empty

personal triumphs into an elaborate art of display, devoid, at its worst,

of other motive. As sophistic spread, as its idea of rhetoric became

dominant, ancient education was narrowed;[6] and ancient oratory eddied

in shallows until it found a new course with the new motive of Christian

preaching.

In exorcising the false conception Aristotle removed the false sophistic

emphasis from style. He does not despise, nor even slight, technic. He

finds analysis of sentence rhythms necessary. But his goal in this, as

in his analysis of figures, is beyond the technical means of securing

particular effects. He does not classify figures for reference; he seeks

in both phrase and cadence the function; and he discusses neither until

he has spent some two-thirds of his treatise on the function of rhetoric

as a whole course of study. This he finds philosophically necessary.

Otherwise rhetoric cannot be justified; otherwise, he clearly implies,

it is narrowed and degraded. For him rhetoric is so inextricably moral

that it should never be divorced from subject matter of real significance.

But what subject matter of real significance has oratory when it is

barred from discussion of present policy? Here appears a strong external

cause of the spread of sophistic. The sophistical trend, already marked,

was furthered by the narrowing of public discussion. Of the three

fields[7] of oratory distinguished by Aristotle, deliberative, forensic,

and occasional, the first was restricted by political changes. It faded

with democracy. So later it faded at Rome, and still later in other

realms. Deliberative oratory presupposes free discussion and audiences

that vote. The steady increase of government from above administered by

an appointed official class hastened also the tendency of the second

kind of oratory, forensic, to become technical, the special art of

legal pleading. Thus the only field left free was the third, occasional

oratory, encomium, or panegyric, the commemoration of persons and days,

the address of welcome, the public lecture. A favorite field even in

Plato’s time, it is in any time the freest field for imaginative and

emotional appeal and for personal triumphs. Thus it was early and

assiduously cultivated by the sophists. Though it opens, on the other

hand, the highest reaches of eloquence, though Isocrates is more than

a sophist and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is as far from sophistic as

possible, still its becoming the main field of Greek oratory gave the

lead to sophistic. In such conditions sophistic could control education;

and its control of education reacted upon the conditions to make a

vicious circle. Oratory and the training for it became preponderantly

an art of display; and the rhetoric finally bequeathed by the ancient

schools was sophistic.

In sum, the sophistic tendency, which may be found in any highly

developed literature, was confirmed in Greek by causes both intrinsic and

extrinsic. Becoming a habit, it became a scheme of education. Against

this Plato represents Socrates in fundamental opposition. Aristotle does

more than oppose it; he establishes constructively a rhetoric whose

persuasion shall be more than personal appeal and personal triumph. But

the rhetoric nobly and philosophically conceived by him did not succeed

in supplanting the tendency seen at its best in Isocrates. The conception

of Isocrates in Philostratus, though inadequate, is not wrong essentially.

The siren which stands on the tomb of Isocrates the sophist—its

pose is that of one singing—testifies to the man’s persuasive

charm, which he combined with the laws and habits of rhetoric.

Balances, antitheses, rimes, though he was not their discoverer

but only the skilful user of what had been discovered

already, he put his mind to, and also to amplitude, rhythm,

sentence-movement, beat. These things prepared the diction of

Demosthenes, who was a pupil, indeed, of Isæus, but a disciple

of Isocrates. Philostratus, _Lives of the Sophists_, I. 17

(Wright’s translation, page 50, modified).

The Isocratean ideal of eloquence, influential even upon its critic

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, even upon so great an orator as Cicero,[8]

became more sophistic in the practise of the schools. In the first

century of our era sophistic had won its place, by the second century

an eminence undisputed till Christian preaching returned to the sound

ancient tradition.

For sophistic is the historic demonstration of what oratory becomes when

it is removed from urgency of subject matter. Seeking some inspiration

for public occasions, it revives over and over again a dead past. Thus

becoming conventionalized in method, it turns from cogency of movement

to the cultivation of style. Cogency presupposes a message. It is

intellectual ordering for persuasion, the means toward making men believe

and act. Style, no longer controlled by such urgencies of subject, tends

toward decoration and virtuosity. A necessary study in any rhetoric, it

had been highly cultivated during Greek democracy; but under monarchy

and Empire it became a preoccupation, almost a monopoly. Sophistic

practically reduces rhetoric to style. The old lore of investigation

(_inventio_), paralyzed by the compression of its trunk nerve, has little

scope beyond ingenuity. Organized movement[9] (_dispositio_), similarly

impaired at the source, tends to be reduced to salience and variety,

or to be supplanted by pattern. Memory becomes verbal. But style and

delivery, becoming the main reliance, are elaborated into a systematic

technic to a degree almost incredible to-day. In sheer virtuosity the

second sophistic has hardly a parallel in earlier or later centuries.

It is more like the art of Paderewski or Bernhardt than like that of

Demosthenes.

B. THE SECOND SOPHISTIC[10]

1. Philostratus, _The Lives of the Sophists_[11]

_The Lives of the Sophists_ by Philostratus derives the “new” sophistic

of his day from the old. New, says he, it is not. We may call it a

second sophistic; but it keeps an old tradition. Far from apologizing

for sophistic, old or new, Philostratus is proud of it. He sets out

to celebrate it as a great tradition. Gorgias is not defended from

Socratic exposure; he is claimed as a distinguished ancestor.[12] That

rhetoric is not what Aristotle urged, that it is after all sophistic,

Philostratus assumes. Nor is the assumption merely provincial vanity;

it was widespread and secure. There was no need to vindicate what was

generally accepted. Moreover the facts justify not only the assumption

of Philostratus, but his history. Though he is not historical in method,

his assertion of continuity from Gorgias down to the platform artists

of his day has been approved by studies really historical, and affirmed

for the fourth century as well. _The Lives of the Sophists_, therefore,

exhibit the second sophistic as the fixing of an old tendency in habitual

practise and teaching.

During the second, third, and fourth centuries, and throughout the Roman

world, rhetoric meant a sophistic generally constant. The leanings of

particular schools, such as Stoic Pergamum, were not wide enough to

bring new departures. They were merely shifts of emphasis within a

common doctrine and practise. The cult of “Atticism” was too artificial

to check the general tendency to “Asianism.”[13] What was learned at

Athens could be practised at Rome; and neither Athens nor Rome dimmed the

glory of Smyrna and Antioch.[14] The schools of Bordeaux were to become

essentially like those of Gaza and Carthage. The same “Gorgian figures”

were learned by St. Augustine in Latin Africa, by St. Gregory Nazianzen

in the Greek East, and by the pagan Libanius. Greco-Roman rhetoric was as

pervasive as Roman law and almost as constant.

2. The Character of Sophistic

a. VIRTUOSITY

In estimating this rhetoric, then, little allowance need be made for

place or date.[15] Its main characteristics were so constant as to stand

out clearly. The most obvious arise from the general aim of virtuosity.

This is the constant assumption of Philostratus. Individual triumphs were

not so much triumphs of individuality as outstanding exhibitions of skill

in working out a pattern. In method, in composition, there was little

difference between a teacher’s assignments to his amateur pupils and his

own professional orations.[16] Sophistic is largely an oratory of themes.

(1) _Declamatio_[17] (μελέτη)

THEMES OF THE SOPHISTS CELEBRATED BY PHILOSTRATUS

HISTORICAL OR SEMI-HISTORICAL THEMES

The Lacedemonians deliberate concerning a wall. I. 20 (70).[18]

(Isæus; so Aristides, II. 9 (220).)

Demosthenes swears that he did not take the bribe.

Should the trophies erected by the Greeks be taken down?

The Athenians should return to their demes after Ægospotami.

Xenophon refuses to survive Socrates.

Solon demands that his laws be rescinded after Pisistratus has

obtained a bodyguard. I. 25 (122-132). (Polemo.)

The Cretans maintain that they have the tomb of Zeus. II. 4

(188). (Antiochus.)

Scythians, return to your nomadic life. II. 5 (194). (Alexander

of Seleucia; so Hippodromus, II. 27 (296).)

The wounded in Sicily implore the Athenians who are retreating

thence to put them to death with their own hands.

Pericles urges them to keep up the war even after the oracle

declares Apollo’s support of the Lacedemonians. (II. 5; both

also of Alexander.)

Isocrates tries to wean the Athenians from their empire of the

sea.

Callixenus is upbraided for not having granted burial to the

Ten.

Deliberation on affairs in Sicily.[19]

Æschines, when the grain had not come.

Those whose children have been murdered reject a treaty of

alliance. II. 9 (220, seq.) (Aristides.)

Hyperides, when Philip is at Elatea, heeds only the counsels of

Demosthenes. II. 10 (230). (Hadrian of Tyre.)

Islanders sell their children to pay taxes. II. 12 (238).

(Pollux.)

The Thebans accuse the Messenians of ingratitude. II. 15 (244).

(Ptolemy.)

Callias tries to dissuade the Athenians from burning the dead.

II. 20 (256). (Apollonius of Athens.)

The citizens of Catana.

Demades against revolting from Alexander while he is in India.

II. 27 (296). (Hippodromus.)

FICTITIOUS THEMES

The adulterer unmasked. I. 25 (132). (Polemo.)

The instigator of a revolt suppresses it. I. 26 (136).

(Secundus.)

The ravished chooses that her ravisher be put to death. II. 4

(188). (Antiochus.)

A tyrant abdicates on condition of immunity. (_Ibid._)

The man who fell in love with a statue. II. 18 (250).

(Onomarchus.)

The magician who wished to die because he was unable to kill

another magician, an adulterer. II. 27 (292). (Hippodromus.)

Evidently the themes were generally the same as those of the

_declamationes_ celebrated by Seneca.[20] Some of them were identical.

Such subjects give the oratory of the imperial centuries, both Greek

and Latin, the air of athletics, and make its teaching seem largely

gymnastic. Gregory Nazianzen, indeed, calls the sophists “oratorical

acrobats.”[21] But instead of dismissing sophistic with so obvious a

sarcasm, we may learn something from its delight in verbal artistry.

For what, then, ultimately do we blame them? For their absolute

emptiness of thought? But who shall say that they were trying

to think, or that they were asked to think?... a kind of

eloquence, and also a system of education, of which we have

not any longer even the notion; for it rested on a sentiment

which has disappeared, _the absolute and disinterested love of

speaking well_—disinterested not always, indeed, as to personal

advantage, but always as to thought. Who knows whether thought

was for them anything else or anything more than a simple

_motif_, a theme to be developed, something which sustained the

discourse without imparting to it any value, something like the

libretto of an opera?[22]

Since the oratory of display is still with us, the second sophistic

should be taken to heart as a complete historic demonstration of what

must become of rhetoric without the urgencies of matter and motive.

Philostratus has no qualms. For him _declamatio_ (μελέτη), far from being

merely a school exercise, is a form of public speaking on a par with any

other. It is even _the_ form of his sophists. He pays little attention

to any other except encomium, which is also a school exercise. Reading

the past with the eyes of the present, he finds it in Gorgias,[23] who

elaborated “encomia of the Medic trophies.” “Medics” (Μηδικά), dilations

on the old glories of the Persian wars, were the favorite subjects of

_declamatio_. This is evident both from their frequent recurrence and

from Lucian’s satire.[24] Scopelian, Philostratus thinks, was best

in Medics, in the Darius and Xerxes things, I mean; for, to me

at least, he of all the sophists seems to render these best and

to set a tradition of rendering for his successors. I. 21 (84).

Ptolemy of Naucratis, however, was nicknamed Marathon.[25] The wonder is

that the nickname was sufficiently distinctive.[26]

(2) Improvisation and Memory

The vogue of such subjects does much to explain the otherwise incredible

accounts of improvisation. “Propose a theme,” the sophist’s challenge

which Philostratus traces back to Gorgias,[27] becomes less startling

when we find that the theme, as well as the treatment, might come from

stock. Even so the readiness and fluency seem phenomenal and were the

great boast. See Mark of Byzantium recognized by pupils in the school of

Polemo.

Accordingly when Polemo asked for themes to be proposed, they

all turned towards Mark.... Mark, lifting up his voice and

tossing his head, said: “I will both propose and execute.”

Thereupon Polemo ... discoursed at him long and wonderfully on

the spur of the moment; and when he had declaimed and heard

Mark declaim, he was both admired and admiring. I. 24 (104).

Aristides was exceptional in declining to speak thus; and Philostratus

thinks the less of him.[28] Generally improvisation was expected as a

mark of virtuosity.[29] The _locus classicus_, perhaps, of improvisation,

the most daring and phenomenal virtuosity, is ascribed by Eunapius to

Prohæresius.

Then from his chair the sophist first delivered a graceful

prelude ... then with the fullest confidence he rose for

his formal discussion. The proconsul was ready to propose a

definition for the theme, but Prohæresius threw back his head

and gazed all round the theater ... and beheld in the farthest

row of the audience, hiding themselves in their cloaks, two

men, veterans in the service of rhetoric, at whose hands he

had received the worst treatment of all, and he cried out:

“Ye gods! There are those honourable and wise men! Proconsul,

order them to propose a theme for me. Then perhaps they will

be convinced that they have behaved impiously.”... Whereupon,

after considering for a short time and consulting together,

they produced the hardest and most disagreeable theme that they

knew of, a vulgar one, moreover, that gave no opening for the

display of fine rhetoric. Prohæresius glared at them fiercely,

and said to the proconsul: “I implore you to grant me ... to

have shorthand writers assigned to me.”... Then he said: “I

shall ask for something even more difficult to grant ... there

must be no applause whatever.” When the proconsul had given

all present an order to this effect ... Prohæresius began his

speech with a flood of eloquence, rounding every period with

a sonorous phrase.... As the speech grew more vehement and

the orator soared to heights which the mind of man could not

describe or conceive of, he passed on to the second part of the

speech and completed the exposition of the theme. But then,

suddenly leaping in the air like one inspired, he abandoned the

remaining part, left it undefended, and turned the flood of his

eloquence to defend the contrary hypothesis. The scribes could

hardly keep pace with him, the audience could hardly endure

to remain silent, while the mighty stream of words flowed on.

Then, turning his face towards the scribes, he said: “Observe

carefully whether I remember all the arguments that I used

earlier.” And without faltering over a single word, he began

to declaim the same speech for the second time. (Wright’s

translation, 493.)

This performance is extraordinary only in degree. That of Isæus, as

reported by Pliny,[30] seems the same in kind; and so, apparently,

are many other recorded triumphs. Taken together, they reveal strict

limits. The improvisation was mainly of style. It consisted in fluency

of rehandling, of variations upon themes, and in patterns, so common

as to constitute a stock in trade. It permitted the use over and over

again not only of stock examples and illustrations, but of successful

phrases, modulated periods, even whole descriptions. It was the art of

a technician, not of a composer.[31] Memory, too, thus trained, was no

longer the orator’s command of his material;[32] it was the actor’s

command of words. Though a sophist might, indeed, be a thinker, he

hardly needed to be for the purposes of his oratory. His fluency was

typically not in seizing and carrying forward ideas and images, but in

readiness to draw upon a store.

(3) Delivery

The character of this oratory is further expressed in the records of

its delivery. Even more than modulation Philostratus exhibits sonority

and force. Polemo’s delivery was thrilling as an Olympian trumpet.[33]

Scopelian imitated the volume of Nicetes and had the sonority of

Gorgias.[34] Favorinus fascinated even those who did not understand

Greek.[35] The carrying voice spoke in marked rhythms. Gesture, pushed

sometimes to the extent of acting, was habitually demonstrative. Sitting

at first, the orator might then leap to his feet, smite his thigh, walk,

stamp, sway as a Bacchante. If such theatrical delivery seems to moderns

of the West more violent than it seemed to its own audiences, it has

never been extinct; and any one familiar with the oratory of display

in any time will recognize the sophist’s heavy frown, his mien of deep

thought, his air of authority.[36] Chaucer’s Pardoner speaks for the

whole sophist line:

I peyne me to han an hauteyn speche.

_Canterbury Tales_, C. 330.

Such weight and vehemence of delivery, sometimes conceding a benignant

smile, oftener relying on arrogance,[37] was the bodily expression of

the impressiveness (δεινότης) cultivated no less assiduously in style.

The sophist was over-expressive lest for a moment he should cease to

be impressive. The audience need not be held to any course of thought;

it must not be held too long by any one device of style; but it must

unflaggingly admire. It must be spellbound. The constant implication of

Philostratus probably echoes the ideal of orator and audience alike:

behold a great speaker!

b. DILATION

Such oratory must be dilated, even inflated. That it was so in fact any

one may satisfy himself who has the patience. The amplification[38]

practised by Cicero and taught by Quintilian, though in print it may

seem over-anxious, is an oratorical necessity. It is not merely Greek

expansiveness; for it moves also the more stinted Latin. In any language

it must almost always be practised as a means to oral clearness.[39]

But sophistic amplification has no such warrant. It is often purely

decorative. Instead of marking a stage of progress, it often merely

dwells on a picture, or elaborates a truism, or acts out a mood. It is

there for itself, expecting its own applause. Many of the figures of

speech are devices of dilation; for sophistic is an art not only of

elaboration, but of elaborateness.

(1) _Ecphrasis_

Without enumerating devices that constitute a large part of sophistic, we

may see the characteristic dilation at the full in the single form known

as ἔκφρασις.[40] An ecphrasis is a separable decorative description,

usually of a stock subject. “I will draw this for you in words,” says

Himerius,[41] using the formula of introduction, “and will make your

ears serve for eyes.” The natural beauty of a prospect or of the human

body is detailed for admiration, even oftener the artistic beauty of

statue or temple. The orator turns on, as it were, a storm, a feast, the

prospect of a city. The essentially artificial character of the ecphrasis

is obvious in the favorite exercise of word-painting a peacock.[42]

Apparently a boy could carry this peacock from school to the platform and

continue to use it with merely verbal variations.

Of course the ecphrasis might rise to a higher level. So it did often.

An accomplished orator might make it splendid, even really moving.

Oratory cannot afford to neglect the appeal of oral description.

None the less the ecphrasis had two essential vices. First it was

extraneous, separable, detachable, a clear sign that sequence did not

count. Secondly, instead of following the Aristotelian counsels of

specific concrete imagery, it habitually generalized and rapidly became

conventional.

Ecphrasis is no less significant for poetic. A form of Alexandrianism[43]

avoided by Vergil and adopted with enthusiasm by Ovid, it perverts

description because it frustrates narrative movement. The habit

of decorative dilation in oratory confirmed a decadent habit of

literature.[44] That the habit is decadent even when indulged with more

taste is suggested by certain passages in De Quincey, in Pater, most

clearly perhaps in that English sophist Laurence Sterne. Among the

ecphrases of the _Sentimental Journey_ is one that he executed upon a

theme taken from the most expert mocker of the sophists, Lucian,[45] and

has made quite typical of the soothing rhythms and the elegant dilation

of sophistic eloquence.

The town of Abdera, notwithstanding Democritus lived there,

trying all the powers of irony and laughter to reclaim it, was

the vilest and most profligate town in all Thrace. What for

poisons, conspiracies, and assassinations, libels, pasquinades

and tumults, there was no going there by day; ’twas worse by

night. Now when things were at their worst, it came to pass

that the Andromeda of Euripides being represented at Abdera,

the whole orchestra was delighted with it. But of all the

passages which delighted them, nothing operated more upon their

imaginations than the tender strokes of nature which the poet

had wrought up in that pathetic speech of Perseus, “O Cupid!

prince of gods and men.” Every man, almost, spoke pure iambics

the next day, and talked of nothing but Perseus’ pathetic

address—“O Cupid! prince of gods and men!” In every street of

Abdera, in every house—“O Cupid! Cupid!” in every mouth, like

the natural notes of some sweet melody, which drop from it

whether it will or no, nothing but “Cupid! Cupid! prince of

gods and men!” The fire caught; and the whole city, like the

heart of one man, opened itself to love. No pharmacopolist

could sell one grain of hellebore; not a single armorer had a

heart to forge one instrument of death. Friendship and Virtue

met together and kissed each other in the street. The golden

age returned and hung over the town of Abdera. Every Abderite

took his oaten pipe, and every Abderitish woman left her purple

web, and chastely sat her down, and listened to the song.

“’Twas only in the power,” says the fragment, “of the god whose

empire extended from heaven to earth, and even to the depths of

the sea, to have done this.”

c. PATTERN

For the composition of the whole speech sophistic generally had little

care. That planned sequence, that leading on of the mind from point

to point, which is the habit of great orators and the chief means of

cogency, presupposes urgency toward a goal. Sophistic often had no goal.

The audience need be won only to admiration, not to decision. Easily,

therefore, rhetoric came to pay no more attention to logical movement

than poetic to movement in narrative. Like Alexandrian narrative,

sophistic oratory cares little for onwardness; and its lore is reduced to

prescription for detail.

If Philostratus seems occasionally aware of the value of planned

movement, scrutiny will reveal that he is thinking not of the order of

the whole, but only of sentences. For instance, the passage praising

Isocrates for his “brilliant composition”[46] specifies his handling of

rhythms; “for thought after thought concludes upon a balanced period.”

This lack of plan may seem paradoxical in the works of writers

as artistic as the Greek men of letters. So, indeed, it is;

but it is explained by the quite different conception that the

Greeks—at least those of the decadence—have of the beauty of

a discourse. For them the whole value is in the detail. The

perfecting of the whole is secondary; they have no taste for

it. By a sort of deliberate intellectual myopia they restrict

their field of vision to the analysis of a paragraph, a period,

a phrase, even a word. Their esthetic sense, so to speak, is

fragmentary.[47]

As if to mark the lack of individual planning for cogency, sophistic

is commonly composed upon set patterns. No other body of oratory has

so uniformly resigned itself to forms. The orator could devote his

whole attention to each separate development because its place was

predetermined in a traditional series of topics. The encomium[48] of

a country was expected to deal with its situation, climate, products,

its race, founders, government, its advancement in learning and

literature, its festivals and its buildings, unless indeed the whole

encomium were based on one of these topics. Similar topics controlled

the praise of a city, a harbor, a bay, an acropolis. The classification

of these as separate forms goes on to enumerate the speech at an

embarkation, a marriage, a birthday, a festival, etc., as in a complete

letter-writer.[49] Similarly prescribed was the encomium of a person. So

pervasive were its topics that they invaded even written biography.[50]

Philostratus follows them in his account of Herodes Atticus.[51] Basil,

on the other hand, explicitly rejects them as inept for encomia of

Christian martyrs; and his protest shows at once their prevalence and

their typical vice.

The school of God does not recognize the laws of the encomium,

but holds that a mere telling of the martyr’s deeds is a

sufficient praise for the saints and sufficient inspiration for

those who are struggling towards virtue. For it is the fixed

habit of encomia to search out the history of the native city,

to find out the family exploits, and to relate the education of

the subject of the encomium, but it is our custom to pass over

in silence such details and to compose the encomium of each

martyr from those facts which have a bearing on his martyrdom.

How could I be an object of more reverence or be more

illustrious from the fact that my native city once upon a time

endured great and heavy battles and after routing her enemies

erected famous trophies? What if she is so happily located that

in summer and winter her climate is pleasant? If she is the

mother of heroes and is capable of supporting cattle, what gain

are these to me? In her herds of horses she surpasses all lands

under the sun. How may these facts improve us in manly virtue?

If we talk about the peaks of mountains near, how they out-top

the clouds and reach the farthest stretches of the air, shall

we deceive ourselves into thinking that drawing praise from

these facts we give praise to men? Of all things it is most

absurd that when the just despise the whole world, we celebrate

their praises from those things which they contemned.[52]

Such composing upon a pattern is legitimately a school exercise. Its use

in elementary education is not confined to sophistic. What is sophistic

is its extent and its prescriptiveness, still more its extension from

school into adult and professional practise. How far the oratory of the

imperial centuries was controlled by fixed topics becomes startingly

evident in its conformity to the rules set forth by the manuals of

elementary exercises.[53] Theon’s of uncertain date may have been

superseded[54] by that of Aphthonius in the fourth century, which at any

rate had a long life.[55] But the pattern is most concisely shown in the

second century by Hermogenes,[56] whose work is typical of them all.

There some of the most characteristic habits of form in sophistic oratory

are seen as prolongations of school exercises.

THE ELEMENTARY EXERCISES (προγυμνάσματα) OF HERMOGENES[57]

MYTH (FABLE)

Myth is the approved thing to set first before the young,

because it can lead their minds into better measures.

Myths appear to have been used also by the ancients, Hesiod

telling that of the nightingale, Archilochus that of the fox.

From their inventors myths are named Cyprian or Libyan or

Sybaritic; but all alike are called Æsopic, because Æsop used

myths for his dialogues.

The description of a myth is traditionally something like this.

It may, they say, be fictitious, but thoroughly practical

for some contingency of actual life. Moreover it should be

plausible. How may it be plausible? By our assigning to the

characters actions that befit them. For example, if the

contention be about beauty, let this be posed as a peacock; if

some one is to be represented as wise, there let us pose a fox;

if imitators of the actions of men, monkeys.

Myths are sometimes to be expanded, sometimes to be told

concisely. How? By now telling in bare narrative, and now

feigning the words of the given characters. For example, “the

monkeys in council deliberated on the necessity of settling

in houses. When they had made up their minds to this end and

were about to set to work, an old monkey restrained them,

saying that they would more easily be captured if they were

caught within enclosures.” Thus if you are concise; but if you

wish to expand, proceed in this way. “The monkeys in council

deliberated on the founding of a city; and one coming forward

made a speech to the effect that they too must have a city.

‘For see,’ said he, ‘how fortunate in this regard are men. Not

only does each of them have a house, but all going up together

to public meeting or theater delight their souls with all

manner of things to see and hear.’” Go on thus, dwelling on the

incidents and saying that the decree was formally passed; and

devise a speech for the old monkey. So much for this.

The style of recital, they say, should be far from periods and

near to pleasantness. The moral to be derived from the myth is

sometimes put first, sometimes last. Orators[58] too appear to

have used myth instead of example.

TALE

A tale, they say, is the setting forth of something that has

happened or of something as if it had happened. Sometimes,

however, authorities set the chria instead of this.

A tale differs from a story as a poem from an extended poetical

work. For a poem or a tale is about one thing, a poetical

work or a story about several. Thus a poetical work is the

_Iliad_, for example, or the _Odyssey_; but a poem is (one of

the component parts, such as) the making of the shield, the

visit to the shades, or the slaying of the suitors. And again,

a story is the history of Herodotus or the composition of

Thucydides; a tale is the incident of Arion or that of Alcmæon.

The forms of the tale are said to be four: the mythical; the

fictitious, which is also called the dramatic, as those of the

tragic poets; the historical; and the political or personal.

But for the present we consider the last.

The modes of tales are five: direct declarative, indirect

declarative, interrogative, enumerative, comparative. Direct

declarative is as follows: “Medea was the daughter of Æetes.

She betrayed the golden fleece”; and it is called direct

because the whole discourse, or the greater part, keeps the

nominative case. Indirect declarative is as follows: “The story

runs that Medea, daughter of Æetes, was enamored of Jason,”

and so on; and it is called indirect because it uses the other

cases. The interrogative is this mode: “What terrible thing did

not Medea do? Was she not enamored of Jason, and did she not

betray the golden fleece and kill her brother Absyrtus?” and

so on. The enumerative mode is as follows: “Medea, daughter

of Æetes, was enamored of Jason, betrayed the golden fleece,

slew her brother Absyrtus,” and so on. The comparative is

as follows: “Medea, daughter of Æetes, instead of ruling

her spirit, was enamored; instead of guarding the golden

fleece, betrayed it; instead of saving her brother Absyrtus,

slew him.” The direct mode is suited to stories, as being

clearer; the indirect, rather to trials; the interrogative to

cross-questioning; the enumerative, to perorations, as rousing

emotion.

CHRIA

A chria[59] is a concise exposition of some memorable saying or

deed, generally for good counsel.

Some chriæ are of words, others of deeds, still others of both:

of words, i.e., essentially sayings, as “Plato said that

the Muses dwell in the souls of the fit”; of deeds, i.e.,

essentially doings, as “Diogenes, seeing an ill-bred youth,

smote his tutor, saying ‘why did you teach him thus?’”

A chria differs from a memoir mainly in scope; for some

memoirs may run to considerable length, but a chria must be

concise. It differs from a proverb in that the latter is a bald

declaration, whereas a chria is often (developed) by question

and answer; and again in that a chria may be based upon deeds,

whereas a proverb is based only upon words; and again in that

a chria introduces the person who did or said, whereas the

proverb has no reference to a person.

Chriæ have been distinguished, mainly by the ancients, as

declarative, interrogative, and investigative.

But now let us come to the point, that is the actual working

out. Let this working out be as follows: first, brief encomium

of the sayer or doer; then paraphrase of the chria itself; then

proof or explanation. For example, Isocrates said that the root

of education is bitter, but its fruit sweet: (1) encomium,

“Isocrates was wise,” and you will slightly develop this topic;

(2) chria, “said, etc.,” and you will not leave this bare, but

develop the significance; (3) proof, (a) direct, “the greatest

affairs are usually established through toil, and, once

established, bring happiness”; (b) by contrast, “those affairs

which succeed by chance require no toil and their conclusion

brings no happiness; quite the contrary with things that demand

our zeal”; (c) by illustration, “as the farmers who toil

ought to reap the fruit, so with speeches”; (d) by example,

“Demosthenes, who shut himself up in his room and labored much,

finally reaped his fruit, crowns and public proclamations.” (e)

You may also cite authority, as “Hesiod says, ‘Before virtue

the gods have put sweat’; and another poet says, ‘The gods

sell all good things for labor.’” (4) Last you will put an

exhortation to follow what was said or done.

So much for now; fuller instructions you will learn later.

PROVERB

A proverb is a summary saying, in a statement of general

application, dissuading from something or persuading toward

something, or showing what is the nature of each: dissuading,

as in that line “a counsellor should not sleep all night”;

persuading, as in the lines “he who flees poverty, Cyrnus,

must cast himself upon the monster-haunted deep and down steep

crags.” Or it does neither of these, but makes a declaration

concerning the nature of the thing: “Faring well undeservedly

is for the unintelligent the beginning of thinking ill.”

Again, some proverbs are true, others plausible; some simple,

others compound, others hyperbolic:

(1) true, such as “no one can find a life without pain”;

(2) plausible, such as “never have I asked what manner of man

takes pleasure in bad company, knowing that birds of a feather

flock together”;

(3) simple, such as “wealth may make men even benevolent”;

(4) compound, such as “no good comes of many rulers; let there

be one”;

(5) hyperbolic, such as “earth breeds nothing feebler than man.”

The working out is similar to that of the chria; for it

proceeds by (1) brief encomium of him who made the saying, as

in the chria; (2) direct exposition; (3) proof; (4) contrast;

(5) enthymeme; (6) illustration; (7) example; (8) authority.

Let the proverb be, for example, “_a counsellor should not

sleep all night._” (1) You will briefly praise the speaker.

Then to (2) direct exposition, i.e., to paraphrase of the

proverb, as “it befits not a man proved in counsels to

sleep through the whole night”; (3) proof, “always through

pondering is one a leader, but sleep takes away counsel”;

(4) contrast, “as a private citizen differs from a king, so

sleep from wakefulness”; (5) “how, then, might it be taken?

if there is nothing startling in a private citizen’s sleeping

all night, plainly it befits a king to ponder wakefully”; (6)

illustration, “as helmsmen are incessantly wakeful for the

common safety, so should chieftains be”; (7) example, “Hector,

not sleeping at night, but pondering, sent Dolon to the ships

to reconnoiter.” (8) The last topic is the one from authority.

Let the conclusion be hortatory.

REFUTATION AND CONFIRMATION

Destructive analysis is the overturning of the thing cited;

constructive analysis, on the contrary, its confirmation.

Things fictitious, such as myths, are open to neither

destruction nor construction; destruction and construction

apply only to things that offer argument on either side.

Destructive analysis proceeds by alleging that the thing is (1)

obscure, (2) incredible, (3) impossible, (4) inconsistent or,

as it is called, contrary, (5) unfitting, (6) inexpedient: (1)

obscure, as “in the case of Narcissus the time is obscure”;

(2) incredible, as “it is incredible that Arion in the midst

of his ills was willing to sing”; (3) impossible, “it is

impossible that Arion was saved on a dolphin”; (4) inconsistent

or contrary, “quite opposite to preserving popular government

is wishing to destroy it”; (5) unfitting, “it was unfitting for

Apollo, being a god, to love a mortal woman”; (6) inexpedient,

when we say that it is of no use to hear this.

Confirmation proceeds by the opposites of these.

COMMONPLACE

The so-called commonplace is the amplification of a thing

admitted, of demonstrations already made. For in this we

are no longer investigating whether so-and-so was a robber

of temples, whether such-another was a chieftain, but how we

shall amplify the demonstrated fact. It is called commonplace

because it is applicable to every temple-robber and to every

chieftain. The procedure must be as follows: (1) analysis of

the contrary, (2) the deed itself, (3) comparison, (4) proverb,

(5) defamatory surmise of the past life (of the accused) from

the present, (6) repudiation of pity by the so-called final

considerations and by a sketch of the deed itself.

Introductions will not be merely within the commonplace, but

will be maintained up to it. For instance, if the commonplace

be about a temple-robber, the introduction, not in sense but

in type, may be as follows: “All evil-doers, honorable judges,

should be hated, but especially those whose audacity is

directed toward the gods”; or again, “If you wish to deprave

other men, let this one go; if not, punish him”; or again, “To

outward seeming the only one on trial here is the accused, but

in truth you judges, too; for to be false to one’s oath of

office may be more criminal than transgression.”

Then, before proceeding to the deed itself, (1) discuss its

contrary; e.g., “Our laws have provided for the worship of

the gods, have reared altars and adorned them with votive

offerings, have honored the gods with sacrifices, festal

assemblies, processions.” Then the application to the

indictment. “Naturally, for the favor of the gods preserves

cities; and without this they must be destroyed.” (2) Now

proceed to the case in hand. “These things being so, what has

this man dared?” and tell what he has done, not as explaining

it, but as heightening. “He has defiled the whole city, both

its public interests and its private; and we must fear lest our

crops fail; we must fear lest we be worsted by our enemies,”

etc. (3) Next go on to comparison. “He is more dangerous than

murderers; for the difference is in the object of attack.

They have presumed against human life; he has outraged the

gods. He is like despots, not like them all, but like the most

dangerous. For in them it appears most shocking that they

lay hands on what has been dedicated to the gods.” And you

will bring into the denunciation comparisons with the lesser,

since they are destructive. “Is it not shocking to punish the

thief, but not the temple-robber?” (4, 5 above.) You may draw

defamation of the rest of his life from his present crime.

“Beginning with small offenses, he went on to this one last,

so that you have before you in the same person a thief, a

housebreaker, and an adulterer” (5, 4 above). You may cite

the proverb in accordance with which he came to this pass,

“Unwilling to work in the fields, he wished to get money by

such means”; and, if you are denouncing a homicide, (you may

tell) also the consequences, “a wife made widow, children

orphans.” (6) Use also the repudiation of pity. Now you will

repudiate pity by the so-called final considerations of equity,

justice, expediency, possibility, and propriety, and by

description of the crime. “Look not on him as he weeps now, but

on him as he despises the gods, as he approaches the shrine, as

he forces the doors, as he lays hands on the votive offerings.”

And conclude upon exhortation. “What are you about to do? what

to decide concerning that which has been already judged?” So

much for the present; the ampler method you will know later.

ENCOMIUM

Encomium is the setting forth of the good qualities that

belong to some one in general or in particular: in general,

as encomium of man; in particular, as encomium of Socrates.

We make encomia also of things, such as justice; and of

animals without reason, such as the horse; and even of plants,

mountains, and rivers. It has been called encomium, they say,

from poets’ singing the hymns of the gods in villages long ago;

and passes also used to be called villages.

Encomium differs from praise (in general) in that the latter

may be brief, as “Socrates was wise,” whereas encomium

is developed at some length. Observe too that censure is

classified with encomia, either because the latter may be

euphemistic or because both are developed by the same

commonplaces. In what, then, does the encomium differ from the

commonplace? For in some cases the two seem very much alike.

The difference, they say, appears in the end, in the issue.

For whereas in the commonplace the aim is to receive a reward,

encomium has no other (end) than the witness to virtue.

Subjects for encomia are: a race, as the Greek; a city, as

Athens; a family, as the Alcmæonidæ. You will say[60] what

marvelous things befell at the birth, as dreams or signs or the

like. Next, the nurture, as, in the case of Achilles, that he

was reared on lions’ marrow and by Chiron. Then the training,

how he was trained and how educated. Not only so, but the

nature of soul and body will be set forth, and of each under

heads: for the body, beauty, stature, agility, might; for

the soul, justice, self-control, wisdom, manliness. Next his

pursuits, what sort of life he pursued, that of philosopher,

orator, or soldier, and most properly his deeds, for deeds

come under the head of pursuits. For example, if he chose the

life of a soldier, what in this did he achieve? Then external

resources, such as kin, friends, possessions, household,

fortune, etc. Then from the (topic) time, how long he lived,

much or little; for either gives rise to encomia. A long-lived

man you will praise on this score; a short-lived, on the score

of his not sharing those diseases which come from age. Then,

too, from the manner of his end, as that he died fighting for

his fatherland, and, if there were anything extraordinary under

that head, as in the case of Callimachus that even in death

he stood. You will draw praise also from the one who slew

him, as that Achilles died at the hands of the god Apollo.

You will describe also what was done after his end, whether

funeral games were ordained in his honor, as in the case of

Patroclus, whether there was an oracle concerning his bones, as

in the case of Orestes, whether his children were famous, as

Neoptolemus. But the greatest opportunity in encomia is through

comparisons, which you will draw as the occasion may suggest.

Similarly also living things without speech, so far as they

permit. You will draw your encomia from the place in which the

thing lives; and in addition to the country of its birth you

will tell to which of the gods it is dedicated, as the owl to

Athena, the horse to Poseidon. In like manner also you will

tell its nurture, the nature of soul and body, its deeds and

their use, the length of its life; and you will use throughout

such comparisons as fall in with these topics.

Encomia of things done you will draw from their inventors, as

the things of the chase from Artemis and Apollo; from those

who practised them, as heroes. But the best procedure for

such encomia is to consider those who pursue them, of what

sort these are in soul and body, e.g., hunters as manly,

courageous, more alert in intelligence, physically vigorous.

Finally you will observe that we must make encomia of the gods;

and it is to be borne in mind that such encomia must be called

hymns.[61]

Furthermore plants similarly, each from the topics of its

habitat, of the god to which it is dedicated, as the olive to

Athena, of its nurture, as how it is grown. If it needs much

care, you will marvel at this; if little, at that. You will

tell concerning its body, its rapid growth, its beauty, and

whether it is ever-blooming, as the olive. Then its usefulness,

on which you will dwell most. Comparisons you will lay hold of

everywhere.

Furthermore encomium of a city you may undertake from these

topics without difficulty. For you will tell of its race that

its citizens were autochthonous, and concerning its nurture

that they were nourished by the gods, and concerning its

education that they were educated by the gods. And you will

expound, as in the case of a man, of what sort the city is

in its manners and institutions, and what its pursuits and

accomplishments.

COMPARISON

Comparison has been included both under _commonplace_ as a

means of our amplifying misdeeds, and also under _encomium_ as

a means of amplifying good deeds, and finally has been included

as having the same force in censure. But since some (authors)

of no small reputation have made it an exercise by itself, we

must speak of it briefly. It proceeds, then, by the encomiastic

topics; for we compare city with city as to the men who came

from them, race with race, nurture with nurture, pursuits,

affairs, external relations, and the manner of death and what

follows. Likewise if you compare plants, you will set over

against one another the gods who give them, the places in which

they grow, the cultivation, the use of their fruits, etc.

Likewise also if you compare things done, you will tell who

first undertook them, and will compare with one another those

who pursued them as to qualities of soul and body. Let the same

principle be accepted for all.

Now sometimes we draw our comparisons by equality, showing the

things which we compare as equal either in all respects or in

several; sometimes we put the one ahead, praising also the

other to which we prefer it; sometimes we blame the one utterly

and praise the other, as in a comparison of justice and wealth.

There is even comparison with the better, where the task is

to show the less equal to the greater, as in a comparison of

Heracles with Odysseus. But such comparison demands a powerful

orator and a vivid style; and the working out always needs

vivacity because of the need of making the transitions swift.

CHARACTERIZATION (ΗΘΟΠΟΙΙΑ)[62]

Characterization is imitation of the character of a person

assigned, e.g., what words Andromache might say to Hector.

(The exercise is called) _prosopopœia_ when we put the person

into the scene, as Elenchus in Menander, and as in Aristides

the sea is imagined to be addressing the Athenians. The

difference is plain; for in the one case we invent words for a

person really there, and in the other we invent also a person

who was not there. They call it image-making (εἰδωλοποιία)

when we suit words to the dead, as Aristides in the speech

against Plato in behalf of the Four; for he suited words to the

companions of Themistocles.

Characterizations are of definite persons and of indefinite;

of indefinite, e.g., what words a man might say to his family

when he was about to go away; of definite, e.g., what words

Achilles might say to Deidamia when he was about to go forth

to war. Characterizations are single when a man is supposed

to be making a speech by himself, double when he has an

interlocutor: by himself, e.g., what a general might say on

returning from a victory; to others, e.g., what a general

might say to his army after a victory.

Always keep the distinctive traits proper to the assigned

persons and occasions; for the speech of youth is not

that of age, nor the speech of joy that of grief. Some

characterizations are of the habit of mind, others of the

mood, others a combination of the two: (1) of the habit, in

which the dominant throughout is this habit, e.g., what a

farmer would say on first seeing a ship; (2) of the mood,

in which the dominant throughout is the feeling, e.g.,

what Andromache might say to Hector; (3) combined, in which

character and emotion meet, e.g., what Achilles might say to

Patroclus—emotion at the slaughter of Patroclus, character in

his plan for the war.

The working out proceeds according to the three times. Begin

with the present because it is hard; then revert to the past

because it has had much happiness; then make your transition to

the future because what is to happen is much more impressive.

Let the figures and the diction conform to the persons assigned.

ECPHRASIS[63]

An ecphrasis is an account in detail, visible, as they say,

bringing before one’s eyes what is to be shown. Ecphrases are

of persons, actions, times, places, seasons, and many other

things: of persons, e.g., Homer’s “crooked was he and halt of

one foot”; of actions, e.g., a description of a battle by land

or sea; of times, e.g., of peace or of war; of places, e.g.,

of harbors, sea-shores, cities; of seasons, e.g., of spring

or summer, or of a festal occasion. And ecphrasis may combine

these, as in Thucydides the battle by night; for night is a

time and battle is an action.

Ecphrasis of actions will proceed from what went before, from

what happened at the time, and from what followed. Thus if we

make an ecphrasis on war, first we shall tell what happened

before the war, the levy, the expenditures, the fears; then the

engagements, the slaughter, the deaths; then the monument of

victory; then the pæans of the victors and, of the others, the

tears, the slavery. Ecphrases of places, seasons, or persons

will draw also from narrative and from the beautiful, the

useful, or their contraries. The virtues of the ecphrasis are

clearness and visibility; for the style must through hearing

operate to bring about seeing. But it is no less important that

the expression correspond to the thing. If the thing be fresh,

let the style be so too; if it be dry, let the style be similar.

Note that some precisians do not make ecphrasis a (separate)

exercise on the ground that it has been anticipated both in

fable and in tale, in commonplace and in encomium; for in these

too, they say, we expatiate descriptively on places, rivers,

deeds, and persons. Nevertheless, since some (authors) of no

small account have numbered this also among their exercises, we

too have followed them, lest we be accused of negligence.

THESIS

The limits of the thesis are traditionally that the thesis

is a discussion of a matter considered apart from every

particular circumstance. For the thesis usually occupies the

field of general debate, not referring to any assigned person,

but simply taking a typical course of exposition, as of any

person whatsoever, by consideration of such things only as

are inherent in the subject matter. Thus when we analyze the

advisability of marriage, we speak not with reference to such

and such an one, as Pericles or Alcibiades, nor to one in

such and such circumstances, time of life, or fortune; but

subtracting all these, we shall consider simply the subject in

itself, making our analysis of what is inherent in that, i.e.,

whether this should be done by anybody whatsoever because

such and such are the results for those who do so; whereas if

we take a definite person and circumstances, and thus make

our exposition of reasons, it will be not a thesis, but an

hypothesis.

