Chapter XXX: The Spell of the Classics (1)

I. CLASSICAL READING.

II. GRAMMAR.

III. THE EFFECT UPON THE MEDIAEVAL MAN; HILDEBERT OF LAVARDIN.

I

During all the mediaeval centuries, men approached the Classics expecting to learn from them. The usual attitude toward the classical heritage was that of docile pupils looking for instruction. One may recall the antecedent reasons of this, which have already been stated at length. In Italy, letters survived as the most impressive legacy from an overshadowing past. In the north, save where they lingered on from the antique time, they came in the train of Latin Christianity, and were offered to men under the same imposing conditions of a higher civilization authoritatively instructing ruder peoples. Moreover, between the ancient times which produced the classic literature and the Carolingian period there intervened centuries of degeneracy and transition, when the Classics were used pedagogically to teach grammar and rhetoric. Then grammars were composed or revised, and other handbooks of elementary instruction. The Classics still were loved; but how shall men love beyond their own natures? Gifted Jerome, great Augustine, loved them with an ardour bringing its own misgivings. Other lovers, like Ausonius and Apollinaris Sidonius, were pedantic imitators.

Both north and south of the Alps another and obviously enduring cause fostered the habit of regarding the Classics as storehouses of knowledge: the fact that they were such for all the mediaeval centuries. They included not only poetry and eloquence, but also history, philosophy, natural knowledge, law and polity. The knowledge contained in them exceeded what the men of western Europe otherwise possessed. As century after century passed, mediaeval men learned more for themselves, and also drew more largely on the classic store. Yet it remained unexhausted. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries constitute the great mediaeval epoch. Men were then opening their eyes a little to observe the natural world, and were thinking a little for themselves. Nevertheless the chief increase in knowledge issued from the gradual discovery and mastering of the works of Aristotle. These centuries, like their predecessors, make clear that men who inherit from a greater past a universal literature containing the best they can conceive and more knowledge than they can otherwise attain, will be likely to regard every part of this literature as in some way a source of knowledge, physical or metaphysical, historical or ethical. And the Classics merited such regard; for where they did not instruct in science, they imparted knowledge of life, and norms and instances of conduct, from which men still may draw guidance. We have outlearned the physics, and perhaps the metaphysics of the Greeks; their knowledge of nature, in comparison with ours, was but as a genial beginning; their polities and their formal ethics we have tried and tested; but we have not risen above the power and inspiration of the story of Greece and Rome, and the exemplifications of life in the Greek and Latin Classics. It has not ceased to be true that he who best loves the Classics, and most deeply feels and glories in their unique excellence as literature, is he who still draws life from them, and discipline and knowledge. Their true lovers, like the true lovers of all noble literature, are always in a state of pupilage to the poems and the histories they love.

Obviously then no final word lies in the statement that through the Middle Ages men turned to the Classics for instruction. They did indeed turn to them for all kinds of knowledge, and for discipline. Often they looked for instruction from Ovid or Virgil in a way to make us smile. Often they were like schoolboys, dully conning words which they did not feel and so did not understand. But in the tenth century, and in the twelfth, some men admired and loved the Latin Classics, and drew from them, as we may, lessons which are learned only by those who love aright.

It would be hard to say what the men of the Middle Ages did not thus gain. The pagan classical literature was one of humanity in its full range of interests. This was true of the Greek; and from the Greek, the universal human passed to the Latin, which the Middle Ages were to know. In both literatures, man was a denizen of earth. The laws of mortality and fate were held before his eyes; and the action of the higher powers bore upon mortal happiness, rather than upon any life to come. When reflecting upon the use and influence of the Classics through the Middle Ages, it is always to be kept in mind that the antique literature was the literature of this life and of this world; that it was universal in its humanity, and still in the Middle Ages might touch every human love and human interest not directly connected with the hopes and terrors of the Judgment Day.

So whenever educated mediaeval men were drawn by the ambitions or moved by the finer joys of human life, it lay in their path to seek instruction or satisfaction from some antique source. If a man wished the common education of a clerk, he drew it from antique text-books and their commentaries. Grammar and rhetoric meant Latin grammar and Latin rhetoric; dialectic also was Latin and antique. Likewise the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, could be studied only in Latin. These ordinary branches of education having been mastered, if then the man’s tastes or ambitions turned to the interests of earth (and who except the saintly recluse was not so drawn?) he would still look to the antique. A civilian or an ecclesiastic would need some knowledge of law, which for the most part was Roman, even when disguised as Canon law.[152] Did a man incline toward philosophy, and the scrutiny of life’s deeper problems, again the source was the antique; and when he lifted his mind to theology, he would still find himself reasoning in categories of antique dialectic. Finally, and this was a broad field of humane inclination, if a clerkly educated man loved poetry, eloquence, and history, for their own sakes, he also would turn to the antique.

