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Title: Medieval rhetoric and poetic to 1400
Interpreted from representative works

Author: Charles Sears Baldwin

Release date: September 8, 2025 [eBook #76844]

Language: English

Original publication: Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1928

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEDIEVAL
RHETORIC AND POETIC TO 1400 ***

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
{ 2. native city race
II. race
{ 3. ancestors birth
{ 4. parents nature

{ 1. pursuits education
III. education { 2. art pursuits
{ 3. laws

{ (a) manliness
{ 1. of soul
{ (b) judgment
{ (a) beauty
achievements { 2. of body { (b) speed
IV. (the main achievements
{ (c) strength
topic)
{ (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 ἐν (6) quia caritas Dei diffusa est in
ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν, cordibus nostris,
(7) διὰ πνεύματος ἁγίου τοῦ δοθέντος (7) per Spiritum sanctum qui datus
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 in (1) Væ qui opulenti estis in Sion et
Zion and trust in the mountains confiditis in monte Samariæ,
of Samaria, which are named optimates, capita populorum,
chief of the nations, to whom ingredientes pompatice domum
the house of Israel came! Israel;
(2) Pass ye unto Calneh, and see; (2) transite in Chalanne et videte, et
and from thence go ye to ite inde in Emath magnam, et

Hamath the great: then go descendite in Geth
down to Gath of the Palæstinorum, et ad optima
Philistines: be they better than quæque regna horum, si latior
these kingdoms? or their terminus eorum termino vestro
border greater than your est:
border?
(3) Ye that put away the evil day, (3) qui separati estis in diem malum,
and cause the seat of violence et adpropinquatis solio
to come near; iniquitatis;
(4) That lie upon beds of ivory, and (4) qui dormitis in lectis eburneis, et
stretch themselves upon their lascivitis in stratis vestris; qui
couches, and eat the lambs out comeditis agnum de grege, et
of the flock, and the calves out vitulos de medio armenti;
of the midst of the stall;
(5) That chant to the sound of the (5) qui canitis ad vocem psalterii:
viol,
(6) and invent to themselves (6) sicut David putaverunt se habere
instruments of musick, like vasa cantici, bibentes in phialis
David; that drink wine in vinum, et optimo unguento
bowls, and anoint themselves delibuti;
with the chief ointments:
(7) but they are not grieved for the (7) et nihil patiebantur super
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 cælo liber aperto
Suetus in ætherios ire meatus
Cernebat rosei lumina solis,
Visebat gelidæ sidera lunæ
Et quæcumque uagos stella recursus
Exercet uarios flexa per orbes,
Comprensam numeris uictor habebat.
Quin etiam causas unde sonora....

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

pervia divisi patuerunt cærula ponti

et

sicca peregrinas stupuerunt marmora plantas....

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 regum gestabat sceptra Syrorum
Fascibus indignus publicis rex, nomine Dagnus,
Celans corda lupi simulatis vultibus agni,
Et dum plumatam portarent colla coronam,
Texerat occulte serpentem forma columbæ.
Iam quid plura querar? Tigribus rabidis fuit is par.

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

{ theologia (the Boethian intellectibilis) { arithmetica
theorica
{ mathematica ( ” ” intelligibilis) { musica
(speculativa)
{ 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 II { demonstratio
{ probabilis (involving inventio and dialectica rhetorica
{ ratio disserendi
iudicium)
{ 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
{ ratio disserendi { dialectica
{ 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 ... aliqua nescire. Id quoque inter prima ... 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 ... quam in libro De institutione oratoris ... Ait
ostentationis. Ne quis igitur ... ergo: “Ne quis [and the two sentences
scientiam possit. are quoted in reverse order].”

II. iii. 3 II. vii. 864
Propter quod Timotheum ... D 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
Quid Aristotelem?... clariorem A quid de eo dicat Quintilianus:
putem. “Quid Aristotelem?... [exact
quotation].”

X. i. 125-131 I. xxii. 852 B
Ex industria Senecam ... quod [Discusses Quintilian’s view (“ut
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:—

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- Misset (l’Abbé E.) and Aubry (P.), Les proses d’Adam de St.
Aubry 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 cecinit;

Sic uterque Trinitatem unitatis prodidit.

Sapiens cum genitore sancto suo Salomon
Plane verbo declaravit esse Deo Filium,
Verbum scilicet æternum corde ejus genitum:

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.”

Book II. Figures

The second book, on stylistic ornament (ornatus, dignitas) is devoted to
the traditional figures. These are the same list from the Rhetorica ad
Herennium as serves for the poetriæ, and are rehearsed in the same order.
The author even excuses himself for not providing new examples. The book closes with
three lists of vices in sense or sound: (1) achirologia, etc., as in Alexandre de Villedieu; (2)
repetitio, etc., as in ad Herennium; (3) six derived from Ars poetica.

Book III. Salutatio

The three kinds of dictamen are: (1) prose, i.e., free composition (sermo
communis, or solutus); (2) metrical; (3) rhythmical (genus rithmicum),
which observes syllabic equality and rime.[26] “Since we have nothing,
however, to do with the two others, ... let us now proceed to the prose
dictamen, the dictamen of letters; for that is demanded of all and recognized
as of great utility. It increases eloquence, promotes favor, enlarges honors,
and often enriches the needy.” The typical parts of a letter—there may be
more, or fewer—are salutatio, exordium, petitio, conclusio. This whole

book is devoted to prescriptions for the first. The salutatio must always be
in the third person. Its order is determined by the relation of the rank or
dignity of the sender to that of the recipient, though this in certain cases is
waived. It is careful of titles and of their appropriate modifiers.