Some theses are political, some not. Political are such as

fall within common considerations, e.g., the advisability of

studying oratory, etc.; unpolitical are such as are peculiar

to a certain field of knowledge and proper to those versed in

it, e.g., whether the heavens are spherical, whether there

are many worlds, whether the sun is a fire. These suit the

philosophers; the others are the exercises of the rhetors. Some

have called the latter practical, the former theoretical; for

action underlies the former, whereas the goal of the latter is

theory.

The thesis differs from the commonplace in that the commonplace

is the amplification of a subject matter admitted, whereas the

thesis is an inquiry into a matter still in doubt. Some theses

are simple, others relative, others twofold: if we discuss

the advisability of marriage, simple; if the advisability of

marriage for a king, relative; if we discuss whether it is

better to contend in games than to farm, twofold, for we must

dissuade from the one and persuade to the other.

Theses are determined by the so-called final headings: justice,

expediency, possibility, propriety; e.g., that it is just

to marry and make to life the contribution of life itself;

that it is expedient, as bringing many consolations; that

it is possible by analogy; that it is fitting, as showing a

disposition not savage. Thus for your constructive argument;

your destructive will be from the opposites. You will refute

also whatever theses may have been found on the other side. At

the end, exhortations and the common moral habits of mankind.

INTRODUCING A BILL

Some include in their exercises the introduction of a bill. And

since in practise lawmaking and the categories falling within

it constitute a (separate) study, they make this distinction.

In practise there is a (particular) circumstance; in an

exercise there is not; e.g., if “in dearth of necessaries it

is proposed that governmental positions be put on sale,” you

have an occasion in the dearth; in an exercise there is none,

but simply a proposal to put governmental positions on sale,

without occasion or other circumstance.

It is determined as evident, just, legal, expedient, possible,

proper; evident, as in Demosthenes “but that this is just is

simple and evident for all to know and learn”; legal, as when

we say “it is contrary to the ancient laws”; just, as when we

say “it is contrary to nature and morals”; expedient, as when

we say “nor can it be done”; proper, as when we say “it hurts

our reputation.”

Arid, impersonal as arithmetic, pedantically over-classified, sometimes

inconsistent, these rules[64] are nevertheless illuminating. They expose

sophistic oratory. The patterns set forth for boys are recognizably the

patterns of the public oratory of men. Such higher attainment as might

come with experience was not in composition. In composition adult oratory

too, as well as these elementary exercises, was feeble at the source. For

lack of animating conception and advancing urgency of thought, it eddied

in forms. It is the historic demonstration of the doom of an oratory of

themes. The resounding reputations so expertly cultivated for themselves

time has reduced to absurdity. Hippodromus, Mark, Polemo, Scopelian—which

of the beadroll of Philostratus is even the echo of an echo?

d. ELABORATION OF STYLE

The long reign of sophistic reduced rhetoric to style.[65] That this was

the preoccupation even of the earlier sophistic we may guess from the

derision of the _Phædrus_ and from other references.[66]

And there is also Polus, who has schools of diplasiology and

gnomology and eikonology, and who teaches in them the words of

which Licymnius made him a present; they were to give a polish.

_Phædrus_, 267, Jowett’s translation.

The wider scope demanded by Aristotle’s different conception is

recognized in the traditional fivefold division[67] found in Cicero and

Quintilian. This division, which has such validity as to be essential

for securing the educational values proposed by the ancients, seems to

have been inactive from Quintilian on to the fall of Rome.[68] That the

limitation to style impoverishes rhetoric and impairs even the study of

style itself is evident in the sophistic period and is confirmed in the

medieval.

Incidentally, the focus on style contributed to the confusion of rhetoric

with poetic.[69] Neither being conceived often in its larger aspects of

movement, both being studied habitually for words and sentences, the

distinction between the two was the more easily blurred. Here poetry

had the more to lose. The use of poetic diction to decorate oratory

must have confirmed the tendency to conceive poetic itself as an art of

decoration.

But the main results of giving to style a monopoly are the cultivation

of literary flavor, with conformity to past usage, and the forcing of

figure and rhythm. The style inevitably acquired by those who seek style

is decorative and elaborate. In order to sound literary, the orator

is impelled both to depart from common speech and to force his note.

Devices valuable in revision, to clarify and impress a message, become

artificial in practise and unduly elaborated in theory by being pursued

for themselves.

(1) Literary Allusion and Archaism

The preoccupation that seized any opportunity for “Medics”[70] led to

frequent literary allusions. Allusion is a legitimate, sometimes an

important, means of heightening eloquence. Reviving old associations by

familiar words and rhythms, it helps to suggest a mood or intensify an

appeal.

Who is this that cometh from Domrémy? Who is she in bloody

coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with

blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? De Quincey,

_Joan of Arc_, last paragraph.

But the sophists used this form of suggestion so incontinently, and often

so conventionally,[71] as to betray an anxiety to sound literary.

The same anxiety led to their frequent use of obsolescent words. Archaism

became an habitual form of decoration. They borrowed the language

of Demosthenes to welcome a proconsul and win from him some otiose

appointment, or played upon an audience to capture its applause for

literary tone. “Atticism” was often little more than pride in a highly

sanctioned diction. The aim of the sophists was not to model their

composition on Demosthenes, still less on the restrained habit of Lysias,

but to borrow from them words enough to give antique flavor. Presuming to

be apostles of Hellenism, they were anxious to sound traditional. That

they often thereby became stilted is early evidence that this conception

of elegance is false.[72]

(2) Decorative Imagery

Metaphor, which is a reliance of all popular oratory, seldom has in

sophistic the suggestiveness of fresh observation. Rather the sophist

relied on far-fetching or on the abundance of his literary stock.[73]

“Living tombs,” said of vultures, is ascribed to Gorgias by the treatise

_On the Sublime_,[74] and passed on through the schools. If Athens

was “the eye of Greece,” another city might be “the eye of Asia.”

Sophistic metaphor generally lacks vitality. That it should achieve

so little imaginative suggestion is a clear sign of artificiality. No

less conventional and decorative are the frequent similes. They are

more sophistic only in being more elaborate. In both cases it is not

the imagery that is sophistic; it is the straining, or the conventional

decoration, or the dilation. For all its store of tropes, for all its

lavish use of them, sophistic is poor in active imagery. Quintilian’s

eighth book analyzes the heightening of diction which comes from

concreteness[75] (iii), amplification (iv), epigram (_sententia_, v),

and tropes (vi). Of these the second and third were the reliance of the

sophists. The first they neglected; the fourth they had conventionalized.

(3) Balance

Imagery, what the ancients called trope, covers all that is usually

meant by the term _figure_ in modern use. Ancient manuals and their

medieval derivatives generally use _figures_ to mean typical adaptations

of sentence movement. These are minutely classified even in the older

rhetoric. The treatise _Ad Herennium_,[76] which does not distinguish

them from tropes, enumerates sixty-one and groups them by the traditional

twofold division followed by Quintilian: _figuræ sententiarum_ (σχήματα

διανοίας), and _figuræ verborum_ (σχήματα λέξεως). Quintilian (IX),

distinguishing them from tropes, both reduces the number of figures

and by grouping simplifies the analysis. Of _figuræ sententiarum_ he

enumerates twelve.[77] _Figuræ verborum_ he groups as: (1) variations

of syntax, (2) modes of iteration, (3) word-play, (4) balance and

antithesis. The sophists especially cultivated these figures, most of

all the last, those forms of balance which were traditionally called the

figures of Gorgias (Γοργίεια σχήματα).[78]

Balance, as an obvious way of marking a comparison or a contrast, is so

familiar in every language and in every period as hardly to be thought

of as a figure. It becomes a figure by becoming a preoccupation; and the

preoccupation, evident in certain modern literary periods, has never been

stronger than in sophistic. The sophists pursued balance with such zeal

as to display its typical faults of padding and superficiality. A habit

of balance tends to slip in here and there a makeweight of mere words,

or to force the sense into the form. Over-balancing, sophistic shows

abundantly, invites false balance. It is the way not to precision, but to

epigram.

Description of the several forms of balance distinguished by sophistic

cannot go far without examples. The only sufficient examples must be

sought in Greek and Latin; for the sophistic refinements often depend

upon the recurrence of inflections or upon transpositions possible only

in a language that is highly inflected. Modern languages depend so much

less on inflection that they chime less readily and can transpose for

symmetry sometimes only by more conspicuous violation of normal sentence

order. Nevertheless some of the sophistic forms of balance, with other

figures of words, can be exhibited accurately, and the character and

effect of them all can be generally suggested, by English examples. Both

the charm and the danger of the ancient figures are exemplified by De

Quincey in what he called “impassioned prose.”

De Quincey’s encomium _Joan of Arc_, insistent in apostrophe, has one

hyperbole that might have been uttered by Polemo or Scopelian. “The

graves that had closed sixty years ago seemed to fly open in sympathy

with a sorrow that echoed their own.” His alliteration, too, often

suggests the same anxiety to enhance. In the ecphrasis on the forest and

fountain of Domrémy (paragraph 12), and again in the corresponding one

toward the close, he is more delicate. On the other hand he uses with

sophistic fondness the device of a carrying iteration. The encomium opens:

What is to be thought of _her_? What is to be thought of the

poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine,

that—like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests

of Judea—rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety,

out of the religious inspiration rooted deep in pastoral

solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more

perilous station at the right hand of kings?[79]

An even more marked example is the paragraph next to the last. Its

opening and its close are as follows:

The shepherd girl that had delivered France—she, from her

dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, she, from her

duel with fire, as she entered her last dream—saw Domrémy,

saw the fountain of Domrémy, saw the pomp of forests in which

her childhood had wandered.... For all, except this comfort

from her farewell dream, she had died—died amidst the tears

of ten thousand enemies—died amidst the drums and trumpets of

armies—died amidst peals redoubling upon peals, volleys upon

volleys, from the saluting clarions of martyrs.

There are few more striking examples of a value in iteration much sought

by the sophists, its carrying on to a climax. Refrain carrying to climax

is used at greater length, and with finer balances and allusions, in the

twenty-eighth paragraph of _The English Mail-Coach_.

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful ulcer,

lurking far down in the depths of human nature. It is not that

men generally are summoned to face such awful trials; but

potentially, and in shadowy outline, such a trial is moving

subterraneously in perhaps all men’s natures. Upon the secret

mirror of our dreams such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps,

to every one of us. That dream so familiar to childhood, of

meeting a lion, and, through languishing prostration in hope

and the energies of hope, that constant sequel of lying down

before the lion, publishes the secret frailty of human nature,

reveals its deep-seated falsehood to itself, records its

abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one of us escapes that dream;

perhaps, as by some sorrowful doom of man, that dream repeats

for every one of us, through every generation, the original

temptation in Eden. Every one of us, in this dream, has a bait

offered to the infirm places of his own individual will; once

again a snare is presented for tempting him into captivity to

a luxury of ruin; once again, as in aboriginal Paradise, the

man falls by his own choice; again, by infinite iteration, the

ancient earth groans to heaven, through her secret caves, over

the weakness of her child: “Nature, from her seat, sighing

through all her works,” again “gives signs of woe that all is

lost”; and again the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing

heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is not

without probability that in the world of dreams every one of

us ratifies for himself the original transgression. In dreams,

perhaps under some secret conflict of the midnight sleeper,

lighted up to the consciousness at the time, but darkened to

the memory as soon as all is finished, each several child of

our mysterious race completes for himself the treason of the

aboriginal fall.

Whether De Quincey’s reading of Greek may have dwelt too long on

Isocrates is less important than that his devices of style spring from

similar preoccupations. The balances of Sir Thomas Browne, whose style he

tells us that he studied, have none of this sophistic chiming and oral

dilation. De Quincey reminds us of the sophists because he is a sophist.

Sophistic was not extinguished with the Roman Empire; and De Quincey’s

style has marked family traits. Thus it is easy to detach many suggestive

examples of the Gorgian figures, balances used not for clearness,

but generally for emotional emphasis and sometimes for emotional

expansiveness.

No! for her voice was then silent;

no! for her feet were dust.

_Joan of Arc_, 1.

The moments were numbered;

the strife was finished;

the vision was closed.

_The English Mail-Coach_, last paragraph.

These are simple balances. “Which was heaven’s vicegerent, and which the

creature of hell” marks the antithesis by reverse balance (_chiasmus_).

The following are enhanced by alliteration:

Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would ever bloom for her.

_Joan of Arc_, 2.

It was not wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such

a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and hear

angelic voices. _Ibid._, 10.

Nor does De Quincey’s refinement stop there. The following balances have

antithesis, alliteration, chiasmus, hyperbaton. The first varies its

contrasting rhythms; the second leads up to the climax quoted above (“For

all, except this comfort”).

Bishop of Beauvais! thy victim died in fire upon a

scaffold—thou upon a down bed. But, for the departing minutes

of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the farewell crisis,

when the gates of death are opening, and flesh is resting from

its struggles, oftentimes the tortured and the torturer have

the same truce from carnal torment; both sink together into

sleep; together both sometimes kindle into dreams. _Joan of

Arc_, 30.

The storm was weathered; the skirts even of that mighty storm

were drawing off. The blood that she was to reckon for had been

exacted; the tears that she was to shed in secret had been

paid to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been

faced steadily, had been suffered, had been survived. And in

her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumphed gloriously;

victoriously she had tasted the stings of death. _Ibid._, 31.

The sophistic marking of balance by rime (_homœoteleuton_), easy in Greek

or Latin through the recurrence of inflectional endings, is so forced

in English as to be very rare and in very bad taste. Word-play, on the

other hand, has always been one of the commonest devices for enhancing

balance into epigram. “Figures do not lie. The trouble with statistics

is not that figures lie, but that liars figure.” Paronomasia is not

sophistic; but, like other jingles, it attracted the sophists too much,

as to-day it attracts Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Bernard Shaw.

(4) _Clausula_

Balance is only one mode of rhythm. The sophists were so preoccupied

with it as often to risk monotony. For though they boasted of variety,

they were too fond of certain rhythms, and too anxious to mark them,

to achieve much flexibility. Their idea of aptness as conformity to an

assumed character or occasion led them rather to cast a whole passage in

one stylistic pattern.

Next to the perfecting of balances, they studied most attentively

sentence cadences.[80] Of _clausulæ_, as of other effects of style,

they had a classified store for selection. Though we find it hard to

follow them here, and impossible to translate their _clausulæ_ in terms

of English stress rhythms, we are not warranted in dismissing their

studies of rhythm as idle. True, they often overdid rhythm as they

overdid technic in general; but English prose has rarely been in danger

of this excess, and in particular it has been surest with those who have

controlled cadence. Sentence emphasis is the clue to mastery of sentence

movement. Its greater masters, modern as well as ancient, have grasped

this not only as logic, but as cadence. The flaw in sophistic rhythms

is their emptiness, the pursuit of them for themselves. The difference

between the sounding _clausula_ of dilation and the solving _clausula_

of mounting emotion can be heard in the same English sophist. All the

following sentences conclude well for the ear; but whereas the first two

are prolonged by decorative additions, the last is an ascending period.

The boy rose to a splendour and a noonday prosperity, both

personal and public, that rang through the records of his

people, and became a by-word amongst his posterity for a

thousand years, until the sceptre was departing from Judah.

_Joan of Arc_, 1.

How if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed queen,

coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting to the morning

air her head, turned grey by sorrow, daughter of Cæsars

kneeling down humbly to kiss the guillotine, as one that

worships death? _Ibid._, 26.

Still in the confidence of children that tread without fear

every chamber in their father’s house, and to whom no door is

closed, we, in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed

for an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps from

the sorrow-stricken fields of earth upwards to the sandals of

God. _The English Mail-Coach_, 32.

(5) Vehemence

“Scopelian, when one of Polemo’s pupils said that his instrument was the

drum, picked up the sneer with ‘the drum, indeed; but it is the shield

of Ajax.’”[81] The passage is characteristic not only in allusion,

figure, and ingenuity, but in grandiloquence. It is itself a drum-beat;

and the sophistic harmony was fond of drums. The stylistic effects most

sought are those most marked.[82] Scott’s deprecatory “The big bow-wow

strain I can do myself”[83] has neither this aim nor this attitude. He

is generously wishing that he could control the quiet sureness of Jane

Austen. A sophist was complacent in his own style. He was anxious only

that his bow-wow should always be big, or, to return to Scopelian’s more

precise figure, that the audience should always hear the drum. It is

the drum that marks sophistic. Few of the devices of style so carefully

cultivated are sophistic in themselves. What is sophistic is the use

of them all, as from a classified store, in excess and with insistent

emphasis. The sophistic style cannot be escaped. It is always saying,

Here is style.

Such rhetoric is not worthless. Some of its technical skill is available

for better ends. But as other arts, to survive and progress, must be

more than technics, so especially the art of words cannot go far without

being animated by power of conception.[84] Technic is promotive and

educative only as it gives free course to motive and vision. As a system

of education, therefore, sophistic was hollow. This is the issue raised

by Plato; and he is justified by history. Sophistic could use its many

devices only to exhibit skill, not to guide either the state or the

individual. The only force that could revive rhetoric with the lore older

than this spent tradition was a new motive.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _De orat._ I. xiii.

[2] 503.

[3] 312.

[4] 273-4.

[5] ARP Chapter II, especially pages 9-11.

[6] Cf. Tacitus, _Dialogus_, in ARP 88.

[7] ARP 14-17.

[8] See Hubbell.

[9] This defect is discerned as early as the _Phædrus_ (264, seq.); but

Socrates does not carry the remedy beyond logical analysis into cogency

of sequence.

[10] The term _second sophistic_ is generally applied to the Greek

rhetoric and oratory of the second, third, and fourth Christian

centuries, and is also applicable to the Latin. Already defined as a

tendency in the first century (ARP IV. ii), it is reviewed at that point

by H. von Arnim in the introduction to _Leben und Werke des Dio von

Prusa_, Berlin, 1898. The second century is reviewed more specifically

by Boulanger. Wright’s introduction provides the best summary guide and

bibliography for English readers. The studies of the influence of the

second sophistic on the Christian orators of this period (see the list at

the head of this chapter) review and define sophistic more precisely and

more significantly than the general works cited in their bibliographies.

But E. Norden’s _Die antike Kunstprosa_ and E. Rohde’s _Der griechische

Roman_ are still suggestive.

[11] Written between 230 and 238. For the dates of the orators celebrated

by Philostratus see Wright, xxii-xl.

[12] I. 9 (30). Substantially the same things, including the public

honors, are recorded of Scopelian, I. 21 (84), and of Polemo, I. 25 (112).

[13] See the general histories, Guignet, 85, and Campbell’s summary,

pages 7-10.

[14] Boulanger, 16, 57; Méridier, 46-47. “By the middle of the first

century A. D., Ephesus, Smyrna, Miletus, and Mytilene were become world

centers for the instruction of rhetoric.” Campbell, 10.

[15] “L’abandon du point de vue historique, qui serait condamnable

ailleurs, devient légitime pour la sophistique, puisque toute évolution y

est rendue impossible par l’existence d’un canon oratoire réligieusement

observé. Libanios s’applique à copier Aristide, qui croit être un

imitateur fidèle de Démosthène.” Méridier, page vi.

[16] “Un public qui ne se lasse pas de faire éternellement sa classe de

rhétorique.” Boulanger, 271.

[17] See προγυμνάσματα under section c below, and, in the index to ARP,

_declamatio_.

[18] The references are to sections and, in parenthesis, to Wright’s

pages.

[19] Cf. Ælius Aristides XXIX and XXX D, summarized by Boulanger, 275.

[20] ARP Chapter IV. ii. 90-93.

[21] xxvii, page 12. A; quoted by Guignet, 46.

[22] Petit de Julleville, _L’école d’Athènes au quatrième siècle_, 105.

Méridier arrives at the same estimate: “Or, dans aucun de ces exercices

oratoires, le sophiste n’a à compter avec la réalité.... La question de

fond importe peu; elle sert simplement de thème, de point de départ,

pour ne pas dire de prétexte.... La grande affaire, c’est de donner au

public l’impression d’un tour de force surprenant exécuté sans difficulté

apparente. Le sophiste est proprement un virtuose qui est capable de

jouer, sur n’importe quel thème, des variations brillantes. Indifférent

aux sujets qu’il traite, il s’applique à multiplier les difficultés de la

forme.” 9. Pliny’s account of Isæus Rhetor (ARP 95) gives substantially

the same impression.

[23] I. 9 (32).

[24] E.g., _Demonax_, 33, 36; _Rhetorum præceptor_, 17.

[25] II. 15 (244).

[26] “Troics” Τρωικά, which Philostratus traces back to Hippias of

Elis (I. 11 (36)), seem more like ἠθοποιίαι (ARP 68, 71, 187, and see

Hermogenes below, section c). The Τρωικά of Dio Chrysostom are an exercise

of another sort, the refutation of a classic (Boulanger, 249). It is

discussed by Von Arnim, 166.

Further on μελέτη see Boulanger, Chapter ii, section v; Méridier, Chapter

i.

[27] Introduction (8).

[28] II. 9 (222).

[29] I. 24 (102); II. 15 (244). Several of the sophists celebrated by

Philostratus withdrew for a brief meditation after receiving the theme:

Scopelian, I. 21 (82); Dionysius of Miletus and Isæus, I. 22 (90);

Polemo, I. 25 (120). Apollonius of Naucratis, he complains, took too

long. II, 19 (254).

[30] ARP 95.

[31] The sound ancient doctrine of _facilitas_ is most definitely

formulated by Quintilian in his tenth book (see ARP 79). It is different

not only in detail, but in its conception and method.

[32] See _memoria_ in the index to ARP.

[33] I. 25 (130).

[34] I. 21 (80-82).

[35] I. 8 (28).

[36] II. 8 (212), 10 (226).

[37] “Polemo was so arrogant that he conversed with cities as his

inferiors, emperors as not his superiors, and the gods as his equals.” I.

25 (114).

[38] See _amplification_ in the index to ARP.

[39] E.g., see _chria_ in the index to ARP and in section c below.

[40] Méridier, 41-44, and Chapter ix; Guignet, Chapter ix; Burgess, 201;

Ameringer, 72, 78, 87; and the “Tempe” and “Memnon” of Dio Chrysostom.

For restraint of this form of dilation by Augustine see Barry, 246;

by Basil, Campbell, 128. For ἔκφρασις in the προγυμνάσματα see below,

section c.

Among his many sallies Lucian has inserted a sober warning: “Restraint in

description of mountains, walls, rivers, and the like is very important;

you must not give the impression that you are making a tasteless display

of word-painting, and expatiating independently while the history takes

care of itself.... You have the mighty Homer’s example in such a case....

If Parthenius, Euphorion, or Callimachus had been in his place, how many

lines do you suppose it would have taken to get the water to Tantalus’

lips; how many more to set Ixion spinning?” _Quomodo historia_, 57;

Fowler’s translation, II. 134.

[41] Orat. x, quoted by Guignet, 188. Hermogenes uses much the same

words. See below, section c.

[42] E.g., [Hippodromus] “recited an encomium on fair-speaking,

beginning with the peacock and showing how admiration makes him spread

his plumage aloft.” II. 27 (288). For this peacock see also Méridier, 144.

[43] ARP 168, 203, 218.

[44] ARP 100.

[45] The theme, which Lucian handles with biting conciseness, is at the

opening of _Quomodo historia_.

[46] ἡ συνθήκη λαμπρά I. 17 (50) (54). Συνθήκη here seems to be used

for σύνθεσις, and νόημα in the context to be equivalent to _sententia_,

as in I. 22 (90) of Dionysius of Miletus. If so, τάξις also, which in

the older rhetoric means _dispositio_, is restricted by Philostratus to

_compositio_. The latter, at any rate, is all that he ever discusses

specifically.

[47] Guignet, 214.

[48] Menander Rhetor, περὶ ἐπιδεικτικῶν, analyzed by Burgess, 110 seq.

Cf. Boulanger, 342, 363. See below, pages 30, 31.

[49] The same topics, indeed, are found in letters, anticipating the

medieval _dictamen_. See Guignet, _Les procédés épistolaires de St.

Grégoire de Nazianzen_, Paris, 1911 (added to the work previously cited).

[50] Miss Kennedy shows that the cramping of biography by encomiastic

pattern hampers Ammianus in imitating Tacitus, whose method is narrative

(_The Literary Work of Ammianus_, Chicago, 1912, pages 11-14).

[51] II., opening.

[52] Basil, _In Gordium_, 142 D-143 A, as translated by Campbell, 147.

[53] For προγυμνάσματα in a general sense see ARP 249.

[54] Sandys, _History of Classical Scholarship_, I. 311. Theon is quoted

by Walden, _The Universities of Ancient Greece_, 200-1, 205-10.

[55] E.g., there is a commentary on Aphthonius by the Byzantine John

Doxopater in the twelfth century, and an Amsterdam edition as late as

1665.

[56] “The most famous technical writer on rhetoric in the second century

... categories quoted by all the technical rhetoricians who succeeded

him.” Wright, xxxvi. See also Boulanger, 241; and Radermacher in

Pauly-Wissowa.

[57] My translation is from the Teubner text of Rabe, Leipzig, 1913,

pages 1-27.

[58] This section and the following remind both of the traditional

importance of narrative and description in oratory and of the general

confusion of poetic with rhetoric.

[59] The exercise is still included in the Jesuit Latin manual of

rhetoric, Kleutgen’s _Ars dicendi_ (1898), but is relegated to an

appendix.

[60] The topics for encomium of a person are analyzed by Burgess (120)

from Aphthonius, and by Méridier (15, 44, 226) and Burgess (120 seq.)

from Menander Rhetor. Menander distinguishes four kinds: simple encomium

(of one dead some time), funeral oration, monody, speech of consolation.

The topic _achievements_ might also be divided as of war and of peace, or

by virtues. That the topic _comparison_ (σύγκρισις) might be distributed,

as in Menander, Hermogenes admits below.

APHTHONIUS MENANDER

I. prologue

{ 1. nationality native country

II. race { 2. native city race

{ 3. ancestors birth

{ 4. parents nature

{ 1. pursuits education

III. education { 2. art pursuits

{ 3. laws

{ 1. of soul { (a) manliness

{ { (b) judgment

{

IV. achievements { { (a) beauty

(the main topic) { 2. of body { (b) speed achievements

{ { (c) strength

{

{ { (a) power

{ 3. of fortune { (b) wealth

{ (c) friends

V. comparison comparison with

each of the

foregoing

VI. epilogue

[61] For the relation of encomium to poetry, see Burgess, 130.

[62] For ἠθοποιία and προσωποποιία see the index to ARP.

[63] See above, page 17.

[64] The other works of Hermogenes deal with _status_ (Περὶ στάσεων),

with _inventio_ (Περὶ εὑρέσεως), with the rationale of impressiveness

(Περὶ μεθόδου δεινότητος), with types of style (Περὶ ἰδεῶν). They show

him to be not altogether a pedant, nor incapable of style. He was

frequently commented, especially by the Byzantines. For modern comment

see, besides Radermacher in Pauly-Wissowa, Jæneke, _De statuum doctrina

ab Hermogene tradita_, Leipzig, 1904; Becker, _Hermogenes de rhythmo

oratorio_, Münster, 1896.

[65] See above, section A.

[66] See O. Navarre, _La rhétorique grecque avant Aristote_.

[67] ARP 21, 42, 64.

[68] Hermogenes, though he has a treatise on _inventio_ (εὕρεσις), and a

separate one on _status_ (στάσις), deviates the former into the formal

parts of _dispositio_ and still more widely into _elocutio_.

[69] ARP, 125-6, 229; Burgess, 166.

[70] See above, page 13.

[71] See the store classified by Burgess, 150.

[72] See Boulanger, 57; Méridier, 17; and St. Augustine on _integritas_,

below, page 65.

[73] “En principe, il fallait ‘bourrer’ sa matière du plus grand nombre

d’images possible, même quand rien n’y obligeait. En fait, on ne devait

donner asile dans ses écrits qu’à certaines images ... dont la nature et

le nombre étaient rigoureusement fixés.” Guignet, 132.

[74] iii.

[75] Quintilian’s use of the terms ἐνάργεια and φαντασία are among the

evidences that he remembered the vital counsels of Aristotle (see ARP 23,

127), though his own treatment of metaphor (VIII. vi. 4) is hardly vital.

[76] Long thought to be Cicero’s. The list of figures is given, pages

62-64, in Wilkins’s digest, section 5 of his introduction to Cicero’s _De

Oratore_.

[77] Interrogatio (rhetorical question), præsumptio (πρόληψις), dubitatio

(ἀπορία, with several modifications), simulatio (including παρρησία and

prosopopœia), apostrophe, sub oculos subjectio (ὑποτύπωσις, corresponding

to the trope evidentia), dissimulatio (εἰρωνεία, distinguished from the

trope ironia, and appearing also as ἀντίφρασις, confessio, concessio,

consensio), reticentia (ἀποσιώπησις, with interruptio and digressio),

imitatio (ἠθοποιία), pœnitentia, emphasis (also a trope), and finally

various forms of insinuation by hint and double meaning. Other figures,

as included by Rutilius Lupus and Celsus, Quintilian lists (IX. ii. 102),

but does not describe.

[78] For convenience of reference Quintilian’s grouping of _figuræ

verborum_ in IX. iii. may be tabulated as follows:—

Group 1, variations of syntax (3-27), such as hyperbaton.

Group 2, modes of iteration (28-65), figuræ per adjectionem; e.g.,

ἐπάνοδος (regressio), πολύπτωτον, μεταβολή, πλοκή, συνωνυμία, πλεονασμός,

διαλλαγή (with the accompanying syntactical variations, βραχυλογία,

ἀσύνδετον, πολυσύνδετον), and, most important, climax (κλῖμαξ, gradatio),

a term applied consistently to progressive iteration; related figuræ per

detractionem, συνεζευγμένον, παραδιαστολή (distinctio).

Group 3, word-play, paronomasia, annominatio (66-73), e.g., ἀντανάκλασις.

Group 4, balance and antithesis (74-86). Quintilian introduces these

Gorgian figures by saying: “Magnæ veteribus curæ fuit gratiam dicendi

paribus et contrariis acquirere. Gorgias in hoc immodicus, copiosus

ætate prima utique Isocrates fuit. Delectatus est his etiam M. Tullius”

(74), and proceeds (75) to divide balance into: πάρισον, ὁμοιοτέλευτον,

ὁμοιόπτωτον, ἰσόκωλον.

The Gorgian figures are analyzed and exemplified by Méridier, 33. 162;

Guignet, 106. Campbell includes them in a different classification,

more distinctive for his analysis, and is generally followed by Sr M.

Inviolata Barry, _St Augustine the orator, a study of the rhetorical

qualities of St. Augustine’s Sermones ad Populum_, Washington, 1924

(Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, VI). Sr Barry’s table,

pages 18-19, is useful for reference.

[79] Incidentally the comparison and contrast with David is carried out

much in the manner of a σύγκρισις.

[80] For Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian on sentence rhythm, see ARP

27, 28, 59-61, 79.

[81] Philostratus, I. 21 (84).

[82] See Méridier’s analysis (20) of the distinction made by Hermogenes

between true and false δεινότης.

[83] Diary, March 14, 1826.

[84] The classic formulation of this is the treatise _On the Sublime_,

viii.

CHAPTER II[1]

ST. AUGUSTINE ON PREACHING (_DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA_, IV)

With this elaborate pedagogical tradition a clean break is made by

St. Augustine. The fourth book of his _De doctrina christiana_[2] has

historical significance in the early years of the fifth century out of

all proportion to its size; for it begins rhetoric anew. It not only

ignores sophistic; it goes back over centuries of the lore of personal

triumph to the ancient idea of moving men to truth; and it gives to the

vital counsels of Cicero a new emphasis for the urgent tasks of preaching

the word of God.

Abstractly and in retrospect the very character of Christian preaching

seems necessarily to reject sophistic. But at the time this seemed

anything but inevitable. Sophistic was almost the only lore of public

speaking then active. It dominated criticism and education. The Greek

fathers Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory Nazianzen might expose its falsity

of conception; but they could not escape it. It had brought them up. Its

stylistic habits were ingrained in their expression. Augustine too had

been brought up on sophistic. Nor could he escape it. Again and again his

style rings with its tradition.[3] Not only had he learned it for good;

he had taught it. He had been himself, in Plutarch’s sense and Strabo’s,

a sophist. We must hasten to add that the great Christians of the fourth

century, if they could not escape sophistic, at least redeemed it by

curbing its extravagance and turning it to nobler uses. But Augustine did

much more. He set about recovering for the new generation of Christian

orators the true ancient rhetoric. He saw that for Christian preaching

sophistic must not only be curbed; it must be supplanted. Against the

background of his day his quiet, simple book, renouncing the balances and

figures of his other works without renouncing their fervor, is seen to be

a startling innovation.

Not the least striking trait of the innovation is its reserve. Augustine

does not attack sophistic as the Gregorys do; he ignores it. In Chapter

xxxi of Book II he had, indeed, mentioned it. Discussing there not

style, but matter, he had contrasted the necessary training in argument

with sophistic quibbling, and had then added, forecasting Book IV, that

superfluous stylistic ornament also is sophistic.

But training in argument on questions of all such kinds as

are to be investigated and resolved in sacred literature

is of the highest value; only we must beware of the lust

for quarrelling, and of the puerile display of skill in

disappointing an opponent.... This sort of quibbling conclusion

Scripture execrates, I think, in the text _Qui sophistice[4]

loquitur odibilis est_. Even though not quibbling, a speech

seeking verbal ornament beyond the bounds of responsibility to

subject matter (_gravitas_) is called sophistic. II. xxxi.

But an uninformed modern reader of Book IV would hardly be aware that

sophistic existed. No denunciation could be more scathing than this

silence. In Augustine’s view of Christian preaching sophistic simply has

no place. A good debater, instead of parrying he counters. He spends his

time on his own case. A good teacher, he tells his neophytes not what to

avoid, but what to do. He has so far renounced sophistic that he has no

concern to triumph. He wishes simply to teach sound rhetorical doctrine.

He achieves an extraordinary conciseness not so much by compression as by

undeviating straightforwardness.

A reader familiar with the times, however, will be reminded of sophistic

by many allusions. Single phrases or sentences some of them, a few more

extended, they all serve to illuminate by contrast the true rhetoric.

All these things, when they are taught by rhetors, are thought

great, bought at a great price, sold with great boasting. Such

boasting, I fear, I may suggest myself in speaking so; but I

had to answer those ill-educated men who think that our authors

are to be despised, not because they lack the eloquence which

such critics love too much, but because they do not use it for

display. vii.

[But an audience of Christian sobriety] will not be pleased

with that suave style in which though no wrong things are

said, right things slight and frail are adorned with foamy

circumlocution. xiv.

I think I have accomplished something not when I hear them

applauding, but when I see them weeping. xxiv.[5]

Display, inflation, thirst for applause—every reader of Augustine’s time

would recognize in these allusions a repudiation of sophistic.

For Augustine thinks that Christian preaching is to be learned best

from Christian preachers. As if in reply to Julian’s scornful “Let

them elucidate their Matthew and Luke,”[6] he recommends not only for

doctrine, but for rhetoric, the Epistles, the Prophets, and the Fathers,

and proceeds to analyze their style. The analysis, though based on the

current Latin version, is generally transferable to the Greek, since

it is much simpler than the classification set forth by sophistic. It

exhibits sentence movement simply in climax, period, balance—those

devices which are most easily appropriated and most useful. The general

ancient counsels of aptness and variety are applied specifically to

preaching. As to cadence (_clausula_), Augustine dispenses with all

subdivisions, and even makes bold to assert that it must sometimes be

sacrificed. Similarly omitting all classification of figures, he manages

to suggest in a few words what figures are for. In a word, he shows how

to learn from the Canon and the Fathers the rhetoric that is vital to

homiletic.

This rhetoric, not only simpler than sophistic, but quite different

in emphasis, is set forth in the terms of Cicero. Augustine has gone

back four and a half centuries to the days before _declamatio_. The

instruction that he draws from his analysis of Christian literature is

planned upon the “instruct, win, move” (_docere_, _delectare_, _movere_)

of _De oratore_ and upon the corresponding three typical styles (_genus

tenue_—_medium_—_grande_) of _Orator_.[7] Evidently Augustine had the

greater Cicero, not the lesser that sufficed for the Middle Age. He

neither quotes nor cites any other rhetorician; and though his doctrine

of aptness and of variety is common throughout the older rhetoric, for

this too he had no need to go beyond the master’s two great works.

Nor have any others been more persuasive as to imitation,[8] which is

Augustine’s controlling idea. This first Ciceronianism, too immediately

aware of the perverted imitation of style taught by sophists to fall into

the archaism and redundancy of later worship of Cicero, is a penetrative

recovery of Cicero’s larger meaning. Augustine’s application of the three

typical styles is more just and more practically distinct than Cicero’s

own. Would that all Ciceronians had been equally discerning!

TABULAR VIEW OF ST. AUGUSTINE’S _DE DOCTRINA CHRISTIANA_ IV

A. For learning to preach, models are more fruitful than rules i-v

B. Eminent models are offered by the literature of Christian

eloquence vi-viii

1. Christian eloquence not merely comparable with pagan,

but distinctive.

2. Analysis of _Romans_ v. especially of climax, period,

clauses, etc.

3. Analysis of _2 Corinth._ xi. 16, especially of variety.

4. Analysis of _Amos_ vi. especially of figures.

C. Christian preaching must fulfil all three typical tasks of

oratory summarized in Cicero’s _docere_, _delectare_,

_movere_ ix-xix

1. _docere_, subordinating even _integritas_ to clearness ix-xi

2. _delectare_, necessary as a means, never an end xii-xvii

3. _movere_, to carry assent into action xviii, xix

D. The three corresponding styles of oratory, Cicero’s

_tenue_, _medium_, _grande_, are exemplified in the Canon xx

1. _genus tenue_ (_submissum_) in _Galatians_ iv. 21 and iii.

15 as demanding trained reasoning and memory.

2. _genus medium_ (_temperatum_) in 1 _Timothy_ v, _Romans_

xii, xiii, as rhythmical, but with cadence often

sacrificed.

3. _genus grande_ in _2 Corinthians_ vi. 2, _Romans_ viii.

28, _Galatians_ iv. 10, the last without the usual

stylistic means.

E. They are also exemplified in St. Cyprian _Ad Cæcilium_ and

_De habitu virginum_, St. Ambrose _De Spiritu_ and _De

virginibus_ xxii

F. No one of the three can effectively be constant xxii, xxiii

G. Constancy is rather in the aim, which is always persuasion xxiv-xxvi

1. The speaker’s life is the greater means of persuasion

in the third style xxvii-xxviii

(Appended Note) The recital of borrowed sermons is permissible xxix

Conclusion, with reminder of prayer, in thanksgiving xxx, xxxi

The fourth book of the _De doctrina Christiana_ is specifically linked by

its proem to the preceding three as setting forth presentation (_modus

proferendi_). Books I-III have dealt with study of the subject matter

(_inventio_); Book IV is to deal with expression. Augustine thus makes

the traditional fivefold division twofold. _Inventio_, which under

sophistic had lapsed, he restores to its rightful place and gives it a

new application to the exegesis of Scripture. Of the remaining four left

to his second heading he discusses only style (_elocutio_). Delivery and

memory are mentioned incidentally; plan is omitted. The omission is not

negligent. The first chapter warns us not to expect a manual of rhetoric.

Nevertheless a modern student cannot help wishing that so suggestive

a treatise had both applied to preaching the ancient counsels as to

plan and exhibited the New Testament in this aspect. Thus to analyze

for imitation not only the style of the Pauline epistles, but their

cogency of order, would doubtless have made the work unduly extensive.

One hopes that seminarians of the fifth century were stimulated, and

that seminarians of the twentieth century will be stimulated, by the

example of the treatise itself to study _Romans_ not only for appeal, but

for cogency. Meantime Augustine’s fourth book remains one of the most

fruitful of all discussions of style in preaching.

Who dare say that the defenders of truth should be unarmed

against falsehood? While the proponents of error know the

art of winning an audience to good will, attention, and open

mind,[9] shall the proponents of truth remain ignorant? While

the [sophist] states facts concisely, clearly, plausibly,[10]

shall the preacher state them so that they are tedious to hear,

hard to understand, hard to believe? While the one attacks

truth and insinuates falsehood by fallacious argument, shall

the other have too little skill either to defend the true or to

refute the false? Shall the one, stirring his hearers to error,

urging them by the force of oratory, move them by terror, by

pity, by joy, by encouragement, and the other slowly and coldly

drowse for truth? ii.

But to learn such skill from rules, he goes on, is the way rather for

boys than for men who have immediately before them the urgent tasks of

preaching.

For eloquence will stick to such men, if they have the talent

of keenness and ardor, more easily through their reading and

hearing of the eloquent than through their following of the

rules of eloquence. Nor does the Church lack literature, even

outside the Canon established in the citadel of authority,

to imbue a capable man with its eloquence, even though his

mind be not on the manner but on the matter, provided he add

practise in writing, in dictating, finally also in composing

orally[11] what he feels according to the rule of piety and

faith. Besides, if such talent be lacking, either the rules of

rhetoric will not be grasped, or if by great labor some few of

them are partially grasped, they will be of no avail.... [Young

preachers] must beware of letting slip what they have to say

while they attend to saying it in good form. iii.

They must, indeed, know the principles of adaptation (iv), and develop

their expression as far as they can; but they will do so best by

imitation.

Whoever wishes to speak not only with wisdom, but with

eloquence.... I rather direct to read or hear the eloquent and

to imitate them by practise than advise to spend his time on

teachers of the art of rhetoric. v.

Expressed in modern terms, Augustine’s position is that rhetoric as a

classified body of doctrine is properly an undergraduate study. It is not

the best approach for seminarians because its method is analytical. The

young preacher, needing rather promotion than revision, will advance more

rapidly by imitation.

Starting from this principle, that the more fruitful study for learning

to preach is imitation of Christian eloquence, Augustine proceeds to show

(vi-viii) how distinctive is the eminence of such models and how repaying

to analysis. His vindication should be pondered by those who still permit

themselves to disparage without distinction the literary value of the New

Testament, and by those who, granting poetic to Ambrose, remain unaware

of his rhetoric.

At this point the question, perhaps, arises whether our

authors, whose divinely inspired writings constitute for

us a canon of most salutary authority, are to be called

philosophers[12] only, or also orators. To me and to those

who agree with what I am saying, the question is very easily

answered. For where I comprehend them, nothing can seem to me

either more philosophical or more eloquent. And all, I venture

to say, who rightly comprehend what they speak, comprehend at

the same time that they could not have spoken otherwise. For as

there is an eloquence becoming to youth, another to age, nor

can that be called eloquence which does not befit the character

of the speaker, so there is an eloquence becoming to men most

worthy of the highest authority and evidently inspired. Our

authors have spoken with such eloquence. No other is becoming

to them, nor theirs to others. For it is like themselves; and,

the more it rejects display, the more it ranges above others

not by inflation, but by cogency. Where on the other hand I do

not comprehend them, though their eloquence is less apparent

to me, I have no doubt that it is such as I find it where I

do comprehend. The very obscurity of inspired and salutary

utterances has been tinged with such eloquence that our minds

should be stimulated not only in study [of their meaning], but

in practise [of their art]. Indeed, if there were leisure,

all the virtues and graces of eloquence with which those are

inflated who put their style ahead of the style of our authors

not by greatness, but by distension, could be exhibited in the

sacred literature of those whom divine Providence has sent to

instruct us and to draw us from this corrupt world to the world

of happiness. But what delights me more than I can say in their

eloquence is not what it has in common with pagan orators and

poets. What I rather admire, what fills me with amazement, is

that the eloquence which we hear around us has so been used,

as it were through another eloquence of their own, as to be

neither deficient nor conspicuous. For it should be neither

condemned nor displayed; and they would have seemed to do the

one if they shunned it, the other if it became noticeable. Even

in those places where perhaps it is noticeable to experts, such

is the message that the words in which it is expressed seem

not to be sought by the speaker, but to subserve that message

naturally, as if one saw philosophy issuing from her own home

in the heart of the philosopher, and eloquence following as an

inseparable servant even when not called.[13] vi.