There is scarcely need to revert again to the use of the Classics in the earlier Middle Ages. We have seen that in Italy they never ceased to form the conscious background to all intellectual life; and that in the north, letters came a handmaid in the train of Latin Christianity--a handmaid that was apt to assert her own value, and also charm the minds of men. From the first, it was the orthodox view that Latin letters should provide the education enabling men to understand the Christian religion adequately. This is the object set forth in Charlemagne’s Capitularies upon education.[153] Three hundred years later Honorius of Autun says in his sermonizing way:

“Not only, beloved, do the sacred writings lead us to eternal life,
but profane letters also teach us; for edifying matter may be drawn
from them. In view of sacred examples no one should be scandalized at
this. For the children of Israel spoiled the Egyptians; they took gold
and silver, gems and precious vestments, which they afterwards turned
into God’s treasury to build the tabernacle.”[154]

Honorius used Augustine’s reference to the Egyptians, and followed this Augustinian view, always recognized as orthodox in the Middle Ages. It was narrower than the practice among those who followed letters. Gerbert at the close of the tenth century loved to teach and read the pagan writers, and drew from them training and discipline.[155] In the next century, the German monk Froumund of Tegernsee, with Bernward and Godehard, bishops of Hildesheim, are instances of German love of antique letters.[156] Yet lofty souls might choose to limit their reading of the Classics, at least in theory, to the needs of their Latinity. Such a one was Hugo of St.-Victor, scholar, theologian, man of genius;[157] he professed to care more for the Christian ardours of the soul than for learning even as a means of righteousness, and chose to take the side of those who would read the classic authors only so far as the needs of education demanded:

“There are two kinds of writings, first those which are termed the
_artes_ proper, secondly, those which are the supplements
(_appendentia_) of the _artes_. _Artes_ comprise the works grouped
under (_supponuntur_) philosophy, those which contain some fixed and
determined matter of philosophy, as grammar, dialectic and the like.
_Appendentia artium_ are those [writings] which touch philosophy less
nearly and are occupied with some subject apart from it; and yet
sometimes offer flotsam and jetsam from the _artes_, or simply as
narratives smooth the road to philosophy. All the songs of poets are
such--tragedies, comedies, satires, heroics, and lyrics too, and
iambics, besides certain didactic works (_didascalica_); tales
likewise, and histories; also the writings of those nowadays called
philosophers, who extend a brief matter with lengthy circumlocution,
and thus darken a simple meaning.

“Note then well the distinction I have drawn for thee: distinct and
different (_duo_) are the _artes_ and their _appenditia_, ... and
often from the latter the student will gain much labour and little
fruit. The _artes_, without their _appenditia_, may make the reader
perfect; but the latter, without the _artes_, can bring no whit of
perfection. Wherefore one should first of all devote himself to the
_artes_, which are so fundamental, and to the aforesaid seven above
all, which are the means and instruments (_instrumenta_) of all
philosophy. Then let the rest be read, if one has leisure, since
sometimes the playful mingled with the serious especially delights us,
and we are apt to remember a moral found in a tale.”[158]

Temperament affected Hugo’s view. He was of the spiritual aristocracy, who may be somewhat disdainful of the common means by which men get their education and round out their natures. The mechanical monotony of pedagogy grated on him and evoked the ironical sketch of a school-room, which he put in his dialogue on the Vanity of the World. The little Discipulus, directed by his Magister, is surveying human things.

“Turn again, and look,” says the latter, “and what do you see?”

“I see the schools of learners. There is a great crowd, and of all
ages, boys and youths, men young and old. They study various things.
Some practise their rude tongue at the alphabet and at words new to
them. Others listen to the inflection of words, their composition and
derivation; then by reciting and repeating them they try to commit
them to memory. Others furrow the waxen tablets with a stylus. Others,
guiding the calamus with learned hand, draw figures of different
shapes and colours on parchments. Still others with sharper zeal seem
to dispute on graver matters and try to trip each other with twistings
and impossibilities (_gryphis_?). I see some also making calculations,
and some producing various sounds upon a cord stretched on a frame.
Others, again, explain and demonstrate geometric figures; and yet
others with various instruments show the positions and courses of the
stars and the movement of the heavens. Others, finally, consider the
nature of plants, the constitution of men, and the properties and
powers of things.”

The Disciple is captivated with this many-coloured show of learning; but the Master declares it to be mostly foolishness, distracting the student from understanding his own nature, his Creator, and his future lot.[159]

These are examples, which might be multiplied indefinitely, of the pious mediaeval view that the _artes_, with a very little reading of the _auctores_, were proper for the educated Christian, whose need was to understand Scripture. Sometimes, stung, at least rhetorically, by fear of the lust and idolatry of the antique, mediaeval souls cry out against its lures, even as Jerome’s Christianly protesting nature dreamed that famous dream of exclusion from heaven as a “Ciceronian.” Alcuin, who led the educational movement under Charlemagne, gently chides one whose fondness for Virgil made him forget his friend--“would that the Gospels rather than the _Aeneid_ filled thy breast.”[160] Three hundred years later, St. Peter Damiani, himself a virtuoso in letters and a sometime teacher of rhetoric, arraigns the monks for teaching grammar rather than things spiritual.[161] Damiani speaks with the harshness of one who fears what he loves. In France, about the same time, our worthy sermon-writer, Honorius of Autun, liked the profanities well enough, and drew from them apt moral tales, which preachers might introduce to rouse drowsy congregations. Yet he directs his pulpit-thunder at the _cives Babyloniae_, the _superbi_, who after their several tastes finger profane literature to their peril: “Those delighting in quibbling learn Aristotle: the lovers of war have Maro, and the lustful idlers their Naso. Lucan and Statius incite discords, while Horace and Terence equip the pert and wanton (_petulantes_)--but since the names of these are blotted from the book of life, I shall not commemorate them with my lips.”[162]

This with the excellent Honorius was pious rhetoric. Yet the love and fear of antique letters caused anxiety in many a mediaeval soul, deflected by them from its narrow path to the heavenly Jerusalem. Indeed the love of letters and of knowledge was to play its part, and might take one side or the other, according to the motive of their pursuit, in the great mediaeval _psychomachia_ between the cravings of mortal life and the militant insistencies of the soul’s salvation. This conflict, not confined to mediaeval monks, has its universal aspects. It echoes in the sigh of Michelangelo over the