The use of Dei gratia with a title is determined specifically. “The main consideration,
however, in any salutatio is who is writing to whom; for there must always be made an
adjustment of the one to the other (collatio personarum). The Pope thus salutes the
Emperor: ‘dilecto filio F. romanorum imperatori et semper augusto’.... The Emperor calls
the Pope ‘sanctissimum in Christo patrem.’” So on down the list of dignities and
occupations[27] the author specifies what is correct, or suggests what is appropriate, in
noun and modifier, and answers certain questions of syntax.

The book closes with a protest. Merely to consult a formulary is a poor
substitute for studying the art of salutatio. It is like swimming with corks.
“The ideal (forma) of salutatio which we have here worked out, well
grasped and held, will save writers both from borrowed plumage and from
deficiency.”

Book IV. Exordium, Narratio, Petitio, Conclusio

The exordium is such a prelude to the statement of the facts as will make
the hearer[28] open-minded, well disposed, and attentive.

The reader’s sympathy is engaged by the writer’s reference to himself, to his opponent,
[29] to his reader, or to the occasion. According to the nature of the subject, the exordium
may be either direct (principium) or indirect (insinuatio). Its diction must be fluent, correct,
unstudied, i.e., it must avoid harshness, deviation from recognized usage, and pomp.[30]
Especially must the writer avoid any language that can be turned against him. To begin
with a proverb, though this is advised by some authors,[31] is to deviate the exordium from
its proper function.

Narratio, statement of the facts,[32] should be concise, transparently clear,
and plausible (brevis, dilucida, verisimilis). The application of the ancient
maxim is to the connection of narratio with exordium by proper
conjunctions and in several possible cases. Similarly are set forth the ways
of connecting it with the following petitio, which is summarily defined.
Conclusio in a letter is not, as in a speech, the logical result of proof. Rather
it is the satisfaction of whatever expectations have been aroused. It may be

affirmative, negative, or conditional, so long as it is a satisfying close.
Modes of connecting it with the rest of the letter again have most space.

Book V. Summary Review of the Preceding Books

The fifth book, reviewing all these items in the same order, constitutes a
summary manual, a summa dictaminis.

“Since I know that some will find the multiplicity of the preceding burdensome, let the
multiplicity be reduced in this book to paucity in consideration for the unlettered (rudium).
Thus, as for those who rejoice in abundance I have displayed letters both various and
adequate, so for the many of weaker stomach who wish to be fed on light diet I ought to set
forth food at once moderate and proper (honestum).” The author then proceeds seriatim
with a digest.

This book by itself provides about the same quantity of precept as
suffices in other manuals to introduce collections of specimens; but it is
exceptionally systematic.[33]

C. Cursus

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the practise of cursus became more
technical, and the use of the term more special. The Chancellor appointed
by Pope Urban II was John of Gaetà (Giovanni Gaetano), who had learned
dictamen from Alberic of Monte Cassino,[34] and who was specifically
commissioned to “reform the style of ancient grace and elegance in the
Apostolic See” and to “restore the Leonine rhythm with its lucid
rapidity.”[35] The dominant chancery style, thus reformed, embodied the
principle of rhythmical close in three types of prose cadence:

(1) cursus planus, víncla perfrégit;
(2) cursus tardus, víncla perfrégerat;
(3) cursus velox, vínculum frègerámus.[36]

The first sentence of a mandate of Innocent III shows all three.

Inter omnes munitiónes et cástra (planus)
quæ Romana ténet ecclésia (tardus)

munitionem et castrum Montis Fiasconis non solum inténdit sed cúpit
(planus)
et providéntius gùbernári (velox)
et studiósius cùstodíri (velox).[37]
The indignant closing paragraph of Dante’s letter to the Florentines begins:

O miserrima Fæsulanórum propágo (planus),
et iterum iam puníta barbáries (tardus)!
An parum timoris prælibáta incútiunt (tardus)?
Omnino vos tremere árbitror vìgilántes (velox),
Quamquam spem simuletis in facie verbóque mendáci (planus),
atque in somniis expergísci plerúmque (planus),
sive pavescentes infúsa præságia (tardus),
sive diurna consília rècoléntes (velox).[38]

The fixing of these three cadences in Roman use would of itself have
given them a vogue beyond letter-writing. Moreover they were chosen not
at random, but as typical fulfilments of rhythmical expectation. For they
appear also, though not exclusively, in the collects of the liturgy and in the
daily offices.[39] The collect for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany has all
three.
Deus qui nos in tantis perículis cònstitútos (vel.) pro humana scis fragilitate non pósse
subsístere (tard.) da nóbis salútem (plan.) méntis et córporis (tard.) ut ea quæ pro peccatis
nostris patimur (not conformed) te adjuvánte vincámus (plan.).[40]

The longer measures of the collect composed in 1264 by St. Thomas
Aquinas for Corpus Christi fall upon velox.
Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili passionis tuæ memóriam rèliquísti, tribue,
quæsumus, ita nos corporis et sanguinis tui sacra mystéria vènerári ut redemptionis tuæ
fructum in nobis júgiter sèntiámus.