The vindication of an eloquence distinctly Christian has the more weight

because its doctrine of form and substance echoes from Cicero the best

ancient tradition. The older tradition had in Augustine’s time been so

overlaid that he could do no better service to rhetoric than to recall

it. In fact, Christian eloquence redeemed public speaking by reviving the

true persuasion.

The insistence on the Ciceronian doctrine that style is not separable

has a bearing more than historical. Not only for Augustine’s time, but

for any time, the truism must be reasserted. His iteration is more than

preoccupation with Cicero, more than repudiation of sophistic. It springs

from the cardinal importance of the truism for homiletic. In the pulpit

the sophistic heresy of art for art’s sake becomes intolerable.

Augustine’s next step (vii) is to support his general claims for

Christian eloquence, and to show how it may be studied, by analyzing

briefly three typical passages. In the first, _Romans_ v. 3-5, he

analyzes prose rhythm under the familiar heads of classical sentence

movement (_compositio_): phrases and subordinate clauses (_cæsa_),

coordinate clauses (_membra_), period (_circuitus_), climax (_gradatio_),

adding the equivalent Greek terms.[14]

RHYTHMICAL ANALYSIS OF _ROMANS_ V. 3, 4, 5

(1) καυχώμεθα ἐν ταῖς θλίψεσιν, (1) Gloriamur in tribulationibus,

(2) εἰδότες ὅτι ἡ θλῖψις ὑπομονὴν (2) scientes quod tribulatio

κατεργάζεται, patientiam operatur,

(3) ἡ δὲ ὑπομονὴ δοκιμήν, (3) patientiam autem probationem,

(4) ἡ δὲ δοκιμὴ ἐλπίδα, (4) probatio vero spem,

(5) ἡ δὲ ἐλπὶς οὐ καταισχύνει, (5) spes autem non confundit,

(6) ὅτι ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ ἐκκέχυται (6) quia caritas Dei diffusa est

ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν, in cordibus nostris,

(7) διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου τοῦ (7) per Spiritum sanctum qui datus

δοθέντος ἡμῖν. est nobis.

The passage is short enough, and the sentence movement simple enough, to

be grasped readily. Its balance is striking without being monotonous,

and is reinforced by a linking iteration that leads to a climax.[15] He

is a wise teacher who begins with an instance so memorable. It must have

seized even more quickly a generation familiar with both the terms and

the method.

The next example, _2 Corinthians_ xi. 16-31, shows the same sentence

devices carried through a much longer reach, and is therefore used both

to reinforce the first and to add the importance of rhythmical variety.

The counsel of variety, though a commonplace of the older rhetoric, had

especial point by contrast with the sophistic fondness for trimming

and prolonging balances. Incidental to the exhibition of variety is a

reminder of aptness; and the analysis concludes:

Finally all this breathless passage is closed with a period of

two members.... But how after this impetus the brief statement

interposed comes to rest, and rests the reader, how apt it is

and how charming, can hardly be said. vii.

The analysis of the third example, _Amos_ vi. 1-6, leads the study to

longer and more sustained rhythmical reaches. Lest it seem the more

difficult in the more figurative version of the Septuagint, Augustine

quotes it “as translated from the Hebrew into Latin style through the

interpretation of the priest Jerome, expert in both languages.”

ANALYSIS OF _AMOS_ VI. 1-6

(1) Woe to them that are at ease (1) Væ qui opulenti estis in

in Zion and trust in the Sion et confiditis in

mountains of Samaria, monte Samariæ, optimates,

which are named chief capita populorum,

of the nations, to whom ingredientes pompatice

the house of Israel came! domum Israel;

(2) Pass ye unto Calneh, and (2) transite in Chalanne et

see; and from thence go videte, et ite inde in

ye to Hamath the great: Emath magnam, et descendite

then go down to Gath of in Geth Palæstinorum,

the Philistines: be they et ad optima

better than these kingdoms? quæque regna horum, si

or their border latior terminus eorum

greater than your border? termino vestro est:

(3) Ye that put away the evil (3) qui separati estis in diem

day, and cause the seat malum, et adpropinquatis

of violence to come near; solio iniquitatis;

(4) That lie upon beds of ivory, (4) qui dormitis in lectis eburneis,

and stretch themselves et lascivitis in stratis

upon their couches, and vestris; qui comeditis

eat the lambs out of the agnum de grege, et vitulos

flock, and the calves out de medio armenti;

of the midst of the stall;

(5) That chant to the sound of (5) qui canitis ad vocem psalterii:

the viol,

(6) and invent to themselves (6) sicut David putaverunt se

instruments of musick, habere vasa cantici,

like David; that drink bibentes in phialis vinum,

wine in bowls, and anoint et optimo unguento

themselves with the chief delibuti;

ointments:

(7) but they are not grieved for (7) et nihil patiebantur super

the affliction of Joseph. contritione Joseph.

Much more urgent, leaping to attack, rising, prolonging, varying,

subsiding to a pregnant close, the prophecy widens the conception of

rhythmical range. Marking the rhythms briefly, Augustine uses it also to

show the oratorical force of figures.[16] Thus a few pages of analysis

are made to yield wide and definite suggestion. This, perhaps, is their

outstanding merit; while they show the student what to look for, they

invite him to go on for himself. But the pedagogical achievement does

not stop there. The professor of rhetoric has seen that rhetorical

analysis must be simplified, and that it must be made progressive.

Where else shall we find so much drawn from three analyses? The first

reduces the complicated lore of rhythm to its essentials. The second,

reinforcing and extending these, dwells upon aptness as a corrective of

rhetorical zeal, and as a constructive principle. The third, quoting

rhythms still more urgent with emotion, passes to the emotional value

of concrete words. To bring the over-classified lore of sophistic back

to the simplicity of Aristotle was a service not only to homiletic, but

to all rhetoric. A greater service was to substitute for the static

and formalized pedagogy of the day a vital order. Augustine had been

doubtless a popular professor; Christianity made him a great teacher.

Pedagogically, therefore, even his incidental definitions are worth

noticing. That the function of grammar is traditionally to impart

correctness of speech (iii) is used to support the contention that even

this elementary skill comes best in fact from imitation. The period

(vii) is defined so as to throw the emphasis on delivery. Its “clauses

are suspended by the speaker’s voice until it is concluded at the end.”

Therefore it “cannot have fewer than two clauses.” So he points out in

the passage above from _Amos_ that the rhythm is available for delivery

(_in potestate pronuntiantis_) either as a series of six or as three

pairs, and that the latter is more beautiful. So he suggests limiting

analysis to give room for oral interpretation.

This same passage which we have set as an example can be used

to show other things relevant to the rules of eloquence. But a

good hearer is not so much instructed by discussion in detail

as he is kindled by ardent delivery. vii.

The next and longest section (ix-xix) is based on Cicero’s “inform,

please, move” (_docere_, _delectare_, _movere_). Distinguishing each of

these tasks clearly, Augustine is at the same time careful to unite

them, by progressively iterative transitions, in the single and constant

task of persuasion. In exposition (_docere_) clearness may demand the use

of popular expressions. What avails correctness in a diction that is not

understood?

He who teaches will rather avoid all words that do not teach.

If he can find correct words that are understood, he will

choose those; if he cannot, whether because they do not exist

or because they do not occur to him at the time, he will use

even words that are less correct, provided only the thing

itself be taught and learned correctly. ix.

The correctness (_integritas_) of diction boasted by the sophists, and

carried by them even to the pedantry of archaism, is here faced squarely.

The assertion that it must sometimes be sacrificed, the making of

clearness absolutely paramount, is the bolder at a time when Christian

preaching was not yet recognized as having secure command of elegance.

Unmistakable clearness, Augustine goes on, is so much more important in

preaching than in discussions permitting question and answer that the

speaker must be quick to help unspoken difficulties.

For a crowd eager to grasp will show by its movement whether it

has understood; and until it has given this signal the subject

must be turned over and over by various ways of expressing it—a

resource beyond the power of those who deliver speeches written

out and memorized.[17] x.

No warrant here, he adds (xi), for dilation beyond the demands of

clearness, but good warrant for making instruction pleasant and appealing

in order to hold attention. Passing thus to the two other tasks of

oratory, he quotes (xii) Cicero’s “to instruct is of necessity, to

please is for interest, to move is for victory.”[18] The three are

then both carefully distinguished and shown to be a sort of geometrical

progression. The first is first of necessity. It must be mastered; but

it is rarely sufficient. To supply the lack, the second demands more

rhetoric by demanding further adaptation to the audience; but it too

must remain insufficient. So the third task, to move, is not merely the

third item in a classification; it is the final stage in a progress.

That progress is increasingly emotional. The last stage demands not only

all the rhetoric of the preceding, but also the art of vivid imagery[19]

and of urgent application. So Augustine arrives at one of those linking

summaries which constitute almost a refrain.

Therefore the eloquence of the Church, when it seeks to have

something done, must not only explain to instruct and please to

hold, but also move to win. xiii.

The next chapter (xiv) warns against resting in the second stage.[20] To

make the pleasing of the audience an end in itself is the typical vice

of sophistic. If preaching tolerates it, “the time will come when they

will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they

heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears.” Augustine quotes,

not these words of St. Paul, but Jeremiah, and rises to denunciation

of mere pleasing. “Far from us be that madness.” One of Cyprian’s rare

descriptive passages is adduced to show how “the wholesomeness of

Christian preaching has recalled his diction from [sophistic] redundancy

and held it to a graver eloquence of less display.” As the ultimate

objection to the sophistic ideal is moral, so is the preacher’s ultimate

resource. Since his strength is derived from a source deeper than human

skill, his best preparation is prayer. Augustine is not above enforcing

this reminder by playing upon the words _orare_, _orator_, _oratio_.

Nevertheless human skill is to be cultivated. Prayer itself proves the

folly (xvi) of making no other preparation. He who abjures human lore of

preaching because God gives us our messages might equally well abjure

prayer because God knows us and our needs. The Pauline counsels specify

how Timothy should preach. As God heals through doctors and medicines, so

he gives the gospel to men by men and through man.

The transition (xvii) to the final task of moving men to action is

another full and explicit iteration of all three, and at the same time

a preparation for the next section on the corresponding three typical

styles. Since the subject matter of preaching is always great, at least

in implication (xviii), does it not always demand a great style? No; for

a great matter (xix) may at the time rather demand exposition; and this

in turn demands a restrained style. Again, a great matter may at the time

rather demand praise or blame; and here enters the second task of so

adapting the style as to win sympathy.

But when something ought to be done, and we are talking to

those who ought to do it and will not, then the great subject

is to be expressed greatly and in such wise as to bend their

minds.... What subject is greater than God? Is it therefore

not a subject for instruction? Or how can any one expounding

the unity of the Trinity do it except by confining himself to

exposition, that so difficult a distinction may as far as is

possible be understood? Is ornament demanded here, and not

rather argument?[21] Is there here something that the audience

is to be moved to do, and not rather something that it is to

be taught to learn? Again, when God is praised in himself or

in his works, what a vision of beautiful and splendid diction

rises before any one praising as well as he can him whom no one

praises aright and no one fails to praise in some way or other!

But if God be not worshipped, or if idols be worshipped with

him or even in his stead, whether dæmons or any other created

being, then to meet so great an evil, and from this evil to

save men, the preaching too must be great. xix.

Augustine has passed (xvii-xix) from Cicero’s three tasks of oratory

to his three typical styles by applying to the preacher Cicero’s

definition of the orator: “He, then, shall be called eloquent who can

speak small things quietly, larger things proportionally, great things

greatly.”[22] Thus the three styles are _genus submissum_ (or _tenue_),

_genus temperatum_ (or _medium_), and _genus grande_. As in Cicero,

these correspond to _docere_, _delectare_, _movere_, and the second is

connected with panegyric.

Augustine now proceeds to exemplify the first style (xx) from _Galatians_

as calling for skill in reasoning and for a memory trained to bring in

objections and difficulties where they can best be met. This debater’s

memory is precisely the ancient _memoria_, the fifth of the traditional

parts of rhetoric. It seems to have fallen into abeyance under sophistic.

What the sophists boasted was verbal memory, which Augustine merely

mentions in his appendix as something quite different.[23]

The same chapter (xx) exemplifies the second, or median style from

_Timothy_ and _Romans_ as having the charm of aptness. Here Augustine

confronts squarely the sophistic habit of making rhythmical beauty

paramount and the pagan disparagement of Christian style. Some one may

find the cadence of _Romans_ xiii. 14 defective. Certainly it would

soothe the ear more rhythmically if the verb came last.

But a graver translator has preferred to keep the usual

word-order [and, he might have added, the logical emphasis].

How this sounds in the Greek used by the apostle they may see

whose expertness in that language goes so far. To me at least,

the word-order, which is the same as in our version, does not

seem there either to run rhythmically. Indeed, the stylistic

beauty (_ornatum_) which consists of rhythmical cadences is

defective, we must confess, in our authors. Whether this is

due to our versions, or whether, as I incline to think, the

authors deliberately avoided these occasions for applause, I

do not venture to affirm, since I confess that I do not know.

But this I know, that anyone who shall make their cadences

regular in the same rhythms—and this is done very easily by

shifting certain words that have equal force of meaning in the

new order—will recognize that these inspired men lacked none of

those things which he learned as great matters in the schools

of the grammarians or rhetors. Moreover, he will discover many

sorts of diction of so great beauty as to be beautiful even in

our customary language, much more in theirs, and never found in

the literature with which [the sophists] are inflated. But we

must beware lest the addition of rhythm detract from the weight

of inspired and grave sentences. Most learned Jerome does not

carry over into his translation the musical skill in which

rhythm is learned most fully, though our prophets did not lack

even that, as he shows in the Hebrew meters of some of them;

[and he gave this up] in order to keep truth to their words....

As in my own style, so far as I think I may do so modestly, I

do not neglect rhythmical cadences,[24] so in our authors they

please me the more because I find them there so rarely. xx.

The third, or great style, whether it be elegant or not, has for its

distinguishing quality the force of emotional appeal. The instances are

from _2 Corinthians_ vi and _Romans_ viii. _Romans_ is a long epistle,

not a sermon. Though it was read aloud, of course, it is essentially

a treatise, a philosophy of history. It is largely expository and

argumentative. Since it is addressed primarily to reflection and reason,

its main artistic reliance is on cogency of order. But even here

presentation does not remain purely logical. For persuasion it must rise

also emotionally. As we read in _Acts_ xvii the outline of the apostle’s

Areopagus speech, we discern beyond the logical chain of propositions

an expanding conception of the Life-giver. Who can doubt that the style

too, as in _Romans_, rose to _grande_? The traditional doctrine of

the peroration, easily as it may be abused, is only the expression in

rhetoric of the audience’s final demand and the speaker’s final answer.

That demand and that answer are emotional.

Adding _Galatians_ iv, Augustine says of it:

Although the whole epistle, except in the elegant last part, is

written in the plain style, nevertheless the apostle inserts

a certain passage of such moving force that it must be called

great even though it has no such embellishments as those just

cited.... Is there here either antithesis, or subordination for

climax, or rhythm in phrase, clause, or period? None the less

for that there is no cooling of the great emotion with which we

feel the style to glow. xx.

After quoting without further comment examples from Cyprian and Ambrose,

Augustine shows (xxii, xxiii) the need of variety. More even than other

forms of oratory, preaching seems to suffer from a stylistic level. No

one of the three styles, least of all the third, can effectively be

prolonged; the change from style to style gives relief; and subordination

of what might be heightened may enhance the emotion of what must be.

What must be heightened is what is to rouse the audience to action. So

the test of achievement in the third style is not applause, but tears

and change of life (xxiv). So also the end of all eloquence, in whatever

style, is persuasion (xxv).

In the restrained style the orator persuades of truth. In the

great style he persuades to action. In the elegant style is

he to persuade himself that he is speaking beautifully? With

such an end what have we to do? Let them seek it who glory

in language, who display themselves in panegyrics and such

exercises, in which the hearer is neither to be instructed nor

to be moved to any action, but merely to be pleased. But let us

judge this end by another end. xxv.

Thus Augustine is more explicit than Cicero in showing that the three

typical styles are but three ways (xxvi) of achieving a single end, even

as the three corresponding tasks, though one of them absorbs attention

at a time, are but three aspects of the single task. Nor can persuasion

dispense with a means beyond art, the appeal of the speaker’s life[25]

(xxvii). Though the Church speaks not merely through a man, but through

his office, persuasion needs for full effect his whole influence. Because

his life is without shame, the preacher speaks not shamelessly (xxviii),

not only with restraint and charm, but with power, to win obedience to

the truth.

The historical significance of the _De doctrina christiana_, important

as it is, should not obscure its value as a contribution to homiletic.

The first homiletic, though one of the briefest, remains one of the

most suggestive. It omits no essential; while it reminds us of the

general principles of rhetoric, it emphasizes those applications to

preaching which are distinctive; and it proceeds pedagogically. Though

the _doctrina_ of the title refers strictly to exposition, and this

is amplified and iterated as a constant necessity, Augustine includes

specifically and from the start both charm and appeal, and concludes by

showing emotional appeal to be the final stage of the comprehensive task

of persuasion. Homiletic is an application of rhetoric long established

as permanent, consistent, and in both materials and conditions fairly

constant. That it is also comprehensive, demanding all three typical

styles, including argument in its exposition, winning sympathy in order

to urge action, varying its art[26] while holding to its single aim, is

most suggestively established here in its first great monument.

Not only does Augustine forbid the arid and the tedious, not only

does he insist on emotional appeal; he also vindicates for Christian

eloquence the importance of charm. This was the more delicate because

charm was both abused by contemporary sophists and still suspected by

contemporary preachers. Augustine presents it at once frankly and with

just discrimination. To make it an end in itself, he is careful to

show, is indeed sophistic; but to ignore it is to forget that preaching

is a form of the oratory of occasion.[27] The Areopagus speech of St.

Paul,[28] though it is only summarized in _Acts_ xvii, is evidently

occasional, and has clear indications of that adaptation to win sympathy

which is Augustine’s interpretation of Cicero’s _delectare_. The speech

on occasion, favorite form of oratory in Augustine’s time, had been

conventionalized to the point of recipe. The recipes, though he knew them

all, Augustine simply ignores; the field he redeems. He shows Christian

preaching how to cultivate it for real harvest. History has shown no

other direction of rhetoric to be so peculiarly homiletic.

Already Christian eloquence had reached conspicuous achievement in

panegyric and more widely in the field of occasional oratory. The pagan

sophist must look to his laurels. But these very triumphs had brought the

danger of lapsing into too familiar conventions. What in pagan oratory

might be no worse than pretty or merely exciting, in Christian oratory

would be meretricious. To hold his difficult course, the preacher, as

Augustine reminds him again and again, must at every moment steer for

his message. He must never deviate. Though sophistic lost its dominance

centuries ago, it has never been quite dead, and it always besets

preaching. Therefore a constant concern of homiletic is to exorcise it

by a valid rhetoric; and no book has ever revealed this more succinctly,

more practically, or more suggestively than the _De doctrina christiana_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Reprinted by courteous permission from vol. XXII (April, 1925) of

Proceedings of the (British) Classical Association, to which it was

presented under the title _St Augustine and the rhetoric of Cicero_.

[2] In _Patrologia latina_ and in the Vienna _Corpus scriptorum

ecclesiasticorum latinorum_; reprinted, Missouri Lutheran Synod, St.

Louis, 1882; translated (1) by Dods (M.), Edinburgh, 1872-1875 (reprinted

in Schaff’s Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers), (2) by Baker (W. J. V.) and

Bickersteth (C.) in _Preaching and teaching according to St. Augustine_

(Book IV only, with _De catechizandis rudibus_), London, 1907, (3) by

Sister Therèse, S.N.D. (IV, with text and commentary), Washington, 1928.

To the references and abbreviations at the head of Chapter I add: Barry

(Sister Inviolata), _St. Augustine the orator_, Washington, 1924 (in the

Catholic University of America Patristic Studies, VI); and Christopher

(J. P.), _S. Aureli Augustini ... de catechizandis rudibus_ translated

with an introduction and commentary, Washington, 1926 (in the same

series, VIII).

[3] For detailed analysis, see Barry.

[4] Even though the application of the text from _Ecclus._ xxxvii. 20 be

questioned, the rebuke of sophistic display, whether in dialectic or in

style, is none the less clear.

[5] Other allusions may be found in the passages quoted below from vi,

from xiv, and from xxv.

[6] βαδιζόντων εἰς τὰς τῶν Γαλιλαίων ἐκκλησίας ἐξηγησόμενοι Ματθαῖον καὶ

Λουκᾶν. Julian, _Epist._ 42, cited in Gibbon’s twenty-third chapter.

[7] ARP 51, 56. The reminiscences of Cicero are so numerous as to show

a pervasive preoccupation. See J. B. Eskredge, _The influence of Cicero

upon Augustine_, etc. (Chicago dissertation), 1912.

[8] E.g., _De oratore_, II. xxi. 88.

[9] The traditional maxim for the _exordium_, _reddere auditores

benevolos, attentos, dociles_, as again in iv.

[10] The traditional maxim for the _narratio_.

[11] Exercitatione sive scribendi, sive dictandi, postremo etiam dicendi.

Cf. the close of xxi.

[12] Thus I venture to translate _sapientes_, remembering the connotation

of the word both for Augustine and for his master Cicero.

[13] So toward the close “The Christian preacher prefers to appeal rather

with matter than with manner, and thinks neither that anything is said

better which is not said more truly, nor that the teacher must serve

words, but words the teacher.” xxviii.

[14] For this sort of analysis see ARP, Chapter v, and the terms in the

index. For the more elaborate sophistical analysis see Méridier, Guignet,

and the other studies of Greek fathers cited above. To suggest such

further study, the Greek of the first example and the King James English

of the third have been set beside. St. Augustine not only confines

himself to the Latin version, but disclaims competence in Greek style.

[15] The linking iteration is characteristic of climax as practised by

sophistic.

[16] Chapter xxix of Book III relegates the study of figures to

_grammatica_; but there also Augustine reminds his readers that figures,

without regard to books or teaching, are a natural expression of the

imaginative impulse.

[17] As to this form of _memoria_ see also Chapter xxix.

[18] Docere necessitatis est, delectare suavitatis, flectere victoriæ.

Or. xxi. 69, with _docere_ for the original _probare_.

[19] Ante oculos dicendo constituis (xii) recalls the _De sublimitate_,

and behind that the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle. Its immediate source is

doubtless Cicero.

[20] The warning is repeated where Augustine is gathering the three

tasks into the final and constant idea of persuasion: “But that which is

handled in the way of charm ... is not to be made an end in itself (xxv)

... nor does it seek merely to please.” Nothing is more admirable in

Augustine’s exposition than this expert linking of his chain of progress.

[21] Numquid hic ornamenta et non documenta quæruntur?

[22] _Orator_, xxix. 101.

[23] Cf. xxix with the quotation from x above; and see _memoria_ in the

index to ARP.

[24] For his cadences, see Barry.

[25] Aristotle, _Rhetoric_ I. ii.

[26] That the Scriptures enter all the three fields of oratory indicated

by Aristotle in _Rhetoric_ I. iii, is suggested by the language of a

passage in Augustine’s third book: _Non autem adserit [scriptura] nisi

catholicam fidem rebus præteritis et futuris et præsentibus. Præteritorum

narratio est, futurorum prænuntiatio, præsentium demonstratio_, III. x.

For the last two words suggest in the context ἐπιδεικτικός, and hence

δικανικός for the first phrase of the sentence and συμβουλευτικός for the

second, according to the Aristotelian division. If so, Augustine has not

followed Cicero’s reducing of the fields to two (ARP 47, 53).

[27] In the passage quoted above from Chapter xix, and in other places

there are clear references to occasional oratory.

[28] See Norden, _Agnostos Theos, Untersuchungen zur Formengeschichte

religiöser Rede_. Leipzig, 1913. But this speech, to judge from the

indications of _Acts_ xvii, was as original in plan as in idea.

CHAPTER III

THE LAST ROMAN SCHOOLS AND THE COMPENDS (FIFTH TO SEVENTH CENTURIES)

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, New

York, 1924.

Boissier Boissier (G.), _La fin du paganisme_, Paris, 1891, 2 vols.

CSE _Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum_, Vienna.

Glover Glover (T. R.), _Life and letters in the fourth century_,

Cambridge, 1901.

Haarhoff Haarhoff (T.), _The Schools of Gaul_, Oxford, 1920.

Halm Halm (K.), _Rhetores latini minores_, Leipzig, 1863.

Keil Keil (H.), _Grammatici latini_, Leipzig, 1870-1880, 7 vols.

Labriolle Labriolle (P. de), _Histoire de la littérature latine

chrétienne_, Paris, 1920.

Manacorda Manacorda (G.), _Storia della scuola in Italia_, vol. I,

_Il medio evo_, Milan, 1913 (2 parts in separate volumes).

Manitius Manitius (M.), _Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des

Mittelalters_, Munich, 1911, 2 vols. (in Iwan von Mueller’s

Handbuch der klassischen Alterthums-Wissenschaft, IX. ii).

Monceaux Monceaux (P.), _Histoire de la littérature latine

chrétienne_, Paris, 1924 (Collection Payot).

MGH _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_ (cited by page of the

appropriate volume).

PL Migne, _Patrologia latina_ (cited by volume and column).

Pichon Pichon (R.), _Études sur l’histoire de la littérature

latine dans les Gaules_, Paris (vol. 1), 1906.

Roger Roger (M.), _L’enseignement des lettres classiques d’Ausone

à Alcuin_, Paris, 1905.

A. THE SCHOOLS OF GAUL

The need of the Church and of the Roman world for such forward counsels,

the tenacity of sophistic among reactionaries and conformists, are amply

exhibited by the last days of Roman Gaul. In the ancient province a

cultivated leisure class, living in the twilight of a great past outworn

and doomed, cherished the sophistic conception of elegance and the

sophistic habit of education by rhetoric[1] as symbols of their Romanism.

Provincials, they were sometimes more Catholic than the Pope; their

writers and teachers would not risk being thought less literary than the

capital of the world. But in fact Gaul of the fifth and sixth centuries

was more Roman than Rome. It was the last territory of the ancient world.

1. Ausonius[2]

“The poetical fame of Ausonius,” says Gibbon in a contemptuous postscript

to a footnote,[3] “condemns the taste of his age.” Whether or not Gibbon

took too seriously the fourth-century habit in compliments, Ausonius at

least reflects the taste of his age. Fading, therefore, long since to

the shadow of a shade, hardly any longer an author, he is nevertheless

an important document. Such fame as he may have had once is hardly even

considered. Like the rhetors celebrated by Philostratus,[4] like those

at Bordeaux whom he himself commemorates, he has ceased to be even a

name. He is a collection of trivial fourth-century verses recalled only

because they incidentally record contemporary preoccupations. Expert in

the metric and the diction that he taught as _grammaticus_, he could turn

a stanza on anything—on a city, a Cæsar, or a sage. Only he preferred

topics that came handily in series: the order of the daily round or of

noble cities, twelve Cæsars, seven sages, a roster of Trojan heroes.

These are topics for Latin verses in school. Many of his poems are

evidently, and others probably, school exercises. This in itself, the

acceptance of themes as literature, is eloquent of the literary habit of

sophistic.

For the work of Ausonius may be summed up as _declamatio_.[5] Its

being mainly in verse hardly modifies its character beyond emphasizing

_sententiæ_. The conciseness imposed upon some of his work by his

predilection for epigrams is the balance and word-play of rhetoric,

not the focus of poetry. That poetic was rhetoric applied to verse

Ausonius was not the man to doubt. His praise of the Bordeaux rhetors

for both alike[6] increases the probability that the two were in fact

alike; and this is confirmed by his own verse. It is confirmed also by

the appearance of several local celebrities now as _grammatici_, now as

_rhetores_. The function of the former was traditionally both to teach

elegant correctness and to expound the poets; of the latter, to train

directly for oratory. But the two functions thus distinguished by

Quintilian seem in fourth-century Bordeaux to have been combined, or at

least to have been exercised successively by the same person.[7]

Evidently the sophistic conception of style as dilation by decoration and

literary allusion was still prevalent. To be literary was to dilate. Of

this Ausonius sometimes shows a humorous awareness.

I might tell thee outright; but for more pleasure I will talk

in mazes and with speech drawn out get full enjoyment.[8]

But the humor of his address to his stenographer does not make the

description of composing the less true to the habit of his time.

I ponder works of generous scope; and thick and fast like

hail the words tumble off my tongue.... I declaim, as now, at

greatest speed, talking in circles round my theme....[9]

The typical _declamator_ appears in Exuperius, “majestic in gait and in

great words.”[10] Literary tags, especially in panegyric, come thick.

Who like you can approach the charm of Æsop, the sophistic

perorations of Isocrates, the arguments of Demosthenes, the

Tullian richness, or the felicity of our own Maro?[11]

The speeches and poems of these men, and of Ausonius himself,[12] are

typically occasional. Their ideal of aptness is sought by following the

recipes for encomium. Literature, long fixed, was to be attained by

expert conformity.

Evidently too these encomiasts still had their reward.[13] As official

spokesmen they were appointed to public office. Ausonius himself rose

with the fortunes of Gratian. From being his tutor he mounted by the

steps of _comes_ and _quæstor_ to be in 378 _præfectus Galliarum_. Such

a position dispenses a man from writing for posterity, and effectually

prevents him from questioning the permanence of an order of life

and thought already spent. Until the Roman world fell apart, it was

satisfyingly enclosed in the schools of Bordeaux.

2. Sidonius Apollinaris

Cherishing of the past, rhetorical education, obsession of style—all

this is embodied in the Roman prefect and Christian bishop Sidonius

Apollinaris.[14] His letters and poems, current through the middle

age as models of style, are consistently in the modes of sophistic.

Commemorations, addresses of welcome or congratulation, above all

panegyrics, they follow the tradition of _declamatio_;[15] and their

allusions abundantly exemplify both the school practise of his day and

the literary preoccupations.

Sending to Perpetuus his discourse at Bourges, Sidonius apologizes for

its defects of style.

Neither rhetorical division, nor oratorical urgency, nor the

figures of _grammatica_ have contributed to it appropriate

ornament and virtuosity. For I did not give myself the

pleasure of adjusting, after the habit of those who file their

perorations, the weight of narrative, or the figures of poetry,

or the sparks of the cadences practised in school.[16]

A long letter to Domitius, describing villa life in detail most

interesting to the historian, contains a lively passage of description.

How pleasant the sound of crickets chorusing at midday, frogs

prating as twilight broods, swans and geese trumpeting their

matings at night, cocks in concert crowing untimely!

So far Sidonius sounds as if he had a respite from style. The

picturesqueness seems to spring from observation. But habit is too

strong to let him either stop there or dispense with literary allusions.

He goes on:

ominous ravens thrice saluting the ruddy torch of rising

Aurora, and at daybreak Philomela whispering among the bushes,

Progne chirping among the posts. To this symphony you may

add the shepherds’ reed music, which in rivalry of songs by

night the unsleeping Tityri of our mountains practise among

herds whose bells echo through the cropped pastures. But all

the various melodies of voices and of songs will the more

caressingly lure your sleep.[17]

Balance has never been pursued more anxiously. The teaching of Probus is

praised for handing down:

the loftiness of the epic poet and the wit of the comic,

the lyrist’s tunefulness and the orator’s declamation, the

historian’s truth and the satirist’s figure, the grammarian’s

regularity and the panegyrist’s plausibility, the sophist’s

seriousness and the epigrammatist’s liberty, the commentator’s

lucidity and the barrister’s obscurity.[18]

The letter of welcome to Constans has a similar series of balanced

contrasts.

For days there was in each mind the paradox that your person,

with the weight of age and the frailty of illness, lofty in

rank and venerable in religion, with mind bent only on giving

pleasure, broke so many bars, so many difficulties in the

way of your coming: the journey’s length, the shortness of

the days; the snows’ abundance, the poverty of provisions;

deserts’ wideness, narrowness of lodgings; in the roads chasms

miry with the wetting of showers or rutted with the dryness

of frosts; besides, either banks rough with rocks or rivers

frozen slippery, hills rugged to climb or valleys scoured by

the frequency of landslides. Through all these discomforts,

because you sought not your private comfort, you brought back

the public love.[19]

Such contrasts in series are sometimes made even more artificial by

word-play.

He responds as Pythagoras, discriminates as Socrates; evolves

as Plato, involves as Aristotle; as Æschines soothes, as

Demosthenes provokes; as Hortensius is in spring, as Cethegus

in summer; hurries as Curio, lingers as Fabius; simulates as

Crassus, dissimulates as Cæsar; has the suasion of Cato, the

dissuasion of Appius, the persuasion of Cicero.[20]

This is the “pomp of Roman speech.”[21]

The aristocracy bent on discarding the scales of Celtic speech

was indoctrinated now with the style of oratory, now with the

modes of the Muses.[22]

Sidonius feels himself the representative of a great tradition.[23]

That tradition was generally ceremonious regard for usage and a certain

anxiety to exhibit culture by literary allusions and by command of

the technic of style. Generally, that is, the literary tradition of

Gaul was sophistic. Specifically it was _declamatio_.[24] The school

tradition celebrated by the elder Seneca, and made by him and by the

_declamatores_ after him the exemplar of oratory, is seen in the pages

of Sidonius equally to monopolize the schools and the platforms of Gaul.

This is rhetoric, and there is no other. It is fully displayed in the

long letters to Lupus[25] and to Claudianus Mamertius,[26] not only in

conclusive evidence of detail, but as a conception that is pervasive

because it is exclusive. As in the letter above to Probus, there is

frequent use of the words _declamatio_, _declamare_, _controversia_, etc.

I remember that your boyhood was competently taught in the

liberal schools; and I have satisfied myself that you often

declaimed before an orator ardently and eloquently.[27]

Now blows the epos of tragedies, now soothes gay comedy, now

flame satires and the oratory of debates on tyrants.[28]

He would vary prosopopœia according to the quality of person,

time, and place, and that in words not ordinary, but thought

out as great and beautiful. In debate assignments [he was]

strong and muscular.[29]

The most extended reference is the letter to Remigius about the

collection which had originally, perhaps, been his desk-book at Rheims,

and which had been revised and copied for imitation.

A certain Auvergnat on his way to Belgium ... filched from

your scribe or bookseller, whether you will or not, at a price

very large, though doubtless inadequate, the first draft of

your _Declamationes_. When he came back to us ... I took

care to have them all copied. It was the universal opinion

that few such can now be spoken. For few, if any, bring to

such assignments even an approximately equal ... aptness

in examples, authority in evidence; propriety in epithets,

urbanity in figures; force in argument, weight in appeal; flow

of words, stroke of cadence. The structure, moreover, is strong

and firm, the very clever transitions woven with pauses that

cannot be resolved. Nor is it the less smooth, light, every way

rounded, and such as aptly to speed a reader’s tongue without

making it stumble, or stutter over rough combinations, or twist

into the chamber of the palate. Finally all is liquid, ductile,

as when the finger runs without a scratch over a surface of

crystal or onyx.... There is no man now living whose discourse

your skill cannot easily outdistance and surpass.[30]

Interesting as is the glimpse of the transmission and traffic of books,

it is quite overshadowed by the significance of such a collection.

Evidently it was regarded not only as a storehouse for imitation in

school, but as a work of literature. Similarly were collected early in

the sixth century the _declamationes_ of Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia.[31]

The letter of Sidonius specifies, moreover, those literary excellences

which were sought alike in teaching and in professional practise. What

he means, for instance, by firmness of _structura_ is not cogency of

composition, but smoothness of style; and revision to this end involves

meticulous adjustment to tongue and ear.

Other references show equally that the exercises of the schools were

carried, as in the earlier imperial centuries, into public speaking and

literature. The orator’s achievement is not the persuasion of his fellow

men; it is his own virtuosity.

He spoke with order, weight, ardor, with great keenness,

greater fluency, greatest skill.[32]

The climax of the praise is his _disciplina_. _Declamatio_ teaches boys

to develop an outline at length.

So providing boys’ themes with pieces to weave in, they

understood that for youth expression consists rather in working

out what is brief than in cutting down what is extended.[33]

But this is no less the achievement of the finished orator.

So a great orator, if he essays an affair that is small, shows

the more convincingly that his talent is large.[34]

The habit of dilation is carried into poetry. Is it not sanctioned by

Horace?

But if any one suggests that a poem so diffuse is to be blamed

for exceeding the sparseness of epigram, he exposes himself

as not having read the Etruscan baths, nor the Hercules of

Sorrento, nor the locks of Flavius Earinus, nor the Tibur of

Vopiscus, nor anything at all from the _Silvæ_ of our Papinius;

for all these ecphrases are not confined by the poet thus

prejudged within the narrow bounds of distichs or quatrains.

Rather as Horace, though a lyrist, teaches in his volume on

the poetic art, he appropriately extends the matter he has

undertaken by many, yes, and purple, patches from the common

store.[35]

Horace is so misapplied because _declamatio_ tends to merge poetic in

rhetoric.[36] The poems of Sidonius differ from his prose in little but

verse. Three of the longer ones are panegyrics; all are occasional;

all show the same habits of style. The literary tags used to sum up

the teaching of Probus[37] assign to poetry a kind of appropriateness

which belongs to rhetoric. Sapaudus owes his literary reputation to

his training in _declamatio_ under Pragmatius, who used to “break the

rhetoric benches” with a peroration.[38]

In short, the rhetoric and the poetic of fifth-century Gaul are seen

in Sidonius to be following faithfully the sophistic tradition of

_declamatio_. He knows all its recipes. From correctness conceived as

archaism and elegance conceived as ceremony, through dilation by the

Gorgian figures and by literary allusion, he is constant to the sophistic

ideal of expert impressiveness.[39] Augustine had been the pioneer of

the Christian future of rhetoric; Sidonius was a complacent reactionary

of its decadent Roman past.

3. Textbooks

a. GRAMMATICA AND DIALECTICA

In this period were written the Latin grammars authoritative throughout

the middle age, those of Donatus and Priscian.[40] The former, used

generally in two parts as an introductory manual, was so current, indeed,

as to become common property and to reduce its author’s name to a common

noun.[41] Priscian came to be used as a second book.[42]

The ancient tradition including in the scope of _grammatica_ not only

meters and some of the figures of speech, but also the study of poetry

through _prælectiones_,[43] is recognized in several of the preliminary

definitions.

What is grammatica? The lore of interpreting poets and

story-writers and the theory of writing and speaking

correctly.[44]

St. Augustine refers to this induction into poetry as habitual.

Without some training in poetic you would not dare to attempt

the function of grammarian. Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, and

others without number are required, that any poet whose

verse appears to seek the applause of the theater may be

understood.[45]

For such teaching the favorite author was Vergil; the favorite authority,

the “Ars Poetica” of Horace.

From this period come also the standard medieval textbooks of logic.

The logic of Aristotle was mediated to the whole middle age by the

translations and commentaries of Boethius. “He translated the Εἰσαγωγή

of Porphyry and the whole of Aristotle’s _Organon_. He wrote a double

commentary on the Εἰσαγωγή and commentaries on the _Categories_ and the

_De interpretatione_ of Aristotle, and on the _Topica_ of Cicero. He

also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical

syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences.”[46] The medieval

order of studies was: Porphyry’s Introduction, the Categories,

Interpretation, Syllogisms, Topics.

b. RHETORICA

Quintilian was known to both Ausonius and Sidonius, and doubtless

generally to the rhetors of Gaul.[47] But his work is addressed rather

to teachers than to pupils. More available for the schools was Cicero’s

youthful compend _De inventione_. The early and continued use of this is

widely attested. Its contents are as follows:

_Book I._ i-vi scope, function, and relations of rhetoric;

vii its five parts; viii-xiii investigation (with _status_

and _quæstio_); xiv the parts of a speech; xv-xviii exordium;

xix-xxi statement of facts; xxii-xxiii division; xxiv-xli proof

(with adaptation to the persons and the case, and with the

kinds of argument); xlii-li rebuttal; lii-lv conclusion (with

appeal to feeling).

_Book II_ (expansion of I in pleading). i-iv introductory

review, the Aristotelian type and the Isocratean type, the

fields of oratory, the determining of the issue (_status_);

v-xvi issues of fact (_status coniecturalis_) in relation to

motive, person, evidence; xvii-xx issues of terms (_status

definitivus_); xxi-xxxvi issues involving more general

considerations (_status generalis_); xxxvii-xxxix profit

(_præmium_) in relation to advantages in themselves and to the

person concerned, in general and with reference to particular

opportunities; xl-li disputed written evidence; lii typical

subjects of deliberative oratory; liii-lvii honor, utility,

necessity; lix encomium and invective.

To this was added in general medieval use the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_,

probably by Cornificius, but thought throughout the middle age to

be Cicero’s.[48] When this began its medieval vogue is difficult to

determine. Since it is not mentioned by either Cassiodorus or Isidore,

it may not have been generally current before the Carolingian revival.

Meantime the fourth century added, besides the commentary of Victorinus

on the _De inventione_, the compendious catechism of Fortunatianus;[49]

and the fifth century, the longer work of Julius Victor.[50]

B. THE TRIVIUM IN COMPENDS OF THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS

The relations of rhetoric to grammar on the one hand and to logic on

the other must be considered in determining its function at any period

of its history. The ancient _grammatica_, for instance, included at its

best not only metric and some of the figures of speech, but a certain

induction into poetry. Its field of composition was pretty definitely

marked out in traditional elementary exercises.[51] _Rhetorica_ as

conceived by Aristotle or by Cicero concerns itself of necessity with

logic. With Quintilian not only proof and refutation, but that estimate

of the whole line of argument for which he provides systematic analysis

under the traditional head of _status_, are largely logical. Logic may be

used for analysis without presentation. This, indeed, is abstractly its

proper function, and indicates its relation to philosophy; but in actual

practise, or in a given system of teaching, its relation may be rather to

rhetoric, and conversely rhetoric, by yielding its field of _inventio_ to

logic, may be reduced to the study of style.

So the estimate of the rhetoric or the poetic of a given period must

consider the contemporary view of the whole Trivium. This obligation is

obvious where the Trivium is conceived as a unified group of studies;

but it is no less important where the three studies are pursued without

explicit relations. Indeed, one of the measures of effective functioning

in any one of them is the fostering or the ignoring of their relations.

A survey of the history of the Trivium in this aspect distinguishes the

lingering of ancient educational traditions in the fourth and fifth

centuries and their lapse in the sixth and seventh, then that increasing

range of cathedral and especially monastic schools which received its

historic impulse from Charlemagne. The great monastic schools come to

their prime in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; in the thirteenth they

yield to the universities. The dominant member of the Trivium in the

earliest of these periods is the _rhetorica_ of decadent antiquity; from

the seventh into the tenth it is _grammatica_; from the eleventh on, it

is _dialectica_.

1. Martianus Capella

The division of studies into seven liberal arts came to the middle age

from Varro’s _Disciplina_ largely through Martianus Capella.[52] His

_Marriage of Philology and Mercury_ was widely current for centuries.

The allegory implied by his title is carried out in ornate verse and

prose through two books. In the other seven books allegory is reduced to

the conventional description introducing each of the arts in turn with

appropriate costume, symbols, and speech. Thus the work divides sharply

into a grandiose allegorical prelude of two books, with a similar prelude

to each following book, and a sober, concise, pedestrian compend of

_grammatica_ (III), _dialectica_ (IV), _rhetorica_ (V), _geometria_ (VI),

_arithmetica_ (VII), _astronomia_ (VIII), and _harmonia_ (IX).

_Grammatica_, the first of the language studies, claims its ancient

territory, including the exposition of poetry. The subsequent treatment

is conventional and incomplete.[53]

The Lady _Dialectica_ is more assertive.

I claim jurisdiction over whatsoever the other arts utter; for

evidently neither _Grammatica_ herself, whom your ears have

approved, nor the second sister, renowned for the skill of rich

utterance, nor she who reduces to line varieties of forms ...

can be explained without my theories. Nay, in my domain and

jurisdiction abide six norms, to which the other disciplines

conform. For the first concerns naming; the second, defining;

the third, affirming; the fourth, concluding; the fifth,

judging, which bears upon the interpretation of poets and their

poems; the sixth, diction, which is adapted to rhetors.[54]

The fifth _norma_ annexes that part of _grammatica_ which was most remote

from logic; the sixth trenches on _rhetorica_. The actual extension of

_dialectica_ into the ancient domain of rhetoric during the high middle

age[55] may have found here some warrant. But Martianus himself does not

include these items either in the prospectus immediately following or in

the subsequent compend.[56]

_Rhetorica_ enters Book V with such pomp and noise as to frighten some of

the minor symbols.