“affectuosa fantasia,
Che l’ arte si fece idolo e monarca,”

--which had so long drawn his heart from Eternity.[163]

Commonly, however, this conflict did not greatly disturb scholars who felt in some degree the classic spell so manifold of delight in themes delightful, of pleasure somehow drawn from clear statement and convincing sequence of thought, of even deeper happiness springing from the stirring of those faculties through which man rejoices in knowledge. To be sure, readers of the Classics, who drew joy from them or satisfaction, or humane instruction, were comparatively few in the mediaeval centuries, as they are to-day. And undoubtedly in the Middle Ages the Classics usually were read in unenlightened schoolboy fashion. Yet making these reservations, we may be sure that letters yielded up their joys to the chosen few in every mediaeval century. “Amor litterarum ab ipso fere initio pueritiae mihi est innatus,” wrote Lupus in the ninth.[164] Gerbert might have said the same, and many of the men who taught at Chartres in the generations following. So likewise might have said John of Salisbury. In studying the Classics he certainly looked to them for instruction. But he also loved them, and found companionship and solace in them, as he says, and as Cicero before him had said of letters.

We may ask ourselves what sort of pleasure do _we_ get from reading the Classics? not necessarily a light distracting of the mind, but rather a deeper gratification: thought is aroused and satisfied, and our nature is appeased by the admirable presentation of things admirable. At the same time we may be conscious of discipline and benefit. There is good reason to suppose that a like pleasure, or satisfaction, with discipline and instruction, came to this exceedingly clever John from reading Terence, Virgil and Ovid, Horace, Juvenal, Lucan, Persius and Statius, Cicero, Seneca and Quintilian--for he read them all.[165] John is affected, impressed, and trained by his classic reading; he has absorbed his authors; he quotes from them as spontaneously and aptly as he quotes from Scripture. A quotation from the one or the other may give final point to an argument, and have its own eloquent suggestions. Sometimes the tone of one of his own letters--which usually are excellent in form and language--may agree with that of the pithy antique quotation garnishing it. A mediaeval writer was not likely to say just what we should when expressing ourselves on the same matter. Yet John makes quite clear to us how he cared for antique letters, in the Prologue to his _Polycraticus_, his chief work on philosophy and life; and we may take his word as to the satisfaction which he drew from them, since his own writings prove his assiduity in their cult. This prologue is somewhat _cherché_, and imbued with a preciosity of sentiment putting one in mind of Cicero’s oration _Pro Archia poeta_.

“Most delightful in many ways, but in this especially, is the fruit of
letters, that banishing the reserve of intervening place and time,
they bring friends into each other’s presence, and do not suffer
noteworthy things to be obliterated by dust. For the arts would have
perished, laws would have vanished, the offices of faith and religion
would have fallen away, and even the correct use of language would
have failed, had not the divine pity, as a remedy for human infirmity,
provided letters for the use of mortals. Ancient examples, which
incite to virtue, would have corrected and served no one, had not the
pious solicitude of writers transmitted them to posterity.... Who
would know the Alexanders and the Caesars, or admire Stoics and
Peripatetics, had not the monuments of writers signalized them?
Triumphal arches promote the glory of illustrious men from the carved
inscription of their deeds. Thereby the observer recognizes the
Liberator of his Country, the Establisher of Peace. The light of fame
endures for no one save through his own or another’s writing. How many
and how great kings thinkest thou there have been, of whom there is
neither speech nor cogitation? Vainly have men stormed the heights of
glory, if their fame does not shine in the light of letters. Other
favour or distinction is as fabled Echo, or the plaudits of the Play,
ceasing the moment it has begun.

“Besides all this, solace in grief, recreation in labour, cheerfulness
in poverty, modesty amid riches and delights, faithfully are bestowed
by letters. For the soul is redeemed from its vices, and even in
adversity refreshed with sweet and wondrous cheer, when the mind is
intended upon reading or writing what is profitable. Thou shalt find
in human life no more pleasing or more useful employment; unless
perchance when, with heart dilated through prayer and divine love, the
mind perceives and arranges within itself, as with the hand of
meditation, the great things of God. Believe one who has tried it,
that all the sweets of the world, compared with these exercises, are
wormwood.”[166]

Hereupon, still addressing himself to his friend and patron, Thomas à Becket, John suggests that these recreations are peculiarly beneficial to men in their circumstances, burdened with affairs; and he puts his principles in practice, by launching forth upon his lengthy work of learned and philosophic disquisition.

To supplement this outline of John’s appreciation of the Classics, it will be interesting to look into the literary interpretation of a classical poem, from the pen of one of his contemporaries. So little is known of the author, Bernard Silvestris, that he usually has been confused with his more famous fellow, Bernard of Chartres. We may refer to both of them again.[167] Here our business is solely with the _Commentum Bernardi Silvestris super sex libros Aeneidos Virgilii_.[168] The writer draws from the _Saturnalia_ of the fifth-century grammarian, Macrobius; but his allegorical interpretation of the _Aeneid_ seems to be his own. He finds in the _Aeneid_ a twofold consideration, in that its author meant to teach philosophic truth, and at the same time was not inattentive to the poetic plot.

