There is little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of
popular Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their
existence was necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile
thread of evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the
renascence of paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to
connect that dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy.
The first point to notice is the dominance of music in this verse, and
the subjugation of the classic metres to its influence. A deeply
significant transition has been effected from the _versus_ to the
_modulus_ by the substitution of accent for quantity, and by the value
given to purely melodic cadences. A long syllable and a short
syllable have almost equal weight in this prosody, for the musical
tone can be prolonged or shortened upon either. So now the
_cantilena_, rather than the _metron_, rules the flow of verse; but,
at the same time, antique forms are still conventionally used, though
violated in the using. In other words, the modern metres of the modern
European races--the Italian Hendecasyllable, the French Alexandrine,
the English Iambic and Trochaic rhythms--have been indicated; and a
moment has been prepared when these measures shall tune themselves by
means of emphasis and accent to song, before they take their place as
literary schemes appealing to the ear in rhetoric. This phase, whereby
the metres of antiquity pass into the rhythms of the modern races,
implies the use of medieval Latin, still not unmindful of classic art,
but governed now by music often of Teutonic origin, and further
modified by affinities of prosody imported from Teutonic sources.
The next point to note is that, in this process of transition, popular
ecclesiastical poetry takes precedence of secular. The great rhyming
structures of the Middle Ages, which exercised so wide an influence
over early European literature, were invented for the service of the
Church--voluminous systems of recurrent double rhymes, intricate
rhythms moulded upon tunes for chanting, solid melodic fabrics, which,
having once been formed, were used for lighter efforts of the fancy,
or lent their ponderous effects to parody. Thus, in the first half of
the centuries which intervene between the extinction of the genuine
Roman Empire and the year 1300, ecclesiastical poetry took the lead in
creating and popularising new established types of verse, and in
rendering the spoken Latin pliable for various purposes of art.
A third point worthy of attention is, that a certain breath of
paganism, wafting perfumes from the old mythology, whispering of gods
in exile, encouraging men to accept their life on earth with genial
enjoyment, was never wholly absent during the darkest periods of the
Middle Ages. This inspiration uttered itself in Latin; for we have
little reason to believe that the modern languages had yet attained
plasticity enough for the expression of that specific note which
belongs to the Renaissance--the note of humanity conscious of its
Graeco-Roman pagan past. This Latin, meanwhile, which it employed was
fabricated by the Church and used by men of learning.