The English translation, following this cadence in the first measure and the
third, departs in the second.
O God, who in this wonderful sacrament hast left us a memórial of thy pássion, grant us,
we beseech thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy body and blood [not

conformed] that we may ever perceive within ourselves the frúit of thy redémption.[41]

Hearing these cadences over and over, preachers of course used them often
in Latin sermons. Thus the cadences that were obligatory in ceremonious
letters, and habitual in other use, confirmed the conception and practise of
Latin prose as rhythmical.
The rhythmical conception of prose, as the middle age knew well, had
been dominant in classical antiquity. But medieval Latin prose, though its
tradition came through the schools of Gaul, had had its own development.
As in verse,[42] so in prose, the shift of rhythmical control to stress opened,
not a breach, but a new artistic life. Medieval Latin ran as a living language
with the movement of living speech. This was recognized even by the
grammarians.[43] So the thirteenth-century manuals of dictamen kept the
terminology of ancient metric to describe accentual rhythms[44] because
Latin to them was present as well as past, and seemed to reach indefinitely
into the future. The future, by the time of the Renaissance, was seen to be
with the vernacular for poetry. More slowly it was seen to be there also for
prose. Meantime Latin poetic and rhetoric came to be studied by revival of
antiquity. Revival translates Renaissance exactly. Italian scholars, and after
them French and English, sought to turn Latin prose back to Cicero. Though
they thus accomplished some most worthy ends, their theory and their
practise interrupted Latin prose composition. Their contemptuous rejection
of medieval rhythms hastened the processes by which Latin became a
“dead” language. In the middle age it was living. A conspicuous evidence of
its vitality, not merely a legal technic, but the formulation of a rhythmical
habit, was the cursus.

FOOTNOTES:
[1] Thurot, 91, 114 (note 2), 483 (note 1). Thurot finds Orléans more in touch
with Italy than with its own part of France.
[2] Several of the collection by Pierre de Blois in PL 207 seem to be form-
letters; and this is the main intention in the tenth-century Collectio Sangallensis,
MHG, Legum Sectio V, Formulæ, pages 390-433. See Clerval, 114, on the
letters of Fulbert in Bibl. Nat. MS 14167; 311-313, on Pierre de Blois, Étienne
de Tournay, and John of Salisbury.

[3] Scribit Remensis archiepiscopus pro causa nostra domino Papæ,
præcipiens litteras suas ad meum formari arbitrium. Ep. 286; PL, 199: 326.
[4] Ep. 223, page 389, in the collection of the letters of Gerbert, John of
Salisbury, and Stephen of Tournay printed by Ruette, Paris, 1611. Both texts,
omitting the salutatio, have the simple heading Guillelmo Papiensi. PL dates the
letter 1167.
[5] Rockinger, I. 405-482.
[6] See Gaudenzi, who also edits it in Bibliotheca iuridica, I. It is printed in
part by Rockinger, I. 121-174.
[7] Edited by Gaudenzi in Bibliotheca iuridica, II.
[8] Hahn, I. 279-385; composed mainly of specimens. For Guido Fava and
Bene di Lucca, see Gaudenzi.
[9] Described from MS Bibl. Nat. fonds St. Victor, 906, and several times
quoted, by Thurot, 414, 415, 483, 484, 485; mentioned by Clark. Manacorda, II.
266, citing Gaudenzi, says it is by Bene of Florence.
The Candelabrum is digested below, section B. 1.
[10] The term was more special than dictator, which meant more generally a
master in the art of prose; but Boncompagno, perhaps because of his legal bent,
uses the two side by side in his Rhetorica novissima: “Dictator, prout hodie
sumitur, est ille qui oratorum dicta legit et repetit, et repetita variat et
componit.... Dictatoris officium est materias sibi exhibitas vel a se aliquando
inventas congruo latino et appositione ornare: tales namque interdum notarii
appellantur.” Bibl. iurid. II. 257.
[11] Under the title Rhetorica ecclesiastica this is studied for the twelfth
century by Emil Ott in Sitzungsberichte der K. Akad. der Wissenschaften,
philosophisch-historische Klasse 125 (1891-1892), Abhandl. 8: pages 1-118,
Vienna, 1892; and in the series edited by Dr. Ludwig Wahrmund with the sub-
title Quellen zur Geschichte des römischcanonistischen Processes im Mittelalter,
Innsbruck, vol. I, 1906.
[12] E.g., the privilegia of Urban III (1185) and of Gregory VIII (1187) in PL
202.
[13] Poole provides the best English introduction to this study.
[14] E.g., Alberic in Rockinger, I. 9. Ermini finds it used in the tenth century
to mean devoir, or theme, “specimen eruditionis,” “lavoro scolastico,” Poeti
epici latini del secolo x, 70, 109.
[15] E.g., Candelabrum, as also Conrad in Rockinger, I. 442. For the poetriæ,
see above, Chapter VII. B.
[16] For prosopopœia and controversia see the index to ARP.
[17] See above, page 191.
[18] Made from the Plimpton MS.
[19] For the three styles, see the indexes to ARP and to this volume.

[20] Cursus is used in this general sense by the thirteenth-century grammar
edited by Fierville (119), which also applies to compositio the phrase equabiliter
perpolita (116). Rhet. ad Heren. has æqualiter perpolita.
For cursus in its special sense, see below, section C.
[21] Poetria nova 1051-1060 is quoted here with some variations from Faral’s
text. The Candelabrum is therefore posterior to 1208-1213.
[22] Cf. Matthieu de Vendôme, II., section 13 seq.; Faral, 155 seq.
[23] “Unius clausule integrum membrum.” Clausula is consistently used to
mean what we now call a sentence. It is so defined below (folio 6): “De clausulis
quoque sequitur ut agamus, quoniam ex distinctionibus clausule compinguntur.
Clausula igitur est plurium distinctionum continuatio ambitum perfectum
sententie comprehendens.” The author adds that it is otherwise used abusive. His
definition agrees with Fierville, 119.