“Since then Virgil in this poem is both philosopher and poet, we shall
first expound the purpose and method of the poet.... His aim is to
unfold the calamities of Aeneas and other Trojans, and the labours of
the exiles. Herein disregarding the truth of history as told by Dares
the Phrygian,[169] and seeking to win the favour of Augustus, he
adorns the facts with figments. For Virgil, greatest of Latin poets,
wrote in imitation of Homer, greatest of Greek poets. As Homer in the
_Iliad_ narrates the fall of Troy and in the _Odyssey_ the exile of
Ulysses; so Virgil in the second Book briefly relates the overthrow of
Troy, and in the rest the labours of Aeneas. Consider the twin order
of narration, the natural and the artistic (_artificialem_). The
natural is when the narrative proceeds according to the sequence of
events, telling first what happened first. Lucan and Statius keep to
this order. The artistic is when we begin in the middle of the story,
and thence revert to the commencement. Terence writes thus, and Virgil
in this work. It would have been the natural order to have described
first the destruction of Troy, and then brought the Trojans to Crete,
from Crete to Sicily, and from Sicily to Libya. But he first brings
them to Dido, and introduces Aeneas relating the overthrow of Troy and
the other things that he has suffered.[170]

“Up to this point we show how he proceeds: next let us observe why he
does it so. With poets there is the reason of usefulness, as with a
satirist; the reason of pleasure, as with a writer of comedies; and
again these two combined, as with the historical poet. As Horace says:

‘Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae,
Aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae.’

“This kind of a historical poem is shown by its figurative and
polished diction and in the various mischances and deeds narrated. If
any one will study to imitate it he will gain skill in writing. The
narrative also contains instances and arguments for following the
right and avoiding what is evil. Hence a twofold profit to the reader:
skill in writing, gained through imitation, and prudence in conduct,
drawn from example and precept. For instance, in the labours of Aeneas
we have an example of endurance; and one of piety, in his affection
for Anchises and Ascanius. From the reverence which he shows the gods,
from the oracles which he supplicates, from the sacrifices which he
offers, from the vows and prayers which he pours forth, we feel drawn
to religion: while through Dido’s unbridled love, we are recalled from
desire for the forbidden.”

The above is excellent, but not particularly original. It shows, however, that Bernard could appreciate the _Aeneid_ in this way. His allegorical interpretation is of a piece with current mediaeval methods. Yet to take a poem allegorically was not distinctively mediaeval; for Homer and other poets had been thus expounded from the days of Plato, who did not himself approve. With Bernard, each Book of the _Aeneid_ represents one of the ages of man, the first Book betokening infancy, the second boyhood, and so forth. Allegorical etymologies are applied to the names of the personages; and in general the whole natural course and setting of the poem is taken allegorically. “The sea is the human body moved and tossed by drunkenness and lusts, which are represented by waves.” Aeneas, to wit, the human soul joined to its body, comes to Carthage, the mundane city where Dido reigns, which is lust; this allegory is unfolded in detail. So the interpretation ambles on, not more and not less jejune than such ingenuities usually are.

* * * * *

Classical studies reached their zenith in the twelfth century. For in every way that century surpassed its predecessors; and in classical studies it excelled the thirteenth, which devoted to them a smaller portion of its intellectual energies. The twelfth century, to be sure, was prodigiously interested in dialectic and theology. Yet these had not quite engulfed the humanities; nor had any newly awakened interest in physical or experimental science distracted the eyes of men from the charms of the ancient written page. The change took place in the thirteenth century. Its best intellectual efforts, north of the Alps at least, were directed to the study and theological appropriation of the Aristotelian encyclopaedia of metaphysics and universal knowledge.[171] The effect of Aristotle was totally unliterary. And the minds of men, absorbed in mastering this giant mass of knowledge and argument, ceased to regard literary form and the humane aspects of Latin literature.

Until the thirteenth century, dialectic and theology were not completely severed from _belles lettres_. The Platonic-Augustinian theology of the twelfth century had been idealizing and imaginative, not to say poetical. Such an interesting exponent of it as Hugo of St. Victor appears as a literary personage, despite his stinted advocacy of classical study. One notes that for his time the chief single source of physical knowledge was the Latin version of the _Timaeus_, certainly not a prosaic composition. Thus, for the twelfth century, an effective cause of the continuance of the study of letters lay herein: whatever branch of natural knowledge might allure the student, he could not draw it bodily from a serious but unliterary repository, like the _Physics_ or _De animalibus_ of Aristotle, which were not yet available; he must follow his bent through the writings of various Latin poets as well as prose-writers. In fine, the sources of profane knowledge open to the twelfth century were literary in their nature, and might form part of the literature which would be read by a student of grammar or rhetoric.

One sees this in John of Salisbury. There may have been a few men who knew more than he did of some particular topic. But his range and readiness of knowledge were unique. And it is evident from his writings that his knowledge (except in logic) had no special or scientific source, but was derived from a promiscuous reading of Latin literature. As a result, he is himself a literary man. One may say much the same of his younger contemporary, Alanus de Insulis.[172] He too has gathered knowledge from literary sources, and he himself is one of the best Latin poets of the Middle Ages. Another extremely poetic philosopher was Bernard Silvestris, the interpreter of Virgil. His _De mundi unitate_ is a Pantheistic exposition of the Universe; it is also a poem; and incidentally it affords another illustration of the general fact, that before the works of Aristotle were made known and expounded in the thirteenth century, all kinds of natural and quasi-philosophic knowledge were drawn from a variety of writings, some of them poor enough from any point of view, but none of them distinctly scientific and unliterary, like the works of Aristotle. Formal logic or dialectic, as cultivated by Abaelard for example, appears as an exception. It had been specialized and more scientifically treated than any branch of substantial knowledge; for indeed it was based on the logical treatises of Aristotle, most of which were in use before Abaelard’s death, and all of which were known to Thierry of Chartres and John of Salisbury.[173]

