{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_The_Mediaeval_Mind_Chapter_32/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_The_Mediaeval_Mind_Chapter_32","id":"wikisource_The_Mediaeval_Mind_Chapter_32","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Mediaeval_Mind/Chapter_32","summary":null,"tags":["Headers_applying_DefaultSort_key","Subpages"],"text":"CHAPTER XXXII\n\n\u00a0\n\nEVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN VERSE\n\n\u00a0\n\n\u00a0\u00a0I. METRICAL VERSE.\n\n\u00a0II. SUBSTITUTION OF ACCENT FOR QUANTITY.\n\nIII. SEQUENCE-HYMN AND STUDENT-SONG.\n\nIV. PASSAGE OF THEMES INTO THE VERNACULAR.\n\n\u00a0\n\nIn mediaeval Latin poetry the endeavour to preserve a\nclassical style and the irresistible tendency to evolve new\nforms are more palpably distinguishable than in the prose.\nFor there is a visible parting of the ways between the\nretention of the antique metres and their fruitful abandonment\nin verses built of accentual rhyme. Moreover, this formal\ndivergence corresponds to a substantial difference, inasmuch\nas there was usually a larger survival of antique feeling and\nallusion in the mediaeval metrical attempts than in the\nrhyming poems.\n\nAs in the prose, so in the poetry, the lines of development\nmay be followed from the Carolingian time. But a difference\nwill be found between Italy and the North; for in Italy the\ncourse was quicker, but a less organic evolution resulted in\nverse less excellent and less distinctly mediaeval. By the\nend of the eleventh century Latin poetry in Italy, rhyming\nor metrical, seems to have drawn itself along as far as it was\ndestined to progress; but in the North a richer growth\nculminates a century later. Indeed the most originative line\nof evolution of mediaeval Latin verse would seem to have\nbeen confined to the North, in the main if not exclusively.\n\nThe following pages offer no history of mediaeval Latin\npoetry, even as the previous chapter made no attempt to\nsketch the history of the prose. Their object is to point out the general lines along which the verse-forms were\ndeveloped, or were perhaps retarded. Three may be\ndistinguished. The first is marked by the retention of quantity\nand the endeavour to preserve the ancient measures. In\nthe second, accent and rhyme gradually take the place of\nmetre within the old verse-forms. The third is that of the\nSequence, wherein the accentual rhyming hymn springs from\nthe chanted prose, which had superseded the chanting of the\nfinal a of the Alleluia.\n\n\u00a0\n\nI\n\nThe lover of classical Greek and Latin poetry knows the\nbeautiful fitness of the ancient measures for the thought and\nfeeling which they enframed. If his eyes chance to fall on\nsome twelfth-century Latin hymn, he will be struck by its\ndifferent quality. He will quickly perceive that classic forms\nwould have been unsuited to the Christian and romantic\nsentiment of the mediaeval period, and will realize that\nsome vehicle besides metrical verse would have been needed\nfor this thoroughly declassicized feeling, even had metrical\nquantity remained a vital element of language, instead of\npassing away some centuries before. Metre was but\nresuscitation and convention in the time of Charlemagne. Yet it\nkept its sway with scholars, and could not lack votaries so\nlong as classical poetry made part of the Ars grammatica\nor was read for delectation. Metrical composition did not\ncease throughout the Middle Ages. But it was not the true\nmediaeval style, and became obviously academic as accentual\nverse was perfected and made fit to carry spiritual emotion. Nevertheless the simpler metres were cultivated successfully\nby the best scholars of the twelfth century.\n\nMost of the Latin poetry of the Carolingian period was\nmetrical, if we are to judge from the mass that remains.\nReminiscence of the antique enveloped educated men, with\nwhom the mediaeval spirit had not reached distinctness of\nthought and feeling. So the poetry resembled the contemporary sculpture and painting, in which the antique was\nstill unsuperseded by any new style. Following the antique\nmetres, using antique phrase and commonplace, often\ncopying antique sentiment, this poetry was as dull as might be\nexpected from men who were amused by calling each other\nHomer, Virgil, Horace, or David. Usually the poets were\necclesiastics, and interested in theology; but many of the\npieces are conventionally profane in topic, and as humanistic\nas the Latin poetry of Petrarch. Moreover, just as Petrarch's\nLatin poetry was still-born, while his Italian sonnets live, so\nthe Carolingian poetry, when it forgets itself and falls away\nfrom metre to accentual verse, gains some degree of life. At\nthis early period the Romance tongues were not a fit poetic\nvehicle, and consequently living thoughts, which with Dante\nand Petrarch found voice in Italian, in the ninth century\nbegan to stammer in Latin verses that were freed from the\ndead rules of quantity, and were already vibrant with a vital\nfeeling for accent and rhyme.\n\nThrough the tenth century metrical composition became\nrougher, yet sometimes drew a certain force from its rudeness.\nA good example is the famous Waltarius, or Waltharilied, of\nEkkehart of St. Gall, composed in the year 960 as a school\nexercise. The theme was a German story found in\nvernacular poetry. Ekkehart's hexameters have a strong Teuton\nflavour, and doubtless some of the vigour of his paraphrase\nwas due to the German original.