[24] Alberic (Rockinger, I. 25) has the same threefold division, but calls [1]
suspensiva, and says that it ends acuto accentu. Conrad (Rockinger, I. 443)
follows Alberic’s terms, and quotes (444-445) Alexander de Villedieu’s
Doctrinale, 2348-2358. The Candelabrum grasps clearly the ancient conception
of a period as a sentence rhythmically composed and rhythmically completed.
[25] The technical significances of this section cannot safely be suggested by
translation. The available terms of modern English, if not misleading, would be
at least prejudicial to an interesting inquiry. A considerable part of the original is
printed by Thurot, 415: “De punctis ... et modo punctandi,” etc.
[26] “Quod paritatem sillabarum et similem consonantiam sine ulla temporis
consideratione observat.” The example is the hymn Ave, Maria, salvatoris. There
is added, by way of caveat, the different ancient definition of rhythmus; but the
medieval use is vindicated “ad delectationem et quandam mollitiem; quoque ad
dignitatem....” So Conrad: “Rithmicum observat tantummodo certum numerum
sillabarum, distinguendo clausulas versiculorum in quadam finali concinnantia.”
Rockinger, I. 419.
[27] Cf. Conrad’s list headed Diversitas personarum. Rockinger, I. 425 seq.
[28] The ancient term auditor is kept, as well as the traditional three functions.
The second function being cardinal in a letter, benevolentiæ captatio in some
manuals, e.g., Alberic’s (Rockinger, I. 18), is used as the heading, instead of
exordium. In others, as, here, it is a subheading. The doctrine here is from Rhet.
ad Herennium I.
[29] Reference to the opponent is kept from ancient rhetoric, though often
inapplicable in a letter. But see the opening of John of Salisbury’s letter at the
beginning of this Chapter.
[30] The ancient counsel against pomp in the exordium, though repeated,
seems to have been less regarded than the others.
[31] E.g., by Geoffroi de Vinsauf, Poetria nova, 126-133 (Faral, 201); Guido
Fava (Rockinger, I. 185; Gaudenzi, 129).
[32] The term is said to be more inclusive. “Narrationum genera tria sunt:
oratorium, digressorium, et poeticum.” Digressorium probably refers to the

digressio for which a place in the speech was provided by ancient rhetoric after
the division (see ARP, 65). Poeticum is of course divided into historia, fabula,
argumentum (for which see the index). The author makes no use of this, or of the
whole division, which indeed is inapplicable to a letter; but it seems to have
troubled him, as it troubled the poetriæ (see above, page 193). Quintilian’s clear
distinction seems to have escaped them: “Et historiæ, quæ currere debet ac ferri,
minus convenissent insistentes clausulæ,” etc., IX. iv.
[33] At this point the author turns from Roman use to French, beginning Book
VI with a new set of definitions.
[34] Alberic’s Rationes dictandi are printed in Rockinger, I. 9-28, and are
followed by Albericus de dictamine, 29-46.
[35] Liber pontificalis, 162, vol. II. 311, as translated by Poole (84) in context.
The Chancellor was afterward (1118-1119) Pope Gelasius II.
[36] The key phrases are Clark’s (10), repeated by Poole (90). The grave
accent in the last indicates that at this point there is often a secondary, lighter
stress.
Tardus is called ecclesiasticus in a thirteenth-century work quoted by Thurot,
482.
A fourth form, trispondiacus (Vacandard, 72, 89), is regarded by Croll (2) as a
modification of velox.
For correctness of cadence as a mark of authenticity see the passage from
Pierre de Blois quoted by Langlois, NE 34, part 2: 26.
The best English summary of the technic of cursus is Poole, Chapter IV,
which also reviews Valois, Havet, W. Meyer, and Clark. The best indication of
the significance of cursus is Croll; for though this essay is directed to a later
period, it reviews medieval habit and through English examples exhibits the
influence of cursus in the development of vernacular prose rhythm.
[37] Reg. VI. 105, June 30, 1203, as quoted and pointed by Poole (97), who
thus prints the whole mandate.
[38] Ep. VI. 6; Toynbee, 75; pointed by Clark, 20. Both record W. Meyer’s
emendation for cursus, puníta (for Púnica, a former corrupt reading). The cursus
in John of Salisbury’s Ep. 221 are followed in the translation above, page 209.
The text begins as follows: “Fáma vulgánte (plan.) didicimus vos et dominum
Ottonem sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ diáconum càrdinálem (vel.) ad preces
illustris domini nostri regis Anglórum (plan.) ex mandato dómini pápæ (plan.) in
partes Aquitániæ dèscendísse (vel.) ut auctore Deo, si fieri potest, Anglicanæ
Ecclesiæ debitam reddatis libertatem (not conformed) et inter dominum regem et
Cantuariensem archiepiscopum pacem et concórdiam rèformétis (vel.). A magnis
etiam et a venerabilibus víris audítum est (tard.) quod præfatus dominus noster
rex adeo de amore véstro confídit (plan.) ut consilio vestro in omnibus
obtemperáre decréverit” (tard.).
[39] For this see Vacandard’s historical review.
[40] Pointed by Croll (27), who compares the English versions of this and of
other collects in the Book of Common Prayer.

[41] If the second measure could have ended on mýsteries of thy bódy, it
would have conformed.
[42] See above, Chapter IV. C.
[43] See above, pages 111, 184.
[44] Candelabrum, describing French interpretation of prose rhythms by
metrical terms, says: “Nor do they consider those feet according to shortness or
length, but according to number of syllables and word-habit.” The whole
passage is quoted by Thurot (484), who notes its correspondence to Maître
Guillaume (quoted at 481): “The feet used in verse are three, dactyl, spondee,
trochee. In dictamen, however, we use two, spondee and dactyl. Nor are the feet
to be measured by length and shortness, but by the run (cursus) of the words.
For every dissyllable, whether long or short, is a spondee; and a trisyllable with
a short penult is a dactyl.” Ponce (quoted also at 481) lays down the same
principle. The cursus, that is, was determined by the number of unstressed
syllables between word-accents. The old terminology of quantitative metric was
kept, partly because it was conveniently familiar, partly because the new
rhythms were legitimate descendants of the old. But the abeyance of quantity
could not be more clearly indicated than by the dictators’ habit of calling every
dissyllable a spondee.