The contrast between the cathedral school of Chartres and the University of Paris illustrates the change from the twelfth to the thirteenth century. The former has been spoken of in a previous chapter, where its story was brought down to the times of its great teachers, Bernard and Thierry, of whom we shall have to speak in connection with the teaching of grammar and the reading of classical authors. The school flourished exceedingly until the middle of the twelfth century.[174] By that time the schools of Paris had received an enormous impetus from the popularity of Abaelard, and scholars had begun to push thither from all quarters. But it was not till the latter part of the century that the University, with its organization of Masters and Faculties, began visibly to emerge out of the antecedent cathedral school.[175] Chartres was a home of letters; and there Latin literature was read enthusiastically. But in Paris Abaelard was pre-eminently a dialectician; and after he died, through those decades when the University was coming into existence, the tide of study set irresistibly toward theology and metaphysics. Students and masters of the Faculty of Arts outnumbered all the other Faculties; nevertheless, counting not by tumultuous numbers, but by intellectual strength, the great matter was Theology, and the majority of the Masters in the Arts were students in the divine science. The Arts were regarded as a preparatory discipline. So through its great period, which roughly coincides with the thirteenth century, the University of Paris was for all Europe the supreme seat of Dialectic, Metaphysics, and Theology, and yet no kindly nurse of _belles lettres_.

The tendencies of Oxford were not quite the same as those of Paris, yet Latin literature as such does not seem to have been cultivated there for its own fair sake. This apparently was unaffected by the fact that a movement for “close” or exact scholarship existed at the English university. Grosseteste, its first great chancellor, teacher and inspirer, unquestionably introduced, or encouraged, the study of Greek; and his famous pupil, Roger Bacon, was a serious Greek scholar, and wrote a grammar of that tongue. But neither Grosseteste nor Bacon appears to have been moved by any literary interest in Greek literature; both one and the other urged the importance of Greek, and of Hebrew too and Arabic, in order to reach a surer knowledge of Scripture and Aristotle. They sought to open the veritable founts of theology and natural knowledge, an intelligent aim indeed, but quite unliterary. In spirit both these men belong to the thirteenth century, not to the twelfth.[176]

In Italy, one does not find that the passage from the twelfth to the thirteenth century displays the decline in classical studies which is apparent north of the Alps. The reasons seem obvious. The passion for metaphysical theology did not invade this land of practical ecclesiasticism and urban living, where pagan antiquity, dumb, broken, and defaced, yet everywhere surviving, was the medium of life and thought and temperamental inclination in the thirteenth as well as in the twelfth century. Nor was Italy as yet becoming scientific, or greatly interested in physical hypothesis; although medicine was cultivated in various centres, Salerno, for example, and Bologna. But for the twelfth, and for the thirteenth century as well, Italy’s great intellectual achievement was in the two closely neighbouring sciences of canon and civil law. These made the University of Bologna as pre-eminent in law as Paris was in theology. There had been schools of grammar and rhetoric at Bologna and Ravenna, before the lecturing of Irnerius on the _Pandects_ drew to the first-named town the concourse of mature and seemly students who were gradually to organize themselves into a university.[177] Thus at Bologna law flourished and grew great, springing upward from an antecedent base of grammatical if not literary studies. The study of the law never cut itself away from this foundation. For the exigencies of legal business demanded training in the scrivener’s and notarial arts of inditing epistles and drawing documents, for which the _ars dictaminis_, to wit, the art of composition was of primary utility. This _ars_, teaching as it did both the general rules of composition and the more specific forms of legal or other formal documents, pertained to law as well as grammar. Of the latter study it was perhaps in Italy the main element, or, rather, end. But even without this hybrid link of the _dictamen_, grammar was needed for the interpretation of the _Pandects_; and indeed some of the glosses of Irnerius and other early glossators are grammatical rather than legal explanations of the text. We should bear in mind that this august body of jurisprudential law existed not in the inflated statutory Latin of Justinian’s time, but in the sonorous and correct language of the earlier empire, when the great Jurists lived, as well as Quintilian. Accordingly a close study of the _Pandects_ required, as well as yielded, a knowledge of classical Latinity. Thus law tended to foster, rather than repress, grammar and rhetoric; and had no unfavourable effect on classical studies. And even as such studies “flourished” in Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, they did not cease to “flourish,” there in the thirteenth, in the same general though rather dull and uncreative way. For it will hereafter appear that the productions of the Latin poets and rhetoricians of Italy were below the literary level of those composed north of the Loire in France, or in England.

II

From the days of the Roman Empire, the study of grammar was, and never ceased to be, the basis of the conscious and rational knowledge of the Latin tongue. The Roman boys studied it at Rome; the Latin-speaking provincials studied it, and all people of education who remained in the lands of western Europe which once had formed part of the Empire; its study was renewed under Charlemagne; he and Alcuin and all the scholars of the ninth century were deeply interested in what to them represented tangible Latinity, and in fact was to be a chief means by which their mediaeval civilization should maintain its continuity with its source. For grammar was most instrumental in preserving mediaeval Latin from violent deflections, which would have left the ancient literature as the literature of a forgotten tongue. Had mediaeval Latin failed to keep itself veritable Latin; had it instead suffered transmutation into local Romance dialects, the Latin classics, and all that hung from them, might have become as unknown to the Middle Ages as the Greek, and even have been lost forever. It was the study of Latin grammar, with classic texts to illustrate its rules, that kept Latin Latin, and preserved standards of universal usage throughout western Europe, by which one language was read and spoken everywhere by educated people. From century to century this language suffered modification, and varied according to the knowledge and training of those who used it; yet its changes were never such as to destroy its identity as a language, or prevent the Latin writer of one age or country from understanding whatever in any land or century had been written in that perennial tongue.