\n\nThe metrical poems of the eleventh century have been\nspoken of already, especially the more interesting ones\nwritten in Italy. Most of the Latin poetry emanating from\nthat classic land was metrical, or so intended. Frequently\nit tells the story of wars, or gives the Gesta of notable lives,\nmaking a kind of versified biography. One feels as if verse\nwas employed as a refuge from the dead annalistic form.\nThis poetry was a semi-barbarizing of the antique, without\nnew formal or substantial elements. Italy, one may say,\nnever became essentially and creatively mediaeval: the\npressure of antique survival seems to have barred original\ndevelopment; Italians took little part in the great mediaeval\nmilitary religious movements, the Crusades; no strikingly\nnew architecture arose with them; their first vernacular\npoetry was an imitation or a borrowing from Provence and\nFrance; and by far the greater part of their Latin poetry\npresents an uncreative barbarizing of the antique metres.\n\nThese remarks find illustration in the principal Latin\npoems composed in Italy in the twelfth century. Among\nthem one observes differences in skill, knowledge, and\ntendency. Some of the writers made use of leonine\nhexameters, others avoided the rhyme. But they were all\nakin in lack of excellence and originality both in composition\nand verse-form. There was the monk Donizo of Canossa,\nwho wrote the Vita of the great Countess Matilda; there\nwas William of Apulia, Norman in spirit if not in blood,\nwho wrote of the Norman conquests in Apulia and Sicily;\nalso the anonymous and barbarous De bello et excidio urbis Comensis, in which is told the destruction of Como by Milan\nbetween 1118 and 1127; then the metrically jingling\nPisan chronicle narrating the conquest of the island of\nMajorca, and beginning (like the Aeneid) with\n\n\"Arma, rates, populum vindictam coelitus octam\n\nScribimus, ac duros terrae pelagique labores.\"\n\nWe also note Peter of Ebulo, with his narrative in\nlaudation of the emperor Henry VI., written about 1194;\nHenry of Septimella and his elegies upon the checkered\nfortunes of divers great men; and lastly the more famous\nGodfrey of Viterbo, of probable German blood, and notary\nor scribe to three successive emperors, with his cantafable\nPantheon or Memoria saecularum. Godfrey's poetry is\nrhymed after a manner of his own.\n\nIn the North, or more specifically speaking in the land\nof France north of the Loire, the twelfth century brought\nbetter metrical poetry than in Italy. Yet it had something\nof the deadness of imitation, since the vis vivida of song had\npassed over into rhyming verse. Still from the academic\npoint of view, metre was the proper vehicle of poetry; as\none sees, for instance, in the Ars versificatoria of Matthew\nof Vendome, written toward the close of the twelfth century.\n\"Versus est metrica descriptio,\" says he, and then elaborates\nhis, for the most part borrowed, definition: \"Verse is metrical\ndescription proceeding concisely and line by line through\nthe comely marriage of words to flowers of thought, and\ncontaining nothing trivial or irrelevant.\" A neat conception\nthis of poetry; and the same writer denounces leonine\nrhyming as unseemly, but praises the favourite metre of\nthe Middle Ages, the elegiac; for he regards the hexameter\nand pentameter as together forming the perfect verse. It\nwas in this metre that Hildebert wrote his almost classic elegy over the ruins of Rome. A few lines have been\nquoted from it; but the whole poem, which is not long, is\nof interest as one of the very best examples of a mediaeval\nLatin elegy:\n\n\"Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tola ruina;\n\nQuam magni fueris Integra fracta doces.\n\nLonga tuos fastus aetas destruxit, et arces\n\nCaesaris et superum templa palude jacent.\n\nIlle labor, labor ille ruit quem dirus Araxes\n\nEt stantem tremuit et cecidisse dolet;\n\nQuem gladii regum, quem provida cura senatus,\n\nQuem superi rerum constituere caput;\n\nQuem magis optavit cum crimine solus habere\n\nCaesar, quam socius et pius esse socer,\n\nQui, crescens studiis tribus, hostes, crimen, amicos\n\nVi domuit, secuit legibus, emit ope;\n\nIn quem, dum fieret, vigilavit cura priorum:\n\nJuvit opus pietas hospitis, unda, locus.\n\nMateriem, fabros, expensas axis uterque\n\nMisit, se muris obtulit ipse locus.\n\nExpendere duces thesauros, fata favorem,\n\nArtifices studium, totus et orbis opes.\n\nUrbs cecidit de qua si quicquam dicere dignum\n\nMoliar, hoc potero dicere: Roma fuit.\n\nNon tamen annorum series, non flamma, nec ensis\n\nAd plenum potuit hoc abolere decus.\n\nCura hominum potuit tantam componere Romam\n\nQuantam non potuit solvere cura deum.\n\nConfer opes marmorque novum superumque favorem,\n\nArtificum vigilent in nova facta manus,\n\nNon tamen aut fieri par stanti machina muro,\n\nAut restaurari sola ruina potest.\n\nTantum restat adhuc, tantum ruit, ut neque pars stans\n\nAequari possit, diruta nec refici.\n\nHic superum formas superi mirantur et ipsi,\n\nEt cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares.\n\nNon potuit natura deos hoc ore creare\n\nQuo miranda deum signa creavit homo.\n\nVultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur\n\nArtificum studio quam deitate sua.\n\nUrbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret,\n\nVel dominis esset turpe carere fide.