Interea sonuere tubæ raucusque per æthram

Cantus, et ignoto cælum clangore remugit:

Turbati expauere dii....

But while the crowd of gods terrestrial was thus disconcerted,

behold a woman of loftiest stature and great assurance, with

countenance of radiant splendor, made her solemn entry.

Helmeted and crowned with royal majesty, she held ready for

defense or for attack weapons that gleamed with the flash of

lightning. Beneath her armor the vesture draped Roman-wise

about her shoulders glittered with the various light of all

_figuræ_, all _schemata_; and she was cinctured with most

precious _colores_ for jewels. The clatter of her weapons as

she moved was as if thunder in the crash of a cloud aflame

broke with leaping echoes. Nay, it seemed as if, like Jove, she

herself could hurl the thunderbolt. For as queen in control

of all things she has shown power to move men whither she

pleased, or whence, to bow them to tears, to incite them to

rage, to transform the mien and feeling as well of cities as of

embattled armies and all the hosts of the peoples.[57]

After this fanfare _Rhetorica_ settles down to drill. Though the

predilection for _declamatio_ transpires now and then even in this,

the compend covers all five parts of the ancient program, and gives

to _inventio_ and _dispositio_ more than twice the space granted to

_elocutio_. There is room not only for character and the feelings (ἤθη

and πάθη), but for _status_ and analysis of types of argument. Most of

the examples are from Cicero. The rhetoric that Martianus preaches is

quite distinct from that which he practises. Its proportions are those of

the better ancient tradition. It does not even dilate on _colores_.[58]

For all the rodomontade with which it is introduced, the ancient program

is still comprehended.

2. Cassiodorus

The survey included by the monk Cassiodorus[59] in his _Institutiones_

is hardly more than an enumeration. The seven arts are not considered in

their larger aspects; and the Trivium is merely sketched. _Rhetorica_,

after being summarily distinguished from _dialectica_ and divided into

its typical considerations and objects, is hastened through the parts of

a speech into the emotions. Then defining it anew and dividing it into

its traditional five parts, Cassiodorus enumerates _status_, reverts to

the parts of a speech, cites Quintilian and Fortunatianus, and classifies

arguments. The meager summary is not even clear. Nevertheless the

influence of Cassiodorus in carrying forward the idea of the seven arts

is attested by frequent reference.[60]

3. Isidore

In the seventh century, and for centuries afterward, a chief purveyor

of the lore of the seven arts was the _Etymologiæ_, or _Origines_, of

the Spanish bishop Isidore of Seville.[61] The work is an aggregation

of summaries, not only of the seven arts, which occupy only three books

of the twenty, but of medicine, law, holy writ, history, the hierarchy

celestial and terrestrial, zoölogy, geography, metallurgy, agriculture,

and crafts. Though it has no single guiding scheme, its brief chapters

are grouped under headings fairly convenient for reference. It is a

guide-book, rendering its first service when books were few and hard to

get, and long continuing in vogue. In the thirteenth century Vincent

of Beauvais,[62] undertaking more systematically a compend hardly less

comprehensive, his vast _Speculum_, transferred to it whole passages from

Isidore.

Isidore appealed to the earlier middle age as a mediator not only of

manifold lore, but especially of ancient tradition.

The disciplines of the liberal arts are seven: first

_grammatica_, i.e., skill in speaking; second, _rhetorica_,

for the splendor and abundance of its eloquence deemed

necessary especially in political questions;[63] third,

_dialectica_, surnamed _logica_, which by subtlest arguments

distinguishes the true from the false. I. ii.

Isidore’s _grammatica_ has the usual contents, including _schemata_,

_tropi_, and metric.[64] _Fabula_ and _historia_ reflect the ancient

elementary exercises.[65] His second book contains both _rhetorica_ and

_dialectica_.

“_Rhetorica_ is the lore of speaking well on political

questions to persuade [men of what is] just and good. It is

called by a Greek name ἀπὸ τοῦ ῥητορίζειν, i.e., from wealth

of speech. For in Greek speech is called ῥῆσις, and an orator

ῥήτωρ. _Rhetorica_, moreover, is connected with _grammatica_.

In the one we learn the lore of speaking correctly; in the

other we perceive how to utter what we have learned. II. i.

“This discipline was invented by the Greeks—Gorgias,

Aristotle, Hermagoras, and transferred to Latin by Cicero and

Quintilian.... The perfect knowledge of this discipline makes

the orator. ii.

“The orator, then, is a good man skilled in speaking: good,

i.e., in nature, breeding, education; skilled in speaking, i.e.,

in expert eloquence. This consists of five parts (_inventio_,

_dispositio_, _elocutio_, _memoria_, _pronuntiatio_) and in the

function of persuading.”... iii.

In the same summary fashion Isidore treats the three fields,

_status_, simple or compound proposition, the four parts of a

speech, the five sorts of cases, syllogisms, law, apothegm,

proof and disproof, the school exercises _prosopopœia_ and

_ethopœia_, questions abstract and concrete. The remainder

of the section, somewhat more than one third, is devoted to

_elocutio_: the three styles, the division into phrase, clause,

and period, the typical faults of phrasing, and the figures.

As to the last he makes a distinction lost on his later

medieval readers. “Of these most have been noted above under

_grammatica_ as the _schemata_ of Donatus. Therefore only those

should find place here which hardly occur in a poem, but freely

in a speech.” II. xxi.

“_Dialectica_ is the discipline designed for the discussion of

cases (ad disserendas causas). It is that species of philosophy

which is called _logica_, i.e., the theory controlling

definition, investigation and discussion. For it teaches in

many forms of questions how by discussion the true may be

distinguished from the false.... Therefore _dialectica_ follows

the discipline of _rhetorica_ because they have many things in

common.” II. xxii.

To distinguish the two, Isidore quotes from Varro a metaphor

often quoted from Zeno; _dialectica_ is the closed fist,

_rhetorica_ the open hand. The one is the more acute in

discussing, the other the more fluent in imparting; the one is

of the schools, the other of the forum; the one for scholars,

the other for the people. xxiii.

A chapter (xxiv) inserted here groups all the seven arts under

_philosophia_, which is threefold:[66] (1) _naturalis_ (_physica_), (2)

_moralis_ (_ethica_), (3) _rationalis_ (_logica_), “in which is discussed

how in the causes of things or in the conduct of life truth itself may be

sought.” Isidore does not, however, pursue this larger scope of _logica_.

Though he cites additionally Plato’s use of the term to include both

_dialectica_ and _rhetorica_, he goes on to enumerate other divisions

of philosophy, and then (xxv) to the usual items of _dialectica_ as

presented by Boethius: Porphyry’s Introduction, Aristotle’s Categories,

interpretation, syllogisms, division and definition, topics.

The program for the Trivium keeps in the main the ancient proportions.

Some usurpation of composition by _dialectica_, some leaning of

_rhetorica_ toward dilation and decoration, may be read into it; but each

of the two studies clearly has its own function, and work enough for

serious occupation. As in other parts of his aggregation, Isidore makes

his summary of the Trivium a list of studies, not a group. He attempts

no unified plan. Therefore his putting of _rhetorica_ before instead of

after _dialectica_ should hardly be pressed for significance.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] ARP 90, 94, 96, 101.

[2] About 310-393; _grammaticus_ and _rhetor_ at Bordeaux, which was the

greatest, perhaps, of the schools of Gaul.

Editions: Schenkl, Berlin (MGH, Auctores antiquissimi, V. ii), 1883;

Peiper, Leipzig (Teubner), 1886; H. G. E. White, London & New York (Loeb

series, 2 vols.), 1919-1921, with translation (used in this section),

introduction, notes, and select bibliography; full bibliography in Marie

José Byrne, _Prolegomena to an edition of the works of Ausonius_, New

York, 1916.

[3] III. xxvii, last sentence of footnote 1.

[4] Chapter I. B. 1.

[5] See Chapter I. B. 2, especially a. (1); and for the earlier

_declamatio_, ARP 87-101.

[6]

Palmæ forensis et camenarum decus.

V. ii. 7.

Facundum doctumque virum, seu lege metrorum

Condita seu prosis solveret orsa modis.

_Ibid._ iii. 3.

[7]

Grammatice ad Scaurum atque Probum, promptissime rhetor.

_Ibid._ xx. 7.

Grammatici in studio vel rhetoris aut in utroque.

_Ibid._ xxv. 3.

Nos [i.e. Ausonius] ad grammaticen studium convertimus et mox

Rhetorices etiam, quod satis, attigimus.

I. i. 15.

[8]

Possem absolute dicere,

Sed dulcius circumloquar

Diuque fando perfruar.

Lines 7-9 of the poem in _Epist._ XII.

[9]

Ego volvo libros uberes,

Instarque densæ grandinis

Torrente lingua perstrepo.

...

Cum maxime nunc proloquor

Circumloquentis ambitu.

II. vii. 7.

[10]

Incessu gravis et verbis ingentibus.

V. xvii. 2.

[11] Quis ita Æsopi venustatem, quis sophisticas Isocratis conclusiones,

quis ad enthymemata Demosthenis aut opulentiam Tullianam aut proprietatem

nostri Maronis accedat? _Epist._ ii.

[12] His most considerable prose piece is the _Gratiarum actio ad

Gratianum_.

[13]

Mox schola et auditor multus prætextaque pubes

Grammatici nomen divitiasque dedit.

V. xviii. 7.

[14] About 430-484; Bishop of Auvergne, 471; educated at Lyon.

Editions: Mohr, Leipzig (Teubner), 1895, and MGH.

Biography by Chaix (l’Abbé L.-A.), _St. Sidoine Apollinaire et son

siècle_, 2 vols., Paris, 1867; translation, with introduction and notes,

by Dalton (O. M.), Oxford, 1915.

For his influence see Manitius, Boissier, Roger. It was doubtless

enhanced, if not revived, by _dictamen_, for which see below, Chapter

VIII. Alain de Lille puts him beside Quintilian and Symmachus among

“rhetoricæ auctores alii” (_Anticlaudianus_, III. iii). John of Salisbury

refers to him in _Metalogicus_ (PL. 199: 831 A, 865 D) and _Policraticus_

(see the index to Webb’s ed.).

[15] See above, Chapter I, B. 2. a. and ARP, IV. ii. A.

[16] Cui non rhetorica partitio, non oratoriæ minæ, non grammaticales

figuræ congruentem decorem disciplinamque suppeditaverunt. Neque enim

illic, ut exacte perorantibus mos est, aut pondera historica aut poetica

schemata scintillasve controversialium clausularum libuit aptari. VII.

ix. 1-2. The words _disciplina_ and _controversialis_ allude to the

schools; _clausula_, to the study of closing cadences. Cf. VIII. iii. 3.

[17] Hic iam quam volupe auribus insonare cicadas meridie concrepantes,

ranas crepusculo incumbente blaterantes, cygnos atque anseres concubia

nocte clangentes, intempesta gallos gallinacios concinentes, oscines

corvos voce triplicata puniceam surgentis Auroræ facem consalutantes,

diluculo autem Philomelam inter frutices sibilantem, Prognen inter

asseres minurientem! Cui concentui licebit adiungas fistulæ septiforis

armentalem Camenam, quam sæpe nocturnis carminum certaminibus insomnes

nostrorum montium Tityri exercent inter greges tinnibulatos per depasta

buceta reboantes. Quæ tamen varia vocum cantuumque modulamina profundius

confovendo sopori tuo lenocinabuntur. II. ii. 14.

[18] Si quid heroicus arduum comicus lepidum, lyricus cantilenosum

orator declamatorium, historicus verum satiricus figuratum, grammaticus

regulare panegyrista plausibile, sophista serium epigrammatista lascivum,

commentator lucidum iurisconsultus obscurum. IV. i. 2.

[19] Obversatur etenim per dies mentibus singulorum quod persona ætate

gravis infirmitate fragilis, nobilitate sublimis religione venerabilis,

solius dilectionis obtentu abrupisti tot repagula, tot obiectas veniendi

difficultates, itinerum videlicet longitudinem brevitatem dierum, nivium

copiam penuriam pabulorum, latitudines solitudinum angustias mansionum,

viarum voragines aut umore imbrium putres aut frigorum siccitate

tribulosas; ad hoc aut aggeres saxis asperos aut fluvios gelu lubricos

aut colles ascensu salebrosos aut valles lapsuum assiduitate derasas;

per quæ omnia incommoda, quia non privatum commodum requirebas, amorem

publicum rettulisti. III. ii. 3.

[20] Sentit ut Pythagoras dividit ut Socrates, explicat ut Platon

implicat ut Aristoteles, ut Æschines blanditur ut Demosthenes irascitur,

vernat ut Hortensius æstuat ut Cethegus, incitat ut Curio moratur ut

Fabius, simulat ut Crassus dissimulat ut Cæsar, suadet ut Cato dissuadet

ut Appius persuadet ut Tullius. IV. iii. 6. This is immediately followed

by another series balancing the Fathers. Similar is the invective

in the letter to Thaumastus: iudicanda dictant, dictata convellunt;

adtrahunt litigaturos, protrahunt audiendos; trahunt addictos, retrahunt

transigentes. V. vii. 2. So 3 and 5 in the same letter, and 14 in the

letter to Faustus, IX. ix.

[21] Sermonis pompa Romani. IV. xvii. 2.

[22] Sermonis Celtici squamam depositura nobilitas nunc oratorio stilo,

nunc etiam Camenalibus modis imbuebatur. III. iii. 2.

[23] Cui tamen sermonicari Latialiter cordi est. IV. iii. 1.

[24] For sophistic, see Chapter I. B.; for _declamatio_, ARP 87-101.

[25] VIII. xi.

[26] IV. iii.

[27] Atqui pueritiam tuam competenter scholis liberalibus memini imbutam

et sæpenumero acriter eloquenterque declamasse coram oratore satis habeo

compertum. V. v. 2.

[28]

Et nunc inflat epos tragœdiarum,

Nunc comœdia temperat iocosa,

Nunc flammant satiræ et tyrannicarum

Declamatio controversiarum.

VIII. xi. 3 (lines 26-29 of the enclosed poem).

Note that _declamatio_ is here recognized as a literary form.

[29] Ethicam dictionem pro personæ temporis loci qualitate variabat,

idque non verbis qualibuscumque, sed grandibus pulchris elucubratis. In

materia controversiali fortis et lacertosus. VIII. xi. 6. For prosopopœia

see ARP, index, and Emporius in Halm, 561. For the use of χαρακτήρ by

Sidonius himself see the stock parasite in III. 13.

[30] Quidam ab Arvernis Belgicam petens ... postquam Remos advenerat,

scribam tuum sive bybliopolam pretio fors fuat officione demeritum

copiosissimo velis nolis declamationum tuarum schedio emunxit. Qui

redux nobis ... curæ mihi ... cuncta transcribere. Omnium assensu

pronuntiatum pauca nunc posse similia dictari. Etenim rarus aut nullus

est cui meditaturo par affatim assistat dispositio per causas, positio

per litteras, compositio per syllabas; ad hoc oportunitas in exemplis

fides in testimoniis, proprietas in epithetis urbanitas in figuris,

virtus in argumentis pondus in sensibus, flumen in verbis fulmen in

clausulis. Structura vero fortis et firma coniunctionumque perfacetarum

nexa cæsuris insolubilibus, sed nec hinc minus lubrica et levis ac modis

omnibus erotundata quæque lectoris linguam inoffensam decenter expediat,

ne salebrosas passa iuncturas per cameram palati volutata balbutiat; tota

denique liquida prorsus et ductilis, veluti cum crystallinas crustas aut

onychitinas non impacto digitus ungue perlabitur ... non extat ad præsens

vivi hominis oratio quam peritia tua non sine labore transgredi queat ac

supervadere. IX. vii. 1-4.

[31] 474-521; works in MGH and in CSE. The subjects of the _controversiæ_

are from the usual stock; e.g.: In abdicatum qui patrem necavit. In

novercam quæ, cum marito privigni odia suadere non posset, utrique

venenum porrexit. In eum qui patri suo cibum subtraxit. His panegyric of

Theodoric was delivered about 507.

A collection of _declamationes_ was current under the name of Quintilian.

[32] Dixit disposite graviter ardenter, magna acrimonia maiore facundia

maxima disciplina. VIII. vi. 6.

[33] Sic adulescentum declamatiunculas pannis textilibus comparantes

intellegebant eloquia iuvenum laboriosius brevia produci quam porrecta

succidi. I. iv. 3.

[34] Sic et magnus orator, si negotium aggrediatur angustum, tunc amplum

plausibilius manifestat ingenium. VIII. x. 3.

[35] Si quis autem carmen prolixius eatenus duxerit esse culpandum quod

epigrammatis excesserit paucitatem, istum liquido patet neque balneas

Etrusci neque Herculem Surrentinum neque comas Flavii Earini neque Tibur

Vopisci neque omnino quicquam de Papinii nostri silvulis lectitasse

quas omnes descriptiones vir ille præiudicatissimus non distichorum

aut tetrastichorum stringit angustiis, sed potius, ut lyricus Flaccus

in artis poeticæ volumine præcipit, multis isdemque purpureis locorum

communium pannis semel inchoatas materias decenter extendit. Carmen XXII.

6 (prose epilogue). The allusions are to Statius. For the rhetorical cast

of the _Ars poetica_ itself, which is constantly quoted throughout the

middle age, see ARP 245.

[36] ARP 100.

[37] Above, page 80.

[38] Nam debetur ab eo percopiosus litteris honor. Hunc olim perorantem

et rhetorica sedilia plausibili oratione frangentem. V. x. 2.

[39] See Chapter I. B. 2. a (3) and d (5).

[40] Both are in Keil, with two other grammarians of this period who seem

to have had considerable currency, Fortunatianus and Victorinus. The

names have occasioned some confusion. Keil calls the grammarian Atilius

Fortunatianus, and distinguishes Maximus from Marius Victorinus. The

latter has been regarded as the author of the widespread commentary on

Cicero’s _De inventione_; but Halm assigns this to Q. Fabius Laurentius

Victorinus. The _Ars rhetorica_ is generally assigned to Q. Chirius (or

Curius) Fortunatianus. But the determination of persons is of little

moment here. The works are all of this period and all current in the

middle age.

Keil includes also the compends of Cassiodorus and Bede. His notes are

valuable especially for locating correspondences and medieval use.

W. J. Chase’s translation of the _Ars Minor_ of Donatus reprints Keil’s

text and has an historical introduction (Univ. of Wisconsin Studies No.

36, Madison, 1926).

[41] E.g., in 1445 Panicali da Cingoli gave his _Flores grammaticæ_ the

sub-title _Donatellus_; and by then the English name for an elementary

grammar was _donet_. Pecock uses the word, in the sense of primer, as a

title for his handbook of morals.

[42] Priscian includes a translation of the elementary exercises of

Hermogenes (see above, Chapter I. B. 2. c).

[43] For _prælectio_ see the index to ARP.

[44] Scientia interpretandi poetas atque historicos et recte scribendi

loquendique ratio. Marius Victorinus, Keil VI. 188. The same words are

found in Audax, Keil VII. 321; and substantially equivalent definitions

in Servius on Donatus, Keil IV. 486; Asper, Keil V. 547; Dositheus, Keil

VII. 376. Priscian’s examples are mainly from poetry.

[45] Nulla imbutus poetica disciplina Terentianum Maurum sine magistro

adtingere non auderes. Asper, Cornutus, Donatus et alii innumerabiles

requiruntur, ut quilibet poeta possit intellegi cuius carmina et theatri

plausus uiderentur captare. _De utilitate credendi_, 17 (CSE, S. August,

vol. 6, 21. 25).

For later use of prælectio see the index to the present volume.

[46] E. K. Rand’s introduction to the Loeb _Boethius_, page ix.

For the commented translation of the Analytics see Manitius I. 30; for

the resumption of the Analytics at Chartres, the section on John of

Salisbury’s _Metalogicus_ below, Chapter VI. C.

[47] The history of the use of Quintilian is set forth in Fierville’s

edition of Book I (Paris, 1890). This has been reviewed and extended by

F. H. Colson in the introduction to his edition of Book I (Cambridge

University Press, 1924).

[48] The assignment to Cicero is as early as Jerome. See Cornificius in

Pauly-Wissowa.

Halm shows very little use of the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ during this

period. There is a full synopsis of this work in Wilkins’s introduction

to his edition of Cicero’s _De oratore_ (Oxford, 1893), page 56. Faral

shows in comparative tables that it is the source of the lists of figures

in the medieval _artes poeticæ_ (_Les arts poétiques du xiie et du xiiie

siècle_, Paris, 1924), pages 52-54.

[49] _Ars rhetorica._ It is praised by Cassiodorus.

[50] Julius Victor makes far the largest use of Quintilian.

[51] See Quintilian I. ix, and compare this and his II. iv with the

exercises of Hermogenes above in Chapter I. B. 2. c.

[52] The best edition of the _De nuptiis Philologiæ et Mercurii_ is

Dick’s, Leipzig (Teubner), 1925.

[53] “Officium uero meum tunc fuerat docte scribere legereque; nunc etiam

illud accessit ut meum sit erudite intellegere probareque.” III. 230.

Many of the usual topics are merely mentioned. Marked agreement with

this book is shown by Priscian, Diomedes, and Charisius; considerable

agreement, by Marius Victorinus and Maximus Victorinus. See Dick’s

references _ad loc._ It is used by Cassiodorus especially, and also by

Isidore. Bede’s use may be through Maximus Victorinus.

[54] Meique prorsum iuris esse quicquid Artes ceteræ proloquuntur. Nam

neque ipsam quam aures uestræ probauere, Grammaticam, neque alteram

opimi oris præcluem facultate, uel illam formarum diuersa radio ac

puluere lineantem sine meis posse rationibus explicari quis dubitat?

Quippe in dicione mea iureque consistunt sex normæ, quis constant ceteræ

disciplinæ. Nam prima est de loquendo, secunda de eloquendo, tertia de

proloquendo, quarta de proloquiorum summa, quinta de iudicando, quæ

pertinet ad iudicationem poetarum et carminum, sexta de dictione, quæ

dicenda rhetoribus commodata est. IV. 336-338.

[55] See below, Chapter VI.

[56] The compend uses Cicero and Quintilian, Aristotle’s _Topics_, but

above all Aristotle’s _Categories_. See Dick _ad loc._

[57] Sed dum talibus perturbatur multa terrestrium plebs deorum, ecce

quædam sublimissimi corporis ac fiduciæ grandioris, uultus etiam decore

luculenta femina insignis ingreditur, cui galeatus uertex ac regali caput

maiestate sertatum, arma in manibus, quibus se uel communire solita

uel aduersarios uulnerare, fulminea quadam coruscatione renidebant.

Subarmalis autem uestis illi peplo quodam circa humeros inuoluto

Latiariter tegebatur, quod omnium figurarum lumine uariatum cunctorum

schemata præferebat, pectus autem exquisitissimis gemmarum coloribus

subbalteatum. Hæc cum in progressu arma concusserat, uelut fulgoreæ

nubis fragore colliso bombis dissultantibus fracta diceres crepitare

tonitrua; denique creditum quod instar Iouis eadem posset etiam fulmina

iaculari. Nam ueluti potens rerum omnium regina et impellere quo uellet

et unde uellet deducere, et in lacrimas flectere et in rabiem concitare,

et in alios etiam uultus sensusque conuertere tam urbes quam exercitus

prœliantes, quæcumque poterat agmina populorum. V. 426-27.

[58] The sections on figures (523-555) are taken almost verbatim from

Aquila Romanus. The preceding sections on _clausula_ are based on

Cicero. _Color_ is used also (e.g. 471) as by Seneca Rhetor (ARP 98).

The frequent agreement of Fortunatianus with this book is shown by Dick

_ad loc._ In comparison with the medieval vogue of the whole work, the

influence of this book seems small. John of Salisbury’s _Metalogicus_,

for instance, citing Martianus a dozen times, never refers to it.

[59] About 490-575.

[60] He is used, for instance, by Remi of Auxerre, and appears in the

tenth-century library of Chartres (Clerval, 21). For other references see

Manitius and Manacorda. The _Institutiones_ are in MGH.

[61] About 570-636; Bishop of Seville about 600. _Etymologiæ_ edited by

Lindsay, Oxford, 1910.

To the usual general books of reference add Labriolle.

[62] See below, Chapter VI. D. 2.

[63] If Isidore’s concision seems to involve him here in a non-sequitur,

he is not the first, nor the last, to force the rhetoric that he heard

under the rhetoric that he read.

[64] _Rhythmus_ is defined vaguely as follows: “Huic adhæret rythmus, qui

non est certo fine moderatus, sed tamen rationabiliter ordinatis pedibus

currit; qui Latine nihil aliud quam numerus dicitur.” I. xxxix.

[65] See the indexes to ARP and to this volume.

[66] For divisions of _philosophia_, see below, Chapter VI.

CHAPTER IV

POETIC, OLD AND NEW (FIFTH TO SEVENTH CENTURIES)

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

AH Dreves and Blume, _Analecta hymnica medii ævi_, Leipzig,

vol. 1, 1886; vol. 53, 1911.

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_,

New York, 1924.

Britt Britt (the Rev. Matthew, O. S. B.), _The hymns of the

Breviary and Missal_, New York, 1922.

CSE _Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum_, Vienna.

Keil Keil (H.), _Grammatici latini_, Leipzig, 1870-1880, 7 vols.

Mearns Mearns (J.), _Early Latin hymnaries_, an index of hymns in

hymnaries before 1100, Cambridge (University Press), 1913.

MGH _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_ (cited by page of the

appropriate volume).

PL _Patrologia latina_, Migne (cited by volume and column).

A. CLAUDIAN AND BOETHIUS

Lack of literary vitality must show itself conspicuously in poetry.

Claudian[1] at the end of the fourth century is typical of the

fashionable versified rhetoric. Poet of those who taught and quoted

Vergil, but liked Lucan and Statius, he is imitative fluently, prettily,

and, except for a certain monotony, expertly. His _Raptus Proserpinæ_ had

the longer life, doubtless, because the abundant allusions and decorative

descriptions give literary atmosphere without taxing either memory or

imagination, and because, though diffuse, it is briefer than much verse

narrative current in its time. Most of Claudian’s other poems were

occasional, and faded with the occasion.

But the old modes, for all the trivial use of them, were not spent.

Boethius[2] showed himself here too the last of the Romans. The man who

interpreted to century after century the logic of Aristotle was a poet.

Not only is the _Consolatio philosophiæ_ poetic in conception; its lyric

interludes are so far above the facile expertness of the time as to

suggest comparison with the best Latin achievement. Nothing less was the

inspiration of their firm and various technic. Though he seems at first

like his contemporaries in looking backward to what was going or gone,

he knew better than they what to look for in the Roman tradition. He is

never either archaist or sophist. Images of classical reminiscence are

used with fresh realization of their source in the sounds and colors of

sea and fields and clouds. They are not tags, nor merely allusions, nor

decoration. So used, they have much the same freshness as of old, or as

the poet’s own immediate observation.

Visebat gelidæ sidera lunæ[3]

is at once old and original; and the last line of this poem focuses the

whole in a pregnant phrase:

Cogitur, heu! stolidam cernere terram.

Conceived by him habitually in cosmical aspects, nature none the less

struck his senses in distinct detail. The philosopher was a poet.

Boethius thus revived the old poetic terseness, as in

Desuper in terram nox funditur,[4]

not merely because he was too original and too serious to be deviated by

the literary habit of dilation, but because he grasped constructively the

economy set forth in the _De sublimitate_[5] as a poetic principle.

Ah! how sheer is the deep flooding my spirit!

Light of my own is lost; alien darkness

Daunts and deludes my soul. Swollen by wind-storms

Charged with vapors of earth, often returning,

Care like a poison spreads infinite languor.[6]

Having thus suggested the mood of oppression through images of the blind

frustration of man by the heavens and the earth, the lyric contrasts the

first, joyous contemplation of nature “under the open sky,” advances

to the inevitable later pondering upon the causes of movements so

stupendous, and returns to the unyielding inertia of environment, still

sharply imaged, but now carried from mood to conviction. The essentially

poetic composition of his lyrics saves them from what would otherwise

seem too intellectual solutions. _Stolidam cernere terram_ is, indeed,

as some other closes of his, a logical conclusion; but it is not reached

by a logical process, nor is it mere epigram. It is the final satisfying

image of a composition intensely and progressively imaginative. The

immense medieval vogue of the _Consolatio_ must often have reminded apt

spirits of the true method of poetry.

In detail also Boethius set a chastening example. The spiritual elevation

of this very lyric may have suggested for hymns[7] a measure that

otherwise would hardly have seemed available. Analysis reveals a fondness

for cæsural effects of syncope, for rime, and for subtler recurrences.

The next lines are:

Hic quondam cæl_o_ liber apert_o_

Suetus in ætheri_os_ ire meat_us_

Cernebat rosei lumina solis,

Visebat gelid_æ_ sidera lun_æ_

Et qu_æ_cumque uag_os_ stella recurs_us_

Exercet uari_os_ flexa per _or_bes,

Comprensam numeris uict_or_ habebat.

Quin etiam causas unde son_or_a....

But the italics exaggerate recurrences which to the ear are not

exaggerated. Boethius does not remind us of literary devices. He never

descends to word-play. His rime[8] is neither insistent nor inclined to

the later art of stanzas. It is merged in the other suggestions of a

various harmony.

The third measure of the third book, echoed now and then in hymns, slows

its pace not only by the cæsural pause, but by the predominance of

spondees at the onset.

Quamuis fluente diues auri gurgite

Non expleturas cogat auarus opes

Oneretque bacis colla rubri litoris

Ruraque centeno scindat opima boue,

Nec cura mordax deseret superstitem,

Defunctumque leues non comitantur opes.

Such reflective lyrics were so readily assimilated to medieval thought

that their grave and restrained form must have been instructive in the

centuries of poetic transition.

B. PRUDENTIUS, SEDULIUS, FORTUNATUS

Prudentius[9] devoted much capable and dignified verse in many meters and

in several distinct literary forms entirely to the service of religion.

The _Psychomachia_, in some nine hundred hexameters, is an allegory of

the soul’s warfare. Such description as that which introduces Avarice[10]

handed on from Roman antiquity to the middle age the poetic habit of

presenting personified abstractions by appropriate costume, gesture, and

speech. The habit is allegory in its most obvious form; the method is the

descriptive ecphrasis[11] transferring to poetry the rhetorical doctrine

of appropriateness. It is the method of Martianus Capella in the same age

and of Alain de Lille in the thirteenth century.[12]

Reviewing his life in the preface to the _Days_ (_Cathemerinon_),

Prudentius seeks a poetry proper to his old age in hymns.

Hymnis continuet dies,

Nec nox ulla vacet, quin Dominum canat.

The twelve poems that follow, cast in nine different measures, are

lyric reflections on the daily recurrences of cockcrow, food or fast,

lamplighting, sleep; or on the festal recurrences of Christmas or

Epiphany. They are poems of some length, not hymns in the specific sense

to which the word was soon limited. But stanzas selected from them were

combined to make the Breviary hymns for Lauds on Tuesday, Wednesday, and

Thursday, and for the feasts of the Holy Innocents, the Epiphany, and the

Transfiguration. Almost equally familiar in the middle age was the _Corde

natus_[13] hymn taken from the ninth poem.

The _Crowns_ (_Peristephanon_) is a group of fourteen poems commemorating

martyrs. Some are even longer than those of the preceding group; and

the narrative of St. Romanus extends to eleven hundred iambic trimeters

in five-line stanzas. Other lyric stanzas are pressed into the service

of narrative, as well as the better adapted hexameter and elegiac.

There is little narrative movement. What Prudentius sought was detailed

description, the making of martyrdom vivid. This, rather than the vogue

of _declamatio_,[14] explains a certain diffuseness and the violence of

many physical horrors of torture and execution. His descriptive habit is

utterly different from Claudian’s. That he was not thinking of rhetoric

seems sufficiently evident from his ignoring the recipes of encomium.[15]

The remaining verses of Prudentius, nearly four thousand hexameters,

more than one-third of his work, present theology by exposition and

argument.[16]

The main work of Sedulius[17] is a hexameter paraphrase of the Bible;

but he is better known for his _Carmen paschale_ because this gave to the

Breviary two hymns.[18] Its rimes suggest increasing inclination toward

regularity, forecasting the time when what the ancient prosody felt as

a device of style was to become a device of composition, a recognized

method of emphasizing words and of making stanzas.

But rime was recognized slowly as a composing principle. Fortunatus[19]

in the next century used it often enough, indeed, to show intention, but

still incidentally. His famous hymn _Vexilla regis_, ignoring rime in

its first quatrain, ends every line of the second with the same sound,

and three of them with double rime.[20] Contemporary interest in meter

appears in the poem replying to Gregory’s request for Sapphics.[21] Most

of his many other graceful occasional poems are in elegiacs. One other

hymn achieved a fame second only to that of the _Vexilla regis_, the

_Pange, lingua, gloriosi_. These two great Passion hymns may be taken

as typical of the transitional poetic of the time. They are at once old

and new. Each is a veritable hymn, not adapted as were the selections

from Prudentius, but composed in a popular measure for community singing.

Turning back to them from their successors of the great medieval period,

one almost inevitably renders them with the same strong stresses. So

read, they seem not to lose, but to gain in emphasis and swing. Who

shall prove that they were not so rendered in the poet’s own time? But

who shall prove that they were? Against such rendering is clear evidence

that Fortunatus controlled expertly the ancient quantitative prosody. For

it are, first, the measures themselves, which come from popular verse

accentual even in ancient Rome, and, second, a shift of speaking habit

spreading slowly through the new Roman world. Both these must now be

examined.

C. THE EARLIER LATIN HYMNS[22]

O lux beata Trinitas

Et principalis Unitas,

Iam sol recedit igneus;

Infunde lumen cordibus.

Te mane laudum carmine

Te deprecamur vespere;

Te nostra supplex gloria

Per cuncta laudet sæcula.[23]

Here is new poetry, and the beginning of a new poetic. Not graver than

Boethius in rejecting decoration, not terser in rejecting dilation, it

is more direct, more simply responsive. The communal expression, the

imaginative answer of people united, is as distinct poetically from

individual reflection as is the communal hope from pensive resignation.

The hope that Boethius had, but did not express in his _Consolatio_,

appears here as above all a communal inspiration. The hymns are popular

essentially in being the poetry of a society, the kingdom of heaven.

Often intensely lyric, they express typically in these earlier centuries

the emotions of a community. Their poets, many of them soon forgotten, if

ever known, without thought of individual fame sought to give voice to

what all felt together. The wide and continued vogue of the early hymns

testifies to the validity of their popular poetic.

Their popularity is conspicuous in their verse. The measure above may be

found, indeed, among learned poets; but it is originally and usually the

verse of common people. Latin popular verse, even in classical times,

was probably accentual. Though still called by the grammarians dimeter,

this particular measure is certainly accentual as it is used in hymns of

later centuries, and as it is rendered later even in hymns of this early

period. Is it accentual as rendered even here at the beginning of Latin

hymnody? The answer, though still disputed, has been much advanced in the

last fifty years. To begin with clear terms, _accentual_ means controlled

by stresses; _quantitative_, controlled by time. All verse beyond mere

mechanical exercise and doggerel has both elements; but every verse has

one or the other for its control, its rhythm. All verse is something

like dance, something like song; but every verse is dominated by the

one rhythm or the other. In this sense English verse is accentual. Every

expert English poet regards time also, as he is aware of alliteration or

subtler recurrences, or as he uses rime; but he sets and holds his rhythm

by stresses. In this sense modern French verse is quantitative. Though it

regards other elements, including stress, it makes time, as English verse

does not, essential in its pattern. The same difference distinguishes

the verse of Bernard of Morlaix from the verse of Vergil, and generally

medieval Latin verse from ancient. Medieval Latin verse has a different

rhythm. Probably the new rhythmical habit began early.

But when we try to determine dates, we should remember that old

verse habits give way to new gradually. Poetic does not progress by

revolutions. The decorative habit of the _Roman de la Rose_, though

it is now a curious piece of antiquity, survived long after Chaucer

had outgrown it and had even exploded it in satire. In verse, too, the

three centuries including Chaucer help us to understand the centuries

from Sedulius to Bede. With other court poets, Chaucer was bilingual.

He not only understood and spoke French; he had French verse in his

subconscious mind. True, the French verse of his time shows, more than

that of to-day, awareness of stress. The two rhythms were so much less

distinct that Chaucer could more easily turn French to the profit of his

own development in metric. None the less his rhythm is English. In spite

of his ready tolerance of a shift of stress in foreign words, and of the

enhancing of his harmonies by long vowels, his rhythm, the pattern or

control of his verse, is consistently accentual. The first great English

poet, as he used French, indeed, but turned for his poetry to English,

kept no less confidently English rhythm.

In the fourth century Latin verse showed distinctly side by side two

rhythms. Quantitative verse, long confirmed by Greek example and often

directly imitative of Greek models, held the field of culture. The verse

of Horace, Vergil, Ovid, it imposed itself upon all educated poets.

Its influence controlled the schools through the archaistic teaching

of style; and its quantitative prosody continued for centuries to be

taught as part of _grammatica_. But all this while another rhythm was

heard from the mouths of soldiers in songs of marching beat. What is

somewhat indefinitely known as Saturnian verse moved beneath and behind

literature, sometimes broke in half-conscious echoes through learned

poetry, then gained the ground lost by literary standards, and finally

won recognition as valid poetry in the hymns.[24]

Eventually the manuals of metric, which in any age proverbially lag

behind current habit, distinguished the new verse by a new application of

an old name. They called it _rhythmus_. The ancient quantitative verse is

generally referred to in the middle age as _metrum_ (_metra_, _metricus_,

etc.); the new Latin verse, as _rhythmus_ (_rithmus_, _rithmicus_, etc.).

Bede’s _De arte metrica_, written early in the eighth century and widely

used as a textbook, distinguishes as follows:

Rhythm is seen moreover to be like meter in that it is a

harmonized pattern of words, not planned metrically, but

adjusted by recurrence of syllables to the judgment of the

ear, as are the songs of popular poets. Though there can be

rhythm without meter, there cannot be meter without rhythm.

The distinction may be stated more clearly thus: meter is

regularity with harmony; rhythm is harmony without regularity.

But often you will find in rhythm even regularity, kept not by

the modes of [ancient] art, but by the sound and by the lead

of the harmony itself. This, though popular poets must do it

rudely, expert poets may do expertly. In this manner was most

beautifully composed, with resemblance to iambic meter, that

famous hymn

Rex æterne domine,

rerum creator omnium,

qui eras ante sæcula

semper cum patre filius,

and other Ambrosians not a few. So in the fashion of trochaic

meter is sung the alphabetical hymn on the day of judgment:

Apparebit repentina

dies magna domini,

fur obscura velut nocte

improvisos occupans.[25]

Bede is apparently feeling his way, and evidently trying to find

warrant for a new poetic in ancient authority. Victorinus, whom he

is quoting,[26] may intend by _rhythmus_ and _numerus_ nothing more

than their older, more general sense. Bede’s variations and additions

make specific and unmistakable application to the verse of the hymns

as distinct from _metra_. The testimony, first to the new habit, and

secondly to the recognition of it as a valid and beautiful poetic, is

testimony to fact. In a schoolbook of the early eighth century Ambrosians

are exhibited as _rhythmi_; and _rhythmi_ are recognized as a distinct,

self-sufficient method of verse.

Though the change of verse habit was slow, though _metra_ were composed

long after _rhythmi_ had won the field, and though on the other hand

even early hymns that are metrically correct may have been rendered as

_rhythmi_, the progressive prevalence of accentual composition can hardly

be doubted; for it answers a shift in the habit of speech itself. By the

seventh century Latin was no longer spoken even by the learned, much less

by the average monk in England or Spain, as it had been spoken by Cicero.

The change of speech tune, doubtless more rapid among men not born to

the language, certainly unequal and gradual, seems to be a fact in the

history of the language.[27]

Some of the earliest verse generally recognized as _rhythmus_ comes

from Ireland.[28] The earliest known hymn manuscript is the so-called

Antiphonary of [Irish] Bangor,[29] which is not an antiphonary, but a

collection of hymns, prayers, and canticles. In poetic art these range

all the way from measures of noble beauty, some of which appear to have

been composed as _metra_, to mnemonic jingle. The following hymn is

probably of the fifth or sixth century:

Ignis creator igneus,

Lumen, donator luminis,

Vitaque vitæ conditor,

Dator salutis et salus,

Ne noctis huius gaudia

Vigil lucerna deserat,

Qui hominem non vis mori,

Da nostro lumen pectori.

Folio 11, _recto_; AH 51: 296.

On its face this is a _metrum_, the familiar iambic dimeter. Rendered

as a _rhythmus_, it would freely disregard quantities, stress the final

syllable of each line, and elsewhere generally stress the word-accent:

ígnis creâtor ígneús. Though either measure is satisfying, the safer

assumption is that the composer intended a _metrum_.

Probably even older, on the other hand, is St. Sechnall’s (Secundinus,

fifth century) fervent but rude praise of St. Patrick in twenty-three

stanzas beginning with the successive letters of the alphabet.

Audite, omnes amantes

Deum, sancta merita

Viri in Christo beati,

Patricii episcopi,

Quomodo bonum ob actum

similatur angelis

Perfectamque propter vitam

æquatur apostolis.

Beata Christi custodit

mandata in omnibus,

Cuius opera refulgent

clara inter homines,

Sanctumque cuius sequuntur

exemplum mirificum,

Unde et in cælis patrem

magnificant Dominum....

Folio 13, _verso_; AH 51: 340.

Here the ignoring of quantities is such as to preclude a _metrum_.[30]

But accentual interpretation also is difficult. Read as a _rhythmus_

based on the _Corde natus_ measure,[31] which was frequently thus used

later, it moves tolerably in certain stanzas (e.g., 4 and 7), but in

others, including the two quoted, intolerably violates word-accent. Read

by word-accent as a _rhythmus_ of three stresses, it makes extravagant

use of two intervening unstressed syllables.[32] Indeed, without some

clearer clue than has yet been offered, we can hardly be sure what

measure was intended.[33] Much less should we regard it as representative

of the early poetic capacity of _rhythmus_. That capacity is amply

vindicated in other hymns of this very manuscript.

1. Iambic

Examination of the early hymns measure by measure begins with St.

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan at the end of the fourth century. Both his own

fame and the recognition of a typical stanza appear in the general use

of the adjective Ambrosian to describe many hymns of unknown authorship

and sometimes of uncertain date. The canon of his own hymns has, indeed,

been determined;[34] but it is less important than his achievement of a

type. His answer to a common need established a common form. He had the

discernment, first, to select a popular measure often used accentually,

and then so to use it as to obey both the popular stress habit and the

learned poetic of quantity. That his hymns are valid either as _metra_

or as _rhythmi_ means, though his regard for word-accent shows that he

foresaw the latter rendering, that they must have been composed in the

former, and probably that time rhythm was still heard in speech. The

increase of the stress habit gradually worked a transformation. The

regular dactylic close hardly satisfying so short a line, the final

syllable, which even in the ancient metric might be long sometimes, came

to be stressed always. As a _metrum_ the iambic dimeter ran _Ætērnĕ

rērūm cōndĭtŏr_; as a _rhythmus_ it became _Ætérne rérum cónditór_.

The effect, though different, is not inferior. For the distinctive

verse values of _rhythmi_, heard at their best in later hymns freely

so composed, can be discerned even here in the earliest centuries by

rendering as _rhythmi_—as in fact they came to be rendered—two of the

most familiar hymns taken from the dimeters of Prudentius.

Ales diei nuntius

Lucem propinquam præcinit:

Nos excitator mentium

Iam Christus ad vitam vocat.

Auferte, clamat, lectulos

Ægros, sopores desides:

Castique, recti, ac sobrii

Vigilate, iam sum proximus....

_Cathemerinon_ i. 1: AH 50: 23.