Therefore fortunately, as the Carolingian scholars studied Latin grammar, so likewise did those of all succeeding mediaeval generations, thereby holding themselves to at least a homogeneity, though not an unvarying uniformity, of usage. Evidently, however, the method of grammatical instruction had to vary with the needs of the learners and the teachers’ skill. The Romans prattled Latin on their mothers’ knees; and so, with gradually widening deflections, did the Latinized provincials. Neither Roman nor Provincial prattled Ciceronian periods, or used quite the vocabulary of Virgil; yet it was Latin that they talked. Thenceforward there was to be a difference between the people who lived in countries where Romance dialects had emerged from the spoken Latin and prevailed, and those people who spoke a Teuton speech. Although always drawing away, the natal speech of Romance peoples was so like Latin, that in learning it they seemed rather to correct their vulgar tongue than to acquire a new language. So it was in the Christian parts of Spain, in Gaul, and, above all, in Italy, where the vulgar dialects were tardiest in taking distinctive form. Nevertheless, as the Romance dialects, for instance in the country north of the Loire, developed into the various forms of what is called Old French, young people at school would have to learn Latin as a quasi-foreign tongue. Across the Rhine in Germany boys ordinarily had to learn it at school, as a strange language, just as they must to-day; and every effort was devoted to this end.[178] It was not likely that the grammars composed for Roman boys, or at least for boys who spoke Latin from their infancy, would altogether meet the needs of German, or even French, youth. Yet only gradually and slowly in the Middle Ages were grammars put together to make good the insufficiencies of Donatus and Priscian.

The former was the teacher of St. Jerome. He composed a short work, in the form of questions and answers, explaining the eight parts of speech, but giving no rules of gender, or forms of declension and conjugation, needed for the instruction of those who, unlike the Roman youth, could not speak the language. This little book went by the name of the _Ars minor_. The same grammarian composed a more extensive work, the third book of which was called the _Barbarismus_, after its opening chapter. It defined the figures of speech (_figurae_, _locutiones_), and was much used through the mediaeval period.

The _Ars minor_ explained in simple fashion the elements of speech. But the _Institutiones grammaticae_ of Priscian, a contemporary of Cassiodorus, offered a mine of knowledge. Of its eighteen books the first sixteen were devoted to the parts of speech and their forms, considered under the variations of gender, declension, and conjugation. The remaining two treated of _constructio_ or syntax. As early as the tenth century Priscian was separated into these two parts, which came to be known as _Priscianus major_ and _minor_. The Priscian manuscripts, whose name is legion, usually present the former. Diffuse in language, confused in arrangement, and overladen perhaps with its thousands of examples, it was berated for its labyrinthine qualities even in the Middle Ages; yet its sixteen books remained the chief source of etymological knowledge. _Priscianus minor_ was less widely used.

The grammarians of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries followed Donatus and Priscian, making extracts from their works, or abridgements, and now and then introducing examples of deviation from the ancient usage. The last came usually from the Vulgate text of Scripture, which sometimes departed from the idioms or even word-forms approved by the old authorities.[179] The _Ars minor_ of Donatus became enveloped in commentaries; but Priscian was so formidable that in these early centuries he was merely _glossed_, that is, annotated in brief marginal fashion.

It would be tedious to dwell upon mediaeval grammatical studies. But the tendencies characterizing them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may be indicated briefly. The substance of the _Priscianus major_ was followed by mediaeval grammarians. That is to say, while admitting certain novelties,[180] they adhered to its rules and examples relating to the forms of words, their declension and conjugation. But the _Priscianus minor_, although used, was departed from. In the first place its treatment of its subject (syntax) was confused and inadequate. There was, however, a broader reason for seeking rules elsewhere. Mediaeval Latin, in its progress as a living or quasi-living language, departed from the classical norms far more in syntax and composition than in word-forms. The latter continued much the same as in antiquity. But the popular and so to speak Romance tendencies of mediaeval Latin brought radical changes of word-order and style, which worked back necessarily upon the rules of syntax. These had been but hazily stated by the old writers, and the task of constructing an adequate Latin syntax remained undone. It was a task of vital importance for the preservation of the Latin tongue. Word-forms alone will not preserve the continuity of a language; it is essential that their use in speech and writing should be kept congruous through appropriate principles of syntax. Such were intelligently formulated by mediaeval grammarians. The result was not exactly what it would have been had the task been carried out in the fourth century: yet it has endured in spite of the attacks, pseudo-attacks indeed, of the _cinquecento_; and the mediaeval treatment of Latin syntax is the basis of the modern treatment. One may add that syntax or _constructio_ was taken broadly as embracing not only the agreements of number and gender, and the governing[181] of cases, but also the order of words in a sentence, which had changed so utterly between the time of Cicero and Thomas Aquinas.