\"\n\nThe elegiac metre was used by Abaelard in his didactic poem to his son Astralabius, and by John of Salisbury in\nhis Entheticus. The hexameter also was a favourite measure,\nused, for instance, by Alanus of Lille in the Anticlaudianus,\nperhaps the noblest of mediaeval narrative or allegorical\npoems in Latin. Another excellent composition in\nhexameter was the Alexandreis of Walter, born, like Alanus,\napparently at Lille, but commonly called of Chatillon. As\npoets and as classical scholars, these two men were worthy\ncontemporaries. Walter's poem follows, or rather enlarges\nupon the Life of Alexander by Quintus Curtius. He is\nsaid to have written it on the challenge of Matthew of\nVendome, him of the Ars versificatoria. The Ligurinus of\na certain Cistercian Gunther is still another good example\nof a long narrative poem in hexameters. It sets forth the\ncareer of Frederick Barbarossa, and was written shortly after\nthe opening of the thirteenth century. Its author, like\nWalter and Alanus, shows himself widely read in the\nClassics.\n\nThe sapphic was a third not infrequently attempted\nmetre, of which the De planctu naturae of Alanus contains\nexamples. This work was composed in the form of the\nDe consolatione philosophiae of Bo\u00ebthius, where lyrics alternate\nwith prose. The general topic was Nature's complaint over\nman's disobedience to her laws. The author apostrophizes\nher in the following sapphics:\n\n\"O Dei proles, genitrixque rerum,\n\nVinculum mundi, stabilisque nexus,\n\nGemma terrenis, speculum caducis,\n\nLucifer orbis.\n\nPax, amor, virtus, regimen, potestas,\n\nOrdo, lex, finis, via, dux, origo,\n\nVita, lux, splendor, species, figura\n\nRegula mundi.\n\nQuae tuis mundum moderas habenis,\n\nCuncta concordi stabilita nodo\n\nNectis et pacis glutino maritas\n\nCoelica terris.\n\nQuae noys (vovs) plures recolens ideas\n\nSingulas rerum species monetans,\n\nRes togas formis, chlamidemque formae\n\nPollice formas.\n\nCui favet coelum, famulatur aer,\n\nQuam colit Tellus, veneratur unda,\n\nCui velut mundi dominae tributum\n\nSingula solvunt.\n\nQuae diem nocti vicibus catenans\n\nCereum solis tribuis diei,\n\nLucido lunae speculo soporans\n\nNubila noctis.\n\nQuae polum stellis variis inauras,\n\nAetheris nostri solium serenans\n\nSiderum gemmis, varioque coelum\n\nMilite complens.\n\nQuae novis coeli faciem figuris\n\nProtheans mutas aridumque vulgus\n\nAeris nostri regione donans,\n\nLegeque stringis.\n\nCujus ad nutum juvenescit orbis,\n\nSilva crispatur folii capillo,\n\nEt tua florum tunicata veste,\n\nTerra superbit.\n\nQuae minas ponti sepelis, et auges,\n\nSyncopans cursum pelagi furori\n\nNe soli tractum tumulare possit\n\nAequoris aestus.\"\n\nPractically all of our examples have been taken from\nworks composed in the twelfth century, and in the land\ncomprised under the name of France. The pre-excellence\nof this period will likewise appear in accentual rhyming\nLatin poetry, which was more spontaneous and living than\nits loftily descended relative.\n\n\u00a0\n\nII\n\nThe academic vogue of metre in the early Middle Ages\ndid not prevent the growth of more natural poetry. The Irish had their Gaelic poems; people of Teutonic speech had\ntheir rough verse based on alliteration and the count of the\nstrong syllables. The Romance tongues emerging from the\ncommon Latin were as yet poetically untried. But in the\nproper Latin, which had become as unquantitative and\naccentual as any of its vulgar forms, there was a tonic poetry\nthat was no longer unequipped with rhyme.\n\nThree rhythmic elements made up this natural mode of\nLatin versification: the succession of accented and unaccented\nsyllables; the number of syllables in a line; and that\nregularly recurring sameness of sound which is called rhyme.\nThe source of the first of these seems obvious. Accent\nhaving driven quantity from speech, came to supersede it in\nverse, with the accented syllable taking the place of the long\nsyllable and the unaccented the place of the short. In the\nCarolingian period accentual verse followed the old metrical\nforms, with this exception: the metrical principle that one\nlong is equivalent to two shorts was not adopted.\nConsequently the number of syllables in the successive lines of an\naccentual strophe would remain the same, where in the\nmetrical antecedent they might have varied. This is also\nsufficient to account for the second element, the observance\nof regularity in the number of syllables. For this regularity\nseems to follow upon the acceptance of the principle that in\nrhythmic verse an accented syllable is not equal to two\nunaccented ones. The query might perhaps be made why\nthis Latin accentual verse did not take up the principle of\nregularity in the number of strong syllables in a line, like\nOld High German poetry for example, where the number of\nunaccented syllables, within reasonable limits, is indifferent.\nA ready answer is that these Latin verses were made by\npeople of Latin speech who had been acquainted with\nmetrical forms of poetry, in which the number of syllables\nmight vary, but was never indifferent; for the metrical rule\nwas rigid that one long was equivalent to two short; and to\nno more and no less. Hence the short syllables were as\nfixed in number as the long.\n\nThe origin of the third element, rhyme, is in dispute.