Salvete flores martyrum,

Quos lucis ipso in limine

Christi insecutor sustulit,

Ceu turbo nascentes rosas.

Quid crimen Herodem iuvat?

Vos prima Christi victima,

Grex immolatorum tener,

Palma et coronis luditis....

_Cathemerinon_ xii. 125: AH 50: 27.

The accentual habit spread slowly and intermittently as a change of

control from one element of verse to another. Both elements continued

in the better hymns to vary and enhance what must otherwise become

monotonous or bald; but the control, the rhythm, gradually changed from

time to stress. Variety through shifting the places of stress[35] appears

in several hymns of the sixth century. The Ambrosian quoted by Bede as an

example of _rhythmus_[36] even begins with a stress;[37] and the probable

following of word-accent often gives a dactylic opening.

Réx ætérne, Dóminé,

Rérum creátor ómniúm,

Qui éras ánte sǽculá

Sémper cum pátre fíliús,

Qui múndi ín primórdió

Ádam plasmásti hóminém,

Cuí tuaé imáginís

Vúltum dedísti símilém; ...

AH 51: 5.

Similar variations appear in the “Versus Flavii ad Mandatum.”

Téllus ac ǽthra iúbilént

In mágni céna príncipís,

Quæ prótoplásti péctorá

Vítæ purgávit férculó.

Hac nócte fáctor ómniúm

Poténti sát mystérió

Cárnem súam cum sánguiné

In éscam tránsfert ánimǽ....

AH 51: 77.

Though possible lingering or revival of a sense of quantities, and the

shifting pronunciation of proper names, leave uncertainties (as above,

for example in _Adam_ and _vitæ_), there is little doubt that such

variations were not only accepted, but even sought. They often relieve

dubious measures; and conversely they are sometimes used in ruder

_rhythmi_ so excessively as to blur the verse pattern. One of the Bangor

hymns seems to run best as follows:

Médiæ nóctis témpus ést;

Prophética vóx ádmonét,

Dicámus laúdes út Deó

Pátri sémper ac fílió

Sáncto quóque spírituí.

Perfécta énim trínitás

Úniúsque substántiǽ

Laudánda nóbis sémper ést....

Folio 11 _verso_; AH 51: 3.

If so, the syncope in line 2 serves to emphasize _vox_. But the verse

of this hymn is inferior.[38] The better hymns use the variations with

better art.

2. Trochaic

More immediately suggestive of accentual rendering was another

soldiers’ measure used by Prudentius in the first poem of his _Crowns_

(_Peristephanon_), a commemoration of two soldier martyrs. It was better

known through a hymn taken from the ninth poem of his _Days_.

Corde natus ex parentis ante mundi exordium,

A et O cognominatus, ipse fons et clausula

Omnium quæ sunt, fuerunt, quæque post futura sunt,

Ipse iussit, et creata; dixit ipse, et facta sunt:

Terra, cælum, fossa ponti, trina rerum machina,

Quæque in his vigent sub alto solis et lunæ globo,

Corporis formam caduci, membra morti obnoxia

Induit, ne gens periret primoplasti ex germine,

Merserat quem lex profundo noxialis tartaro....

_Cathemerinon_ ix. 10.[39]

Rendered as a _rhythmus_, as in the hymn quoted by Bede,[40] the measure,

besides ending with a stress, was often divided at the cæsura, to make

stanzas of six four-stress lines; for the original line is long to handle

singly; it tends to break. None of the other hymns taken from this poem

of Prudentius is so familiar and so stirring as this of Fortunatus:

Pange, lingua, gloriosi prælium certaminis,

Et super crucis tropæo dic triumphum nobilem,

Qualiter redemptor orbis immolatus vicerit.

De parentis protoplasti fraude factor condolens,

Quando pomi noxialis morte morsu conruit,

Ipse lignum tunc notavit, damna ligni ut solveret....

_Carmina_ II. ii; MGH 27.[41]

Possibly Fortunatus composed this as a _rhythmus_; more probably he

thought of the soldiers’ marching stresses as reinforcing his _metra_.

The long Bangor hymn ascribed to St. Hilary of Poitiers, and probably

very old,[42] is quoted with admiration by Bede[43] as a metrum.

Hymnum dicat turba fratrum,

hymnum cantus personet;

Christo regi concinnantes

laudem demus debitam.

Tu Dei de corde verbum,

tu via, tu veritas,

Iesse virga tu vocaris,

te leonem legimus.

Dextra patris, mons et agnus,

angularis tu lapis,

Sponsus idem vel columba,

flamma, pastor, ianua.

In prophetis inveniris

nostro natus sæculo;

Ante sæcla tu fuisti

factor primi sæculi....

Folio 3 _recto_; AH 51: 264.

It has the deeper significance of exhibiting an early form of medieval

symbolism.

The very different trochaic measure of the sixth-century Irish

“breastplate” hymn, with abrupt pauses and rime, seems clearly a

_rhythmus_, and deserves attention least of all for its art.

_Lorica sancti Gyldæ Sapientis_

Suffragare, * trinitatis unitas,

Unitatis * miserere trinitas.

Suffragare,

quæso, mihi posito

Maris magni

velut in periculo,

Ut non secum

trahat me mortalitas

Huius anni

neque mundi vanitas.

Et hoc idem

peto a sublimibus

cælestis mi-

litiæ virtutibus,

Ne me linquant

lacerandum hostibus,

Sed defendant

me iam armis fortibus....

AH 51: 358.

3. Other Measures

Less popular, more literary measures, though some of them were used

early in the hymnaries, seem to have been interpreted as _rhythmi_ more

slowly. This, indeed, is what one would expect; but the evidence is not

decisive. The Sapphic stanza, the beautiful meter of the second poem of

Boethius,[44] even iambic trimeter, were in time transformed. But in

hymns they were comparatively infrequent; and for other uses they were

revived with what seems clearly quantitative intention and achievement.

Either rendering is beautiful for one of the few Sapphic poems that are

essentially hymns, a hymn for Sunday Lauds.

Ecce iam noctis tenuatur umbra;

Lucis aurora rutilans coruscat;

Nisibus totis rogitemus omnes

Cunctipotentem,

Ut Deus nostri miseratus omnem

Pellat languorem, tribuat salutem,

Donet et patris pietate nobis

Regna polorum.

Præstet hoc nobis deitas beata

Patris et nati pariterque sancti

Spiritus, cuius reboatur omni

Gloria mundo.

AH 51: 31.[45]

The most striking verse in the Bangor manuscript is that of the familiar

Communion hymn.

Sancti, venite, Christi corpus sumite

Sanctum bibentes, quo redempti, sanguinem,

Salvati Christi corpore et sanguine,

A quo refecti laudes dicamus Deo,

Hoc sacramento corporis et sanguinis

Omnes exuti ab inferni faucibus.

Dator salutis, Christus filius Dei,

Mundum salvavit per crucem et sanguinem;

Pro universis immolatus Dominus

Ipse sacerdos exsistit et hostia....

Folio 10 _verso_; AH 51: 298.

The spondaic opening and the marked cæsura may be reminiscent of the

_Quamvis fluente dives auri gurgite_ of Boethius;[46] and the composition

is far superior to the Bangor habit in sense of time values. Not only

Irish and popular, but probably much older than this manuscript,[47]

the hymn may have been composed as a _metrum_. By either rendering it

is unusually, and at the same time expertly, free. Though the spread of

stress rhythm carried some verse that is rude and mechanical, as in this

manuscript, it did not of itself forfeit time values, and it opened in

the old language new effects of verse.

4. Poetic Conceptions

But the newness of the verse is at best less significant than the newness

of the poetry. A jaded world has been refreshed by new imaginative

expression. Bede’s exhibition of Christian poetry is not merely pious;

nor is it either timid or complacent. He is convinced of a new Latin

poetry. As Augustine redeemed rhetoric, so Ambrose transformed poetic, by

new motives. The tender image of the Holy Innocents playing with their

palms and crowns[48] is neither old nor new; it is the timeless language

of individual lyric. But the habitual conceptions of Prudentius and

Ambrose, of Hilary and Gregory, are not individual; they are communal.

The lyric of the hymns exalts the common emotions of common observance.

It is the poetry of aspirations shared not only with all Christians

everywhere, but with immediate companions turning work into worship. It

expresses the visions of a fellowship.

No exception is found in the early hymns commemorating martyrs. The

triumph is not personal. The individual heroism passes into the common

hope of released energy and of the triumph of the kingdom of God. As

early churches were built over the tombs of martyrs, and later additions

made the nave look both down to the original _confessione_ and up to the

high altar, so the martyr hymns express both a common gratitude and a

common devotion. So a hundred images of light, suggestions of dawn, noon,

stars, the ordinary lamp, the candle in church, lead not to individual

emotion, but to the poetry of theology.

In every light is the light of the world. The night-light (_vigil

lucerna_) leads up to the giver of light, the creative fire (_Ignis

creator igneus, Lumen donator luminis_).[49] Poetry discerns a new earth

because of a new heaven, and finds both one. The poets of the hymns do

not, as the Stoics, look down on the material world; they look through

it. They neither belittle physical reality nor bow to it; they go on from

it. Life in the hymns is not an urgent present and a visioned future;

it is all one. The frame of the Christian year opens in the hymns on

eternity. Eternal life begins now, and is not survival, but progressive

release of human energy by God. Thus the Incarnation is revealed by

Prudentius not in versified theology, but in poetic truth. It becomes a

cosmic vision.

Though this conception was widespread through the Prudentian hymn _Corde

natus_,[50] and though Prudentius was quite as much philosopher as poet,

literary influences are insufficient to account for the consistent

continuity of the hymns as thought. Even Fortunatus, who certainly was

no philosopher, was uplifted by common visions. The single line _Hymnum

dicat turba fratrum_[51] might be taken as a formula for the poetic

of the early hymns. Hilary discerned also the communal appeal of the

symbolism of the Old Testament, as Ambrose had discerned a communal

verse; but though the hymns owe much to individuals, the character of

their lyric grows from unifying communal conceptions of life.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Claudian wrote about 400, mainly in hexameters and elegiacs. Sidonius

refers to him; and he is often cited later as a model of verse.

[2] About 480-524. _Tractates_ and _De consolatione philosophiæ_, text

and translation, ed. Stewart (H. F.) and Rand (E. K.), London and New

York, 1918 (Loeb Classical Library). For bibliography, see Manitius I;

for introduction to the manifold significance, Stewart’s _Boethius, an

essay_, Edinburgh and London, 1891.

[3] _De consolatione philosophiæ_ I, Metr. ii. 9.

[4] I, Metr. iii. 6.

[5] ARP 126-127.

[6]

Heu quam præcipiti mersa profundo

Mens hebet et propria luce relicta

Tendit in externas ire tenebras,

Terrenis quotiens flatibus aucta

Crescit in immensum noxia cura.

I, Metr. ii. 1-5.

[7] Hymns echoing this measure may be traced in _Mearns_. Bede cites two,

which he erroneously ascribes to St. Ambrose (_De arte metrica_, Keil

VII. 255, 256).

[8] In this poem _or_ recurs at the same place in 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19;

22 rimes with 24 on _-entis_. The rime of adjective with noun is frequent

of course; but Boethius marks it by putting one at the cæsura, the other

at the end. His most frequent rimes of this sort are on _-as_. For the

recurrence of _-os_, _-us_, with neighboring _-o_ see III. ii. 32-35.

[9] Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Spaniard, 348-about 410; prepared

a complete edition of his works 405. Often cited in the middle age,

his works were printed in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth

centuries, and have been studied often since. Lanfranchi reëdited the

Bodoni edition in 1894 (Turin, second ed., 1904).

See, besides Manitius, Boissier, Monceaux, and Glover: Puech, _Prudence,

étude sur la poésie latine chrétienne_, Paris, 1888; Lease, _A syntactic,

stylistic, and metrical study of P._, Baltimore, 1895; Maigret, _Le

poète chrétien P._, Paris, 1903; Ermini (F.), _Peristephànon, studi

Prudenziani_, Rome, 1914; Bergman, _Aulus Prudentius Clemens, der

grösste christliche Dichter des Alterthums_, Dorpat, 1921-1924.

[10] 454.

[11] See above, page 17.

[12] For Martianus Capella see above, Chapter III; for Alain, below,

Chapter VI.

[13] See below, C. 2.

[14] Puech, however, calls Prudentius in the _Peristephanon_ “l’un des

derniers représentants de la déclamation latine,” and perhaps with no

more warrant, “le prédécesseur des peintres castillans ou valenciens du

xvie ou du xviie siècle” (page 129).

[15] Nor has Prudentius, though he is fond of alliteration, much

word-play. His verse, rather strictly quantitative, seems undoubtedly to

have been so composed, though later it was rendered accentually.

[16] _Apotheosis_, 1089 verses on the Incarnation; _Hamartigenia_,

974 on the origin of sin; two books _Contra Symmachum_, 1756 directly

polemic. J. Bergman regards him as a pioneer even in these poems. After

pointing out the influence of the _Psychomachia_ on the whole middle age,

he adds that _Apotheosis_ and _Hamartigenia_ are “kühne Versuche, die

kühnsten seit Lucretius’ Tagen, Philosophie in Form einer Dichtung zu

bieten.” _Aulus Prudentius Clemens, der grösste christliche Dichter des

Alterthums_, Dorpat (Acta et Comment. Univer. II. 1), 1924.

[17] Fifth century; works in CSE and in PL.

Bede praises Sedulius for internal rime in hexameters. “Optima autem

versus dactylici ac pulcherrima compositio est cum primis pænultima ac

mediis respondent extrema, qua Sedulius frequenter uti consuevit, ut

pervi_a_ divis_i_ patuerunt cærul_a_ pont_i_

et

sicc_a_ peregrin_as_ stupuerunt marmor_a_ plant_as_....

Non tamen hoc continuatim agendum, verum post aliquot interpositos

versus.” _De arte metrica_, Keil VII. 244.

[18] _A solis ortus cardine_ for Lauds on Christmas Day, and _Crudelis

Herodes, Deum_ for Epiphany Vespers (AH 50: 58).

[19] Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus, about 530-600; went from

Italy to Gaul, 565; Bishop of Poitiers, 599. Works, ed. Leo, MGH.

See, besides the general works, Elss, _Untersuchungen über den Stil und

die Sprache des Venantius Fortunatus_, Heidelberg, 1907.

[20] Rime appears early in Irish hymns. See AH 51, Part II.

[21] _Carmina_ IX. vi.

[22] An excellent introductory summary is that of Blume (article

_hymnody_) in the _Catholic Encyclopedia_, which may also be consulted

for Ambrose, etc., and for some of the greater hymns. Britt makes the

best known Latin hymns available in one volume, with carefully selected

translations, trustworthy ascriptions, biographical and bibliographical

notes, indexes, and brief historical introduction. But this admirable

work, though otherwise constantly useful, does not give for most of the

hymns the earliest known text. This will be found, through the invaluable

index of Mearns, in AH. Other references will be found in Britt’s preface.

[23] St. Ambrose; Britt, 71; AH 51: 38.

[24] Recognition of the two methods of verse may be indicated by a line

of Fortunatus,

Quæque sunt rythmis vel amica metris,

in stanza 11 of _Carm._ IX. vii (MGH, page 212); but the two words are

not necessarily used with the distinction that is clear in Bede (below,

in next paragraph).

[25] Videtur autem rhythmus metris esse consimilis, quæ est verborum

modulata compositio, non metrica ratione, sed numero syllabarum ad

iudicium aurium examinata, ut sunt carmina vulgarium poetarum. Et quidem

rhythmus per se sine metro esse potest, metrum vero sine rhythmo esse non

potest; quod liquidius ita definitur: metrum est ratio cum modulatione,

rhythmus modulatio sine ratione. Plerumque tamen casu quodam invenies

etiam rationem in rhythmo, non artifici moderatione servata, sed sono et

ipsa modulatione ducente, quem vulgares poetæ necesse est rustice, docti

faciant docte. Quomodo et ad instar iambici metri pulcherrime factus est

hymnus ille præclarus ... et alii Ambrosiani non pauci. Item ad formam

metri trochaici canunt hymnum de die iudicii per alphabetum.... Keil VII.

258.

[26] The work, which is assigned by Keil to Maximus Victorinus, is headed

_Ars Palæmonis de Metrica Institutione_. It begins by defining _metrum_,

and then goes on: “Metro quid videtur consimile? Rhythmus. Rhythmus

quid est? Verborum modulata compositio non metrica ratione sed numerosa

scansione ad iudicium aurium examinata, ut puta veluti sunt cantica

poetarum vulgarium. Rhythmus ergo in metro non est? Potest esse. Quid

ergo distat a metro? Quod rhythmus per se sine metro esse potest, metrum

sine rhythmo esse non potest. Quod liquidius ita definitur, metrum est

ratio cum modulatione, rhythmus sine ratione metrica modulatio. Plerumque

tamen casu quodam etiam invenies rationem metricam in rhythmo, non

artificii observatione servata, sed sono et ipsa modulatione ducente.”

Keil VI. 206.

[27] The importance of the music for the interpretation of a measure

gives additional weight to what is in other respects the most specific

exposition of the verse of the early hymns, that of Pierre Aubry in _Le

rythme tonique dans la poésie liturgique et dans le chant des églises

chrétiennes au moyen âge_, Paris, 1903. For his conclusions as to verse,

and more widely as to language, are supported by his expert knowledge

of the early history of Church music. They may be indicated by a few

leading quotations. “Évolution du langage parlé vers le principe tonique

au quatrième et au cinquième siècle” (8). “La rythmique antique est

en voie de transformation ... transformation même que subissent les

langues de l’antiquité au seuil du moyen âge ... un principe nouveau

de vitalité linguistique: l’accent. L’ancienne prosodie, qui reposait

sur la distinction des syllabes en longues et en brèves, a disparu

dans l’usage vers le même temps. On ne connaît plus que des syllabes

accentuées et des syllabes atones. Un rythme d’intensité s’est substitué

au rythme quantitatif. L’accent vainqueur a tué la quantité” (54). “Les

langues liturgiques ... ont dans chaque mot une syllabe affectée d’un

accent tonique.... À l’époque qui nous occupe, cet accent est toujours

d’intensité ... ni plus d’acuité, ni plus de durée, mais plus de force”

(55). “Un poète comme Claudien faisait des vers latins à la façon d’un

amateur de vieux langage.... L’accent tonique prend un rôle de plus en

plus prépondérant.... Au septième siècle cette transformation est un

fait accompli” (57). “Telles hymnes de saint Ambroise, _Consors paterni

luminis_ par exemple, ou de saint Grégoire le Grand, par exemple _Rerum

Creator optime_, sont de pures strophes iambiques dimètres métriques,

tandisque le principe tonique domine dans l’hymne ambrosienne _Vox clara

ecce intonat_, et que dans cette autre, _Christe, Redemptor omnium_, il

est assez malaisé de déterminer les règles suivies par le poète” (60).

But even readers inexpert in music and in some of the languages quoted

will learn much by following the line of exposition throughout.

Aubry’s position as to the dominance of stress is supported by Gastoué,

_Les origines du chant romain_, Paris, 1907, chapter ii, pages 60-67.

[28] See AH 51, Part II, with Blume’s introduction.

[29] 681-691; reproduced in facsimile and transcribed by F. E. Warren for

the Henry Bradshaw Society, volume IV, London, 1892; edited and annotated

by him in volume X, 1895.

[30] Blume (AH 51: 345) calls it “der älteste uns bekannte rein

rhythmische Hymnus;” but by “rein” he too probably means that it has no

rhythm but syllabic equality. See note 33, below.

[31] See below, section 2.

[32] Nevertheless Benchuir bona regula (folio 30, _recto_; AH 51: 356)

may well be reconsidered in this aspect, as well as the two later Irish

hymns in AH 51: 351 and 352.

[33] A widespread explanation is that Irish hymns were often composed

with no other rhythm than equality between lines in the number of

syllables. Even the support of W. Meyer (see especially _Spanisches zur

Geschichte der ältesten mittellateinischen Rythmik_) and of Blume seems

insufficient to establish this theory against two grave objections. The

first objection is that _mere_ equality in number of syllables hardly

constitutes a pattern. It does not provide recurrences marked enough to

guide either composer or hearer. It is hardly verse. The idea that a

practise so mechanical actually became a habit is repugnant. The second

objection is that on this theory Irish Latin verse ignored not only

quantities, but word-accent—ignored, that is, either speech-tune. The

Irish monks of all men, the best linguists of Europe in this period,

were hardly the ones to write Latin verse by ignoring the habit of the

language. And in fact the following of the word-accent will often reveal

a stress rhythm sufficient for the ruder mnemonic verses and satisfying

in the better ones. Moreover this consideration is fortified by what we

know of the music (see note 27 above), which leaned on the word-accent.

True, such rendering sometimes involves two unstressed syllables in

succession, or conversely two stresses without intervention; but this

variation is a natural means against monotony. The pattern is kept by

the unvarying number of stresses in each line; variety is secured by

occasionally shifting their places. The idea that in this period iambic

or trochaic _rhythmi_ admitted no effects similar to the substitution

of dactyl or anapest in a _metrum_, or to a spondee, is an assumption

unwarranted by either theory or fact.

[34] Dreves (_Aurelius Ambrosius, der Vater des Kirchengesanges, eine

hymnologische Studie_, Freiburg, 1893) settles on the following eighteen

hymns, of which he prints the text and indicates the melodies.

(1) Æterne rerum conditor,

(2) Splendor paternæ gloriæ,

(3) Iam surgit hora tertia,

(4) Nunc sancte nobis Spiritus,

(5) Rector potens verax Deus,

(6) Rerum, deus, tenax vigor,

(7) Deus, creator omnium,

(8) Intende, qui regis Israel,

(9) Amore Christi nobilis,

(10) Inluminans altissimus,

(11) Agnes, beatæ virginis,

(12) Hic est dies verus Dei,

(13) Victor, Nabor, Felix, pii,

(14) Grates tibi, Iesu, novas,

(15) Apostolorum passio,

(16) Apostolorum supparem,

(17) Æterna Christi munera,

(18) Iesu, corona virginum.

[35] Compare _Ignis creator igneus_ above, page 114, and the latter part

of note 33.

[36] Above, page 111.

[37] Blume _ad loc._ notes that this opening is not unusual. The hymn is

mentioned by Cæsarius of Arles.

[38] So is that of the commemorative Bangor hymn _Sáncta sanctórum óperá_

at the end of the manuscript (folio 36 _verso_; AH 51: 357).

[39] The meter is – ⏓ – – – ⏓ – – – ⏑ – – – ⏑ ⏑ (with – ⏑ permissible

instead of – –) For other combinations of stanzas in hymns taken from

this poem see AH 50: 25-27.

[40] _Apparebit repentina_, above, page 111.

[41] Part of this, but also used separately, is _Lustra sex qui iam

peregit_.

[42] The evidence is reviewed by Blume, AH 51: 269-271.

[43] _De arte metrica_, Keil VII. 258.

[44] _De consol. philos._ I, Metr. ii. See above, page 101.

[45] Blume rejects the ascription to St. Gregory the Great; and the hymn

may belong to the next period. Cf. _Nocte surgentes vigilemus omnes_,

page 136. Any one who will render in time rhythm the most familiar of

all Sapphics, the “Integer vitæ” of Horace, then sing it to the familiar

college tune, then render it as a _rhythmus_, will realize practically

much of what is involved in interpreting a given text of this period of

transition. Greenough’s _Accentual rhythm in Latin_ (Harvard Studies IV.

105) pointed out in 1893 that quantitative correctness in medieval use of

the Sapphic does not preclude accentual preoccupation.

[46] _De consol. phil._ III, metrum iii; quoted above, page 103.

[47] See Blume _ad loc._ He admits the possibility, which seems far

from a probability, of reading this as a senarius, but prints it with

conviction as a four-verse stanza (dividing at the cæsura) after the

analogy of other Irish hymns. Some of these are in this manuscript; but

none is equal in art, and this one is not so written. I think it must

have been sung _Sánctí, veníté, Chrísti córpus súmité_, though _Sáncti,

veníte_ is a more frequent rhythmical opening.

[48] Second stanza of _Salvete flores martyrum_, above, section 1.

[49] Above, page 114.

[50] Page 119.

[51] Page 120.

CHAPTER V

THE CAROLINGIANS AND THE TENTH CENTURY

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

AH Dreves and Blume, _Analecta hymnica medii ævi_, Leipzig,

vol. 1, 1886; vol. 53, 1911.

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, New

York, 1924.

Clark Clark (J. M.), _The abbey of St. Gall ..._, Cambridge

University Press, 1926.

Ermini Ermini (F.), _Poeti epici latini del secolo X_, Rome, 1920.

Halm Halm (K.), _Rhetores latini minores_, Leipzig, 1863.

Keil Keil (H.), _Grammatici latini_, Leipzig, 1870-1880, 7 vols.

Manitius Manitius (M.), _Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des

Mittelalters_, Munich, 1911, 2 vols. (in Von Mueller’s

Handbuch der klassischen Alterthums-Wissenschaft, IX. ii).

MGH _Monumenta Germaniæ historica_ (cited by page of the

appropriate volume).

PL Migne, _Patrologia latina_ (cited by volume and column).

A. THE TRIVIUM IN THE GREATER MONASTERIES

Hibernia, Northumbria, Francia were successively the seats of learning

in the period of readjustment after the invasions. Men born to Celtic

speech, to English, to Frankish learned the Latin culture and transmitted

it to the middle age. In the circumstances the writers of the eighth,

ninth, and tenth centuries were primarily teachers; and their chief field

was _grammatica_. The language of learning was no longer for any of them

common speech; it had to be acquired even by Italians and Gauls as a

second language and a superior. In compensation it was universal, halted

by no frontiers. The whole western world of culture was a _quartier

Latin_. _Scoti_, as the Irish Celts were commonly called, wrote and

taught in it by Humber, Rhine, or Loire; Bede wrote in it his _Church

History of the English People_; Alcuin was brought from the school

of York to apply it to the education of the Frankish empire, and his

companion and successor was the Bishop of Orléans, Theodulf, a Goth from

Spain.

_Grammatica_ became thus more important than ever. It opened not

only learning in general, not only literature, but especially the

interpretation of the liturgy, the offices, the creeds, and the

Scriptures. Charlemagne’s care was to secure a clergy that should be

first educated and then educating. The mission of the Church to teach

through the universal language of western Christianity was exercised

partly through the cathedrals, mainly through the monasteries. In these

centuries rose such great monastic schools as Fulda, St. Gall, and Tours.

As the physical preservation and circulation of texts depended on the

_scriptoria_, so on the masters of the monasteries depended not only

specific training for the religious life, but much of the more general

training in divinity and most of the seven liberal arts.

The monastic slant suggests a narrowing of culture. But the restriction

of the seven arts must have been due quite as much to those other

conditions which gave the preponderance to _grammatica_. The achievement

of the age was preparatory. That the age of preparation was also an age

of revival is witnessed best by the outstanding teachers. The _Scoti_ who

fled from the Danes to the Continent were remarkable no more for their

preservation of the last vestiges of Greek than for their intellectual

eagerness. They were a stirring leaven. The greater schools founded

during this period, such as that at Wearmouth to which English Benedict

had brought store of books from Rome and Vienne, show an impressive

succession of teachers: Bede, Alcuin, Rabanus, Loup, Remi, Gerbert.[1]

The former three are sufficient assurance that culture was safe; the

latter, that it was advancing.

A work on the Elements of Philosophy, ascribed to Bede, closes with the

following list:

The order of learning is as follows. Since _eloquentia_ is the

instrument of all teaching, they are instructed in it first.

Its three parts are correct writing and correct delivery

of what is written; proof of what is to be proved, which

_dialectica_ teaches; figures of words and sentences, which

_rhetorica_ hands down. Therefore we are to be initiated in

_grammatica_, then in _dialectica_, afterward in _rhetorica_.

Equipped with these arms, we should approach the study of

philosophy. Here the order is first the quadrivium, and in this

first _arithmetica_, second _musica_, third _geometria_, fourth

_astronomia_, then holy writ, so that through knowledge of what

is created we arrive at knowledge of the Creator.[2]

Toward the close of the tenth century the same order of studies, except

for the transposition of _geometria_ and _musica_, appears in the school

at Speier. Though the details of the reminiscences prefixed by Walter of

Speier to his _Passion of St. Christopher_[3] are obscured by figurative

language, allusions, and other devices of style, he shows unmistakably,

after his first lessons in psalmody, a full course of _grammatica_,

including much metric. His references seem also to indicate both the

elementary exercises beginning with _fabula_, and _prælectiones_ on

Vergil, Ovid, Horace’s _Ars poetica_, and the _metra_ of Boethius.

_Dialectica_, which he entered by the door of Porphyry, he recalls less

distinctly. _Rhetorica_, though remembered in her usual garb of flowers,

evidently included _declamatio_. By the end of the tenth century,

then, a typical monastic school, though still spending most time on

_grammatica_, seems to have offered an ample trivium.

B. _GRAMMATICA_

Donatus and Priscian, with the other grammarians of the declining

Empire,[4] kept their authority. They were successively adapted to

changing needs in manuals by Bede, Boniface, Paulus Diaconus, Alcuin,

Loup, Remi, Gerbert, Abbo, Ælfric. That _grammatica_ thus engaged the

best teachers of the time is evidence of its cardinal importance. At

Chartres, by the tenth century, _grammaticus_ was the usual name for

headmaster.[5]

The study of figures, both those usually included in _grammatica_ and

those assigned to _rhetorica_, was applied to the interpretation of

holy writ. Augustine[6] had pointed out that the Scriptures not only

use figures, but explicitly mention allegory and parable. Bede’s brief

summary _De schematibus et tropis sacræ scripturæ_[7] is thus typical

both of elementary teaching and of medieval habit of reading.

1. POETIC

That neither Bede nor Alcuin specifically defines _grammatica_ in the

traditional terms as including the study of Latin poetry may mean no

more than that neither wrote comprehensively on the whole subject. The

_prælectio_ can hardly have been neglected by the _Scoti_, or by Bede

himself. The definition of Rabanus in the ninth century[8] not only

resumes the whole ancient scope, but puts the interpretation of the poets

first. That Boethius was added to the list of classics[9] is significant

of the influence of his _metra_ even on the hymns.

When Bede tells his boys to look at all the first syllables[10] of a

manuscript page of hexameters, because these syllables must be long, he

is not precluding either nicer points of metric or wiser consideration of

poetry; he is very practically teaching Latin quantities. His book offers

much more; and though its subject is only metric, it takes pains to

distinguish rhythmic,[11] and closes with that classification of poetry

by Diomedes which was to be often repeated.

Since we have discussed at length poems and meters, it is to be

observed finally that the kinds of poetry are three. For it is

active, or imitative, what the Greeks entitle _dramaticon_ or

_mimeticon_; or narrative, what the Greeks style _exegematicon_

or _apangelticon_; or common, i.e. mixed, what the Greeks

call _cœnon_ or _micton_. That is _dramaticon_, or active,

in which the _personæ_ are presented as speaking without the

intervention of the poet, as in tragedies and fables, for

drama is called in Latin _fabula_. In this kind is written

“Quo te Moeri pedes? an quo via ducit, in urbem?” as also

among ourselves the Song of Songs, where the voice of Christ

and of the Church are clearly found to alternate without the

writer’s intervention. That is _exegematicon_, or narrative,

in which the poet himself speaks without the intervention of

any _persona_, as three books of the Georgics and the first

part of the fourth, as well as the poems of Lucretius and

others like them. In this kind our literature shows Proverbs

and Ecclesiastes, which are composed metrically in their

own language. _Cœnon_ or mixed, is the kind in which the

poet himself speaks and also the _personæ_ are presented as

speaking. So are written the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, the

Æneid of Vergil, and with us the story of blessed Job, though

this in its own language is written not entirely as poetry, but

partly as prose, partly in _metra_ or in _rhythmi_.[12]

Far as this is not only from Aristotle, but from Vergil, the shift of

emphasis from composition to style remained for centuries characteristic

of medieval Latin poetic, and opened the way for the confusion of poetic

with rhetoric.

2. LATIN HYMNS

(1) Iambic

The best known hymn of this period is by Rabanus (ninth century).

Veni creator, Spiritus,

Mentes tuorum visita,

Imple superna gratia

Quæ tu creasti pectora.

Qui paracletus diceris,

Donum Dei altissimi,

Fons vivus, ignis, caritas

Et spiritalis unctio....

AH 50: 193.

This keeps generally the quantities of the metrical dimeter.[13] Rime

is insistent in ruder hymns. The two following, Irish of the eighth

century, though substantially correct as _metra_ in some stanzas, seem

to be _rhythmi_. The first is alphabetical; the second, a _lorica_. As

_rhythmi_ they are relieved by shift of stress in the places indicated,

and probably intend it elsewhere; i.e., they are most satisfactorily

read by word-accent.

R. Assint nobis sublimia

Sancti Petri suffragia.

Audite, fratres, famina

Petri pastoris plurima.

Baptismatis libamina

Fudit veluti flumina.

Bís refúlsit ut fulmine

Sacro sanctorum agmine;

Fléntes dúxit ex ordine

Gentes divino carmine....

AH 51: 347.

O rex, O rector regminis,

O cultor cæli carminis,

O persecutor murmuris,

O Deus alti agminis.

Aido, mech Prich, benevola

Posco puro precamina,

Út refrígeret flumina

Méi cápitis calida;

Curet caput cum renibus

Méis átque cum talibus,

Cum oculis et genibus,

Cum auribus et naribus,

Cum ancylis euntibus,

Cum fistulis sonantibus,

Cum lingua atque dentibus,

Cum lacrimarum fontibus.

Sanctus Aid altus adiuvet,

Meum caput ut liberet,

Ut hoc totum perseveret

Sánum, átque pervigilet.

AH 51: 315.

(2) Trochaic

Rhythmical use of the _Corde natus_ measure[14] is suggested by frequent

disregard of the distinction in the original meter between trochee and

spondee within the line, and of the dactyl at the end.[15] The popular

swing of this _rhythmus_ is felt in a well known hymn of the eighth

century:

Urbs beata Hierusalem, dicta pacis visio,

Quæ construitur in cælis vivis ex lapidibus,

Et angelis coornata ut sponsata comite!

Nova veniens e cælo, nuptiali thalamo

Præparata ut sponsata, copulatur Domino.

Plateæ et muri eius ex auro purissimo;

Portæ nitent margaritis, adytis patentibus

Et virtute meritorum illuc introducitur

Omnis qui pro Christi nomine hic in mundo premitur....

AH 51: 110.[16]

Freer use, with both end-rime and occasional internal rime,[17] as in

lines 3 and 5 above, appears in an Irish hymn ascribed to St. Cuchuimne.

Cantemus in omni die

concinnantes varie,

Conclamantes Deo dignum

hymnum sanctæ Mariæ.

Bis per chorum, hinc et inde,

collaudemus Mariam,

Ut vox pulset omnem aurem

per laudem vicariam.

Maria de tribu Iuda,

summi mater Domini,

Opportunam dedit curam

ægrotanti homini.

Gabriel advexit verbum,

sinu patris paterno

Quod conceptum et susceptum

in utero materno....

AH 51: 305.

A Septuagesima hymn in a tenth-century manuscript is so united by the

iteration of _Alleluia_ that the poet felt no need of rime.

Alleluia, dulce carmen, vox perennis gaudii,

Alleluia laus suavis est choris cælestibus,

Quod canunt Dei manentes in domo per sæcula.

Alleluia læta, mater, concinis, Ierusalem,

Alleluia vox tuorum civium gaudentium;

Exsules nos flere cogunt Babylonis flumina....

AH 51: 52.

A much simpler trochaic measure is heard in one of the most popular of

medieval hymns. Found in a manuscript of the ninth century, it may well

be earlier.

Ave, maris stella,

Dei mater alma

Atque semper virgo,

Felix cæli porta.

Sumens illud Ave

Gabrielis ore,

Funda nos in pace

Mutans nomen Evæ....

AH 51: 140.

(3) Other Measures

Sapphics, which of course exercised the skill of the learned,[18] are

occasionally convincing in a hymn.

Nocte surgentes vigilemus omnes,

Semper in psalmis meditemur atque

Viribus totis Domino canamus

Dulciter hymnos,

Ut pio regi pariter canentes

Cum suis Sanctis mereamur aulam

Ingredi cæli simul et beatam

Ducere vitam.

Præstet hoc nobis deitas beata

Patris et nati pariterque sancti

Spiritus, cuius reboatur omni

Gloria mundo.

AH 51: 26.

One Sapphic, doubtfully ascribed to Paulus Diaconus, had currency enough

to furnish later a memory stanza for the notes of the scale.

UT queant laxis REsonare fibris

MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum,

SOLve polluti LAbii reatum,

Sancte Iohannes....

MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 83.

The striking measure of _Sancti venite_[19] is not forgotten.

Felix per omnes festum mundi cardines

Apostolorum præpollet alacriter

Petri beati, Pauli sacratissimi,

Quos Christus almo consecravit sanguine:

Ecclesiarum deputavit principes....

MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 136; AH 50: 141.

The second measure of Boethius, exhibited by Bede in two poems,[20] is

echoed in the _Tanquam præcipitans turbo regentes_ of Sedulius Scotus[21]

and appears in a fine Assumption hymn of the ninth century.

O quam glorifica luce coruscas,

Stirpis Davidicæ regia proles,

Sublimis residens, virgo Maria,

Supra cæligenas ætheris omnes!

Tu cum virgineo, mater, honore

Angelorum domino pectoris aulam

Sacris visceribus casta parasti;

Natus hinc Deus est corpore Christus....

AH 51: 146.

In a few hymns of this period the measure seems to be derived from one

used twice by Prudentius.[22]

En cæli rutilant lumine splendido,

Testantur dominum nascere parvulum,

Qui format minima et qui creat ardua;

Regni sceptra tenens, est Deus atque homo....

MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ II. 247.

A _rhythmus_ of uncertain date is most plausibly assigned to

tenth-century Verona.[23]

O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,

Cunctarum urbium excellentissima,

Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea

Albis et virginum liliis candida,

Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia,

Te benedicimus, salve per sæcula.

Petre, tu præpotens cælorum claviger,

Vota precantium exaudi iugiter;

Cum bis sex tribuum sederis arbiter,

Factus placabilis iudica leniter

Teque petentibus nunc temporaliter

Ferto suffragia misericorditer.

O Paule, suscipe nostra precamina,

Cuius philosophos vicit industria;

Factus œconomus in domo regia

Divini muneris adpone fercula,

Ut, quæ repleverit te, sapientia

Ipsa nos repleat tua per dogmata.

AH 51: 219.

To read this as a rhythmical senarius disregards not only many

quantities, as might be expected, but also many word-accents. The

measure of the hymn just above is suggested by the doubly dactylic

close and the generally long and stressed opening. But so to render it

is again to violate many word-accents, including almost all those of

the characteristic second foot. The word-accent is generally kept by

rendering:

Ó Roma nóbilis, órbis et dómina.[24]

It is hard not to think that at least the final rhythmical dactyls were

in the composer’s mind. If so, we have rhythmical dactyls not only as

occasional substitutions, but as constituent; and the easiest rendering

makes them constitute the whole measure.

Carolingian hymn-writers ranged in art all the way from the expert and

fluent metrist Sedulius Scotus to the undisciplined Gottschalk,[25] who

would write twelve stanzas on a single rime such as _Christe, mearum |

Lux tenebrarum_,[26] or _Spes mea, Christe, | Rex benedicte_.[27] Thus he

rimes even Sapphics. With much diffuseness and jingle he has sometimes

a lyric appeal that forecasts the more sentimental hymns of later

centuries, and is as far from the gravity of the elder habit.

Hymnody is typically communal and popular. Such poetic opportunities

inspired and authorized in the Carolingian period some verse more valid

as devotion than as poetry. Here and there manuscripts have preserved

local commemorations which make little pretense beyond grateful mnemonic.

But hymns of higher achievement show that the new Latin verse given by

the Church to the last days of the Empire was appreciated and carried

forward as poetry; and the rhythmical adaptations of measures not used

before evince an active, and often an expert, poetic.

3. NARRATIVE HEXAMETERS AND ELEGIACS

But the characteristic verse of the period is hexameter or elegiac. Thus

Theodulf composed even the familiar Palm Sunday hymn.

Gloria, laus et honor tibi sit, rex Christe redemptor,

Cui puerile decus prompsit osanna pium....

MGH _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 558.

Alcuin devotes fifty-five hexameters to a _conflictus_ between spring and

winter, and celebrates York in over sixteen hundred.[28] The elegiacs may

seek Ovidian recurrences.[29]

_Præsul amate, precor_, huc tu diverte, viator:

Sis memor Albini ut, _præsul amate, precor_.

_O mea cara domus_, habitatio dulcis, amata,

Sis felix semper, _O mea cara domus_.

Alcuin, _ibid._ 250.

_Ordiar unde tuos_, sacer O Benedicte, triumphos?

Virtutum cumulos _ordiar unde tuos_?

_Euge beate pater_, meritum qui nomine prodis!

Fulgida lux secli, _euge beate pater_!

Paulus Diaconus, _ibid._ 36.

Of the many narrative poems employing these measures the commonest were

the _passiones_, or saints’ legends, usually with at least a rhythmic

bent, and by the tenth century habitually _rhythmi_ with internal rime.

The tenth-century _Vita et passio sancti Christophori_ of Walter of

Speier, though it abundantly exemplifies both the metrical training and

the study of Latin poets that he mentions in his introduction, shows also

the trend of the time.

More quidem reg_um_ gestabat sceptra Syror_um_

Fascibus indign_us_ publicis rex, nomine Dagn_us_,

Celans corda lup_i_ simulatis vultibus agn_i_,

Et dum plumat_am_ portarent colla coron_am_,

Texerat occult_e_ serpentem forma columb_æ_.

Iam quid plura quer_ar_? Tigribus rabidis fuit is p_ar_.

II. 1-6; Ermini, page 82, 240-245.[30]

Some, at least, of these longer poems were cumulative school exercises.

A promising theme in the imitative verse that was commonly part of

the study of the Latin poets would be commented by the _grammaticus_,

revised according to his criticism, and kept by him for later

rehandling or extension.[31] Thus the verse, even with the rhythmical

habit established, attended to Latin quantities. Thus also classical

reminiscences, especially Vergilian, are frequent; and Walter shows the

continued vogue of Prudentius. For the hexameters most typical of the

period are literary exercises.

C. _DIALECTICA_

Logic followed the Boethian tradition handed down by Isidore.[32] Alcuin,

though his manual is meager, repeats in his tract on the Trinity St.

Augustine’s view of the importance of this study[33] for the defense of

the faith. Rabanus makes it theoretically central.

_Dialectica_ is the training of the reason to investigate,

define, and express, and to be able to distinguish the true

from the false. This, then, is the training of trainings; it

teaches how to learn. This exhibits and unfolds the nature,

aim, and scope of reason itself. It knows; its aims and

virtue are both to know and to make knowers. _De clericorum

institutione_ III. xx; PL 107: 397 C.

But the turn of _dialectica_ to dominate the Trivium was not yet.

D. _RHETORICA_

Alcuin’s adaptation of the _De inventione_ of Cicero, Walafrid Strabo’s

enumeration of the five ancient parts of rhetoric, do not prove the

use of the whole ancient program. Even the ancient texts would not of

themselves carry on the ancient method. The “_quæstiones civiles_”

often quoted from Cicero’s opening definition could hardly carry their

ancient content either in a society disturbed by the invasions or

in a society reorganizing under feudalism. Moreover the teaching of

_rhetorica_, even when it kept touch with Roman method, was likely to

lean on the _declamatio_ handed down by the schools of Gaul.[34] For all

these reasons the ancient lore naturally most sought and most used was

_elocutio_, the counsels of style. The function of _rhetorica_ is usually

described by some such verb as _ornare_.

Little beyond this is suggested by the summary of Rabanus. Repeating once

more that the field of rhetoric is _quæstiones civiles_, he adds:

Nevertheless [rhetoric] is not outside the scope of training

for the Church. For whatever an orator or preacher of the

divine law sets out capably and fitly in teaching, whatever he

expresses aptly and elegantly in letters, conforms to this art.

_De clericorum institutione_ III. xix; PL 107: 396 C.

