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