These general statements find illustration in the famous _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa-Dei, whose author was born in Normandy in the latter half of the twelfth century. He studied at Paris, and in course of time was summoned by the Bishop of Dol to instruct his _nepotes_ in grammar. While acting as their tutor, he appears to have helped their memory by setting his rules in rhyme; and the bishop asked him to write a _Summa_ of grammar in some such fashion. Complying, he composed the _Doctrinale_ in the year 1199, putting his work into leonine or rhyming hexameter, to make it easier to memorize. Rarely has a school-book met with such success. It soon came into use in Paris and elsewhere, and for some three hundred years was the common manual of grammatical teaching throughout western Europe. It was then attacked and apparently driven from the field by the so-called Humanists, who, however, failed to offer anything better in its place, and plagiarized from the work which they professed to execrate.[182]

The etymological portions of the _Doctrinale_ follow the teachings of the _Priscianus major_; the part devoted to syntax, or _constructio_, shows traces of the influence of the _Priscianus minor_. But Alexander’s treatment of syntax is more systematic and elaborate than Priscian’s; and he did not hesitate to defer to the Vulgate and other Christian Latin writings. Thus he made his work conform to contemporary usage, which its purpose was to set forth. He did the same in the section on Prosody, in which he says that the ancient metricians distinguished a number of feet no longer used, and he will confine himself to six--the dactyl, spondee, trochee, anapaest, iambus, and tribrach.[183] In contradiction to classical usage he condemns elision;[184] and in his chapter on accent he throws over the ancient rules:

“Accentus normas legitur posuisse vetustas;
Non tamen has credo servandas tempore nostro.”[185]

Alexander was not really an innovator. He followed previous grammarians in condemning elision, and in what he says of quantity and accent. In his syntax he endeavoured to set forth rules conforming to the best Latin usage of his time, like other mediaeval grammarians before him. He was indeed vehement in his advocacy of recent and Christian authors as standards of writing, and he inveighed against the scholars of Orleans, who read the Classics, and would have us sacrifice to the gods and observe the indecent festivals of Faunus and Jove.[186] But others defended the Orleans school, and perhaps still regarded the Classics as the best arbiters of grammar and eloquence. There exist thirteenth-century grammars which follow Priscian more closely than Alexander does.[187] Yet his work represents the dominant tendencies of his time.

Twelfth and thirteenth century grammarians recommended to their pupils a variety of reading, in which mediaeval and early Christian compositions held as large a place as Virgil and Ovid. The _Doctrinale_ advocates no work more emphatically than Petrus Riga’s _Aurora_, a versified paraphrase of Scripture. Its author was a chorister in Rheims, and died in 1209.[188] The works of scholastic philosophers were not cited as frequently as the compositions of verse-writers; yet mediaeval grammarians were influenced by the language of philosophy, and drew from its training principles which they applied to their own science. Grammar could not help becoming dialectical when the intellectual world was turning to logic and metaphysics. Commencing in the twelfth century, overmasteringly in the thirteenth, logic penetrated grammar and compelled an application of its principles. Often grammarians might better have looked to linguistic usage than to dialectic; yet if grammar was to become a rational science, it had to systematize itself through principles of logic, and make use of dialectic in its endeavour to state a reason for its rules. Those who applied logic to grammar at least endeavoured to distinguish between the two, not always fruitfully. But a real difference could not fail to assert itself inasmuch as logic was in truth of universal application, while mediaeval grammar never ceased to be the grammar of the Latin language. Nevertheless its terminology was largely drawn from logic.[189]

So dialectic brought both good and ill, proving itself helpful in the regulation of syntax, but banefully affecting grammarians with the conviction that language was the creature of reason, and must conform to principles of logic. One likewise notes with curious interest, that, from their dialectic training apparently, grammarians first found as many _species_ of grammar as languages,[190] and then forsook this idea for the view that, in order to be a science, grammar must be universal, or, as they phrased it, one, and must possess principles not applicable specially to Greek or Latin, but to _congruous construction in the abstract_; “de constructione congrua secundum quod abstrahit ab omni lingua speciali,” are the words of the English thirteenth-century philosopher and grammarian, Robert Kilwardby.[191] A like idea affected Roger Bacon, who composed a Greek grammar,[192] which appears to have been intended as the first part of a work upon the grammars of the learned languages other than Latin. It was adapted to afford a grounding in the elements of Greek: yet it touches matters in a way showing that the writer had thought deeply on the affinities of languages and the common principles of grammar. Of this the following passage is evidence:

“Therefore, because I wish to treat of the properties of Greek
grammar, it should be known that there are differences in the Greek
language, to be hereafter noted in giving the names of these dialects
(_idiomata_). And I call them _idiomata_ and not _linguas_, because
they are not different languages, but different properties which are
peculiarities (_idiomata_) of the same language.[193] Wishing to set
forth Greek grammar, for the use of the Latins, it is necessary to
compare it with Latin grammar, because I commonly speak Latin myself,
seeing that the crowd does not know Greek; also because grammar is of
one and the same substance in all languages, although varying in its
non-essentials (_accidentaliter_), also because Latin grammar in a
certain special way is derived from Greek, as Priscian says, and other
grammarians.”[194]

The dialecticizing of grammar took place in the north, under influences radiating from Paris, the chief dialectic centre. These did not deeply affect grammatical studies in Italy, or in the Midi of France, which in some respects exhibited like intellectual tendencies. Grammar was zealously studied in Italy, but it did not there become either speculative or dialectical. To be sure northern manuals were used, especially the _Doctrinale_; but the study remained practical, an art rather than a science, and its chief element, or end, was the _ars dictaminis_ or _dictandi_. The grammatical treatises of Italians were treatises upon this art of epistolary composition and the proper ways of drawing documents. These works were studied also in the North, where the _ars dictaminis_ was by no means neglected.[195]