The passage is reminiscent of St. Augustine’s _De doctrina

christiana_;[35] and eight later chapters (xxix-xxxvi) follow this

closely, sometimes continuously and word for word. But Rabanus is at once

less specific and narrower as to style. As to composition in the large he

says hardly anything; and he seems to miss the cogency of Augustine’s own

order.

The larger and more vital conception of rhetoric, which was at least

before the eyes of Rabanus, seems more to beckon Loup de Ferrières. Man

of letters in his intellectual eagerness[36] as well as in his style, and

teacher as well, he makes requisitions on the libraries of his friends.

The Quintilian that he needs is not the volume of selections, but all

twelve books;[37] the Cicero, not only the common _De inventione_, but

also the book whose recovery by Poggio in the fifteenth century was one

of the literary events of the Renaissance, the _De oratore_.[38] If these

two cardinal works of the better ancient tradition were not much sought,

at least they were available.

The “three styles” seem already to have been transferred in school from

rhetoric to poetic, and exemplified from Vergil.[39] Mature practise was

already attentive to prose rhythm. Abbo of Fleury, much preoccupied with

this, was also fond of alliteration, and sometimes marked his balances

with rime.

Qua peracta pœnitentia, populos suæ dioceseos mandat, mandando

convocat, convocando suppliciter persuadet, ut triduano jejunio

a se divinæ indignationis iracundiam removeant, removendo

avertant, quatenus sacrificio spiritus contribulati placatus

Dominus illi suam gratiam concederet, qua corpus beati martyris

tangere et lavare auderet; qui licet tantis virtutibus floreret

in mundo, vili tamen et sibi incongruo continebatur mausoleo.

_Abbonis Floriacensis Passio Sancti Edmundi._[40]

Though the extremes of this passage go beyond Abbo’s normal practise,

they appear also in tenth-century ceremonious letters.[41]

E. THE POETIC OF GERMANIC EPIC

This is the period also of Germanic epic: the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_

(probably eighth century), _Waldere_, _Finnsburgh_, and _Maldon_, the

_Hildebrand_ (early ninth century) of the continental Germans, the

Scandinavian “Elder Edda.”[42] Though little connection is apparent

between these verse narratives and the Latin poetic with which they are

contemporary, there may have been some.[43] Anglo-Saxon epic is of the

time of Bede. The Walter legends are known largely through the Latin

hexameters of Ekkehard;[44] and other learned clerks found native epic

worth while not only as history, but as literature.

What has been preserved shows the primary epic appeal of legend not

exotic and imported, but handed down in folklore still orally active.

This is not at all to say that they are history as opposed to fiction.

Their historical value, however great, is accidental. Their facts,

already centuries old, have been shaped by tradition. Their Sigurd or

Hildebrand is seen through a magnifying mist. Epic is never, in our

modern sense, history. It is the glorification in song of a hero; and

primary epic has its own authentic appeal from singing a hero that still

belongs to the poet and to his hearers and still beckons their communal

dreams.

Thus Germanic epic, taking us farther back through legend into myth,

gives a more immediate sense of oral tradition. There is even an eery

likeness, as of the most ancient poetic repeating itself, between the

minstrel in the _Beowulf_ and the minstrel in the _Odyssey_.

But after they had put from them the desire of meat and drink,

the muse stirred the minstrel to sing the songs of famous

men, even that lay whereof the fame had then reached the wide

heaven, namely the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles,

son of Peleus.... Then Odysseus of many counsels spake to

Demodocus, saying: “Demodocus, I praise thee far above all

mortal men, whether it be the Muse, the daughter of Zeus,

that taught thee, or even Apollo; for right duly dost thou

chant the faring of the Achæans, even all that they wrought

and suffered, and all their travail, as if, methinks, thou

hadst been present, or heard the tale from another. Come now,

change thy strain, and sing of the fashioning of the horse of

wood, ... even the guileful thing that goodly Odysseus led up

into the citadel, when he had it laden with the men who wasted

Ilios!”... So spake he, and the minstrel, being stirred by the

god, began and showed forth his minstrelsy. He took up the

tale where it tells how the Argives of the one part set fire to

their huts, and went aboard their decked ships and sailed away,

while those others, the fellowship of renowned Odysseus, were

now seated in the assembly-place of the Trojans, all hidden in

the horse, for the Trojans themselves had dragged him to the

citadel. _Odyssey_ viii. 72-75, 484-504 (Butcher and Lang’s

prose translation).

So Hrothgar’s minstrel is represented as singing songs of former heroes

to awaken joy in hall along the mead-bench. Among those thus inserted

in the _Beowulf_ is the lay of King Finn, which has come down also in

another form. As the Greek minstrel turns old songs to the praise of the

hero present before him, so the warriors celebrating in hall Beowulf’s

killing of Grendel turn the legend of Sigmund.

At times one of the king’s thanes, whose memory was full of

songs, laden with vaunting rhymes, who knew old tales without

number, invented a new story, closely bound up with fact. The

man deftly narrated the adventures of Beowulf, and cunningly

composed other skilful lays with interwoven words. _Beowulf_,

867-874 (Tinker’s prose translation).

In such passages we seem to be near the roots of verse narrative.

The verse narratives of the Germanic peoples during this period are

poetically homogeneous. _Hildebrand_, indeed, is more stinted than

_Beowulf_, and the north inclines more than the west toward lyric; but

they all have essentially the same poetic.[45] Their epic conception is

typically not of a progressive story, but of a situation. The hero is

imagined in a crisis. Sometimes abrupt or stinted, they nevertheless

prevail by unity. This mainspring of their poetic is their habitual

means toward tragic intensity.[46] Even more constant is their movement

in detail. The verse consists of two staves separated by a marked cæsura,

but corresponding by alliteration. The alliteration is not, as in Latin

verse, an added suggestion; it is constituent; it makes the verse.

Him ða Scyld ᵹewat to ᵹescæphwile

felahror feran on frean wære;

hi hyne þa ætbæron to brimes faroðe,

swæse ᵹesiþas, swa he selfa bæd,

þenden wordum weold wine Scyldinᵹa,

leof landfruma lanᵹe ahte.

þær æt hyðe stod hrinᵹedstefna

isiᵹ and utfus, æþelinᵹes fær:

_Beowulf_, 26-33 (Wülcker’s revised text).

No less essential is the two-stave movement, so strong in Germanic

habit that it may well have been influential in handling even Latin

hexameters with cæsura reinforced by rime.[47] In Anglo-Saxon the staves

show distinct recurrent types; and the verses generally tend, as above,

to “run on,” whereas the Old Norse are oftener composed in the fashion

of the “closed couplet.” But these differences are unimportant beside

the constant binary movement. The verses are not equal in number of

syllables; their stress rhythm is patterned in alliterated pairs.

Then departed Scyld at his appointed hour,

glorious to go unto God’s keeping.

Together they bore him to breaking surges,

bosom companions, as he bade himself

while he wielded words, warden of Scyldings,

loved land-ruler, long their master.

At the roadstead bode his ringèd bow,

icy, eager, atheling’s ship.

They laid him there, beloved chieftain,

bringer of booty, on the breast of the ship,

mighty by the mast. There were many treasures

from long voyages laden beside him.

Ne’er heard I that comelier keel provided

hacking weapons and harness warlike,

brands and byrnies. On his bosom lay

store unstinted that must start with him

on the flood’s realm to float outward.[48]

_Beowulf_, 26-42.

All primary epic is thus concrete. It speaks habitually in the immediate

terms of the five senses. But the habit of images crystallized among

the Germanic poets in a conventional epic diction. Their style is

deliberately removed from common speech. Its most obvious traits are

designation by descriptive compounds and accompaniment by descriptive

epithets. A lord is “land-ruler,” as above, or “prize-giver,” or

“hoard-ward.” His warrior is “hall-counselor,” “earl’s hope,”

“rugged-in-war.” The ominous raven is “sallow-brown, swarthy.” Ships

especially command a whole store of such phrases as those of the seventh

and eighth lines above. Germanic epic has a distinct poetic language.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bede (c. 673-735), Wearmouth.

Alcuin (c. 735-804), York, Schools of the Palace, St. Martin’s at Tours.

Rabanus (c. 780-856), Fulda.

Loup (805-862), Fulda, Ferrières.

Remi (841-908), Auxerre, Reims.

Gerbert (c. 940-1003), Reims. See Julien Havet’s _Lettres de Gerbert

(983-997)_, with his valuable introduction, Paris, 1889. For a suggestive

summary of the greater schools and their teaching, with valuable

bibliographical notes, see Ermini, vi-xvi, 69-70.

[2] _Opera_, Basel, 1563 (whence PL), vol. II, page 343, end of the last

book (IV, περὶ διδάξεων) of _De elementis philosophiæ_.

Loup’s first letter to Einhard puts _rhetorica_ second (MGH, _Epist._

tom. VI, pars prior, page 8); and so does Rabanus, _De clericorum

institutione_, III. xviii (PL 107: 395 B).

[3] _Passio S. Christophori, carmen rhythmicum_, rec. C. Strecker, MGH,

Poet. lat. med. æv., vol. IV, Part II. 809.

The introduction is included among the selections printed in Ermini.

Walter’s reference to psalmody is at line 15; to _fabula_, at 55; to

_prælectio_, at 91; to _declamatio_, at 140. For all these, except the

first, see the indexes to ARP and to the present volume.

[4] See above, page 87. Alcuin’s verses on York (MGH, _Poet. lat. æv.

Carol._ I. 169) enumerate in the eighth-century library there: Donatus,

Eutyches, Phocas, Pompeius, Priscian, Probus, Victorinus, Servius.

The ninth-century library of St. Amand had Eutyches, Marius Plotius

[Sacerdos], Priscian, Servius, and Victorinus (Desilve, _De schola

Elnonensi Sancti Amandi_, Louvain, 1890, page 51).

[5] Clerval, _Les écoles de Chartres_, 22; and, for the eleventh century,

47, 48, 56, etc.

[6] _De doctrina christiana_, III. xxix.

[7] PL. 90: 175; Halm, 607.

[8] Grammatica est scientia interpretandi poetas atque historicos et

recte scribendi loquendique ratio. Hæc et origo et fundamentum est artium

liberalium. _De clericorum institutione_, III. xviii (PL, 107: 395 B).

[9] Above, section A, close.

[10] _De arte metrica_ (PL, 90: 156. 4; Keil, VII. 234).

[11] Above, page 110. The distinction seems to be made by Walafrid

Strabo, _Libellus de exordiis et incrementis rerum ecclesiasticarum_

(840-842), cap. 26, pp. 506-508 (MGH, _Capitularia regum francorum_, II,

Appendix); and by Hucbald (IXth century):

Astipulare meis, quia non sunt carmina, rhythmis ...

Quod si, ut puto, nequit carmen jam jure vocari,

Sit satis huic saltem censeri nomine rithmi.

Quoted by Desilve, _De schola Elnonensi Sancti Amandi_, p. 57.

[12] Keil, VII. 259. The passage in Diomedes is in Keil, I. 482.

[13] Iamb for spondee in the third foot, as in line 8, is a liberty

adopted from classical verse by Bede (_Adesto, Christe, vocibus_) and by

Paulus Diaconus (_Fratres, alacri pectore_). Even Sedulius Scotus, as to

whose metrical expertness there can be no doubt, uses this liberty in a

classical poem (_Ventosa cum desæviat_, MGH, _Poet. lat. Car._ III. 162).

Rendered rhythmically, their hymns often suggest the shift of stress that

seems to be intended in the Irish hymns.

[14] See above, page 119.

[15]

Nos dicamus Christo laudem genitoris unico,

Mundi legitur librorum qui creator paginis,

Cuius fine clemens venit liberare perditos....

Petrus Diaconus, MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 48.

Sensi, cuius verba cepi exarata paginis,

Nam a magno sunt directa, quæ pusillus detulit;

Fortes me lacerti pulsant, non imbellis pueri....

Paulus Diaconus, _ibid._ 49.

The interesting application of the measure by Paulinus of Aquileia to

extended narrative, though generally keeping the final dactyl, pays

otherwise no more regard to quantity.

Fuit domini dilectus languens a Bethania

Lazarus beatus sacris olim cum sororibus,

Quas Iesus æternus amor diligebat plurimum,

Martha simul et Mariam felices per sæcula.

_Ibid._ 133.

These are all of the eighth century. Compare, in the ninth, Rabanus

(Claras laudes ac salubres, posco, fratres dicite, _ibid._ II. 235; AH

50: 203), and Sedulius Scotus (Conditor supernus orbis imperator omnium,

_ibid._ III. 159).

[16] The hymn has nine stanzas; but the latter part, beginning _Angularis

fundamentum_, is also sung separately.

[17] Interesting use of rime both as occasional echo and as regular

correspondence is heard in the hymn, from a tenth-century manuscript, _O

redemptor, sume carmen_, AH 51: 80.

[18] E.g., Sedulius Scotus. Blume suggests that the hymn above is by the

author of _Ecce iam noctis_, page 121.

Alcuin’s Sapphic _Christe salvator hominis ab ore_ (MGH, _Poet. lat.

Carol._ I. 313; AH 50: 154) is less scrupulous in quantities than might

be expected of him if he intended a _metrum_. It is entitled _Ymnus_.

[19] Chapter IV. C. 3. Compare, in the same volume of MGH, _Refulget

omnis luce mundus aurea_ (137); in volume III, _O tu qui servas armis

ista mœnia_ (703, late eighth century); in AH 51: 121, _Adnue, Christe,

sæculorum Domine_; and, in Duemmler’s _Rhythmorum eccl. ævi carolini

specimen_ (Berlin, 1881), _Audi me deus, peccatorem nimium_ (6), and

_Agnus et leo, mitis et terribilis_ (12). These instances taken together

seem to me to make against W. Meyer’s different reading (_Spanisches zur

Geschichte der ältesten mittellateinischen Rythmik_, 111) of the poem

below as a “rhythmic pentameter.”

[20] Ascribed erroneously to St. Ambrose (_De arte metrica_, Keil VII.

255). For the poem of Boethius, _Heu quam præcipiti mersa profundo_, see

above, Chapter IV. A.

[21] MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ III. 158. So _Vestri tecta nitent luce

serena_, III. 169, and others.

[22] _Cathemerinon_ v and in the preface to Book I _Contra Symmachum_.

The meter is – – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑. Compare the first ode of Horace. So

Paulus Albarus in an acrostic poem on St. Eulogius, _Almi nunc revehit

festa polifera_ (MGH, _ibid._, III. 139). Boethius uses the measure

with a shorter alternate line (III, _metrum_ viii); and it is otherwise

varied, by a shorter line at the end of the stanza, in the eighth-century

hymn _Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia_ (Britt, 159), and in the

ninth-century hymn _Festum nunc celebre magnaque gaudia_ (MGH, _ibid._

II. 249). All these hymns are exceptionally correct in quantities; and

the measure, unusual in hymns, may well have been composed metrically.

[23] See Traube (in _Philolog. Untersuch. aus dem Mittelalter_, Munich

1891), who associates with it _O admirabile Veneris ydolum_.

Cf. Abelard’s _O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata_. AH. 48: 163.

[24] The recollection that Poe wished thus to render the first ode of

Horace might well give pause, were it not that Poe, though doubtless

an ignoramus in Latin metric, was a poet and was interpreting Horace

rhythmically.

[25] Godescalc (822-870) is in MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ III. 724.

[26] AH 50: 220.

[27] _Ibid._ 221.

[28] _Ibid._ 270, 169.

[29] ARP 217.

[30] Riming hexameters appear generally, though not always, throughout

Ermini: in the Latin _Gesta Apollonii_ versifying the romance of

Apollonius of Tyre (113); in Uffing’s _Carmen de sancto Liudgero_ (131);

even in the accomplished Hrotsvitha.

[31] Ermini xvi, xviii, 43, 74, 110, 111. In the following century,

school exercise in prosopopœia is suggested by some of the verse of

Baudry de Bourgeuil (1046-1130); e.g., the Ovidian XLII, XLIII, CLIX,

CLX, pages 29, 39, 141, 145 in the edition of Phyllis Abrahams, Paris,

1926.

[32] Above, Chapter III. B.

[33] _Libellus de sancta Trinitate_, cited by Gaskoin, _Alcuin_, 127.

[34] Above, Chapter III. A.

[35] Book IV; see above, Chapter II.

[36] “Erinnert an die Tätigkeit der italienischen Humanisten.” _Manitius_

I. 486.

The letters of Loup are in MGH (_Epist._ VI, Pars Prior, ed. Duemmler,

1900). See also Levillain, _Étude sur les lettres de Loup de Ferrières_,

Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 72 (1901): 445-509; 73 (1902):

69-118, 289-330, 537-586.

[37] _Epist._ 62, to Altsig about 849: “Quintiliani institutionum

oratoriarum libros xii.” Cf. _Epist._ 103, to Benedict III.

[38] _Epist._ 1, to Einhard: “Tullii de rhetorica liber ... eiusdem

auctoris de rhetorica tres libri in disputatione ac dialogo de oratore.”

The latter is unmistakable. It is sufficient evidence even if the

“Tullium de oratore” of _Epist._ 103 be regarded as uncertain.

[39] The misapplication, very common later (see the index), seems to be

intended by Walter of Speier.

Præterea triplicis succincta veste coloris

Omnibus excellens docuit nos musa Maronis.

_Vita et Passio Sancti Christophori_ I. 104.

For the “three styles” see ARP 56, 57-59, 228; and above, 56, 67.

[40] In _Memorials of St. Edmund’s Abbey_, ed. T. Arnold (Rolls Series,

96), I. 22. See the references to Abbo in G. H. Gerould’s _Abbot Ælfric’s

rhythmic prose_, Modern Philology 22 (May, 1925): 352-366; and, for the

prose of Loup de Ferrières, W. Meyer, _De clausula in Lupi epistolis

rhythmica_, Gött. gelehrt. Anzeig., 1893, page 22.

[41] E.g., Summæ sanctitatis, scientiæ, pietatis et ordinis culmine

sublimato domino.... Nunc ergo puerum istum, viscera mea, filium

consobrinæ meæ, solam et maximam curam meam, commendo quibus estis

plenissimi visceribus misericordiæ vestræ, ut vestram vitam et vos

‘primis miretur ab annis,’ mansuetudinem vigore decoratam, doctrinam

operibus commendatam, austeritatem dulcedine temperatam, taciturnitatem

modestam, locutionem utilem vel necessariam, victus et somni parcitatem,

mediocritatem vestitus, ieiuniorum et orationum per dies et noctes

instantiam, largitionem elemosinarum, susceptionem hospitum, solamen

lugentium, peregrinis et egentibus, plebibus et clero, monachis et

virginibus, viduis et orphanis, comitibus et regibus, servis et liberis,

coniugibus et continentibus, mediocribus et maximis, Iudæis et gentilibus

vos unum omnia perdiscat effectum. Quod si aliquid apud vos, ubi omnes

proficiunt, doctrinæ morumque profectus, Deo largiente, ceperit,

debitorem vobis de eo Christum facitis, qui eum talem educaveritis, ut

non solum sibi, sed et aliis possit utilitati fieri. MGH, Legum sectio v,

formulæ, 409 (Collectio Sangallensis Salomonis III tempore).

For prose rhythm in medieval letters see below, Chapter VIII. C.

[42] The poetic of Irish epic during this period is more difficult to

determine. From the existing forms, which are later, we may divine

that its conceptions were at once mythical and romantic, and that its

incidental verse—its main course was in prose—had already an elaborate

technic.

The generally typical epic traits are suggestively presented by W. P.

Ker, _Epic and Romance_, London, 1897; the specifically Anglo-Saxon ones,

by R. W. Chambers, _Beowulf_, Cambridge, 1921. Both give extracts and

references.

[43] Chambers, reviewing the parallels with classical epic explored by

Klaeber, finds “no tangible or conclusive proof of borrowing. But the

influence may have been none the less effective for being indirect” (330).

[44] Ekkehard I of St. Gall, _Waltharius_, MGH, _Script._ II. 117. For

other editions, translations, and studies see Ermini, who reprints

considerable selections.

[45] “For purposes of poetry there was only one nation—the Germanic—split

into many dialects and groups, but possessed of a common metre, a common

style, a common standard of heroic feeling.” Chambers, 99.

[46] For the tragic tendency see Ker, 86.

[47] See above, page 140.

[48] The beginning of the passage is quoted above in the original. The

object of this rendering is to follow exactly, verse by verse, the

original rhythm. Though such imitation must sooner or later break down,

for short stretches it indicates specifically the salient verse habits.

CHAPTER VI

RHETORIC AND LOGIC IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, New

York, 1924.

Clerval Clerval (l’Abbé A.), _Les écoles de Chartres au moyen âge,

du Ve au XVIe siècle_, Chartres, 1895 (Mémoires de la

Société Archéologique d’Eure-et-Loir, XI).

Haskins Haskins (C. H.), _The renaissance of the twelfth century_,

Harvard University Press, 1927.

Manacorda Manacorda (G.), _Storia della scuola in Italia_, vol. I,

_Il medio evo_, Milan, 1913 (2 parts in separate volumes).

Mignon Mignon (l’Abbé A.), _Les origines de la scolastique et

Hugues de Saint-Victor_, Paris, 1895, 2 vols.

PL _Patrologia latina_, Migne (cited by volume and column).

Poole Poole (Reginald Lane), _Illustrations of the history of

medieval thought_, London, 2d ed., 1920. See also his

important biography of John of Salisbury in Dict. Nat.

Biog., his article in Eng. Histor. Rev., July, 1923, and

his communication, March 27, 1924, to the British Academy

(Proceedings, xl) on the early correspondence.

A. THE TRIVIUM AT CHARTRES, ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES

At the fall of Rome the Trivium was dominated by _rhetorica_; in

the Carolingian period, by _grammatica_; in the high middle age,

by _dialectica_. The shift of emphasis to logic probably began in

the eleventh century. Even Chartres, renowned for its teaching of

_grammatica_, shows hints of this under Fulbert.[1] In the next century

the theory of logic was fortified by commanding in Latin translation

those parts of Aristotle’s _Organon_ which had not been available; and

its practise became more urgent through the historic debates as to

universals. By offering thus the most active training in composition,

logic confirmed the restriction of rhetoric to style. John of Salisbury,

after giving full scope to _grammatica_, focuses his great book on

_dialectica_. _Rhetorica_ he merely mentions; it claims none of his

thought. Nor does any other leader of the high middle age treat rhetoric

as active in the intellectual processes of composing. Rhetoric has no

educational vitality. The vital study that taxes and develops men’s minds

is logic.

In detail, _grammatica_ at Chartres[2] during the great century of the

school (about 1050-1150), shows a full development of _prælectio_ and

distinct cultivation of rhythmic.[3] _Rhetorica_, except in _dictamen_

and in some application of the larger ancient precepts of composition

to preaching, is at a standstill.[4] The more significance therefore

attaches to a short poem of Fulbert summing up the differences between

rhetoric and logic: the one concrete, current, reasoning in enthymemes,

aiming at persuasion; the other abstract, syllogistic, aiming at

conviction.[5] This giving of the full ancient scope to rhetoric in

theory may be a reminder, may be even a protest. At any rate the practise

had no such scope. The Chartres manuscript[6] containing these verses is

an eleventh-century collection of traditional materials for the study

of logic. The study was advanced by Gilbert de la Porrée.[7] Thierry’s

collection[8] of the traditional writers on the seven arts, _Bibliotheca

septem artium_, or _Heptateuchon_, gives 190 leaves to _grammatica_,[9]

88 to _rhetorica_,[10] 154 to _dialectica_.[11] The remaining 160 leaves

of the two large volumes are devoted to the Quadrivium. Thierry’s

prologue,[12] summarizing the functions of the several arts _viâ_

Martianus Capella, distributes those of the Trivium as follows: through

_grammatica_, elegance; through _dialectica_, logical coherence; through

_rhetorica_, ornament. Oral composition, as distinct from revision for

style, seems to have no pedagogy except through logic.

B. THE TRIVIUM IN HUGH OF ST. VICTOR

Hugh of St. Victor’s[13] _Lore of teaching_ (_Eruditio didascalica_, or

_Didascalicon_) is neither a compend nor a program; it is a concise

philosophical survey of education. Though his primary concern is with

what is to be studied, and to what ends, he sometimes gives also acute

hints of method. Book I (_De studio legendi_), a preliminary survey of

typical directions of study, ends (xii) with _logica_, Hugh’s general

term for the Trivium as a group, i.e., for all language studies.

Considering language as expression (_logica sermocinalis_), these are

indeed the usual three; but considering language as thought (_logica

rationalis_), they are only two, _dialectica_ and _rhetorica_. Book II

(_De discretione artium_) expands the exposition to determine the places

of all seven arts in a scheme of philosophy. First the Quadrivium,

then the manual arts, are classified under the traditional threefold

division:[14] theory (1) of thought, (2) of morals, or conduct, (3)

of technical skill. Outside this division remains the Trivium, Hugh’s

_logica_, as a fourth and final group. Though _logica_ may be divided

simply, as in Book I, Hugh now offers a more philosophical division by

function in composing. By the latter we have (a) _grammatica_ by itself

as having no such function, and (b) _rhetorica_ and _dialectica_ together

as both involving investigation (_inventio_) and the processes of

arrangement, and revision (_iudicium_). These two composition studies are

thus seen to belong, as probable proof (_probabilis_), between absolute,

or abstract proof (_demonstratio_) and plausible, or illegitimate proof

(_sophistica_).

PHILOSOPHIA

_theorica_ { theologia (the Boethian intellectibilis) { arithmetica

(_speculativa_){ mathematica ( ” ” intelligibilis) { musica

{ physica ( ” ” naturalis) { geometria

{ astronomia

_practica_ (_activa_, _ethica_)

_mechanica_: the seven manual arts, e.g., lanificium, agricultura

{ dialectica

{ rationalis { rhetorica

_logica_ {

I { { grammatica (scientia loquendi sine vitio)

{ sermocinalis { dialectica (disputatio acuta, verum a falso

{ distinguens)

{ rhetorica (disciplina ad persuadendum quæque

{ idonea)

{ grammatica

_logica_ { { demonstratio

II { ratio disserendi { probabilis (involving { dialectica

{ inventio and iudicium) { rhetorica

{ sophistica

From these classifications Hugh proceeds in Book III to practical

considerations: of studies as training (_disciplina_), of the

interrelations of the seven arts, of a scheme of reading (_ordo

legendi_), of meditation, etc. The three remaining books deal with sacred

studies.

Hugh’s term _logica_ expresses a conception of the Trivium as an

integrated group. Less obvious, but hardly less significant, is the

importance given implicitly to logic (_dialectica_). Though rhetoric is

recognized as having theoretically a function in composing, it receives

otherwise but little more attention than in the cardinal treatise of

medieval pedagogy, the _Metalogicus_.

C. THE _METALOGICUS_ OF JOHN OF SALISBURY

The most extensive reasoned medieval survey of the Trivium is the

_Metalogicus_[15] of John of Salisbury. Though this devotes most space to

logic and to the logical aspects of other language study, it is a unified

and carefully coherent presentation of all teaching that deals with

words. Statesman as well as scholar, more widely known, perhaps, than any

other man of his time, and more widely conversant with its movements in

church and state, secretary to two archbishops of Canterbury, rounding

out his life as Bishop of Chartres, he devoted his best thought to the

_Metalogicus_. The classification underlying its first two books is that

of Hugh of St. Victor.[16]

{ scientia recte loquendi scribendique

{ grammatica {

{ { poetica

logica {

{ { demonstrativa

{ { { dialectica

{ ratio disserendi { probabilis {

{ { rhetorica

{ sophistica

By the conception of the Trivium as twofold, _rhetorica_ is theoretically

subordinated; and in John’s working out of the scheme it is ignored.

Barely mentioned,[17] it appears to have no distinctive composing

function. Part of its ancient function seems to be implied now and then

under _grammatica_; more is certainly transferred to _dialectica_, with

which John connects most of what he discerns of composition as a study.

His scheme can be comprehended only as a whole and in sequence. The

survey of _logica_ in Books I and II is not primarily an analysis. Rather

it develops the functions of language studies in progressive stages. This

procedure, too, as well as some of its important details, may have been

suggested by Quintilian.[18] John is concerned less with division than

with order. His own order is so significant and so carefully marked[19]

that it should be followed step by step.

DIGEST OF _METALOGICUS_

BOOK I. _GRAMMATICA_

i-vi. The opening takes occasion from certain opponents of the

Trivium.[20] “When _logica_ was derided, and its envious opponent

provoked me, in spite of my indignation and protests, by almost daily

disputes, at length I accepted trial, and have studied to reply to his

calumnies” (824 A) ... “Since I have undertaken the defense of _logica_,

the book is entitled Metalogicon.”

vii-ix. Eloquence is natural, not in the perverted sense that the full

exercise of speech is instinctive, but only to the extent that speech is

the peculiar opportunity of mankind.

x (837 B). “_Logica_, then, to show the widest meaning of the word, is

the theory of speaking or of discoursing. Sometimes it is contracted to

the extent of limiting the force of the word to theories of discourse.

Whether, therefore, it teaches the ways of reasoning or offers a rule

for all speech, they are evidently unwise who call it useless; for

either [the narrower or the wider scope] is taught by most famous theory

as necessary. The twofold meaning of the word comes from its origin in

Greek; for there λόγος means now speech (sermo), now theory (ratio).

But that its meaning may be extended most widely, let us assign to it

at present the control of all speech, so that nowhere it may be proved

useless, and so that in its more general sense it may appear as a whole

very useful and necessary.”

xi. The idea of any art is to further nature by theory.

xii (839 C). “But since _artes_ are of many kinds, the first of all for

a mind bent on wisdom are the _artes liberales_. All these are included

in the theory either of the Trivium or of the Quadrivium; and so great

efficacy they are said to have achieved among the ancients, who taught

them assiduously, that they opened all reading, roused the mind to

everything, and sufficed to resolve the difficulties of all questions

which can be settled. They to whom the theory of the Trivium expounded

the secrets of all speech, the law of the Quadrivium the secrets of

all nature, needed no teachers to explain their books or resolve their

questions.”

xiii (840 A). “Of all these the first is _logica_, in that part of it

which deals with the first teaching of speech.... This is _grammatica_,

the lore of speaking and writing correctly, the origin of all liberal

disciplines ... the cradle of all philosophy ... the first nurse of all

literary study.”

xiv-xvi. _Grammatica_ imitates nature by keeping congruity of

thought.[21] For instance, it does not tolerate adjectives of secondary

application with nouns of primary application.

xvii (847 A). “In other things, too, _grammatica_ imitates nature; for

the precepts of _poetica_ set forth the habits of nature and exact of

the craftsman in this art that he follow nature—to that degree, indeed,

that the poet shall not depart from the footprints of nature, but apply

himself to stick to them in manner, gesture, even word. Moreover the

theory is to be kept not only in feet or tenses, but in ages, places,

seasons,[22] and other details beyond our present purpose; for all these

come from the workshop of nature. Indeed, _poetica_ stays so close to the

things of nature that many have refused to include it in _grammatica_,

asserting that it is an art in itself, pertaining no more to _grammatica_

than to _rhetorica_,[23] though so far related to both as to have

precepts in common. Let them snarl about this who will. I will not keep

up the dispute; but under favor of them all I think that _poetica_ is to

be assigned to _grammatica_ as to the mother and nurse of its study....

Either _grammatica_ will hold on to _poetica_, or _poetica_ will be

turned out from the number of the liberal disciplines.”

xviii-xx. _Grammatica_ deals both with precision and with imagery, both

with denotation and with connotation. It includes letters, syllables,

phrase, sentence-form, punctuation, figures, metric—everything that can

be taught verbally.

xxi-xxiii. It has occupied persons no less eminent than Cæsar and Cicero.

It is a practical guide to utterance and to learning. The objection

derived from Seneca is insufficient. For the practise of philosophy and

of virtue the important approaches are reading, teaching, meditation. Of

these the root and foundation is _grammatica_.

xxiv. Actually the _prælectio_ is vindicated by such a _grammaticus_ as

Bernard of Chartres.[24]

(853 C) “He, then, who aspires to philosophy, let him lay hold of

reading, teaching, and meditation, with the practise of good works, lest

God be angry and what he seemeth to have be taken from him. But since

_lectio_ is equivocal, applicable both to the practise of teacher and

learner and to the absorption of one studying writings for himself,

let the one, the interchange of teacher and learner, be called, to use

Quintilian’s word, _prælectio_, the other, applied to the scrutiny of

meditation, simply _lectio_. On the authority, then, of Quintilian,

the _grammaticus_ in his _prælectio_ ought to attend to such details

as to ask to have the verse analyzed into the parts of speech and the

appropriate feet, which ought to be known in poems. He should take

exception to barbarisms, improprieties, or other transgressions of the

law of speaking—not, however, that he should find fault with poets for

metrical necessities which, though faults in prose, are called virtues

in verse, since force of necessity commonly wins the praise of virtue for

what cannot be denied without sacrifice. Metaplasm, sentence variation,

figures of speech and such various iterations as may be present, the

theory underlying this way of speaking or that—all these the _prælectio_

should point out and impress upon the hearer’s memory by frequent

warnings.

(854 A) “The _prælectio_ should make authors yield, without holding them

up to ridicule, the feathers with which, crow-fashion, they have decked

their works from various disciplines, to make the style more becoming.

The more disciplines the teacher is imbued with, and the more abundantly,

the more fully he will discern the elegance of authors, the more clearly

he will bring it out in teaching. For they by the _diacrisis_ which we

may call illustration[25] or visualization, when they had undertaken in

bare outline story, plot, fable, or whatever else it might be, would

develop it with such abundance of disciplines and such charm of sentence

and style that the work when completed seemed the image of all the arts.

(854 B) “_Grammatica_ and _poetica_, indeed, are entirely fused and

control the whole surface of what is expounded. _Campologica_, as it is

called, contributing descriptive amplification of proof,[26] looses its

theory in a blaze of gold; and _rhetorica_ with store of persuasions and

brilliance of style rivals the brightness of silver. Mathematics is borne

on the wheels of its Quadrivium and, hard on the heels of the others, has

woven its own figures and charms in manifold variety. Science, having

searched the counsels of nature, brings from its own storehouse manifold

charm of figures. Moreover that which rises above the other parts of

philosophy—I mean ethics—without which not even the name of philosopher

abides, surpasses all the others in the gift of ornament that it brings.

Sound Vergil or Lucan, and there, whatever philosophy you profess, you

will find its making. In proportion, therefore, to the capacity of the

pupil, or to the industry and diligence of the teacher, the fruit of the

_prælectio auctorum_ is constant.

(854 C) “This used to be the habit of Bernard of Chartres, in our modern

times the most overflowing spring of literature in Gaul. In his reading

he would show first what was simple and regular. Grammatical forms,

rhetorical figures, quibbles of sophistry, relations of the passage to

other disciplines, he used to bring out clearly—not, however, by teaching

everything at every point, but by adjusting to the capacity of his pupils

and to the time of the instruction. Since appeal of discourse is either

in precision, that is in the nice adjustment of adjective or verb to

noun, or in imagery, that is in passing by comparison from one sense to

another, he used to inculcate these in the minds of his hearers whenever

he found occasion. Since memory is strengthened and talent is sharpened

by practise, he would spur some by exhortation, others by punishments,

to imitate what they had heard. Each of them was required to account on

the following day for what he had heard on the preceding, some more, some

less. For with them the preceding day always taught the following.[27]

(855 A) “The evening exercise, which was called _declinatio_,[28] carried

such abundance of grammar that any one keeping at it for a whole year,

provided he were not too stupid, would control the principles of speaking

and writing and could not remain ignorant of the meaning of expressions

in common use. But since no school, nor any day, should be without

religion, such a subject was proposed as would upbuild faith and morals

and animate the group, as by common discussion, toward good. The final

item, moreover, of this _declinatio_, or rather of this philosophical

discussion, exhibited the footsteps of pious remembrance. The souls of

the departed, by devout offering of the sixth penitential psalm [_De

profundis_] and the Lord’s Prayer, were commended to their Redeemer.

(855 B) “For those whose assignments were elementary exercises in

imitating prose or poetry he set poets or orators and prescribed close

imitation after showing the art of connection and of sentence close.[29]

If a boy had brightened his work by sewing on a piece from some one else,

he would show that the theft was detected, but very often would inflict

no punishment. But if the borrowing was misplaced, with modest kindliness

he bade the boy come down to express his author’s likeness; and his own

practise was such that in imitating his predecessors he became a model

for his successors. He also taught among the elements and fixed in mind

the force of composition,[30] the achievement of thought and of phrase,

the character of the style, whether thinness or plausible abundance,

extravagance or just measure.

(855 C) “Stories and poems, he used to say, were to be read carefully,

not on the run; and of each pupil he required as a daily task something

memorized with careful attention. But superfluous reading, he would

add, should be shunned, famous authors are enough. To follow what every

one, however unimportant, has ever said is to regard oneself either

too meanly or too boastfully. It holds back and obstructs minds which

would otherwise make better use of their leisure; and what displaces

something better is so far unavailing that it cannot even be called

good. To explore all papers and ponder all writings, even those not

worth reading, is no more to the purpose than to attend to old wives’

tales. For, as Augustine says in his _De ordine_: ‘Who shall call that

man uncultured who has not heard of the flight of Dædalus, or a liar

for asserting it, or impudent for questioning it? I always feel deep

pity for those of our friends who are accused of ignorance if they have

not answered what was the name of the mother of Euryalus, and who dare

not call the people who ask such questions shallow, impertinent, and

curious.’ So says Augustine both neatly and truly. Therefore it was

rightly reckoned by the ancients among the virtues of a _grammaticus_

that there should be some things which he did not know.

(856 A) “Since in all the preliminary exercises nothing is more useful

than to accustom oneself to what ought to be done expertly, Bernard’s

students would daily write prose and verse and practise themselves

by exchange of criticism. Nothing is more useful than this exercise

for expression, nothing more promotive of learning; and its greatest

contribution is to the conduct of life, provided this insistence be

controlled by charity, and progress in literature contribute to humility.”

The last chapter (xxv) quotes at length the _laus grammaticæ_ of

Quintilian I. iv. 5-6.[31]

BOOK II. _DEMONSTRATIVA_ AND _DIALECTICA_

_Proem._ “The course of the former book has sufficiently, I think,

disengaged the truth that _grammatica_ is not useless, and that without

it not only eloquence falls short, but the way toward the other

expressions of philosophy is not open.”

i. _Logica_, being the theory of discourse, embraces both investigation

and judgment.[32]

ii. Knowledge of truth being for them the highest good, the Peripatetics

divided philosophy into two parts: natural, or physical, and moral, or

ethical.[33] But the difficulties arising from insufficient control of

discourse “demonstrated the need of determining and publishing a lore

which should distinguish words and concepts[34] and dissipate the mists

of fallacies. Here, indeed, as Boethius asserts in his second commentary

on Porphyry, is the origin of the _logica disciplina_. For there had to

be a lore which should distinguish the true from the false and teach

which reasoning holds the path of [absolute] truth, which of probable,

which of assumed,[35] and which should be distrusted. Otherwise truth

cannot be found by reasoning (858 C).... The rules of the art were seized

and handed down finally by Aristotle.”

iii. (859 C) “Later in time than the other disciplines of philosophy,

this is first in place. For beginners in philosophy it is a prerequisite,

as the interpreter of words and concepts, without which no item of

philosophy comes precisely to light. He who thinks that philosophy is

taught without _logica_, i.e., by [direct] cultivation of wisdom, may

as well do away with theory in everything, since this is the domain of

_logica_.... The very name comes from its being an aid and a test of

theory. Plato divided it into _dialectica_ and _rhetorica_; but those

who estimate its efficacy higher give it more, i.e., _demonstrativa_,

_probabilis_, _sophistica_. _Demonstrativa_ begins in the first stages of

training, and passes on into the next. It is satisfied only by necessity;

provided a thing ought to be so, it pays little attention to whether

or not it appears to be so. This becomes the philosophical majesty of

those who are teaching precisely, a majesty grounded, quite apart from

the assent of an audience, on its own will. _Probabilis_, on the other

hand, is occupied with what appears to be so to all, or to many, or to

intelligent observers, with what is best known and most probable to

them, or with what follows therefrom. This includes _dialectica_ and

_rhetorica_, since logician and orator alike striving to persuade, the

one an opponent, the other a judge, think the [abstract] truth of their

arguments makes little difference, provided they keep what seems to be

true. But _sophistica_, which is apparent and not serviceable wisdom,

assumes the likeness either of probability or of necessity, little caring

what this or that may be, while it involves whatever is discussed in

fanciful images and deceptive shadows. _Dialectica_, that member of the

Trivium which all approach from this side and from that, but few, in

my judgment, really pursue, neither aspires to dogma, nor is drowned

in the waves of politics, but analyzes truth by prompt and reasonable

probability.”

iv. _Dialectica_, moreover, is the art of effective debate.

v-viii. _Logica_ has for its distinctive function to serve as effective

instrument. It is not an end in itself. So perverted, it becomes the

absurd and deplorable occupation of senility.

ix-xi. (866 C) “_Dialectica_, which among the servants of eloquence is

most alert and prompt, avails each man according to the measure of his

knowledge.... Deprived of the strength of the other disciplines, it is

maimed and almost useless; thriving with their vigor, it is strong to

overthrow all falsehood, and always suffices at least to reach a probable

conclusion.” From my own teachers, to whom I returned years after

they had schooled me, I conclude that “as _dialectica_ advances other

disciplines, so if it remain alone, it lies bloodless and sterile, and

does not engender the fruit of philosophy in a soul not impregnated from

other sources.” Of itself it can only despatch issues, not rise to others.

xii. _Dialectica_ operates in all disciplines wherever the issue is

abstract.[36] It leaves to _rhetorica_ whatever is hypothesis, i.e.,

whatever involves concrete circumstances: who, what, when, why, how. It

makes no address to the public, expects no legal decision.

xiii-xv. Though each division of philosophy has its own field of inquiry

and its own principles, yet _logica_ supplies methods common to all, as

it were theory in a nutshell. A problem in _dialectica_ considers choice

and avoidance, truth and knowledge, whether for itself or as aiding

inquiry where opinion divides.

xvi-xvii. Review of the value and place of Aristotle, of the right use of

Porphyry’s Introduction, and of other typical cases in teaching. Bernard

(875 D) of Chartres and his followers took great pains to heal the breach

between Plato and Aristotle; “but in my opinion they came late and

labored in vain to reconcile in death those who differed as long as they

lived.”

xviii-xix. Certain errors of those who profess Aristotle can hardly be

overlooked: the burdening of tender shoulders, the making of Porphyry

cover the whole ground, the misinterpretation that simplifies Aristotle

by substituting Plato or something remote from both.

xx. The last chapter, much the longest, presents Aristotle on genus and

species.

BOOK III. _TOPICA_

i-iv. A survey of the teaching of categoriæ, prædicamenta, and

interpretatio as preliminary begins with general advice (890 D). “The

exposition of every book should be such as to furnish most readily the

knowledge of what is written. No occasion should be sought of introducing

difficulty; everywhere the way should be opened. That was the practise,

I remember, of Abelard ... (891 A). Thus Porphyry should be read so that

the significance of the expressions in question may be retained and

the sense of the words got from the surface. He will be sufficiently

introductory so, and conspicuous for being quickly intelligible ... (891

D). For the text is to be searched mannerly, not bitterly racked, as

if it were a prisoner, until it gives up what it has not taken.” This

preliminary closes with a reminiscence (900 C). “Bernard of Chartres

used to say that we, like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, can see more

and farther not because we are keener and taller, but because of the

greatness by which we are carried and exalted.”

v-x. Forecasting the rest of the program, John wonders why Aristotle’s

_Topica_ should have been so long neglected (903 A). “Single words of

it, in both rules and examples, are valuable not only for _dialectica_,

but for almost all the disciplines. It comprises eight books, each more

potent than the last.” The following digest, book by book, iterates (910

C) the general value. “The precepts of all eloquence seem to be derived

originally from it as from the primary source. For it is indubitably

true, as Cicero and Quintilian say, that rhetors and rhetoricians have

found in it not only an aid, but a source.”