\nIn some instances it may have passed into Greek and Latin\nverses from Syrian hymns. But on the other hand it had\nlong been an occasional element in Greek and Latin\nrhetorical prose. Probably rhyme in Latin accentual verse\nhad no specific origin. It gradually became the sharpening,\ndefining element of such verse. Accentual Latin lent itself\nso naturally to rhyme, that had not rhyme become a fixed\npart of this verse, there indeed would have been a fact to\nexplain.\n\nThese, then, were the elements: accent, number of\nsyllables, and rhyme. Most interesting is the development\nof verse-forms. Rhythmic Latin poetry came through the\nsubstitution of accent for quantity, and probably had many\nprototypes in the old jingles of Roman soldiers and\nprovincials, which so far as known were accentual, rather\nthan metrical. Christian accentual poetry retained those\nsimple forms of iambic and trochaic verse which most readily\nsubmitted to the change from metre to accent, or perhaps\none should say, had for centuries offered themselves as\nnatural forms of accentual verse. Apparently the change\nfrom metre to accent within the old forms gradually took\nplace between the sixth and the tenth centuries. During\nthis period there was slight advance in the evolution of new\nverses; nor was the period creative in other respects, as\nwe have seen. But thereafter, as the mediaeval centuries\nadvanced from the basis of a mastered patristic and antique\nheritage, and began to create, there followed an admirable\nevolution of verse-forms: in some instances apparently\nissuing from the old metrico-accentual forms, and in others\ndeveloping independently by virtue of the faculty of song\nmeeting the need of singing.\n\nThis factor wrought with power\u2014the human need and\ncognate faculty of song, a need and faculty stimulated in the\nMiddle Ages by religious sentiment and emotion. In the\n\nfusing of melody and words into an utterance of song\u2014at last\ninto a strophe\u2014music worked potently, shaping the\ncomposition of the lines, moulding them to rhythm, insisting upon\nsonorousness in the words, promoting their assonance and\nat last compelling them to rhyme so as to meet the stress,\nor mark the ending, of the musical periods. Thus the\nexigencies of melody helped to evoke the finished verse,\nwhile the words reciprocating through their vocal capabilities\nand through the inspiration of their meaning, aided the\nevolution of the melodies. In fine, words and melody, each\nquickened by the other, and each moulding the other to\nitself, attained a perfected strophic unison; and mediaeval\nmusician-poets achieved at last the finished verses of hymns\nor Sequences and student-songs.\n\nThere were two distinct lines of evolution of accentual\nLatin verse in the Middle Ages; and although the faculty\nof song was a moving energy in both, it worked in one of\nthem more visibly than in the other. Along the one line\naccentual verse developed pursuant to the ancient forms,\ndisplacing quantity with accent, and evolving rhyme. The\nother line of evolution had no connection with the antique.\nIt began with phrases of sonorous prose, replacing inarticulate\nchant. These, under the influence of music, through the\ncreative power of song, were by degrees transformed to\nverse. The evolution of the Sequence-hymn will be the\nchief illustration. With the finished accentual Latin poetry\nof the twelfth century it may become impossible to tell\nwhich line of rhythmic evolution holds the antecedent of a\ngiven poem. In truth, this final and perfected verse may\noften have a double ancestry, descending from the rhythms\nwhich had superseded metre, and being also the child of\nmediaeval melody. Yet there is no difficulty in tracing by\nexamples the two lines of evolution.\n\nTo illustrate the strain of verse which took its origin in\nthe displacement of metre by accent and rhyme, we must look\nback as far as Fortunatus. He was born about the year\n530 in northern Italy, but he passed his eventful life among\nFranks and Thuringians. A scholar and also a poet, he\nhad a fair mastery of metre; yet some of his poems evince\nthe spirit of the coming mediaeval time both in sentiment and form. He wrote two famous hymns, one of them in the\npopular trochaic tetrameter, the other in the equally simple\niambic dimeter. The first, a hymn to the Cross, begins with\nthe never-to-be-forgotten\n\n\"Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis\";\n\nand has such lines as\n\n\"Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis\n\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\nDulce lignum, dulce clavo dulce pondus sustinens!\"\n\nIn these the mediaeval feeling for the Cross shows itself,\nand while the metre is correct, it is so facile that one may\nread or sing the lines accentually. In the other hymn, also\nto the Cross, assonance and rhyme foretell the coming\ntransformation of metre to accentual verse. Here are the\nfirst two stanzas:\n\n\"Vexilla regis prodeunt,\n\nFulget crucis mysterium,\n\nQuo carne carnis conditor\n\nSuspensus est patibulo.\n\nConfixa clavis viscera\n\nTendens manus, vestigia\n\nRedemtionis gratia\n\nHic immolata est hostia.\"\n\nPassing to the Carolingian epoch, some lines from a\npoem celebrating the victory of Charlemagne's son Pippin\nover the Avars in 796, will illustrate the popular trochaic\ntetrameter which had become accentual, and already tended\nto rhyme:\n\n\"Multa mala iam fecerunt ab antico tempore,\n\nFana dei destruxerunt atque monasteria,\n\nVasa aurea sacrata, argentea, fictilia.\"\n\nNext we turn to a piece by the persecuted and interesting\nGottschalk, written in the latter part of the ninth century.