CHAPTER IX
PREACHING

References and Abbreviations

Bourgain Bourgain (l’Abbé L.), La chaire française au xiie siècle d’après
les manuscrits, Paris, 1879.
Clerval (see the list for Chapter VI).
Cruel Cruel (R.), Geschichte der deutschen Predigt im Mittelalter,
Detmold, 1879.
Douais Douais (C.), Essai sur l’organisation des études dans l’Ordre
des Frères Prêcheurs au xiiie et au xive siècle (1216-1342).
Prèmiere province de Provence. Province de Toulouse, avec de
nombreux textes inédits. Toulouse & Paris, 1884.
LM Lecoy de la Marche (A.), La chaire française au moyen âge,
spécialement au xiiie siècle, d’après les manuscrits
contemporains, Paris, 1886 (2nd edition).
Owst Owst (G. R.), Preaching in medieval England, an introduction
to sermon manuscripts of the period c. 1350-1450, Cambridge,
1926.
PL Patrologia latina (Migne), cited by volume and column.
Perdrizet Perdrizet (Paul), Étude sur le Speculum humanæ salvationis,
Paris (thèse), 1908.
Polheim Polheim (Karl), Die lateinische Reimprosa, Berlin, 1925.

The historian of twelfth-century preaching finds the “prodigious
success”[1] of St. Anselm’s sermon on the Assumption not even faintly
echoed in the flat record. The same disappointment awaits any one who
shall turn from the fame of John Bunyan’s preaching to his printed sermons.
In both cases the reputation is more convincing than the record. The

testimony leaves no doubt that the preacher was eloquent; but his eloquence
has not been preserved. The seventeenth-century record and the medieval,
though in different directions, are alike insufficient.[2] Even when we have
on the page before us the very sentences—and often we have something
less, or even something different, we lack something of the eloquence. For
the difficulty of transmission is so fundamental that it thwarts even the
records of our own day. Oratory is typically the energizing of a message by
a speaker for a specific audience. Its style depends on all three. In varying
degrees all three enter into its composition. The occasion becomes part of
the message. Between speaker and audience there is mutual response.
Therefore of all the arts oratory is the most perishable.
But the history of oratory, though often baffling, is not hopeless. So
perishable that it can never be quite recaptured, oratory may be so charged
that even through imperfect record much often transpires. For any given
period its records not only reveal much of the habit of the time, but
conversely can often be so interpreted by that habit as to become really
significant. Medieval sermons can thus be related not only to the medieval
pedagogy of rhetoric, but to actual habits of composition and of style. In a
form of oratory continuous for nearly two thousand years they will show at
least what in preparation, composition, utterance, record is typically
medieval.
For the middle age preaching is the characteristic form of oratory.
Political oratory being in abeyance, legal oratory having little scope,
preaching practically monopolizes the third field distinguished by Aristotle,
occasional oratory, the oratory of here and now. Teaching, clearly of course
a sermon function, sometimes becomes the main object; but even so it is not
incompatible with other oratorical use of the occasion. Indeed, a sermon
hardly succeeds as teaching except through the typical means of occasional
oratory. For a sermon is different from a lesson, and even more different
from an essay. As a form of oral composition it has opportunities and
methods distinct from those of the bar or the senate. Occasional oratory,
always beset by temptations toward sophistic,[3] has always opened on the
other hand the highest ranges. In preaching, the safeguard against sophistic
is in the distinctive use of the occasion to move men to action. Always
emotional, occasional oratory becomes in preaching a distinct form of
persuasion. Relying less than political oratory on argument, reasoning less

and pleading more, it is even more urgent toward a goal. This character,
achievement alike and misuse, is vivid in the medieval preaching of the
friars.
Medieval preaching is occasional oratory not only in the ancient
application to special solemnity, but more significantly in using the familiar
recurrences of the Church year. The whole western world kept not only
Christmas, but Candlemas, Michaelmas, and the rest. Nothing is more
characteristic than the focus of popular emotion upon Corpus Christi. The
calendar of feasts and fasts was the actual calendar. A medieval auditory
had a great common fund of conscious and subconscious associations. The
surrounding symbolism of stone and glass was familiar from land to land.
The pulpit was beside the altar. The regular sermon on a Sunday or a feast
was at Mass after the gospel, which furnished its text.[4] The atmosphere of
prayer was intensified by specific petition preceding and following. “Let us
therefore ask our Lord to give me good words for you” ended the exordium,
or “Pray that we may be illuminated,” or “Pray the Lord, therefore, that by
the power of spiritual teaching to-day your hearts may be uplifted”;[5] and
the congregation united in Pater and Ave. So the sermon ended with prayer,
and was immediately followed by common intercessions. Though some of
these conditions are constant throughout the history of Christendom, never
before or since have they combined at once so amply and so widely to
constitute the conditions of preaching. In this special sense medieval
preaching was the oratory of occasion. At no other time has oratory had at
command so large and constant a fund of common emotional associations.