BOOK IV. _ANALYTICA_

In contrast to the ten long chapters of III, IV is divided into forty-two

short ones: i-v, _analytica_ in general; vi-viii, _demonstrativa_;

ix-xx, the progress of knowledge: sensus, imaginatio, prudentia, ratio,

intellectus; xxi-xxiii, _hypothetica_, _sophistica_; xxiv-xlii, critical

review: objectors to Aristotle the place of _logica_ in teaching, typical

conceptions of ratio, and of truth and error, the relation of ratio to

veritas.

This last book iterates the importance of correlation (xxviii. 982 B).

“But though _logica_ is useful generally, he who is ignorant of other

arts[37] is not so much helped by it toward philosophy as he is hindered

by a habit of verbosity and presumption. For _logica_ is almost useless

if it be alone. It stands out when it shines by the power of correlated

studies.”

John’s slighting of rhetoric cannot be explained merely by his

preoccupation with logic. Why was he thus preoccupied in a consistent

and progressive scheme of the whole Trivium? He begins with a _logica_

embracing all studies of words; he devotes a whole book to _grammatica_;

in his last pages he is speaking of an _organon_ that shall be a minister

to _eloquentia_. Yet _rhetorica_ he merely mentions when he must. That he

was aware of its ancient importance in such a scheme as his is evident

from his large use of Quintilian’s _Teaching of Rhetoric_. No other

medieval writer gave this work more attention. The much-quoted chapter

(I. xxiv) on _prælectio_ uses not only Quintilian’s ideas, but his

very words;[38] and other correspondences are no less significant. The

following list, though not complete, is typical.

QUINTILIAN, _INST. ORAT._ _METALOGICUS_

I. iii. 3-5 II. viii. 865 B-C

Illud ingeniorum ... decrescit. Hoc est quod ... decrescit.

I. viii. 13-14 I. xxiv. 853 D-854 A

In prælegendo grammaticus ... In prælegendo grammaticus ...

memoriam agitet. memoriam auditorum.

17-21 855 B-D

Præcipue vero illa ... Id quoque inter prima ...

aliqua nescire. aliqua ignorare [with substitution

of Augustine for Didymus, who is

relegated to 864 C].

The correspondences above, verbatim for considerable stretches, involve

here and there transpositions or other variations. The following are

quotations or adaptations.

I. iv. 5-6 I. xxv. 856 D

Quo minus sunt ferendi ... in libro _De institutione oratoris

quam ostentationis. Ne quis ..._ Ait ergo: “Ne quis

igitur ... scientiam possit. [and the two sentences are

quoted in reverse order].”

II. iii. 3 II. vii. 864 D

Propter quod Timotheum ... Refert Quintilianus [quotation

with slight verbal variation].

II. iv. 5-7 IV. xxviii. 932 B

Nec unquam ... quod exculpi. Teneræ tamen ætati ...

improbitas conquiescat

[correspondence evident in

idea, occasionally in word].

X. i. 83 II. ii. 859 A

Quid Aristotelem?... quid de eo dicat Quintilianus:

clariorem putem. “Quid Aristotelem?... [exact

quotation].”

X. i. 125-131 I. xxii. 852 B

Ex industria Senecam ... [Discusses Quintilian’s view (“ut

quod voluit efficit. pace Quintiliani loquar”) with

occasional reminiscence of his

words.]

Even if these correspondences were confined to Quintilian’s first and

second books, there would still be no sufficient ground for the inference

that John, consulting him primarily for _grammatica_ and further for his

general ideas on education, did not think of him as a rhetorician. For

Quintilian not only presents rhetoric from the beginning; he frequently

in these first books cites and quotes Aristotle as a rhetorician. But the

matter seems to be put beyond doubt by the use of Book X. It is only fair

to assume of so careful a scholar reading the first books and one of the

last, and occupied with Quintilian’s idea of educational sequence, that

he read the whole work.[39]

Having read and admired one of the chief ancient works on rhetoric, why

did he leave rhetoric out of his own scheme? The answer is probably in

the contemporary conditions to which the _Metalogicus_ is adjusted,

and especially in the contemporary state of rhetoric. It seems not to

have been in the twelfth century worth more than mention from a John of

Salisbury seeking a vital sequence of studies. It lacked what he sought

above all, vital relations. If he had known Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_, he

might conceivably have sought to recall the ancient study to its better

ancient aim. What he found vital in Quintilian’s rhetoric he transferred

to _grammatica_ or to _dialectica_, partly, no doubt, because the

transfer was actually going on, partly, one may think, because he saw in

these other studies the real opportunities of his time for composition.

The current lore of ornament which passed for rhetoric could hardly

detain his consideration.

What he discerns in _grammatica_, and had found in the teaching of

Bernard, is of course training in precision. But though he makes much

of this, he does not slight the value of concreteness for presentation;

he sees the importance of studying style by imitation; and he adopts

from Quintilian a word not common in medieval treatises, _œconomia_. All

these point to composition; and composition seems to have been one of the

essential applications of the master’s analysis. The _prælectio_ as John

describes it is tinged with Quintilian because it realizes fully the

ancient function of _grammatica_ with the poets.

In the rapidly expanding teaching of _dialectica_ also he sees

opportunity for composition. To this end, very likely, he urges

repeatedly that the debates of the schools keep touch with reality by

insisting on subject matter through correlation with other studies.

Above all he desires that language studies be unified and progressive,

that they call for expanding correlation of _inventio_ and _iudicium_.

The study that in his time actually demanded and exercised these was not

_rhetorica_, which was by way of ignoring both; it was _dialectica_.

D. THIRTEENTH CENTURY SURVEYS

1. The _Anticlaudianus_ of Alain de Lille

The allegorical survey entitled by Alain[40] _Anticlaudianus_ has but

superficial likeness to the _De nuptiis philologiæ et Mercurii_[41] of

Martianus Capella. Each presents the seven liberal arts in allegory; each

is in nine books; but there is no real resemblance, nor any indication of

Alain’s having used Martianus except as a stock source. The allegory of

Martianus is confined to his first two books, and is purely decorative;

the allegory of Alain pervades his whole work as a controlling idea. That

idea is the function of education in the redemption of mankind. The

sub-title “de officio viri boni et perfecti” is akin to Hugh’s[42] “animæ

perfectio.” The consistent, elaborate theological symbolism shows some

force of conception and, in spite of occasional excursions into style,

some ardor and elevation. The four thousand hexameters are usually above

the medieval fatal fluency in this verse. The survey, though it has not

Hugh’s originality and does not attempt John’s unification, is equally

serious.

The seven arts are summoned to provide _Prudentia_ with a

chariot for her quest on behalf of man. _Grammatica_ supplies

the pole; _Logica_, the axle, which _Rhetorica_ adorns with

gems and gold; the Quadrivium, the four wheels. The horses, the

five senses, are then harnessed by _Ratio_. When the upward

journey has reached the term of human powers, _Prudentia_,

leaving her chariot, is conducted by _Theologia_ into the

empyrean, to the saints, to Mary, to God himself. Obtaining

of God the formation of the new man, _Prudentia_ returns to

seek gifts for the _anima creata_. _Natura_ gives it a body.

_Concordia_ and _Pudicitia_, _Ratio_ and _Honestas_, coöperate

in gifts with the seven arts. The dubious gifts of _Fortuna_

are assisted by _Ratio_. Thereupon the vices declare war, which

is concluded by the victory of the opposed virtues.

Alain incidentally defines the character of each of the seven arts, and

summarizes its scope. Each has its function—except _rhetorica_. The other

members of the Trivium[43] provide the car of Prudentia with essential

pole and axle; the Quadrivium supplies essential wheels; but all that

_Rhetorica_ has to offer is quite unessential adornment. Though Alain

rehearses the traditional parts of her ancient lore,[44] he sums up her

actual occupation in two lines of cardinal significance.

Supremasque manus apponit, opusque sororum

Perficit, atque semel factum perfectius ornat.

III. ii. 511 D.

In other words, rhetoric is not operative as composition, but only as

style after the fact. Her gifts to the soul are only _colores_, _decor_,

_clausula_.

Adsunt rhetoricæ cultus floresque colorum,

Verba quibus stellata nitent; et sermo decorem

Induit, et multa splendescit clausula luce.

VII. vi. 554 D.

Alain’s own use of rhetoric is consistent with this point of view.

Each of his allegorical figures is introduced with the conventional

descriptive ecphrasis; and his diffuseness arises from the idea that

_poetica_ involves decorative dilation by those _colores_ of which Cicero

and Vergil are equally patterns.

Verbi pauperiem redimit splendore _colorum_

Tullius, et dictis ornatus fulgura donat.

Virgilii musa mendacia multa _colorat_,

Et facie veri contexit pallia falso.

I. iv. 491 C.

2. The _Speculum Doctrinale_ of Vincent of Beauvais

The vast _Speculum_ of Vincent of Beauvais[45] is a compend of all

knowledge. Its second part, _Speculum doctrinale_, Mirror of Teaching,

devotes two books to the Trivium. _Grammatica_,[46] including metric,

follows Isidore. The following book[47] devotes ninety-eight chapters to

logic (_logica_), ten to rhetoric, twenty-three to poetic. The proportion

is significant; and _poetica_, taken from under the ægis of _grammatica_,

appears as a separate, coördinate section. For rhetoric Vincent, still

following Isidore,[48] repeats the classical definition and division. The

following chapters (101-108) deal briefly with the elements of a speech,

the ideals of oratory, the types of cases, status, syllogisms, _loci

rhetorici_, style.

Vincent then goes on to _poetica_,

which Alphorabius[49] in his book on the division of the

_scientiæ_ puts last among the parts of _logica_, and which in

his book on the origin of the _scientiæ_ he describes thus:

“_Poetica_ is the lore of ordering meters according to the

proportion of words (dictiones) and the times of feet and of

their rhythms (numeri).” Again he says in the former book: “It

belongs to _poetica_ to make the hearer through its locutions

image something as fair or foul which is not so,[50] that he

may believe and shun or desire it. Although certainly it is

not so in truth, nevertheless, the minds of hearers are roused

to shun or desire what they image.” Moreover poetry has seven

species: _comedia_, _tragedia_, _invectio_, _satyra_, _fabula_,

_historia_, _argumentum_.[51] _Comedia_ is poetry reversing a

sad beginning by a glad end; but _tragedia_ is poetry lapsing

from a glad beginning to a sad end (109). The function, then,

of the poet is in this, that with a certain beauty he converts

actual events into other species by his slanting figures (end

of 110).

Except meter, which belongs under _grammatica_, and the two forms of

drama, which are not thought of as forms of composition, there is nothing

to distinguish this poetic from rhetoric.

3. St. Bonaventure _de Reductione Artium ad Theologiam_

St. Bonaventure[52] distinguishes four “lights”: (1) the exterior light

of a manual art, illuminating with regard to artistic form; (2) the

inferior light of knowledge through the senses, illuminating with regard

to the patterns of nature; (3) the interior light of philosophical

knowledge, illuminating with regard to truth comprehended intellectually;

(4) the superior light of grace and revelation, illuminating with regard

to truth as a means of salvation.[53] For (3), the “interior light,” his

division is stated first in its commonest form. _Philosophia_ is: (a)

_rationalis_ (i.e., _sermonum_), (b) _naturalis_ (i.e., _rerum_), (c)

_moralis_ (i.e., _morum_). This division[54] he then repeats in another

form and order:

(a) _physica_, for knowing the causes of being;

(b) _logica_, for knowing the theory of understanding;

(c) _practica_, for knowing the conduct of living.

Finally he considers it in a third aspect. The domain of _moralis_

is motive; of _physica_ is self-limited and self-sufficient; of

_sermocinalis_ is interpretation. The last item he subdivides into:

_grammatica_, for expression, regarding reason as apprehension,

seeking the appropriate;

_logica_, for instruction, regarding reason as judgment,

seeking the true;

_rhetorica_, for persuasion, regarding reason as motive,

seeking the ornate.[55]

Bonaventure does not use the word _dialectica_. His word for this,

not for the whole Trivium,[56] is _logica_. Though his _movendum_ and

_motivam_ suggest association of rhetoric with morals, and remind one of

Aristotle’s conception, and Cicero’s, and Quintilian’s, he is content

to give rhetoric the narrow and barren field of _ornatus_, assigning

_docendum_ and _verum_ to logic.

4. The _Trésor_ of Brunetto Latini

The Old French _Trésor_ of Brunetto Latini[57] devotes a far larger

proportion of space than Vincent’s _Speculum_ to rhetoric. Book I,

surveying the seven arts,[58] includes history, geography, and the

zoölogy of the bestiaries. Book II adds to Aristotelian ethics a

collection of moral apothegms.[59] Book III opens politics with rhetoric.

Here begins the third book of the _Treasure_, which speaks of

the teachings of good speech and of the government of towns and

cities.... Cicero says that the highest lore for governing a

city is rhetoric.[60] 467.

They are mistaken who think that to tell fables or old stories

... is matter of rhetoric.... [Rather rhetoric is concerned

with] what is said by word of mouth or sent by letter to induce

belief, to praise or blame, to advise ... in something that

demands decision. 471.

The following chapters present the ancient division into five parts and

the lore of _status_ and _quæstio_.[61] But at this point the distinctive

ancient function of rhetoric begins to fade. After saying that the main

division of all expression is into prose and rime, he adds that “the

teachings of rhetoric are common to both,” save for the restrictions of

meter.[62] The section on _dispositio_, the ordering of a speech, takes

from Martianus Capella not his sober survey, but a single passage which

Brunetto perverts by subdivision and by transfer to narrative.

To exploration of the material [of a speech], with discernment

of its value for persuasion, is to be joined the ordering of

the points, which is the part commonly called _dispositio_....

The scheme may be either the natural order or devised by the

orator’s artifice; natural, when after the beginning comes the

statement of facts, then the division, proposition, proof,

conclusion and epilogue; by the orator’s artifice, when the

things that must be said have been distributed through the

parts of the speech.[63]

Here Martianus is apparently extending to the whole plan of a speech the

commonplace of ancient rhetoric that the _narratio_ (statement of facts)

might be either continuous as a single, distinct part, or distributed for

the sake of giving salience to its separate items. Brunetto’s further

extension is not his own; it is common stock of the contemporary _artes

poeticæ_.[64] These manuals make much of “natural” and “artificial”

order, subdivide each, and apply both to narrative. Brunetto is typical.

“Order [means] everything in its place; but this order is in

two manners, one which is natural and another artificial....

The artificial order is divided into eight manners”:

(1) to say at the beginning what was at the end,

(2) to begin with what was in the middle,

(3) to base your story on the beginning of a proverb,

(4) to base it on the middle of the proverb,

(5) to base it on the end of the proverb,

(6) (7) (8) so for three uses of an example. 482.

The mechanical division reflects a wide abeyance in theory, not only of

poetic shaping and movement, but even of the _dispositio_ of ancient

rhetoric; for its real concern is not with composition at all, whether in

prose or in verse, but with the phrasing of certain patterns.

Brunetto’s preoccupation with style, and with style mainly as decorative

dilation, soon appears in “how to dilate one’s tale in eight ways

... which are called colors of rhetoric.”[65] Among these _colores_,

under _demonstrance_ (_demonstratio_), is his celebrated, but entirely

conventional, ecphrasis on Yseult.

The traditional parts of a speech (exordium, etc.) are used[66] as

an approach to _dictamen_, of which Brunetto appears to be thinking

through much of what follows. The concluding chapters on statecraft are

far from a discussion of politics. Rather they set forth the conduct of

a seigneur. Thus they fail to carry out the relations of rhetoric to

government which in his opening he borrows from Cicero. Book III, then,

of the _Trésor_ lapses further and further from the ancient conception of

rhetoric with which it begins. The rhetoric which it actually presents,

and which it applies to poetry as well as to _dictamen_,[67] is a meager,

though pleasant, review of style.[68]

What rhetoric appears in these surveys to lack most is distinct function.

Writers as different as John of Salisbury and Brunetto Latini seem

to think of it as polishing, decorating, especially dilating, what

has been already expressed. It comes in after the real job is done;

it has lost its ancient function of composing. The ancient lore of

_inventio_ kept rhetoric in contact with subject matter and with actual

presentation. This had so much less scope in feudal society that the lore

easily lapsed, or was perverted. The only large field for its exercise

was preaching. Education, therefore, naturally threw its weight on

_grammatica_ for boys, on _dialectica_ for men. Between the two rhetoric

was crowded into narrow room. Whether it would still have vindicated

itself if it had been the rhetoric of Aristotle, or oftener the rhetoric

of Quintilian, can be only conjectured. Actually it was the rhetoric

of _De inventione_ and _ad Herennium_, and inculcated the sophistic of

Sidonius. That may explain why there was no medieval rhetorician who

really advanced the study.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Fulbert, c. 960-1028. His distinguished successor Ives, who ruled

Chartres 1090-1115, had been, with Anselm, a pupil of Lanfranc at Bec,

and had himself taught there (Clerval, 146).

That Chartres had the whole _Organon_ even before Gilbert de la Porrée,

Richard l’Evêque, and John of Salisbury is shown by Clerval, 244 seq.

Haskins notes in the twelfth century the primacy of the cathedral schools

(Laon, Tours, Chartres, Orléans, Paris) over the monastic.

(_The Normans in European History_, 177; _The Renaissance of the Twelfth

Century_, 49.)

[2] The traditional manuals and authors continue: Donatus, Priscian,

Martianus Capella (not much used), Bede, _De arte metrica_; Livy,

Valerius Maximus, Orosius, Gregory of Tours; Vergil, Ovid, Horace,

Terence, Statius; Fortunatus, Sedulius, Arator, Prudentius, Boethius.

_Prælectio_ appears at its best in John of Salisbury’s account of the

teaching of Bernard of Chartres (below pages 160-164). See the admirable

summaries, period by period, in Clerval.

The library at Bec in the twelfth century had Priscian, Isidore,

Martianus Capella (with Remi’s commentary), Anselm _De grammatica_, and

Claudian (PL 150: 775-782).

[3] Clerval, 111-113, suggests an influence on the earlier forms of

liturgical sequences.

[4] Colson (ed. of Book I, Cambridge, 1924) finds no clear indication of

Quintilian in the eleventh century; and the large use of him by John of

Salisbury in the twelfth (below, page 169) is not specifically related

to rhetoric. Cicero is limited to _De inventione_ and the commentary of

Victorinus (Clerval, 115). The _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ is the source of

the _Colores_ of Onulf, who taught at Speier c. 1050. The Bec library

had in the twelfth century “utraque rhetorica” (i.e., _De inv._ and _Ad

Herenn._), Cicero, _De partit. orat._, Suetonius, and the letters of

Sidonius. At Chartres Thierry cites Quintilian and, according to Clerval,

233, Cicero, _De oratore_. The latter, with Quintilian, appears in _A

list of textbooks from the close of the twelfth century_, Haskins in

Harvard Stud. Class. Phil. 20:92.

[5] Clerval, 115-116.

[6] *100 as described in Clerval, 117. Besides Fulbert’s verses, it

has (*10) two short treatises: _De rhetoricæ cognatione_, and _Locorum

rhetoricorum distinctio_. The _Topica_, of course, are common ground

between rhetoric and logic.

[7] Gilbertus Porretanus, c. 1075-1154, Chancellor at Chartres 1126,

teacher at Paris 1141, Bishop of Poitiers 1142; _Liber sex principiorum_,

_Comment. IV libr. Boeth._, _Liber de causis_. See Clerval, 163-168, and

Poole. Clerval suggests that Gilbert, as well as Thierry and Bernard

Silvester, had relations with the Toulouse translators of Arabic books

into Latin.

[8] Terricus Carnotensis, Breton, _scolarum magister_ at Chartres 1121,

taught rhetoric at Paris c. 1140, died c. 1150; _Comment. De invent._

and _Rhet. ad Herenn._; _Heptateuchon_ c. 1141 (Chartres MSS. *497, 498)

described in Clerval, 220 seq., with a synoptic table of contents.

[9] Donatus and Priscian.

[10] Cic. _De invent._ and _Partit. Orat._, _Rhet. ad Herenn._, the

summary of Severianus, and Martianus Capella.

[11] The usual Boethian items.

[12] Translated in Clerval, 221.

[13] Hugh of St. Victor, Saxon, c. 1096-1141, entered the Abbey of

St. Victor at Paris c. 1116 and taught there; works PL 175-177. See

especially Mignon, whose second chapter is a good summary of studies

before Hugh. A critical study of the MSS. by Hauréau (B.), _Les œuvres

de H. de St. V._, Paris, 1886 (a revision of a study published in 1859),

shows that _Eruditio didascalica_ has only six parts, the seventh added

in PL being a separate work. See also Fourier Bonnard, _Histoire de

l’abbaye royale et de l’ordre des chanoines réguliers de St. Victor de

Paris_, Paris (n. d.); and the index to Manacorda. John of Salisbury

refers to Hugh, and uses part of his classification.

[14] The division, which is common in the middle age (e.g., John of

Salisbury, _Metalogicus_, II. ii), is in Quintilian, _Inst. Or._ XII. 2.

10.

[15] About 1159. For John see Poole, the index to Clerval, and the

antiquated, but still suggestive study of Schaarschmidt, _J. S. nach

Leben und Studien ..._, Leipzig, 1862. Webb (C. C. I.) has edited the

_Policraticus_, Oxford, 1909, with an introduction especially valuable

for John’s reading, and announced an edition of the _Metalogicus_, for

which meantime the only available text is in PL 199, referred to in

this section by column. The letters, also in PL 199, were printed with

Gerbert’s and Stephen of Tournai’s in 1611 (Paris, Ruette). The _Historia

pontificalis_, printed in MGH as anonymous, has been edited by Poole,

Oxford University Press, 1927. _Policraticus_ IV, V, VI, with selections

from VII and VIII, are translated, with an introduction, by Dickinson

(J.) as _The statesman’s yearbook of J. of S._, New York, 1927.

[16] See the preceding section. John mentions Hugh at 833 A, 924 B. The

word _disserere_ Hugh and John may have taken, as John took other things

at the opening of Book II, from Isidore (see above, page 97); but the

ultimate source of the phrase _ratio disserendi_ is probably Cicero’s

_Topica_: “omnis ratio diligens disserendi duas habet partes, unum

inveniendi alteram iudicandi.” _Top._ 2. Cf. _Fin._ 1. 7. 22; _Fat._ 1.

1. _Disserere_ seems limited to _dialectica_ in _De orat._ I. 9 (see

Wilkins’s note); but using the same word in II. 157, Cicero points

out that the proper function of _dialectica_ is analysis (_iudicium_,

not _inventio_). In _Orator_ 113, discussing the common ground of

rhetoric and logic, he says “utrumque in disserendo est,” and goes on to

distinguish logic as _ratio disputandi_ from rhetoric as _ratio dicendi_.

_Dicere_ is generally his word for rhetoric. Quintilian, whom John uses

largely, probably has in mind the same distinction in X. 1. 81, though in

other places he uses _disserere_ more generally.

[17] I. xvii (847 C), xxiv (854 B), II. x (868 B).

[18] For John’s use of Quintilian, see below, page 169.

[19] In this respect _Metalogicus_ is conspicuously different from

_Policraticus_.

[20] These “Cornificians” are mentioned 825 C, 827 A, 852 B, 857 A. See

Clerval 182, 211, 227.

[21] Quadam proportione rationis, 841 B.

[22] This poetic is none the less rhetoric for being confirmed by

quotations from Horace (_Ars poetica_, 102-105, 108-111; see ARP 245).

The general doctrine of appropriateness was the basis of the specific

recipes for _encomium_ (above, page 31).

[23] Cf. Vincent of Beauvais below, section D. 2.

[24] The following translation renders entire the most specific extant

account of _prælectio_ in the middle age. Long selections from it

in French translation will be found in Clerval, 225-227; a shorter

selection, with the corresponding Latin text, in Faral, _Les arts

poétiques du xiie et du xiiie siècle_, Paris, 1924, 99-101. Haskins, 135,

has a short selection in English translation.

For _prælectio_, see the index to ARP and to this volume.

[25] _Illustratio_ is Quintilian’s word (and Cicero’s, he says) in VI.

ii. 32, where he is exhibiting the same sort of development as is here

indicated by John. For _historia_, _argumentum_, _fabula_ see the index.

That these were elementary school exercises suggests that the subject of

this sentence (_Illi_) refers not to authors, but to schoolboys engaged

in developing a _materia_; but the reference can hardly be determined in

PL, in which the whole sentence seems to me dubious.

[26] _Probandi colores._ The word _colores_ in this sense, unusual at

this time, is characteristic of Seneca Rhetor, to whom John refers in II.

viii. But the solution of a passage apparently corrupt may well await a

better text.

[27] Cf. III. vi (904 C). Et sicut juxta ethicum: discipulus prioris est

posterior dies.

[28] _Declinatio_ is the eighth item, under Priscian, in the list from

Thierry’s _Heptateuchon_ cited above, page 153.

[29] For _clausula_ see the indexes to ARP and to this volume; for John’s

own cadences, below, Chapter VIII.

[30] Œconomia.

[31] See below, page 170.

[32] For _inventio_ and _iudicium_ see Hugh above, page 154, and note 16.

Quintilian III. iii. 5 objects to the application of this to rhetoric.

[33] See Hugh’s division above, page 155.

[34] Vocum et intellectuum.

[35] Ficta, hypothetical? Sophistica seems to be intended in the

following clause.

[36] Thesis.

[37] Reading _aliarum_.

[38] This is pointed out by Colson in his edition of Quintilian’s first

book, Cambridge, 1924, page 1, note 2. It is the stranger that the

quotations should not have been noticed before since John himself calls

attention to them: “ut verbo utamur Quintiliani,” “ab auctoritate ejusdem

Quintiliani” (I. xxiv. 853 D).

[39] _Illustratio_ in I. xxiv (854 A/B) is probably a reminiscence of

Quintilian VI. ii. 32, to judge not only from the word, but from the

context in both passages. Cf. 844 A, 851 C, 860 C, 910 D.

[40] Alanus de Insulis (about 1128-1202), Cistercian at Citeaux,

sometimes called “doctor universalis,” wrote mainly on theology.

_Anticlaudianus_ was edited by Wright in the second volume of his

_Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century_,

London, (Rolls Series), which contains also _De planctu naturæ_. The

latter has been translated by D. M. Moffat in Yale Studies in English,

New York, 1908.

The citations in this section are by column from PL 210. For the _Summa

de arte predicatoria_ see below, Chapter IX. C.

[41] See above, Chapter III. B. 1.

[42] For Hugh, see above, page 153.

[43] Alain’s order is the usual (1) _grammatica_, (2) _dialectica_, (3)

_rhetorica_. His _logica_ is _dialectica_, not the inclusive term of Hugh

and John. Its _auctores_ (III. ii. 510 A) are Porphyry, Aristotle, Zeno,

Boethius.

[44] III. ii. 512-513.

[45] About 1190-1264. The _Speculum_ was printed at Strasburg in 1473,

and by the Benedictines at Douai in 1624.

[46] Book III (II in the Benedictine edition).

[47] Book IV (III in the Benedictine edition).

[48] Vincent refers in Chapter 100 to Quintilian. “Tullius in libro de

oratore” (100 and 127) is probably not a reference to _De oratore_. In

101 “Tullius in rhetorica prima,” and in 127 “idem in rhetorica secunda,”

are the usual references to _De inventione_ and _ad Herennium_. For the

references to Quintilian see Bassi, _Giornale storico_, XXIII, 186, and

Colson’s introduction to his edition of Quintilian’s first book, page lii.

[49] Farabi. For translations from Arabic see above, page 153, and

Haskins, Chapter IX.

[50] Compare Alain above in the quotation on page 174.

[51] For the three school exercises that conclude this list see the

indexes to ARP and to this volume; for the rest of the classification,

Bede, above, Chapter V. B. 1.

[52] 1221-1274. The _Opusculum de reductione artium ad theologiam_ is

number 4 (pages 317-325) in volume 5 of the Works edited by the College

of St. Bonaventure, Quaracchi (Florence), 1891.

[53] (1) Lumen exterius artis mechanicæ illuminat respectu figuræ

artificialis;

(2) lumen inferius cognitionis sensitivæ illuminat respectu formæ

naturalis;

(3) lumen interius cognitionis philosophicæ illuminat respectu veritatis

intellectualis;

(4) lumen superius gratiæ et sacræ Scripturæ illuminat respectu veritatis

salutaris.

[54] For the classifications of Hugh of St. Victor and John of Salisbury

see above, sections B and C.

[55]

(a) moralis regit motivam;

(b) naturalis regit se ipsam;

(c) sermocinalis regit interpretativam:

(1) grammatica ad exprimendum respicit rationem ut apprehensivam

... congruum;

(2) logica ad docendum respicit rationem ut iudicativam ... verum;

(3) rhetorica ad movendum respicit rationem ut motivam ... ornatum.

[56] That he does not intend _logica_ in the larger sense of Hugh and

John will be clear from comparative study of the three forms of his

division, and also from _Collationes in hexaëmeron_ (in the same volume),

IV. 18-25. This briefly sums up _rhetorica_ according to its ancient

topics, including the three fields and the five parts. Here again

_dialectica_ is not used, and _logica_ merely supersedes it.

[57] 1230-1294. The _Trésor_ is edited, with an introduction, by

Chabaille in the Collection des documents inédits sur l’histoire de

France, Paris, 1863. References in this section are to the pages of

this edition. The Italian version, also widely current, is edited by L.

Gaiter, Bologna, 1878. See also F. Maggini, _La rettorica italiana di B.

L._ (Pub. del R. Istituto di studi superiori), Florence, 1913.

[58] The proem, beginning with theology as the highest lore of

_theorica_, makes the usual enumeration under _mathematica_, divides

_practica_, “la seconde science de philosophie,” into “éthique .

économique . politique,” and so arrives at rhetoric, but with some

confusion as to logic.

[59] See Chabaille, xv.

[60] Villani may be merely repeating this when he says: “Egli fu

cominciatore e maestro in digrossare i Fiorentini, e farli scorti in bene

parlare et in sapere guidare e reggere la nostra repubblica secondo la

politica.” VIII. x.

[61] Brunetto’s main source is Cicero _De invent._

[62] La grans partisons de touz parleors ... en prose ... en rime; mais

li enseignement de rectorique sont commun andui, sauf ce que la voie de

prose est large et pleniere, si comme est ore la commune parleure des

gens; mais li sentiers de rime est plus estroiz et plus fors. 481.

[63] His igitur ad fidem faciendam prudenter inuentis ordo rerum est

sociandus, quæ pars _dispositio_ uocitatur ... duplex igitur huius partis

est ratio; aut enim naturalis est ordo aut oratoris artificio comparatur:

naturalis, cum post principium narratio, partitio, propositio,

argumentatio, conclusio epilogusque consequitur; artificio oratoris, cum

per membra orationis quæ dicenda sunt digerimus. V. 506 (Teubner, ed.

Dick, 248).

[64] See below, Chapter VII. B.

[65] “Comment l’om puet acroistre son conte en viij manieres ... qui sont

apelees color de rectorique.” The first of these, _aornement_, is defined

so bluntly that the humorous implication may be intentional: “tout ce

que l’om porroit en iij moz ou en iiij, ou a mult po de paroles dire, il

les acroist par autres paroles plus longues et plus avenans qui dient ce

meisme.” 486.

[66] 490.

[67] For _dictamen_, see below, Chapter VIII.

[68] Jean d’Antioche in his introduction to the translation of _De

inventione_ and _Rhetorica ad Herennium_ (end of XIIIth century) has two

divisions of _Philosophye_: (A) into _ethique morale_, _rationele_, and

_naturele_; (B) as follows:—

Philosophye

Practique Teorique

Civile Dispensative Morale Naturele Devine Matematique

| | |

| | |

{ Mecanique { Prudence |

{ Droit { Justize |

{ Sermocinale { Force |

| { Temprance { Geometrie

| { Arismetique

{ Gramaire { Muzique

{ Logique { Astronomie

{ Retorique |

| |

| |

+-------------------Les vii ars------------------+

Delisle in _Notices et Extraits_, 36:216.

Neither _Le mariage des sept arts_ nor Henri d’Andeli’s _Bataille des

sept arts_ contains any information about teaching.

CHAPTER VII

LATIN POETIC IN THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

AH Dreves and Blume, _Analecta hymnica medii ævi_, Leipzig

(vol. 1, 1886; vol. 53, 1911; sixty volumes proposed).

ARP Baldwin (C. S.), _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, New

York, 1924.

Britt Britt (the Rev. Matthew, O. S. B.), _The hymns of the

Breviary and Missal_, New York, 1922.

F Faral (E.), _Les arts poétiques du xiie et du xiiie

siècle_, recherches et documents sur la technique

littéraire du moyen âge, Paris, 1924.

Manacorda Manacorda (G.), _Storia della scuola in Italia_, vol. I,

_Il medio evo_, Milan, 1913 (2 parts in separate volumes).

Mari Mari (G.), _I trattati medievali di ritmica latina_, Milan,

1899, pages 35-80, for the latter part of the _Poetria_ of

Johannes de Garlandia; for the former part, Romanische

Forschungen XIII (1901-1902), pages 883-965.

Misset-Aubry Misset (l’Abbé E.) and Aubry (P.), _Les proses d’Adam de

St. Victor_, texte et musique, précédées d’une étude

critique, Paris, 1900.

A. _POETICA_ INCLUDED IN _GRAMMATICA_

The _grammatica_ of this period continued the traditional inclusion of

metric and of certain figures of speech; and the master’s _prælectio_

on the Latin poets involved at Chartres, as two centuries before at

Speier,[1] imitative writing of Latin verse. About 1200 appeared two

hexameter summaries: the _Doctrinale_[2] of the Norman Alexandre de

Villedieu, and the _Græcismus_[3] of the Flemish Évrard de Béthune. The

former had so long and wide a vogue that it may be called the standard

medieval mnemonic of _grammatica_. Reviewing successively inflections,

syntax, metric,[4] accents, figures, it includes under the last the lists

of Greek terms that show at once a preoccupation of the time and the

shifting boundary between _grammatica_ and _rhetorica_.[5]

B. _POETRIA_

Distinctive of this period is the separate _ars poetica_, or _poetria_.

Often itself in verse, this sort of manual differed from Bede’s, first in

being less a reference book for the study of meters than an exercise book

for the actual writing of Latin verse, and secondly in giving less space

to prosody than to poetic diction. The four most conspicuous[6] may be

assigned approximately to the half-century divided by 1200 (c. 1175-1225).

1. Matthieu de Vendôme, _Ars Versificatoria_ (before 1175)

Matthew’s prose manual, though it omits prosody, is otherwise connected

even more obviously than the others with the teaching of _grammatica_.

Not only is he known to have been _grammaticus_ at Orléans; his book

is inclined throughout in the direction of such teaching,[7] and it

contains specimen school exercises. The grammatical slant is most

obvious in those on adjectives in _-alis_, _-osus_, _-atus_, _-ivus_,

_-aris_.[8] The longer examples of descriptive verse may well be such

successively revised themes as were seen earlier at Speier.[9] The use of

Horace’s “Ars poetica” is so extensive, even for the time, as to suggest

that Matthew’s book may have begun in his _prælectiones_ on that poem.

Whatever degree of probability may be attached to these suggestions,

there is no doubt of Matthew’s intention and preoccupation. His book

seeks to further the writing of Latin descriptive verse. The idea behind

it is that poetry is mainly description, which in turn proceeds mainly by

dilation. Style, which is his only concern, is conceived as decoration.

Though his lists of figures for this purpose (III) generally agree with

those of the _Doctrinale_,[10] rhetoric is evident not only in the phrase

_colores rhetorici_,[11] but as a constant preoccupation. That _poetica_

as style is identical with _rhetorica_ he assumes; that it is distinct as

composition can hardly have entered his head, but composition in either

field is beyond his scope. His sections on beginning (I. 3-16) refer not

to introducing the subject, but to phrasing the first sentences. The

faults then enumerated (I. 30-37) are of style. Description is expounded

(I. 38-113) as appropriateness of phrase to condition, age, place, etc.,

and as the seeking of “attributes” in a person’s physical and mental

habit, his deeds, his speech,[12] or in the cause, quality, and time of

an event. Reference to subject, thought, or composition goes no further;

the rest of the book is purely verbal.

2. Geoffroi de Vinsauf, _Poetria Nova_ (c. 1210)

The extraordinary vogue of Geoffrey’s two thousand hexameters in itself

suggests that his too is an exercise book. To suppose that it was

cherished for its literary achievement is to impute to several centuries

a larger and more general appetite for bombast than other evidence

warrants. As school mnemonics his verses are more tolerable. As exercises

in synonyms they have excuse for their redundancy. As suggestions

and examples in the pursuit of figures they have more warrant for

exaggeration as a means of distinctness. Caricature, which can never have

been the intention of a man devoid of humor, has before Geoffrey’s time,

and since, resulted from sheer overemphasis. His own incessant word-play

is so anxious as to verge sometimes on _reductio ad absurdum_. Or were

some of these tirades made to order by his students? May they be such

progressively revised composite themes as the earlier schools assigned in

similar hexameter tasks?[13] At any rate, a probable explanation of the

portentous style, as well as a charitable one, is that the _Poetria nova_

was a museum for boys.

After bowing to the ancient _inventio_ and _dispositio_, neither of which

is in point and neither handled as a process of composing, Geoffrey

devotes most of his book to the rhetorical means of dilation. This is

the aim of the _colores_, not only of verbal expansions in general, but

in particular of two sorts of deliberate interpolation: apostrophe and

description.

To go farther afield, let apostrophe be the fourth means of

lingering by which you may detain the subject.

Seventh comes description, pregnant with words, to dilate the

work.[14]

Chaucer,[15] whose ironical homage has made Geoffrey a laughing-stock,

was exploding the use of these figures in verse narrative. In oratory

also of a certain sort he exhibits their deviation in the specimen

preaching of the Pardoner because they are perennial in sophistic.

Geoffrey’s description is precisely the ecphrasis cultivated throughout

the Empire in _declamatio_.[16] In a word, Geoffrey’s poetic, as

Alain’s, Vincent’s, Brunetto Latini’s,[17] is mainly the rhetoric of

dilation. The sophistic of the ancient encomium, walking the schools once

more, is now called Poetria.

3. Évrard, _Laborintus_ (c. 1213)

The _Laborintus_[18] is at once briefer and more inclusive. Opening with

rueful mock-heroic on the lot of a schoolmaster, it glances through the

seven arts in a series of allusions, and expands upon _grammatica_.

Thus poetry is reached by the traditional approach.[19] Most space,

however (269-598), is given to exemplifying rhetorical ornament,

especially figures. Though the list, as usual, is long, the manufactured

or borrowed examples are short. Évrard’s plan of tucking away each

within a closed hexameter-pentameter couplet is carried out with some

ingenuity. Though he has to take more room for _demonstratio_ (573-594),

he generally abjures Geoffrey’s dilating upon dilation. His examples

are rather mnemonics than exhibitions. The fourth section (599-686)

is a list of authors for school reading.[20] The order, though not

obviously progressive, suggests: (1) certain brief moralizing works for

elementary study, i.e., a “Cathonet” (the so-called “Distichs of Cato”),

a “Théodolet,” or “Theudlet” (the allegorical verse dialogue entitled

_Theodulus_),[21] an “Ysopet,” or collection of fables;[22] (2) the

classics and their imitators, with Vergil applied as the exemplar of all

“three styles”;[23] (3) the Latin summaries of the Trojan war, Dares and

the _Ilias latina_, (4) Sidonius and the earlier Christian poets, Alain’s

_Anticlaudianus_, and Matthew’s _Tobias_; (5) a group of works on style,

i.e., Geoffrey’s _Poetria_; the _Doctrinale_ and _Græcismus_, Matthew’s

_Ars versificatoria_, Martianus Capella, and Bernard Silvester.[24]

The section on metric (687-834) exemplifies the leonine verses repudiated

by Matthew,[25] the handling of phrases and clauses—even to such

ingenuities as reversible lines, several patterns of internal rime in

the hexameter,[26] and typical faults. After lamenting a schoolmaster’s

hardships (835-990), Évrard concludes (991-end) with classified

specimens of _rhythmi_. There is a noticeable preponderance of trochaic

measures.[27] The final group of quatrains in a measure common both in

hymns and in Goliardic use is clearly a school exercise in framing a

stanza to end upon a familiar quotation.

4. Johannes de Garlandia, _Poetria_ (probably before mid-Thirteenth

Century).

John’s work differs from the other three in specific application to

_dictamen_.[28] The inclusion of _poetria_ and _dictamen_ in one

treatise, though ill managed, is a practical adjustment to the teaching

of the time. As taught, both were _rhetorica_, and both were confined

within the single department anciently called _elocutio_. John begins,

indeed, as Geoffrey does, with _inventio_; but his treatment of it[29]

shows how faint in his time were even the echoes of its ancient function.

Invoking for it simultaneously the “Ars poetica” and the _Rhetorica ad

Herennium_, he first misapplies it to adaptation of style to person,

occasion, etc., as in a letter—and as in the “three styles” of which

Vergil is again made the exemplar! Then he perverts it to the search for

appropriate proverbs, of which he provides a classified list for use in

_dictamen_. His further applications show that _inventio_ in his practise

is purely verbal and leads, as fatally as all other approaches, to the

lists of figures. “Nor should it be forgotten,” he adds (897),[30]

“that any theme (_materia_) can be expressed in six ways according to

the six cases of the noun.” As if uneasy at the ancient application of

the term, he appends a final section _De arte inveniendi materiam_, as

a separate device for “boys wishing to amplify and vary a theme.” For

example, in writing about a book they might find occasion for praise

or blame in the efficient cause, i.e., in the writer; in the material

cause, i.e., in parchment, ink, etc. This can hardly be the mere dotage

of John the Englishman. It is a sharp reminder of the educational level

of these manuals; and it shows that the old _inventio_ had departed from

_rhetorica_.[31]

Otherwise he could hardly go on (Chapter II): “After _inventio_ ...

follows _electio_. Tully after _inventio_ puts _dispositio_, then the

art of memorizing, and finally delivery; but, for writers of poetry

or _dictamen_, after _inventio_ the useful art is that of choosing”!

The choosing that he means is of the right style, “brief for affairs

of the Curia (i.e., _dictamen_), diffuse for poetry” (897). Again he

exemplifies by a specimen letter. _Memoria_ is considered merely as

mnemonic; and the cardinal mnemonic is a diagram of the “three styles”

(900), each with its proper furniture of persons and things occupying a

segment of a circle, the _Rota Virgili_.[32] As in the other manuals,

the “art of beginning” (905), though divided into several modes, has

little to do with composition. A letter (907) may begin with a proverb,

an example, a comparison, with _si_, or _cum_, or _dum_, or an ablative

absolute. The “six parts of a discourse” (911) are summarily defined as

by the ancients, but thereupon exemplified in seventy-eight elegiacs. As

in the other manuals also, the art of concision (913) is mentioned; but

the art of dilation (914) by figures is dilated.

Such clumsy handling makes obvious the misapplications of rhetoric to

poetic that are current among John’s contemporaries. Another perversion

equally general is that of the _narratio_[33] of a speech to narrative.

After exhibiting quite properly the statement of facts in a letter as an

application of _narratio_, John deviates as follows:

But since _narratio_ is common to prose and meter, we must

enumerate its kinds [the three kinds of poetry taken by Bede

from Diomedes[34]].... Under the second falls the _narratio_

which is distinguished by Tully thus: there is a kind of

_narratio_ remote from legal pleading ... _fabula_, _historia_,

_argumentum_ (926).

Brunetto Latini shows not only the same deviation,[35] but also that

“natural order and artificial order” which John (905) and the other

pedagogues had perverted from Martianus Capella’s _narratio_ to

narrative, and, behind both, the general misconception of the ancient

_dispositio_.[36] Terms traditional in ancient rhetoric for the processes

of composition are deviated at once to poetic and to style because the

consideration never extends beyond figures, feet, or clauses.

Thus John is able to add (928) to the “three poetic styles ... four

other styles in modern use: (1) the Gregorian, (2) the Tullian, (3)

the Hilarian, (4) the Isidorian. By the first he means the Roman style

in _dictamen_.”[37] The second he distinguishes not by rhythm, but

by _colores_, and as “used both by poets when they write prose and

by teachers in school exercises.” The third, defined metrically, is

exemplified both by an ancient hymn[38] and (929) by a letter. The

fourth, that of Augustine’s _Soliloquies_, marks the balance of clauses

not by equality of length, but by chiming cadences. To the usual list of

figures are added the ten commonplaces (939) for the description of a

person;[39] to a lust-and-blood plot (_tragedia_), further specimens of

_dictamen_. Rhetoric and poetic are merged in one scheme of style. The

scheme is confused; but the intention is single.