\nA young lad has asked for a poem. But how can he sing,\nthe exiled and imprisoned monk who might rather weep as the\nJews by the waters of Babylon? yet he will sing a hymn to the Trinity, and bewail his piteous lot before the highest\npitying Godhead. The verses have a lyric unity of mood,\nand are touching with their sad refrain. Their rhyme, if not\nquite pure, is abundant and catching, and their nearest\nmetrical affinity would be a trochaic dimeter.\n\n\"1.\u00a0Ut quid iubes, pusiole,\n\nquare mandas, filiole,\n\ncarmen dulce me cantare,\n\ncum sim longe exul valde\n\nintra mare?\n\no cur iubes canere?\n\n\u00a0\n\n\"2.\u00a0Magis mihi, misenile,\n\nflere libet, puerule,\n\nplus plorare quam cantare\n\ncarmen tale, rubes quale,\n\namor care.\n\no cor iubes canere?\n\n\u00a0\n\n\"3.\u00a0Mallem scias, pusillule,\n\nut velles tu, fratercule,\n\npio corde condolere\n\nmihi atque prona mente\n\nconlugere.\n\no cur iubes canere?\n\n\"4.\u00a0Scis, divine tyruncule,\n\nscis, superne clientule,\n\nhic diu me exulare,\n\nmulta die sive nocte\n\ntolerare.\n\no cur iubes canere?\n\n\"5.\u00a0Scis captive plebicule\n\nIsraheli cognomine\n\npraeceptum in Babilone\n\ndecantare extra longe\n\nfines Iude.\n\no cur iubes canere?\n\n\"6.\u00a0Non potuerunt utique,\n\nnec debuerunt itaque\n\ncarmen dulce corarn gente\n\naliene nostri terre\n\nresonare.\n\no cur iubes canere?\n\n\"7.\u00a0Sed quia vis omnimode,\n\nconsodalis egregie,\n\ncanam patri filioque\n\nsimul atque procedente\n\nex utroque.\n\nhoc cano ultronee.\n\n\"8.\u00a0Benedictus es, domine,\n\npater, nate, paraclite,\n\ndeus trine, deus une,\n\ndeus summe, deus pie,\n\ndeus iuste.\n\nhoc cano spontanee.\n\n\"9.\u00a0Exul ego diuscule\n\nhoc in mare sum, domine:\n\nannos nempe duos fere\n\nnosti fore, sed iam iamque\n\nmiserere,\n\nhoc rogo humillime.\n\n\"10.\u00a0Interim cum pusione\n\npsallam ore, psallam mente,\n\npsallam voce (psallam corde),\n\npsallam die, psallam nocte\n\ncarmen dulce\n\ntibi, rex piissime.\"\n\nGottschalk (and for this it is hard to love him) was one\nof the initiators of the leonine hexameter, in which a syllable\nin the middle of the line rhymes with the last syllable.\n\n\"Septeno Augustas decimo praeeunte Kalendas\"\n\nis the opening hexameter in his Epistle to his friend\nRatramnus. To what horrid jingle such verses could attain\nmay be seen from some leonine hexameter-pentameters of\ntwo or three hundred years later, on the Fall of Troy,\nbeginning:\n\n\"Viribus, arte, minis, Danaum clara Troja ruinis,\n\nAnnis bis quinis fit rogus atque cinis.\"\n\nHector and Troy, and the dire wiles of the Greeks never\nleft the mediaeval imagination. A poem of the early tenth\ncentury, which bade the watchers on Modena's walls be\nvigilant, draws its inspiration from that unfading memory,\nand for us illustrates what iambics might become when\naccent had replaced quantity. The lines throughout end in\na final rhyming a.\n\n\"O tu, qui servas armis ista moenia,\n\nNoli donnire, moneo, sed vigila.\n\nDum Hector vigil extitit in Troia,\n\nNon eam cepit fraudulenta Graecia.\"\n\nAnd from a scarcely later time, for it also is of the tenth\ncentury, rise those verses to Roma, that old \"Roma aurea et\neterna,\" and forever \"caput mundi,\" sung by pilgrim bands as\ntheir eyes caught the first gleam of tower, church, and ruin:\n\n\"O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina,\n\nCunctarum urbium excellentissima,\n\nRoseo martyrum sanguine rubea,\n\nAlbis et virginum liliis Candida:\n\nSalutem dicimus tibi per omnia,\n\nTe benedicimus: salve per secula.\"\n\nThis verse, which still lifts the heart of whosoever hears\nor reads it, may close our examples of mediaeval verses\ndescended from metrical forms. It will be noticed that\nall of them are from the early mediaeval centuries; a\ncircumstance which may be taken as a suggestion of the\nfact that by far the greater part of the earlier accentual\nLatin poetry was composed in forms in which accent simply\nhad displaced the antique quantity.\n\n\u00a0\n\nIII\n\nWe turn to that other genesis of mediaeval Latin verse,\narising not out of antique forms, but rather from the\nmediaeval need and faculty of song. In the chief instance\nselected for illustration, this line of evolution took its inception in the exigencies and inspiration of the Alleluia\nchant or jubilation. During the celebration of the Mass, as the\nGradual ended in its last Alleluia, the choir continued chanting\nthe final syllable of that word in cadences of musical exultings.\nThe melody or cadence to which this final a of the Alleluia\nwas chanted, was called the sequentia. The words which\ncame to be substituted for its cadenced reiteration were\ncalled the prosa. By the twelfth century the two terms\nseem to have been used interchangeably. Thus arose the\nprose Sequence, so plastic in its capability of being moulded\nby melody to verse. Its songful qualities lay in the\nsonorousness of the words and in their syllabic\ncorrespondence with the notes of the melody to which they were\nsung.\n\nIn the year 860, Norsemen sacked the cloister of\nJumi\u00e8ges in Normandy, and a fleeing brother carried his\nprecious Antiphonary far away to the safe retreat of St. Gall.\nThere a young monk named Notker, poring over its\ncontents, perceived that words had been written in the place\nof the repetitions of the final a of the Alleluia. Taking the\ncue, he set to work to compose more fitting words to\ncorrespond with the notes to which this final a was sung.