A. Vernacular to the People, Latin to the Clergy

The appeal of medieval preaching to this common emotional fund,
though it cannot often be measured, can be analyzed often as to style and
composition, oftener as to habit of thought, in abundant documents. Even in
print hardly any medieval material is more abundant—and there are further
stores in manuscript—than collections of sermons. In order to interpret
these, we must constantly remember how they were made and why. First,
medieval sermons are habitually gauged to one of the two typical
audiences. Either they are for the lay folk in parish church or cathedral
(sermones ad populum), and were preached in the vernacular; or they are

for the clergy (sermones ad clerum), i.e., before synods, councils, schools,
oftenest of all in monastery chapels, and were preached in Latin.[6] In either
case, until the late middle age, the record was always in Latin; in either case
the preparation also, the notes and outline and more or less of the further
composition, was usually in Latin. In the former case of a sermon preached
to a lay congregation the record gives at most only a translation.[7] In the
latter case of a sermon preached to a monastic community the record is at
least nearer to the spoken word. We can press further, therefore, the analysis
of sermons preserved by such communities as the Cistercians and the
Victorines.[8]
Though popular preaching is no less worthy of study, less of it has been
transferred to the written page.[9] But translation, though it could convey
little of the spoken vernacular style, must not be thought of as involving the
difficulties of to-day. In the middle age every cleric was bilingual; and
every preacher of distinction enough to be recorded not only read and wrote
Latin habitually, but spoke it fluently.[10] His schooling having been in
Latin, both written and oral, his daily offices, his reading, and whatever
writing he did being still in Latin, he used Latin easily and naturally in
thinking out and ordering a sermon or in giving another’s sermon, or his
own afterward, the permanence of writing. Since he would not be
embarrassed, as young preachers sometimes are to-day, by trying to recall
phrases and sentences, preaching in the vernacular from Latin notes might
even leave oral composition the more free.

B. Collections

The other process, the final rendering in Latin, was by no means always
of the sermon as preached. It might be merely a digest, or more expansive,
or the whole sermon. All three degrees seem to be exemplified among the
printed sermons of Fulbert.[11] The compilers of Odo of Morimond say: “he
was very eloquent; but in writing his sermons we have ignored the form for
the substance.”[12] Collections often show distinctly less concern for record,
for commemoration of achievement, than for guidance. Some even of the
more important collections have evidently this practical aim. They propose
not only inspiration, but practical suggestion and direction for future
sermons on recurrent themes. They are less anthologies than repertories.

Maurice de Sully, Bishop of Paris, thus designed his widespread collection
primarily for the pastors of his diocese.[13] The study of preaching, not
merely the preservation of notable sermons preached in his time (sermones
reportati de auditu), seems to have been the object of the collections of
Pierre de Limoges. Clearly the best known of these, his Distinctiones,[14]
arranging not only whole sermons, but outlines and suggestive passages
alphabetically by subjects, is meant for reference. That the collections
commonly had in view the practical use of successful sermons as models is
suggested again and again, and sometimes indicated.[15]
The great thesaurus of Jacques de Vitry[16] is systematically practical, a
collection not primarily of sermons, but for sermons. Models, outlines,
suggestions, intended for adaptation in the vernacular[17] are arranged
according to the Church calendar: four books for the seasons, a fifth for the
saints, with three expositions for each day, the first of the introit, the second
of the epistle, the third of the gospel. The sixth book is classified for
adaptations to typical social groups. What has naturally most attracted
modern historians in this storehouse is the abundance of illustrative
descriptions and stories, the exempla. A resource prized in all times for
popular address, the exemplum was so cultivated in medieval preaching as
to call forth many collections.[18] It looms unduly large to modern readers
because the exempla have now an extraneous interest in reflecting medieval
life, and because they were taken not only, as now, from contemporary life,
from history, from legend, but also from the bestiaries.

The basilisk, they tell us, bears in his eye his poison, vilest of animals, beyond others to
be execrated. Wilt thou know the eye that is empoisoned, eye of evil, eye that has
fascination? Then think thou upon envy. St. Bernard on the Psalm Qui habitat, xiii. 4; PL
183: 237.

The mythical zoölogy is now often too diverting to keep its effectiveness
as illustration. But to recover this, and to realize that the bestiaries do not
convict the middle age of credulity, we need not go back of St. Francis de
Sales. Exempla, after all, are a commonplace of preaching because they are
a necessity.
The general thesaurus and the special[19] alike confirm the impression of
wide use of a common fund of topics and illustrations. But sermon helps are

not peculiar to the middle age. Every age has offered to its preachers
something equivalent to the medieval handy manuals.[20] Not only
preaching, but all occasional oratory, has always been beset by the
temptation to rely on pattern and stock.[21] That the middle age had many
conventional sermons is less significant than that it had St. Bernard and the
early Dominicans.

C. Manuals

Medieval manuals of preaching are no more specific than modern
manuals as to their rhetoric. That is typically generalized, or even taken for
granted. For instance, Guibert de Nogent’s Liber quo ordine sermo fieri
debeat,[22] concerned entirely with interpretation, has no rhetoric at all. The
anonymous Chartres work on popular preaching quoted in part by
Clerval[23] gives, besides the usual procedure and advice, a practical
counsel for preparation and one for delivery. The first is to fix meditation on
the specific object of that sermon and on the specific means most likely to
bring it home, not on the words. The words will come if the matter is surely
ordered. The second is to increase urgency from quotations of texts through
exempla uttered with loud appeal until the congregation shows emotional
response, then to moderate the tone so as to lead quietly to the final
benediction.
Another anonymous manual[24] sets forth eight methods of expansion
(De dilatatione sermonum): (1) definition and exposition of terms,
especially of their “moral” significance; (2) division, not to be so minute in
a sermon as in a treatise; (3) proof, by contraries, enthymemes, examples,
again to be guarded from subtlety; (4) citation of confirmatory texts; (5)
degrees, i.e., positive-comparative-superlative, as in exhibiting one of the
virtues; (6) metaphors, not to be multiplied nor mixed; (7) symbolism, i.e.,
allegory, tropology, anagogy; (8) cause and effect. Most of these are
commonplaces of rhetoric. Some of them, and their use for dilation, suggest
the same preoccupations as the poetriæ.[25]
The Dominicans, devoted to preaching, maintaining a long and severe
discipline of studies, provided systematically for oral composition.
“Legendo, studendo, disputando”[26]—the last tallies not only with