Latin grammar, although over-dialecticized in the North, and in Italy made very practical, remained of necessity the foundation of classical studies, and of mediaeval literary effort, in prose and verse. As the basis of liberal studies, it had no truer home than the cathedral school of Chartres.[196] Contemporary writers picture the manner in which this study was there made to perform its most liberal office, under favourable mediaeval conditions, in the first half of the twelfth century. The time antedates the _Doctrinale_, and one notes at once that the Chartrian masters used the ancient grammatical authorities. This is shown by the _Eptateuchon_ of Thierry, who was headmaster (_scholasticus_) and then Chancellor there for a number of years between 1120 and 1150. As its name implies, the work was a manual, or rather an encyclopaedia, of the Seven Arts. Thierry compiled it from the writings of the “chief doctors on the arts.” He transcribed the _Ars minor_ of Donatus and then portions of his larger work. Having commended this author for his conciseness and subtilty, Thierry next copied out the whole of Priscian. As text-books for the second branch of the Trivium, he gives Cicero’s _De inventione rhetorica libri 2_, _Rhetoricorum ad Herennium libri 4_, _De partitione oratoria dialogus_, and concludes with the rhetorical writings of Martianus Capella and J. Severianus.[197]

So much for the books. Now for the method of teaching as described by John of Salisbury. He gives the practice of Bernard of Chartres, Thierry’s elder brother, who was scholasticus and Chancellor before him, in the first quarter of the twelfth century. John has been advocating the study of grammar as the _fundamentum atque radix_ of those exercises by which virtue and philosophy are reached; and he is advising a generous reading of the Classics by the student, and their constant use by the professor, to illustrate his teaching.

“This method was followed by Bernard of Chartres, _exundissimus
modernis temporibus fons litterarum in Gallia_. By citations from the
authors he showed what was simple and regular; he brought into relief
the grammatical figures, the rhetorical colours, the artifices of
sophistry, and pointed out how the text in hand bore upon other
studies; not that he sought to teach everything in a single session,
for he kept in mind the capacity of his audience. He inculcated
correctness and propriety of diction, and a fitting use of congruous
figures. Realizing that practise strengthens memory and sharpens
faculty, he urged his pupils to imitate what they had heard, inciting
some by admonitions, others by whipping and penalties. Each pupil
recited the next day something from what he had heard on the
preceding. The evening exercise, called the _declinatio_, was filled
with such an abundance of grammar that any one, of fair intelligence,
by attending it for a year, would have at his fingers’ ends the art of
writing and speaking, and would know the meaning of all words in
common use. But since no day and no school ought to be vacant of
religion, Bernard would select for study a subject edifying to faith
and morals. The closing part of this _declinatio_, or rather
philosophical recitation, was stamped with piety: the souls of the
dead were commended, a penitential Psalm was recited, and the Lord’s
Prayer.

“For those boys who had to write exercises in prose or verse, he
selected the poets and orators, and showed how they should be imitated
in the linking of words and the elegant ending of passages. If any one
sewed another’s cloth into his garment, he was reproved for the theft,
but usually was not punished. Yet Bernard gently pointed out to
awkward borrowers that whoever imitated the ancients (_majores_)
should himself become worthy of imitation by posterity. He impressed
upon his pupils the virtue of economy, and the values of things and
words: he explained where a meagreness and tenuity of diction was
fitting, and where copiousness or even excess should be allowed, and
the advantage of due measure everywhere. He admonished them to go
through the histories and poems with diligence, and daily to fix
passages in their memory. He advised them, in reading, to avoid the
superfluous, and confine themselves to the works of distinguished
authors. For, he said (quoting from Quintilian) that to follow out
what every contemptible person has said, is irksome and vainglorious,
and destructive of the capacity which should remain free for better
things. To the same effect he cited Augustine, and remarked that the
ancients thought it a virtue in a grammarian to be ignorant of
something. But since in school exercises nothing is more useful than
to practise what should be accomplished by the art, his scholars wrote
daily in prose and verse, and proved themselves in discussions.”[198]

This passage indicates with what generous use of the _auctores_ Bernard expounded grammar and explained the orators and poets; how he assigned portions of their works for memorizing, and with what care he corrected his pupils’ prose and metrical compositions, criticizing their knowledge and their taste. He was a man mindful of his Christian piety toward the dead and living, but caring greatly for the Classics, and loving study. “The old man of Chartres (_senex Carnotensis_),” says John of Salisbury, meaning Bernard, “named wisdom’s keys in a few lines, and though I am not taken with the sweetness of the metre, I approve the sense:

‘Mens humilis, studium quaerendi, vita quieta,
Scrutinium tacitum, paupertas, terra aliena....’”[199]

Bernard, Thierry, and other masters and scholars of their school, as the advocates of classical education, detested the men called by John of Salisbury _Cornificiani_, who were for shortening the academic course, as one would say to-day, so that the student might finish it up in two or three years, and proceed to the business of life. A good many in the twelfth century adopted this notion, and turned from the pagan classics, not as impious, but as a waste of time. Some of the good scholars of Chartres lost heart, among them William of Conches and a certain Richard, both teachers of John of Salisbury. They had followed Bernard’s methods; “but when the time came that so many men, to the great prejudice of truth, preferred to seem, rather than be, philosophers and professors of the arts, engaging to impart the whole of philosophy in less than three years, or even two, then my masters vanquished by the clamour of the ignorant crowd, stopped. Since then, less time has been given to grammar. So it has come about that those who profess to teach all the arts, both liberal and mechanical, are ignorant of the first of them, without which vainly will one try to get the rest.”[200]

Upon these people who seemed charlatans, and yet may have represented tendencies of the coming time, Thierry, Gilbert de la Porrèe,[201] and John of Salisbury poured their sarcasms. The controversy may have clarified Bernard’s consciousness of the value of classical studies and deepened his sense of obligation to the ancients, until it drew from him perhaps the finest of mediaeval utterances touching the matter: “Bernard of Chartres used to say that we were like dwarfs seated on the shoulders of giants. If we see more and further than they, it is not due to our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high and upborne by their gigantic bigness.”[202]