\nSo these lines of euphonious and fitting words appear to\nhave had their beginning in Notker's scanning of that\nfugitive Antiphonary, and his devising labour. Their primary\npurpose was a musical one; for they were a device\u2014mnemotechnic,\nif one will\u2014to facilitate the chanting of\ncadences previously vocalized with difficulty through the\nsinging of one simple vowel sound. Notker showed his\nwork to his master, Iso, who rejoiced at what his gifted\npupil had accomplished, and spurred him on by pointing\nout that in his composition one syllable was still sometimes\nrepeated or drawn out through several successive notes.\nOne syllable to each note was the principle which Notker\nnow set himself to realize; and he succeeded.\n\nHe composed some fifty Sequences. In his work, as\nwell as in that of others after him, the device of words\nbegan to modify and develop the melodies themselves\nSometimes Notker adapted his verbal compositions to those\ncadences or melodies to which the Alleluia had long been\nsung; sometimes he composed both melody and words; or,\nagain, he took a current melody, sacred or secular, to which\nthe Alleluia never had been sung, and composed words for\nit, to be chanted as a Sequence. In these borrowed melodies,\nas well as in those composed by Notker, the musical periods\nwere more developed than in the Alleluia cadences. Thus\nthe musical growth of the Sequences was promoted by\nthe use of sonorous words, while the improved melodies\nin turn drew the words on to a more perfect rhythmic\nordering.\n\nNotker died in 912. His Sequences were prose, yet\nwith a certain parallelism in their construction; and, even\nwith Notker in his later years, the words began to take on\nassonances, chiefly in the vowel sound of a. Thereafter the\nmelodies, seizing upon the words, as it were, by the principle\nof their syllabic correspondence to the notation, moulded\nthem to rhythm of movement and regularity of line;\nwhile conversely with the better ordering of the words for\nsinging, the melodies in turn made gain and progress,\nand then again reacted on the words, until after two\ncenturies there emerged the finished verses of an Adam of\nSt. Victor.\n\nThus these Sequences have become verse before our\neyes, and we realize that it is the very central current of\nthe evolution of mediaeval Latin poetry that we have been\nfollowing. How free and how spontaneous was this\nevolution of the Sequence. It was the child of the Christian\nMiddle Ages, seeing the light in the closing years of the\nninth century, but requiring a long period of growth before it\nreached the glory of its climacteric. It was born of musical\nchanting, and it grew as song, never unsung or conceived of\nas severable from its melody. Only as it attained its\nperfected strophic forms, it necessarily made use of trochaic\nand other rhythms which long before had changed from\nquantity to accent and so had passed on into the verse-making habitudes of the Middle Ages. If there be any\nLatin composition in virtue of origin and growth absolutely\nun-antique, it is the mediaeval Sequence, which in its final\nforms is so glorious a representative of the mediaeval Hymn.\nAnd we shall also see that much popular Latin poetry,\n\"Carmina Burana\" and student-songs, were composed in\nverses and often sung to tunes taken\u2014or parodied\u2014from\nthe Sequence-hymns of the Liturgy.\n\nThere were many ways of chanting Sequences. The\nmusical phrases of the melodies usually were repeated once,\nexcept at the beginning and the close; and the Sequence\nwould be rendered by a double choir singing antiphonally.\nOrdinarily the words responded to the repetition of the\nmusical phrases with a parallelism of their own. The lines\n(after the first) varied in length by pairs, the second and\nthird lines having the same number of syllables, the fourth\nand fifth likewise equal to each other, but differing in\nlength from the second and third; and so on through the\nSequence, until the last line, which commonly stood alone\nand differed in length from the preceding pairs. The\nSequence called \"Nostra tuba\" is a good example. Probably\nit was composed by Notker, and in his later years; for it is\nfilled with assonances, and exhibits a regular parallelism of\nstructure.\n\n\"Nostra tuba\n\nRegatur fortissime Dei dextra et preces audiat\n\nAura placatissima et serena; ita enim nostra\n\nLaus erit accepta, voce si quod canimus, canat pariter et pura conscientia.\n\nEt, ut haec possimus, omnes divina nobis semper flagitemus adesse auxilia.\n\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\u00b7\n\nO bone Rex, pie, juste, misericors, qui es via et janua,\n\nPortas regni, quaesumus, nobis reseres, dimittasque facinora\n\nUt laudemus nomen nunc tuum atque per cuncta saecula.\"\n\nHere, after the opening, the first pair has seventeen\nsyllables, and the next pair twenty-six. The last pair\nquoted has twenty; and the final line of seventeen syllables\nhas no fellow. A further rhythmical advance seems reached\nby the following Sequence from the abbey of St. Martial at\nLimoges. It may have been written in the eleventh century.\nIt is given here with the first and second line of the couplets\nopposite to each other, as strophe and antistrophe; and the\nlines themselves are divided to show the assonances (or\nrhymes) which appear to have corresponded with pauses in\nthe melody:\n\n\"(1) Canat omnis turba\n\n(2a)\nFonte renata\n(2b)\nLaude jucunda\n\nSpiritusque gratia\n\net mente perspicua\n\n(3a)\nJam restituta\n(3b)\nSicque jactura\n\npars est decima\n\ncoelestis illa\n\nfuerat quae culpa\n\ncompletur in laude\n\nperdita.