Dominican fame, but with the focus, and the increasing emphasis, of oral
training on logic.[27] Otherwise the manual of the fifth Dominican General,
the De eruditione prædicatorum of Humbert de Romans, says little of
rhetoric. Rather it is practical psychology, as are the second book of
Aristotle’s Rhetoric and the sixth book of Jacques de Vitry.
Practical by another method is the manual of Alain de Lille, Summa
magistri Alani doctoris universalis de arte prædicatoria.[28] “First we must
see,” he says at the end of his preface, “what preaching is, its distinguishing
qualities of expression and of thought, and its typical species; secondly, who
should preach; thirdly, to whom; fourthly, why; fifthly, where.” His first
chapter, after brief consideration of preaching as public speaking, sets forth
the special sanction for sermons of the gospels, the Psalms, the Pauline
epistles, and the “books of Solomon” as offering instruction in morals.
Winning his audience by his own humility and by the practical import of his
message,[29] not by appeals to applause, the preacher proceeds to the
twofold exposition of the text. “Let his words be sometimes emotional
(commotiva), to soften the minds of his hearers and bring tears. But let the
sermon be concise, lest prolixity bring instead boredom.... Finally he should
use exempla.”
Chapter ii proposes for a theme the scorning of the world (De mundi
contemptu), and for its text, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”
Distinguishing the vanity of this world as thus typically threefold, Alain
quotes Romans and the Psalms and adds Persius. “Thus the preacher should
confirm each division of his text. His next step is to show where is vanity,
where vanity of vanities, where all is vanity.... The scorning of the world,
thus established by the way of the world itself, should be established also
by consideration of man’s end (a causa finali).” The peroration
apostrophizes human blindness (O homo, si mundana, etc.).
In a word, Alain furnishes a specimen order and procedure. Succeeding
chapters thus present other usual topics: scorning of oneself, gluttony, the
other deadly sins, the heavenly hope, spiritual grief and joy, patience and
each of the other virtues, love of God and of one’s neighbor, etc. The
remaining headings of his prefatory division are taken up at chapter xxxviii;
and his consideration of different types in congregations has the humor to
include the sleepy. The title Summa, then, implies a preacher’s book of

reference, with advice and direction subordinated to classified material. The
distinction of this Summa is its systematic conciseness.

D. Symbolism

Much more distinctive than any provision of collection or manual for
ordinary use of a common fund is the prevalence of symbolism. The
“moral” exposition that followed the literal commonly had this direction.
For medieval symbolism was not merely a habit of exposition; it was seen
as well as heard because it was a habit of conception. The cathedrals still
exhibit in sculpture and glass what came in words from their pulpits. The
Psalms, especially those recurring in the daily offices, thus conveyed from
generation to generation the eternal word of God. For every psalm was the
lyric cry of David, or of some other ancient Hebrew, only in the first
instance (litteralis expositio). It always meant more; and its further meaning
(moralis expositio), as cumulating progressive experience of God, was more
important. It always meant not only David, but every other soul thus
answering God, the “poor man” of every time and of every clime, every
individual then and there focusing and enlarging by those words his own
experience.
So far the “moral” interpretation treats the psalm as an extreme case of
literary inspiration, appropriates it as having the universal validity of every
lyric that has survived the centuries. A religious classic, more widely and
intensely spiritual than any other body of lyrics, the psalter is still only a
classic. But medieval interpretation always took a third step. Every psalm
meant not only David, and further not only every “poor man” making it his
own, but also “the man,” the Lord incarnate to share all humanity and to
give men “power to become the sons of God.” Thus the Psalms spanned the
centuries, connected the New Testament with the Old indivisibly, and were
the voice of man in every age answering God in the Church. The habitual
use of the Old Testament, and even of secular history, as prefiguring is here
focused in its simplest form.[30] Simplest and commonest instance of
symbolism, the interpretation of the Psalms is characteristic. Though not,
indeed, peculiar to the middle age, it opens a widespread medieval habit.
The habitual use of the Song of Songs as symbolic of the Christ and his
Church reminds us that symbolism is essentially poetic. It was the usual

poetic of medieval preaching in interpreting not only the Scriptures, but all
human experience. As behind the word lay spiritual meaning, so behind the
veil of the senses lay the realities of life. The so-called “otherworldliness”
of medieval preaching is no ignoring of physical facts; it is a sustained and
consistent call to see through them. What medieval philosophy defined as
seeing “in the aspect of eternity” (sub specie æternitatis) medieval
preaching inculcated as a habit of vision. The habit might, indeed,
degenerate, as in that popular manual of the fourteenth century, the
Speculum humanæ salvationis,[31] into extravagance or minute formalism;
but even so it kept some view of history as a providential progress. It might
rise, on the other hand, to express the immediate apprehension of the
mystic, the vision of spiritual genius. But the distinction of the medieval
mystic is rather in degree than in kind. The whole age is characteristically
habituated to mysticism. No other poetic vision is equal to Dante’s; but no
other form of poetry in his age, whether in verse or in sermon, is commoner
than the vision.
Not only to the rapt was the visible world eloquent of the unseen eternal.

Full, indeed, is everything of supernal mysteries, abounding each in its special sweetness
if the eye that beholds be but attentive, as of him who knows how to suck honey from the
stone and oil from the hardest rock. St. Bernard, De Laudibus Virginis Matris, I. 1; PL 183:
56.

In the following sermon of this series St. Bernard refers seriatim to the
accepted prefigurations of the Blessed Virgin. She is the perennial
antagonist of the serpent (Genesis iii. 15), the mulier fortis of Solomon
(Proverbs xxxi. 10), the burning bush (Exodus iii. 2), Aaron’s budding rod
(Numbers xvii. 8), Isaiah’s rod from the root of Jesse (xi. 1), the rod that
smote the rock (Exodus xvii. 6) and divided the sea (Exodus xiv. 16),
Gideon’s fleece (Judges vi. 37-40), the woman who is the Lord’s new
creation (Jeremiah xxxi. 22). The prefigurations of this list had an obvious
appeal in sermons through being familiar in hymns, in sculpture, in glass.
Evidently St. Bernard loved them for their poetry; but he is also convinced
of their sanction. He even formulates the theory of symbolic prefiguration.