The final section, _ars ritmica_, is significant, as Évrard’s is, by

its very presence in a schoolbook. It shows (56)[40] the same school

assignment of a stanza framed to end on a familiar quotation. Its

classification of examples, though not illuminating, is much clearer than

the subdivisions of the chapters preceding. _Rhythmus_, the verse of

the hymns, distinguished from _metrum_ though discussed in some of the

ancient metrical terms, is presented for study and practise. For the

schoolboys who used it, as for the modern explorer, this section must

have offered the relief of an active poetic after the drill of deviated

rhetoric.[41]

5. Common Traits

The pedantic subdivision of these manuals shows that their aim was not

to organize the study of poetic, but to cover its elements by as many

exercises as possible. Imitative writing of Latin verse, long part of the

study of _grammatica_, has been combined with the theory of _rhetorica_

through exercises in figures, and with its practise through exercises

in _dictamen_. Doubtless the resulting aggregation was called _poetria_

both because the exercises were still connected with the traditional

_prælectio_ and were oftenest in verse, and because, whether in verse

or in _dictamen_, they were focused on that heightening by ornament and

by dilation which was conventionally regarded as poetic. _Poetria_,

then, meant generally the study of style, and specifically the study of

stylistic decoration. The lore for this was rhetoric,[42] partly indeed

by misapplication, partly from the vagueness of the boundary in Latin

tradition. The “colors of rhetoric,” not always clearly distinguished,

sometimes strangely spelled, were faithfully recited as a sort of Greek

ritual of poetic. The confusion went to its bitter end in that stock

perversion by which Vergil’s poetic was broken on the wheel into three

pieces of rhetoric.

The vital difference between rhetoric and poetic in composition, probably

beyond the ken of these writers, was certainly beyond the intention of

these manuals. Composition for them goes no further than the adjustment

of a sentence. The ancient _inventio_ and _dispositio_, sometimes dragged

in by misapplication, are generally ignored. The distinction of “natural”

from “artificial” order provides a pattern, not to promote composition,

but to obviate its necessity. So the “methods of beginning” are presented

as verbal devices. The scope of these manuals suggests that rhetoric,

whether in its own name or as _poetria_, did not teach composition. What

had once been part of rhetoric was now left to logic and the debates of

the schools. As for poetic composition, the active progress of vernacular

verse narrative would hardly be represented in a schoolbook. What is

represented, what appears alike in school Latin and in professional

vernacular,[43] is surviving conventional pattern, the passive voice

of poetic, not its active. Marie had found another poetic. Chrétien,

though he had accepted some of the same conventions of style, had learned

otherwise what he knew of narrative movement. Even Latin narrative had

been otherwise studied by Walter Map. To poetic in this larger composing

activity the _poetria_ of the schools offers no clue. At the turn of the

next century Dante, who knew all its poetic conventions, ignored them in

a supreme composition; and within that century Chaucer, who knew them

too, laughed them away.

C. HYMNS

1. Progress of Rimed Stress Verse

The ancient quantitative metric learned in school was often practised in

such occasional verse as Baudry de Bourgeuil’s.[44] Both his elegiacs and

his partially rimed verses are literary exercises. More significant is

the tentative use of rime in the same eleventh century by Fulbert.

Verbum Dei Spiritumque legifer in Genesi,

Rex David secundo psalmo post tricenum cecin_it_;

Sic uterque Trinitatem unitatis prodid_it_.

Sapiens cum genitore sancto suo Salomon

Plane verbo declaravit esse Deo Fili_um_,

Verbum scilicet æternum corde ejus genit_um_:

PL 141: 342.[45]

Heribert, Bishop of Eichstätt in 1021, rimed more confidently, but still

without insistence.

Salve, crux sancta, salve mundi gloria,

Vera spes nostra, vera ferens gaudia,

Signum salutis, salus in periculis,

Vitale lignum, vitam portans omnium....

AH 50: 291.

The danger of insistence in rimed stress verse was already evident in

many accentual hexameters riming the end of the verse with the middle.

How easily the combination lapses into doggerel appears in a common

seven-stress verse with marked cæsura (4 + 3).

Gratiæ millesimo ducentesimoque

Anno sexagesimo quarto quarta quoque

Feria Pancratii post sollempnitatem

Valde gravis prelii tulit tempestatem

Anglorum turbatio castroque Lewensi,

Nam furori ratio, vita cessit ensi....

_The Battle of Lewes_ (in Wright’s _Political Songs_,

Camden Society, 1839, page 72).

Such mechanical versifying merely makes obvious that stress rhythm was

the established habit.[46] By the twelfth century anything else was

merely literary exercise, quite out of the literary current; and the

danger of obtruding the stress pattern of failing to fuse it with the

other means of suggestion, was more and more expertly avoided.

How far even a very marked pattern of stress and rime could be carried

was demonstrated in the famous _De contemptu mundi_ of Bernard of

Cluny.[47] Though its arraignment of his age soon faded, its detail of

doom and redemption, its realization of eternal life, showed poetic

vitality. Bernard’s failure in organizing the movement of the whole is

thus forgotten in the striking success of these parts.[48]

Nescio, nescio quæ jubilatio, lux tibi qualis,

Quam socialia gaudia, gloria quam specialis.

Laude studens ea tollere, mens mea victa fatiscit.

O bona gloria, vincor; in omnia laus tua vicit.

Stant Sion atria conjubilantia, martyre plena,

Cive micantia, Principe stantia, luce serena.

The heavenly Jerusalem has never been contrasted with the cities of the

perverted present more eloquently. For Bernard’s achievement of style is

rather in the ample realizations of eloquence than in poetic compression.

The poetic distinction is in the verse. The sheer technical mastery of

insistently rimed stress rhythm shows the possibilities of the verse

habit of his time.

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt; vigilemus.

Ecce minaciter imminet arbiter, ille supremus.

Thus the poem begins; and the cento made from it is often entitled[49]

_Hora novissima_. Accentual hexameters rimed within—the Leonine system

carried a step further—are rimed together as couplets. They are entirely

dactylic except in the last foot; the typical ancient variation by

spondee within the line is never used. Finally they are divided into

three staves of two beats each, thus foregoing another ancient variation,

the shift of cæsura. The first two staves of each line rime together; the

last rimes with the last stave of the next line. The pattern could hardly

be more marked. Yet the drumming dactyls, the insistent rime, are kept

in movement; they do not stall even when the weaving of the line becomes

sheer virtuosity.

Pax ea pax rata, pax superis data, danda modestis.

Bernard demonstrated that even insistently rimed stress rhythm could be

kept from jar and jingle by attending constantly to movement. For this he

exhibited further the capacity of accentual dactyls. More generally he

displayed with great technical skill the range and flexibility of rhythm

always chiming with word-accent, that is always answering the habit of

speech.

The currency of rimed stress verse is obvious in student songs and

other jocular and satirical poems known generically as Goliardic.[50] A

little satire on masters and bachelors of arts, assigned to the eleventh

century, is typical of the ease with which such verse could be turned.

Jam fit magister artium

Qui nescit quotas partium

De vero fundamento.

Habere nomen appetit,

Rem vero nec curat nec scit,

Examine contento.

Jam fiunt baccalaurii

Pro munere denarii

Quamplures idiotæ.

In artibus ab aliis

Egregiis scientiis

Sunt bestiæ promotæ.

E. du Méril, _Poésies populaires du moyen

âge_, Paris, 1847, page 153.

Of the numerous twelfth- and thirteenth-century poems of this sort, many

of which have been repeated ever since, none is more famous than the

drinking song once attributed to Walter Map.

Mihi est propositum in taberna mori.

Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,

Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori:

Deus sit propitius huic potatori....

Du Méril, 205.

2. Variations in Trochaic Stanza

Rime no longer incidental, but integral and composing, opened to medieval

poetic wide artistic possibilities of stanza. The austere requiem

sequence of Thomas of Celano, _Dies iræ_, is cast in three-line trochaic

stanzas of a single rime.

Dies iræ, dies illa,

Solvet sæclum in favilla,

Teste David cum Sibylla.

Quantus tremor est futurus

Quando Judex est venturus,

Cuncta stricte discussurus!...

Britt, 87.

That forty of the forty-five hymns assigned by Misset-Aubry to Adam of

St. Victor are trochaic shows the strong preference of the time. The

commonest of these trochaic stanzas, the favorite hymn measure of the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries, expands _Corde natus_ into a six-line

stanza by doubling the first stave in a riming couplet twice and using

the second stave between the two couplets and at the riming end.

In natale Salvatoris

angelorum nostra choris

succinat conditio.

Armonia diversorum

sed in unum redactorum

dulcis est connexio.

Felix dies hodiernus,

in quo Patri coeternus

nascitur ex virgine;

felix dies et iocundus!

illustrari gaudet mundus

veri solis lumine....

Adam of St. Victor, _In die Natali Domini_.

Using this scheme oftener than any other, Adam rarely holds to it

throughout a hymn. His way is rather to vary it in one or two stanzas;

and in some of his hymns he even interpolates a stanza of a different

measure. For example, the ninth stanza of this Christmas hymn departs

entirely from the pattern except in the middle and end lines.

Quam subtile Dei consilium,

quam sublime rei misterium!

virga florem,

vellus rorem,

virgo profert filium.

Nec pudorem lesit conceptio,

nec virorem floris emissio:

concipiens

et pariens

comparatur lilio.

This is the only variation; all the other stanzas are regular. The _Lauda

Sion_ sequence of St. Thomas Aquinas varies the measure but slightly; and

the _Stabat Mater_ keeps it strictly—even reinforces it with additional

rimes.

Adam’s harmonizing of rimed rhythmic, conspicuous above, has great range

and variety. The range appears in the following contrast:

Suggestor sceleris

pulsus a superis

per huius aeris

oberrat spacia,

dolis invigilat,

virus insibilat;

sed hunc adnichilat

presens custodia.

_St Michael_, v (Misset-Aubry 214)

Salve dies dierum gloria,

dies felix Christi victoria,

dies digna iugi leticia,

dies prima!

Lux divina cecis irradiat

in qua Christus infernum spoliat,

mortem vincit et reconciliat

summis ima.

Feria IV [_Pasche_], i (Misset-Aubry 185)

Within a hymn the variations are delicate adjustments. The hymn on the

Cross strikes the familiar measure, swerves from it, returns to it,

varies it.

Laudes crucis attollamus,

nos qui crucis exultamus

speciali gloria.

Dulce melos

tangat celos,

dulce lignum

dulci dignum

credimus melodia.

Voce vita non discordet;

cum vox vitam non remordet,

dulcis est simphonia.

Servi crucis crucem laudent

qui per crucem sibi gaudent

vite dari munera.

Dicant omnes et dicant singuli:

Ave, salus totius seculi,

arbor salutifera.

O quam felix, quam preclara

hec salutis fuit ara,

rubens agni sanguine,

agni sine macula

qui mundavit secula

ab antiquo crimine!

_De cruce_, i-iv (Misset-Aubry 189)

3. Symbolism

Quite as widely Adam realized the poetic possibilities of symbolism.

Imagination in the middle age was stirred habitually by types. As these

spoke in sculpture and glass they spoke in the hymns. Medieval symbolism

sought to induce mood, to stir emotion, not by individualizing concrete

details, but by familiar typical associations: lamb, vine, star of the

sea. Such symbols, long ago drawn from Messianic prophecy,[51] had become

both numerous and familiar. They differ essentially from the figures

of the _poetriæ_ in being not decoration, not epithets or periphrases

used instead of proper names, but immediate lyrical approaches. _Light_

is used, not instead of the sacred name, or of some such title as

Redeemer or Savior, but to focus attention on the Light of the World.

So _Cornerstone_,[52] or _Lamb_, or _Bread_, suggests redemption

immediately in one aspect. So the Redeemer is seen to be foreshadowed

in Isaac,[53] Joseph, or David; for medieval art sees history as the

progress of the redemption of mankind.

In this aspect the symbols of the Virgin Mother are lyric not merely

in warmth of emotion, but in visions of human progress as divine. In

turn _Bush_ burning but unburnt, _Flower_, _Fleece_ bedewed, _Star_

immemorially guiding sailors, she embodies personally hope after hope.

This habitual symbolism of stone and glass and hymn is less sentimental

than intellectual. While it appeals to childhood memories, it opens

vistas. The surcharging of the Corpus Christi hymns does not cloud their

scholastic precision.

Ecce, panis angelorum,

Factus cibus viatorum,

Vere panis filiorum,

Non mittendus canibus.

In figuris præsignatur,

Cum Isaac immolatur,

Agnus Paschæ deputatur,

Datur manna patribus.

_Lauda Sion_, x; AH 50: 584.

Panis angelicus fit panis hominum,

Dat panis cælicus figuris terminum;

O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum

Servus pauper et humilis.

_Sacris sollemniis_, vi; AH 50: 587.

Keeping much of the tradition of its earliest centuries, hymnody has

nevertheless widened its range; keeping communal devotion, it has risen

in contemplation. This is the character of the poetry written for the

new feast by the Angelic Doctor.[54] The enthusiasm of the popular

processions is answered, but it is also brought to its goal. The

greatest medieval hymns obliterate the crude distinction between “reason”

and “feeling,” between “thought” and “emotion.” They remind us of that

ancient saying about the sublime, that it springs from intellectual vigor

of conception.[55] That is why, of all medieval poetry, they are the best

approach to the _Divina Commedia_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Pages 129, 152.

[2] In 1199; represents the new school of Paris as against the

conservatives of Orléans; 2645 hexameters; in use at Troyes, 1436 (Carré

(G.), _L’enseignement secondaire à Troyes_, Paris, 1888, pages 18, 19,

49).

First printed at Venice by Wendelin of Spires, 1470; more than 160

editions by 1500 (Allen (P.), _The Age of Erasmus_, page 41), though

meantime attacked by Valla and Sulpitius Verulanus.

Ed. Reichling (D.) Berlin, 1893, with an introduction of 300 pages,

including the researches of Thurot. See also Manacorda, index.

Generally speaking, the _Doctrinale_ was current throughout Europe for

three hundred years.

Fierville (Ch.) exhibits the interesting return to Priscian of a

thirteenth-century grammarian evidently dissatisfied with the method of

Alexander (_Une grammaire inédite du xiiie siècle ..._ Paris, 1886).

[3] About 1212, _Græcismus de figuris et octo partibus orationis, sive

grammaticæ regulæ versibus latinis explicatæ_; mentioned by Henri

d’Andeli (ed. Paetow, 49, 50); by Reginald Pecock, _Reule_ (ed. Greet, E.

E. T. S., 251); printed 1487, Paris; reprinted in Corpus grammaticorum

latinorum medii ævi, vol. I, Wratislaviæ, 1887. See Manacorda, index.

[4] In this part (III) he makes bold to say (1559): “Cum sim Christicola,

normam non est mihi cura / de propriis facere quæ gentiles posuere.” In

the next part also (IV, accents) he insists on the habit of the actual

Latin verse of the time (2295): “hos solos usu debes servare moderno”;

and again (2329) “Accentus normas legitur posuisse vetustas; / non tamen

has credo servandas tempore nostro.”

[5] The first list (2365), pleonasmos, is: acyrologia, cacosyntheton,

eclipsis, tautologia, amphibologia, tapinosis, macrologia, perissologia,

cacenphaton, aleoteta.

The second, metaplasmus (2405), appears as: prothesis, epenthesis,

paragoge, auferesis (syncopa, apocopa), systola, ectasis, etc.

The third, schema (2445), is: prolempsis, zeugma, sylempsis, hypozeuxis,

anadiplosis, epanalempsis, epizeuzis, anaphora, paronomœon, schesis

onomaton, homoteleuton, paronomasia, polyptoton, etc.

The fourth, tropi (2497), is: metaphora, metonomia, antonomasia,

catachresis, onomatopœia, synodoche, allegoria, hyperbole, etc.

[6] F, cardinal for these _poetriæ_, and a most important contribution

to medieval poetic, studies dates, ascriptions, and relations, provides

analytical tables of contents, sums up in its introduction the common

rhetorical doctrine, and for three of these authors establishes critical

texts. The fourth and latest, Johannes de Garlandia, will be found in

Mari.

[7] Ad informationem puerilis disciplinæ quasdam dictiones quæ

cooperativæ sunt ... interserui. II. 12 (F 154). Qui in scolastico

exercitio fabulas circinantes poeticas. IV. 1 (F 180). In scolastico

versificandi exercitio. IV. 16 (P 184).

[8] II. 15-26 (F 155-160). He adds: “sunt et aliæ terminationes

adjectivorum; sed in prælibatis ornatior verborum festivitas et

elegantior junctura potest assignari.” (F 155).

[9] I. 50-58, 107-111 (F 121-132, 146-149). For the practise at Speier,

see above, page 141.

[10] See note 5, above.

[11] III. 45.

[12] Sunt igitur attributa personæ undecim: nomen, natura, convictus,

fortuna, habitus, studium, affectio, consilium, casus, facta, orationes,

I. 77 (F 136). Both the topics and their application are descended from

the encomium of sophistic. See above, page 31.

[13] Above, note 7, and page 141.

[14]

Latius ut curras, sit apostropha quarta morarum

Qua rem detineas et ubi spatieris ad horam.

264.

Septima succedit prægnans Descriptio verbis,

Ut dilatet opus.

554.

A hundred lines later Geoffrey can still say:

Restat adhuc aliud quod linguam reddit opimam.

So certain is he of dilation as the mode of poetry that he demands

support for it even of Horace.

Multiplice forma

Dissimuletur idem; varius sis et tamen idem.

224.

The doctrine is no less insistent in his prose treatise, also printed in

F. See especially II. 2. A. (F 271-284).

[15] Tale of the Nun’s Priest, 521 (B 4531). The allusions are to

_Poetria_ 326 (Anglia regnorum regina), 375 (O Veneris lacrimosa dies).

For the significance of Chaucer’s satire here, see below, Chapter X. D.

3. Chaucer’s use of the contemporary rhetorical fund is discussed in

Manly’s “Chaucer and the Rhetoricians,” London, 1927 (British Academy,

Warton Lecture on English Poetry XVII, read June, 1926).

[16] See in general Chapter I, and in particular the index. Faral acutely

notes Geoffrey’s mention of Sidonius.

[17] See above, Chapter VI. D. Geoffrey presents Lady Poetry (61)

substantially as Alain presents Lady Rhetoric (_Anticlaudianus_ III. ii,

quoted above, page 174); and Alain tags with the same _colores_ Cicero

and Vergil in two successive lines (I. iv, above, page 174).

[18] Composed in some thousand elegiacs, to which are appended specimens

of various _rhythmi_. The author is called by Faral, to distinguish him

from Évrard de Béthune, Évrard l’allemand.

[19]

Nostra comes fida,

Poesis, 224.

Grammatical famulans subit ingeniosa

Poesis, 253.

[20]

Viribus apta suis pueris ut lectio detur,

Auctores tenero fac ut ab ore legas.

599.

The following titles, which are sometimes given allusively, are indicated

in F.

[21] For this medieval textbook see Hamilton (G. L.) in Modern Philol.

VII (1909), 169-185. The work, which is of the middle of the ninth

century, is assigned by Manitius (I. 570) to Godescalc, as the name

suggests. It is called an eclogue because of the matching of pagan with

Christian instances between Pseustis and Alethia, with final appeal to

Phronesis. John of Salisbury alludes to it, _Metalogicus_, 859 C.

[22] These items appear also in the later schoolbooks known as _Auctores_

(_Autores_, _Actores_) _octo_. The one used at Troyes in 1436 contained:

a Cathonet, a Théodolet, a Facet (_Facetus_), _Carmen de contemptu

mundi_, Matthew’s _Tobias_, Alain’s _Parabolæ_, an Ysopet, and a Fleuret

(_Floretus_), and added Sulpicius of Veroli’s _De moribus puerorum_

(Carré, _L’enseignement secondaire à Troyes ..._ Paris, 1888, page 20).

Cf. Paetow’s ed. of Henri d’Andeli, 16, 37, 53. The same contents, with

some variations of order, appear in two sixteenth-century _Autores_

printed at Lyon. See also Haskins, 131.

[23] For the three styles of ancient rhetoric, see ARP 56, 57-59, 228;

for St. Augustine’s application, above, page 68; for the transfer to

poetic, Geoffrey’s prose treatise II. 145 (F 312), John’s _Rota Virgili_

below, page 192, and Walter of Speier above, page 144.

[24] Bernard Silvester is one more reminder of _dictamen_.

[25] _Ars versificatoria_ II. 43 (F 166).

[26] For instance, the pattern of the _Hora novissima_, below, page 199.

[27] I am unable to follow always the classification in F.

[28] _Dictamen_, however (for which see below, Chapter VIII), is in the

background of all these manuals. The title is _Poetria magistri Johannis

anglici de arte prosayca metrica et rithmica_.

[29] Chapter I.

[30] The numbers refer to the pages of Mari’s edition in Romanische

Forschungen XIII.

[31] Matthew begins with the same topics, but without the perverted

ancient terms.

[32] Reproduced in F. 87. Vergil exemplifies _genus tenue_ in the

_Bucolics_, _medium_ in the _Georgics_, _grande_ in the _Æneid_.

[33] For the ancient _narratio_ see the index to ARP.

[34] See above, page 131.

[35] _Trésor_ III, part I. ii and xxxvii; Chabaille 471 and 518.

[36] See the section on Brunetto Latini, D. 4 of the preceding chapter.

It is noticeable that he too is preoccupied with _dictamen_. For the

elementary exercises _fabula_, _historia_, _argumentum_, see the tabular

view of Quintilian in ARP 64, compare the section on Hermogenes in

Chapter I above, and consult the index to this volume.

[37] Utuntur notarii domini pape, 928. Fierville, in the study mentioned

above, note 2, finds: (1) stilus gallicus seu Aurelianensis, based on

stress (i.e., rhythmic), (2) stilus Tullianus, based on quantities, (3)

stilus romane curie. See below, Chapter VIII, B and C.

[38] Primo dierum, AH 51: 24.

[39] As in Matthew; see note 12 above.

[40] The references are to the pages of Mari’s _Trattati_. One of John’s

own poems (AH 50: 554) ends each stanza with a hexameter taken from

Vergil, Ovid, or Lucan.

[41] As a document also it is interesting both for its examples and, if

the text may be trusted, for some of its terms: “a rithmo qui constat ex

duabus _percussionibus_” (35); “in prosis que cantantur in ecclesia” (42,

the regular twelfth-century use, as for the hymns of Adam of St. Victor);

“frequenter contigit in gallicis consonantiis” (59); “sed in toto ymnario

quo nos utimur nonnisi tres diversitates metri autentice sunt” (60).

[42] For the common derivation of the _colores_ from the _Rhetorica ad

Herennium_ see the valuable tables in F 52-54.

[43] F presents many interesting correspondences, with indications for

further study.

[44] See above, Chapter V, footnote 31.

[45] Part of the interesting collection of Fulbert’s verse in PL 141 is

printed as prose.

[46] The ignoring of the quantity of an unstressed syllable appears in

such rimes as _chórīs_ with _salvatórĭs_, _vītā_ with _levítă_. Every

dissyllable stresses the penult (Alexander de Villedieu, _Doctrinale_,

2299); and the disregard of quantity is even more marked in calling it

indifferently a spondee. See below, Chapter VIII, note 44.

[47] Called also Bernard of Morlaix or Morlas. The poem, some 3000 lines,

is of 1140. It is printed in Wright’s _Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and

Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century_, vol. II, London, 1872 (Rolls

Series). A considerable portion, including the familiar parts, is in

Harrington’s _Medieval Latin_, Boston, 1925, pages 315-322. Bernard’s

rime is no less insistent in his _Mariale_, AH 50: 426.

[48] The modern revival of these parts is due largely to John Mason

Neale. His _Rhythm of Bernard de Morlaix, monk of Cluny, on the

celestial country_ gives verse renderings beginning: “The world is very

evil,” “Brief life is here our portion,” “There Jesus shall embrace

us,” “For thee O dear, dear country,” “Jerusalem the golden,” with

the corresponding Latin text (first ed. 1858; seventh, 1865). _Britt_

(170-173) quotes large portions.

[49] As in the musical setting of Horatio Parker.

[50] For an introduction to the Goliardic poetry see the article

_Goliard_ in Encyclopedia Britannica, with its bibliography.

[51] See the _Hymnum dicat turba fratrum_ above, page 120; the seven

Advent antiphons (_O Sapientia_, etc.) known as the seven O’s, and

_symbolism_ in the index.

[52] Lapis, petra, fundamentum, silex, etc., and further, mel de petra,

oleum de saxo, etc.

[53] This is one of the suggestions that Adam seems to have taken from

Hugh of the same community.

Adam’s most frequently recurring symbols are grouped conveniently in

relation to medieval habit by Misset-Aubry, pages 56-110.

[54] The doctrine of transubstantiation was promulgated by Innocent III

at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215; the feast of Corpus Christi, by

Urban IV in 1264, for the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. The proper hymns

were written by St. Thomas Aquinas: _Lauda, Sion_ for the sequence of the

Mass; _Pange, lingua_ (containing _Tantum ergo_), _Sacris sollemniis_,

_Verbum supernum_ (containing _O salutaris_), for the office; _Adoro te

devote_, for adoration. See AH 50: 583-591; _Britt_, pages 173-192.

[55] ARP 123, 124.

CHAPTER VIII

_DICTAMEN_

REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS

Bornecque Bornecque (H.), _Les clausules métriques latines_,

Lille, 1907, Travaux et mémoires de l’Université de

Lille (for the ancient tradition, but including late

Latin).

Butow Butow (A.), _Die Entwicklung der mittelalt. Briefsteller_,

Greifswald (dissertation), 1908.

Clark Clark (A. C.), _The cursus in medieval and vulgar

Latin_, Oxford, 1910. See also his _Fontes prosæ

numerosæ_, Oxford, 1909.

Clerval (as in headnote to Chapter VI).

Croll Croll (M. W.), _The cadence of English oratorical

prose_, Studies in philology, 16 (1919): 1-55.

Fierville Fierville (C.), _Une grammaire latine inédite du xiiie

siècle_, Paris, 1886.

Gaudenzi Gaudenzi (A.), _Sulla cronologia delle opere dei dettatori

bolognesi da Buoncompagno a Bene di Lucca_,

Bulletino dell’ istituto storico italiano, 14 (1895):

85. See also in Bibliotheca iuridica medii ævi, vol.

II, Bologna, 1892, his _Rainerii de Perusia ars notaria_

(page 25) and _Boncompagni rhetorica novissima_ (page 240).

Hahn Hahn (S. F.), _Collectio monumentorum ..._,

Braunschweig, 1724.

Harmon Harmon (A. M.), _The clausula in Ammianus Marcellinus_,

New Haven, 1910, Conn. Acad. of Arts and Sciences.

Havet Havet (L.), _La prose métrique de Symmache ..._

Paris, 1892.

Langlois Langlois (C. V.), _Formulaires de lettres ..._, six

articles in NE, 34 (parts 1 and 2), 35 (part 2).

Manacorda (as in headnote to Chapter VI).

MGH _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica._

NE _Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque

Nationale...._

Paetow Paetow (L. J.), _The arts course at medieval universities

with special reference to grammar and rhetoric_,

University of Illinois Studies, vol. 3, No. 7, Jan.,

1910. See also the bibliography in his _Guide to the

study of medieval history_, University of California

Press, 1917.

PL _Patrologia latina_ (Migne) cited by volume and column.

Polheim Polheim (K.), _Die lateinische Reimprosa_, Berlin, 1925.

Poole Poole (R. L.), _Lectures on the history of the Papal

chancery ..._, Cambridge (University Press), 1915.

Rockinger Rockinger (L.), _Briefsteller und Formelbücher ..._,

2 vols., Munich, 1863-1804, Quellen zur bayerisch.

u. deutsch. gesch.

Thurot Thurot (C.), _Notices et extraits ... pour servir à

l’histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen âge_,

Paris, 1868, in NE 22, part 2 (entire).

Toynbee Toynbee (P.), _Dantis Alagherii epistolæ ..._ with

introduction, translation, notes, and indices, and

appendix on the _cursus_, Oxford, 1920.

Vacandard Vacandard (E.), _Le cursus, son origine, son histoire,

son emploi dans la liturgie_, Revue des questions

historiques, n. s., 34 (1905): 59-102.

Valois Valois (N.), _De arte scribendi epistolas apud gallicos

medii ævi scriptores rhetoresve_, Paris, 1880, in Bibl.

de l’École des Chartes, 22: 161, 257.

The art of letter-writing, especially the composition of official and

other ceremonious letters, was of cardinal importance in the middle age.

Even to-day, when letters of affairs are facilitated and multiplied by

devices for dictation and despatch, it has a field smaller than the

medieval in proportion to the other means of communication. Since these

conditions lasted into modern times, letter-writing kept its importance

throughout the Renaissance; but its art, developed in Latin antiquity

and keeping for all affairs of moment the Latin language, became in the

middle age a necessary ally alike to law and to diplomacy. _Dictamen_ was

a recognized profession and an habitual means of education. The model for

the official correspondence of the western world was the Papal Chancery.

The chief center of teaching was Bologna.[1] Though there was rivalry at

Orléans, there was a recognized primacy of _stilus Romanus_.

No medieval form of writing has come down to us more abundantly in

manuscripts; and none is more abundantly available in print. In addition

to the collections of letters by famous men, or included with them, are

many form-letters preserved as models.[2] Medieval epistolary habits

are thus amply exemplified as the most widespread applications of the

study of style. As a fine art medieval diplomatic correspondence is seen

at its finest in the letters of John of Salisbury. The expertness that

illuminated even routine affairs and determined the direction of great

ones was recognized in his own day. The Archbishop of Rheims, writing to

the Pope concerning the exile of the Archbishop of Canterbury, leaves the

form of his letter to John.[3] At an earlier crisis of that exile, when

Becket cried out against Henry’s influence at Rome, the indignation of

the great prelate was submitted to the great secretary; and he was too

faithful a friend to forget his art.

On reading the letter that you have decided to send to the lord

William of Pavia, though I dare not judge its intention, I

cannot approve its literary conception.... If the items of your

letter are thus brought up one by one, your reply will seem to

have proceeded rather from bitterness and rancor than from the

singleness of charity. _Ep._ 220; PL 199: 246.

Having shown a list of grievances to be ineffective as composition,

he adds immediately that accusations are dangerous as style. But not

stopping with criticism, he took the great hazard upon himself in the

following letter to the same Cardinal.

Popular rumor reports to us that you and the lord Otto,

Cardinal Deacon of the Holy Roman Church, invited by our

illustrious lord the King of the English, and commissioned by

Papal mandate, are come down to the Aquitanian country, with

the help of God by your best endeavor to restore to the English

Church its inalienable freedom, and to renew peace and concord

between the king and the archbishop. By princes, yea, and even

by prelates, it has been heard that our aforesaid lord the king

so trusts your devotion that his acceptance of your advice in

every particular is a foregone conclusion: in my exceeding

joy whereat, I have decided that I too should ask advice of

you and assistance, ready in all things to obey you, saving

my freedom of conscience and my personal honor. For I trust

in the Lord that with you consideration of personages and of

rewards will not be so influential that by any of your actions

the Church shall be injured, scandal be engendered in lay folk,

or your bright reputation be darkened. These, indeed, are the

works of men by whom either the law is unknown or its Author

is disregarded. Not such are you, whose good faith and whose

prudence the Lord has so honored with his approval that you

are set before the world upon the golden candlestick of seven

lamps as a lantern and as a beacon, that yours may be the light

for all men that enter. On you, therefore, all men are fixing

their observation; and many fear lest the temptation of Lucifer

should end in extinction and in ruin, lest the intimacy with

the king, which they say you have lately been cementing, be to

you beginning of dereliction. And indeed,

Sin will be judged by intent; but its crime becomes greater

and greater

Strictly with every degree of the criminal’s office and

station.

(Juvenal, III. viii. 140.)

But in the meantime I am hopeful that this intimacy between you

and the king, which to many is so suspect, will be fruitful to

the Church, necessary to us, salutary to him, to you a further

glory. For if he gives you obedience where even legal necessity

binds him, and where any evasion would be at the risk of his

salvation, without doubt he will be repentant, will confess his

transgression, and humbly giving the Church satisfaction, will

restore to us all peace and freedom with our stolen integrity,

and will tear quite out of his heart the hate of his brethren.

Otherwise what power is able to save him from the snare of the

devil?

I am most certain, since it is indubitably true and even most

obvious, that not even Peter himself received of the Lord such

plenitude of commission that he could absolve the impenitent;

and it no less certainly follows that if stolen goods can be

restored and are not restored, the move is not penitence, but

stratagem. Where, therefore, the prince of the apostles has

restricted authority, no argument will convince me that power

can be validly exercised by any man whatsoever. I admit, for

it is true, that our lord the king, as a prince among the

most glorious, is most highly to be considered, but with the

condition that God be never offended. Otherwise arises a form

of idolatry, when on whatsoever pretext of expediency the

creature is put above the Creator, as we are taught by Paul

the apostle. Wrongs are not to be done that good things may

issue; nor may any right of dispensation counter the Lord’s

commandment, which in law or in gospel has always the final

ruling.

As for me, that you may the more conveniently advise me, that

the cry of the poor man may be admitted to have its hearing,

exile for me has now passed its fourth year; notwithstanding

my lord the king, by me and through others, has often been

notified that, though at the bar of my conscience I have not

deserved his anger, yet to regain his favor I would gladly

perform whatever might please him, saving my conscience and

the integrity of my honor. Certain intermediaries, indeed,

have approached me, suggesting that I withdraw my fidelity and

devotion from the lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and swear

fidelity to the king and observance of the laws of the kingdom.

Because I cannot do this, and will not, for it is against my

conscience and my honor, proscribed as an exile, I shall be

gladly an exile till God shall deliver me. Am I to break my

obligation of obedience when the Church is in danger, and God

in the trial? Father and suzerain deserted, am I to swear to

laws disapproved by the canons, when our lord the Pope in

council at Sens with the brethren, with yourselves, I imagine,

in audience, has denounced them? Nay, I would not swear that I

had kept all the canons, or even all the gospel, since, as the

apostle sadly reminds us, in much we have all been offenders.

A lesser wickedness is simple prevarication than prevarication

that is loaded with perjury. Well I know that perjury,

disobedience, or any other baseness whatsoever, no one dare

impute to your Lordships.

But since I fear you may weary of my wordiness, my words shall

reach their conclusion, a fervent prayer that you may be

zealous to end the misery of a Church too long in danger of

foundering, and to defend us from the assaults of unremitting

injustices.

May my lord fare well, and upon the proscripts of Christ may he

have mercy. For I am interceding in the name of all my fellows

in exile; and if I fail of my consolation, none the less I

shall hold myself paid by whatever I know the other proscripts

of Christ to have through your offices. _Ep._ 221; PL 199:

247.[4]

Medieval letters, long studied for history, should be better known as

literature.

Less available, though for our purposes more directly important, are the

manuals. Called generically _ars dictaminis_ (or _dictandi_), or _summa

dictaminis_, they are sometimes brief introductions to the formularies,

sometimes substantial and detailed separate works. The latter have much

less often than the formularies been printed. The ampler manuals apply to

letter-writing a review of both grammar and rhetoric. This is instructive

in Conrad’s _Summa de arte prosandi_.[5] The _Boncompagnus_,[6] so

widely used that Boncompagno’s name, like Donatus, became a common noun,

is amplified rather by diffuseness and by abundance of specimens. The

_Rhetorica novissima_[7] of the same author is at once over-divided

and ill-digested. Equally diffuse and equally relying on specimens, it

appeals to students of law by deliberate and often inept variations from

the traditional lore of rhetoric. The vogue of Thomas of Capua is hardly

explained by the meager printed text of his _Dictator_.[8] None of these

is at once so ample and so specific as a work by a Florentine of the

Bolognese school, perhaps Bene of Florence, entitled _Candelabrum_.[9]

A. THE RHETORIC OF _DICTAMEN_

The international affairs of the Roman Curia demanded and developed

professional _notarii_.[10] Their first and abiding concern was

precision. Legal correctness of language, exactitude, systematic

verification and record, precaution against tampering and forgery, all

demanded an elaborate technical skill. This was _ars notaria_ in the

stricter sense, an important branch of the practise of law, especially

of canon law.[11] Beyond legal correctness and dignity it developed

style befitting Rome. Privileges,[12] decrees, mandates, dispensations,

commissions, and other forms observed exact appropriateness and rhythms

that were at once marks of authenticity and models. The same care

extended to diplomatic correspondence. The documents in both fields, a

mine for students of medieval history, amply attest the importance of

_dictamen_ as a profession.[13]

So wide a demand would of itself have maintained schools of professional

technic. But since the technic demanded preliminary general training,

it became a development of _rhetorica_. Not only so; it divided with

preaching the whole field of daily prose composition. In current

application oral composition was preaching, written composition was

_dictamen_. The two were the typical medieval fields for the ancient

lore of persuasion. The manuals of _dictamen_ often begin by defining

it in the general sense of writing.[14] Dividing all writing into (1)

_metricum_, the ancient quantitative verse still taught as a branch

of _grammatica_, (2) _rithmicum_, the accentual rimed verse of the

hymns, and (3) _prosaicum_, they confine themselves to the third, and

make it equivalent to letter-writing (_prosaicum vel epistolare_). To

this they apply the current ancient authorities, _De inventione_ and

_Ad Herennium_, adding for its maxims of aptness _Ars poetica_. The

ampler manuals include the sacred list of figures obligatory in the

_poetriæ_.[15] Otherwise the application of the ancient rhetoric is

practical and pointed.

For in fact the ancient lore was immediately and practically applicable.

It did not, as in the _poetriæ_, have to be perverted. Of the

traditional five parts of ancient rhetoric, _inventio_, _dispositio_,

and _elocutio_, though not _pronuntiatio_ and _memoria_, bear directly

on letters, whereas the first two have nothing properly to do with

verse-writing. _Elocutio_ is applied practically by being focused on the

cardinal ancient virtue of appropriateness; artistically, by elaborating

_compositio_ as prose rhythm. Immediately adaptable were the five

parts of a speech. The _exordium_ is always cardinal in a letter as

_benevolentiæ captatio_. _Narratio_ applies exactly in its proper sense

of statement of the facts. _Petitio_, though it has less scope, is quite

pertinent. _Conclusio_, though varying most from its ancient function,

has some general correspondence. In a word, the classical doctrine for

the parts of a speech applied to a letter by mere reduction of scale.

_Dictamen_ was equally practical in actual teaching. Besides giving

exercises in correctness, it compelled attention to elegance. Its

study of appropriateness was readily extended by such imaginary

adaptations as were inculcated in the ancient _prosopopœia_, and thus

provided in writing the kind of practise sought orally in the ancient

_controversiæ_.[16] John of Garlandia’s confused combination of verse and

prose in a single manual[17] is insufficient to prove that the two were

often taught concurrently; and the higher tone of the _artes dictandi_

suggests that they were addressed to older pupils.

B. DIGEST OF _CANDELABRUM_ I-V[18]

Book I. Choice of Words, Rhythmical Composition of Sentences

_Dictamen_ is defined with the usual inclusiveness as apt and elegant

writing, inseparable from subject matter, depending on native ability,

teaching, and practise, using to some extent all five traditional parts

of rhetoric, but mainly style (_elocutio_).

Exercising in all three styles (_humilis_, _mediocris_,

_sublimis_),[19] it must beware of the corresponding

vices: aridity, looseness, inflation. Its three requisites

are choiceness of diction (_elegantia_), sentence skill

(_compositio_), and dignity (_dignitas_, _ornatus_).

Choiceness, or elegance, includes both purity (_latinitas_,

the avoidance of barbarisms and solecisms, and, more widely,

exactness of syntax) and lucidity (_explanatio_, including such

figures as are illustrative).

All the rest of Book I is devoted to _compositio_ as rhythm.

“_Compositio_ is order polished smooth (_ordinatio verborum

equabiliter perpolita_). If, therefore, we wish to give

discourse this charm, we must so change the natural order

that speech may have a _cursus_[20] charming and smooth and

that we may not seem to talk vulgarly. _Compositio_ seems

to be threefold: natural, casual (_fortuita_), and apt [i.e.,

adjusted, called below artistic]. The natural, proper to

expositors, reduces the artistry of discourse to the natural

order. Even in this the _dictator_ must give most careful

attention to elegance.... If following the natural order

does not give elegance, that superficial _compositio_ is

inadmissible. Casual may be called that which, regarding only

elegance, arranges words not artistically, but with simple

freedom. It is observed in manuals and in the Scriptures,

and commended by holy men; for, as says the apostle, ‘the

kingdom of God consists not in word, but in work and power’

[1 Cor. 4. 20]. Further a certain sage says: ‘the simple word

is the guardian of our faith’. That _compositio_ is artistic

(_artificialis_) which gives the sentence charm by harmonizing

its words in equable arrangement. But this is observed in one

way at Orléans, in another by the fount of Latinity, Cicero, in

another by the Apostolic See. For the Orléans arrangement is by

imaginary dactyls and spondees; the Ciceronian tradition, by

the artistry of the several feet—a style therefore absolutely

dependent on the laws of metric. We, however, shall proceed

according to the authority of the Roman Curia, because every

one finds its style simpler.”

Considering the positions of nominatives and of oblique cases, of

relative clauses, of infinitives, of locutions fixed in certain places by

usage, the author quotes Geoffroi de Vinsauf: “A noble gravity comes from

order itself when what is joined by syntax is separated by order.”[21]

A word ending in a consonant should be followed by one beginning with a

vowel, and _vice versa_. The _cursus_ should not be continuously swift or

slow but varied:

E.g., neither _animo simplici colitur dominus_, nor

_simplicitate cordiali dominator summus perfecte veneratur_,

but _simplicitate animi perfecte dominus veneratur_.

So the _dictator_ will add, subtract, or transpose.

E.g., _Vestra amicitia presentium tenore cognoscat_ is

relieved by transposing the first two words.

He will consider the rhythms of terminations:[22]

of adjectives in _-ivus_, _-aris_, _-alis_, _-osus_, _-orus_,

_-ensis_, _-atus_ [stressed on the penult], against those in

_-icus_ and _-eus_ [stressed on the antepenult]; of verbs,

e.g., _nobilitat et coronat_, noticing that participles are

available oftener than gerunds.

The rule for cadences (_de finibus distinctionum_) is that they must

satisfy.

“The _cursus_ must not be held up by a crowded or stinted

close. Clauses (_distinctiones_) should therefore end on

polysyllables, that the whole _cursus_ may be forwarded by the

sentence-closes. For style limps and is involved in delay if

the end is suffocated by the crowding of contracted speech....

Neither monosyllables nor words of more than four syllables are

in place at the end.” The rule is then exemplified in detail.

These considerations open the large principle, fundamental in ancient

rhetoric and clearly discerned by this writer, that sentence skill

consists in composing rhythmical units in a total movement, i.e., in

composing by heard clauses.

“We have spoken often of _distinctiones_ since no discourse

can please that is indistinct.... A _distinctio_, then, is an

integral member of one sentence,[23] weaving its words in apt

order and releasing its thoughts from any tangle of doubt....

There are three kinds: ... [1] _dependens_ [later styled by its

ancient name _comma_, or _cæsum_], [2] _constans_ [a statement

complete in itself, but carrying on, _colum_, _membrum_, also

called _distinctio media_], [3] _finitiva_, that _distinctio_

in which the whole sentence is finished (_totalis clausula

terminatur_), called by the Greeks _periodus_, i.e.,

_circuitus_, or _finalis_.”[24]

In punctuation the author prefers the simple and sparing Roman use, and

deprecates applying to _dictamen_ the rules followed in pointing the

religious offices.[25]

The final consideration of this section is of sentence length. Book I

closes with general advice.

“Let the _dictator_ be so attentive in weaving his series

of sentences as not to obstruct his auditor’s ears with

burdensome words, nor to induce prolixity; but by aptness, as

well of words as of thought, let all seem to proceed so easily

(_expedite_) that each has its place as chosen fitly.”