\n\ndivina.\n\n(4a)\nEcce praeclara\n(4b)\nEnitet ampla\n\ndies dominica\n\nper orbis spatia,\n\n(5a)\nExsultat in qua\n(5b)\nQuia destructa\n\nplebs omnis redempta,\n\nmors est perpetua.\"\n\nA Sequence of the eleventh century will afford a final\nillustration of approach to a regular strophic structure, and\nof the use of the final one-syllable rhyme in a, throughout\nthe Sequence:\n\n1.\n\n\"Alleluia,\n\nTurma, proclama leta;\n\nLaude canora,\n\nFacta prome divina,\n\nJam instituta\n\nSuperna disciplina,\n\n2\n\nChristi sacra\n\nPer magnalia\n\nEs quia de morte liberata\n\nUt destructa\n\nInferni claustra\n\nJanuaque celi patefacta!\n\n3\n\nJam nunc omnia\n\nCelestia\n\nTerrestria\n\nVirtute gubernat eterna.\n\nIn quibus sua\n\nJudicia\n\nSemper equa\n\nDat auctoritate paterna\"\n\nAs the eleventh century closed and the great twelfth\ncentury dawned, the forces of mediaeval growth quickened\nto a mightier vitality, and distinctively mediaeval creations\nappeared. Our eyes, of course, are fixed upon the northern\nlands, where the Sequence grew from prose to verse, and\nwhere derivative or analogous forms of popular poetry\ndeveloped also. Up to this time, throughout mediaeval\nlife and thought, progress had been somewhat uncrowned\nwith palpable achievement. Yet the first brilliant creations\nof a master-workman are the fruit of his apprentice years,\nduring which his progress has been as real as when his\nworks begin to make it visible. So it was no sudden birth of power, but rather faculties ripening through apprentice\ncenturies, which illumine the period opening about the year\n1100. This period would carry no human teaching if\nits accomplishment in institutions, in philosophy, in art\nand poetry, had been a heaven-blown accident, and not the\nfruit of antecedent discipline.\n\nThe poetic advance represented by the Sequences of\nAdam of St. Victor may rouse our admiration for the poet's\ngenius, but should not blind our eyes to the continuity of\ndevelopment leading to it. Adam is the final artist and his\nwork a veritable creation; yet his antecedents made part of\nhis creative faculty. The elements of his verses and the\ngeneral idea and form of the sequence were given him;\u2014all\nhonour to the man's holy genius which made these into\npoems. The elements referred to consisted in accentual\nmeasures and in the two-syllabled Latin rhyme which\nappears to have been finally achieved by the close of the\neleventh century. In using them Adam was no borrower,\nbut an artist who perforce worked in the medium of his art\nTrochaic and iambic rhythms then constituted the chief\nmeasures for accentual verse, as they had for centuries, and\ndo still. For, although accentual rhythms admit dactyls\nand anapaests, these have not proved generally serviceable.\nLikewise the inevitable progress of Latin verse had developed\nassonances into rhymes; and indeed into rhymes of two\nsyllables, for Latin words lend themselves as readily to\nrhymes of two syllables as English words to rhymes of one.\n\nThere existed also the idea and form of the Sequence,\nconsisting of pairs of lines which had reached assonance and\nsome degree of rhythm, and varied in length, pair by pair,\nfollowing the music of the melodies to which they were\nsung. For the Sequence-melody did not keep to the same\nrecurring tune throughout, but varied from couplet to\ncouplet. In consequence, a Sequence by Adam of St\nVictor may contain a variety of verse-forms. Moreover, a\nnumber of the Sequences of which he may have been the\nauthor show survivals of the old rhythmical irregularities,\nand of assonance as yet unsuperseded by pure rhyme.\n\nBefore giving examples of Adam's poems, a tribute\nshould be paid to his great forerunner in the art of Latin\nverse. Adam doubtless was familiar with the hymns of\nthe most brilliant intellectual luminary of the departing\ngeneration, one Peter Abaelard, whom he may have seen\nin the flesh. Those once famous love-songs, written for\nHelo\u00efse, perished (so far as we know) with the love they\nsang. Another fate\u2014and perhaps Abaelard wished it so\u2014was\nin store for the many hymns which he wrote for his\nsisters in Christ, the abbess and her nuns. They still exist,\nand display a richness of verse-forms scarcely equalled even\nby the Sequences of Adam. In the development of Latin\nverse, Abaelard is Adam's immediate predecessor; his verses\nbeing, as it were, just one stage inferior to Adam's in\nsonorousness of line, in certainty of rhythm, and in purity of\nrhyme.\n\nThe \"prose\" Sequences were not the direct antecedents\nof Abaelard's hymns. Yet both sprang from the freely\ndevising spirit of melody and song; and therefore those\nhymns are of this free-born lineage more truly than they are\ndescendants of antique forms. To be sure, every possible\naccentual rhythm, built as it must be of trochees, iambics,\nanapaests, or dactyls, has unavoidably some antique\nquantitative antecedent; because the antique measures\nexhausted the possibilities of syllabic combination. Yet\nantecedence is not source, and most of Abaelard's verses by\ntheir form and spirit proclaim their genesis in the creative\nexigencies of song as loudly as they disavow any antique\nparentage.