These words [“To-day ye shall know that the Lord will come”], indeed, have in Holy
Writ their [historical] location in place and time; but not incongruously have they been
adapted to the vigil of the Lord’s Nativity by mother Church—the Church, I say, she who
has with her the counsel and spirit of her Spouse and God.... When, therefore, she changes

or shifts words in Holy Writ, her combination (compositio) has more weight than the
passage in its original place, the more, perhaps, the greater the distance between figure and
fact, between light and shadow, between mistress and handmaid. St. Bernard, In Vigilia
Nativitatis Domini, III. 1; PL 183: 94.

His second sermon for Advent carries out the prefiguration of the rod, or
stem (virga).[32]

From these passages I think it now manifest what is the stem proceeding from the root of
Jesse, and what is the flower on which reposeth the Holy Spirit. For the Virgin Mother of
God is the stem, her son is the flower, flower indeed the son of the Virgin, flower white at
once and ruddy, the chosen from thousands (Cantic. v. 10), flower that angels desire in
their visions, flower at whose fragrance the dead have revival, and, as he himself beareth
witness, flower of the field (Cantic. ii. 1), not of the garden. Flowereth the field without
human ministry, not by sowing of any one, not upturned by spading, not from without
made fertile. So entirely, so the Virgin’s womb hath flowered; so inviolate, unimpaired, and
chaste the body of Mary as the pasture of the eternal vigor hath burgeoned its flower,
whose is a beauty beyond corruption, whose a glory unfading forever. O Virgin! stem of
the highest, to what a summit thou liftest on high thy holiness! even to him that sitteth on
the throne, even to the Lord in his majesty. Nor is that a great marvel, since thou has sent
so deep the roots of thy meekness. O truly celestial plant, that art precious above all and
holy above mankind! O true tree of life, which alone was worthy to bear the fruit of
salvation! De Adventu Domini, II. 4; PL 183: 42.

The symbolism of his sermon in the Epiphany octave on the marriage at
Cana is specifically moralized.

Now, methinks, ye have fathomed to what my words are tending. To-day ye have been
hearing the wonder performed at the marriage, beginning indeed of the Lord’s tokens, even
as a story sufficiently wonderful, and in significance still richer in gladness. Great indeed
was the sign of the heavenly power, that water turned into wine at the Lord’s bidding; but
far better that other changing at the right hand of the Highest which in this one is
prefigured. We are bidden every one to the spiritual marriage at which of a truth the
bridegroom is Christ our Lord. Wherefore we sing in the Psalter: And he as a bridegroom
coming forth from his chamber [Psalm xviii. 6]. Spouse indeed are we to him, if this seem
not to you incredible, both all together one spouse and every soul by itself a spouse singly.
But when can this be conceived of its God by human weakness, that we should be his
beloved as a bride is beloved by her bridegroom? Far enough is this bride below her
bridegroom in origin, below in her nature, below in her dignity. Nevertheless for that
ancient Æthiop woman the son of the eternal king from far made his advent, and that for
his own he might espouse her, feared not even to die for her. Moses, indeed, took to wife
an Æthiop woman, but his marriage availed not to change the Æthiop’s color: Christ will
present his bride, whom he loved in her baseness and all her foulness, glorious with his
own glory, his Church without spot or wrinkle. Aaron may murmur; Miriam (Maria) may
murmur, not the new, but the old, not the Lord’s mother, but Moses’ sister; not, I say, our
Mary, she who shows her solicitude if some lack perchance is found at the marriage. Ye,
therefore, as is meet, amid the murmurs of the priests, amid the murmurs of the synagogue,

give your entire devotion to these our common acts of praise and thanksgiving. Dominica
Prima post Octavam Epiphaniæ, II. 2; PL 183: 158.

Such preaching shows the same preoccupation as the symbolic windows
of the cathedrals, their carved capitals, above all the thronged but
harmonized groups of their great porches. It is not merely conventional
illustration; it is a constant and consistent reminder of the history of
mankind as a scheme of redemption.

E. Composition

1. Imaginative Method

The most conventional form of symbolism is allegory. This may be no
more than what Lowell calls “personification by capital letters,” as in the
Vice and Virtue, the Reason, Feeling, or Nature, of the eighteenth century.
Even so it has more point when the convention is as instantly recognizable
as the seven deadly sins of medieval capitals and poems, or the four
cardinal and the three theological virtues, or even the seven liberal arts,
each with appropriate costume, attitude, gesture, or action. How pleasant
allegory may be in verse is evident in the wide popularity of the Roman de
la Rose.
But no less evidently such pictorial aggregation offers little to preaching,
since it has no vigor of composition. To be moving, allegory as well as
higher symbolism must be narrative. The classic demonstration of this, the
Pilgrim’s Progress, was written by a preacher. The art has never been more
widely or more expertly pursued than in the middle age. The fourteenth-
century English Piers Plowman suggests even more vividly, with its
strongly oral manner, how allegory might move in preaching. A sermon
might be not only enlivened by passages of easily recognizable description;
it might further be vivified by making the figures individuals and by putting
them into speech and action. A complete demonstration is furnished in the
interlude, prologue, and tale of Chaucer’s Pardoner. That accomplished
rascal is made to display the whole art of oral narrative, from its vulgar
drama to its high ranges of symbolic suggestion. The case is extreme; but
the method has been a resource of popular preaching from the days of
Nathan’s rebuke to David down to the present. Oral narrative, often with