\n\nFor example, there may be some far echo of metrical\nasclepiads in the following accentual and rhyme-harnessed\ntwelve-syllable verse:\n\n\"Advenit veritas, umbra praeteriit,\n\nPost noctem claritas diei subiit,\n\nAd ortum rutilant superni luminis\n\nLegis mysteria plena caliginis.\"\n\nBut the echo if audible is faint, and surely no antique whisper\nis heard in\n\n\" Est in Rama\nVox audita\nRachel flentis\nSuper natos\nInterfectos\nEjulantis.\"\nNor in\n\n\" Golias prostratus est,\nResurrexit Dominus,\nEnse jugulatus est\n\nHostis proprio\u00a0;\nCum suis submersus est\nIlle Pharao.\"\n\nThe variety of Abaelard's verse seems endless. One or\ntwo further examples may or may not suggest any ante-\ncedents in those older forms of accentual verse which\nfollowed the former metres\u00a0:\n\n\" Ornarunt terram germina,\nNunc caelum luminaria.\nSole, luna, stellis depingitur,\nQuorum multus usus cognoscitur.\"\n\nIn this verse the first two lines are accentual iambic\ndimeters\u00a0; while the last two begin each with two trochees,\nand close apparently with two dactyls. The last form of\nline is kept throughout in the following\u00a0:\n\n\" Gaude virgo virginum gloria,\nMatrum decus et mater, jubila,\nQuae commune sanctorum omnium\nMeruisti conferre gaudium.\"\n\nNext come some simple five-syllable lines, with a catch-\ning rhyme\u00a0:\n\n\" Lignum amaras\nIndulcat aquas\nEis immissum.\nOmnes agones\nSunt sanctis dulces\nPer crucifixum.\" Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/221 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/222 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/223 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/224 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/225 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/226 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/227 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/228 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/229 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/230 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/231 the entire contents of existing and progressive Christian and antique culture were contained in the mediaeval Latin literature, the literature of religion and of law and government, of education and of all serious knowledge. It was to be the primary literature of mediaeval thought; from which passed over the chief part of whatever thought and knowledge the vernacular literatures were to receive. For scholars who follow, as we have tried to, the intellectual and the deeper emotional life of the Middle Ages, the Latin literature yields the incomparably greater part of the material of our study. It has been our home country, from which we have made casual excursions into the vernacular literatures.\n\nThese existed, however, from the earliest mediaeval periods, beginning, if one may say so, in oral rather than written documents. We read that Charlemagne caused a book to be made of Germanic poems, which till then presumably had been carried in men's memories. The Hildebrandslied is supposed to have been one of them. In the Norse lands, the Eddas and the matter of the Sagas were repeated from generation to generation, long before they were written down. The habit, if not the art, of writing came with Christianity and the Latin education accompanying it. Gradually a written literature in the Teutonic languages was accumulated. Of this there was the heathen side, well represented in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse; while in Old High German the Hildebrandslied remains, heathen and savage. Thereafter, a popular and even national or rather racial poetry continued, developed, and grew large, notwithstanding the spread of Latin Christianity through Teutonic lands. Of this the Niebelungenlied and the Gudrun are great examples. But individual still famous poets, who felt and thought as Germans, were also composing sturdily in their vernacular a lack of education possibly causing them to dictate (dictieren, dichteri) rather than to write. Of these the greatest were Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. With them and after them, or following upon the Niebelungenlied, came a mass of secular poetry, some of which was popular and national, reflecting Germanic story, while some of it was courtly, transcribing the courtly poetry which by the twelfth century flourished in Old French.\n\nThus bourgeoned the secular branches of German literature. On the other hand, from the time of Christianity's introduction, the Germans felt the need to have the new religion presented to them in their own tongues. The labour of translation begins with Ulfilas, and is continued with conscientious renderings of Scripture and Latin educational treatises, and also with such epic paraphrase as the Heliand and the more elegiac poems of the Anglo-Saxon Cynewulf. Also, at least in Germany, there comes into existence a full religious literature, not stoled or mitred, but popular, non-academic, and non-liturgical; of which quantities remain in the Middle High German of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.\n\nObviously the Romance vernacular literatures had a different commencement. The languages were Latin, simply Latin, in their inception, and never ceased to be legitimate continuations and developments of the popular or Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. But as the speech of children, women, and unlettered people, they were not thought of as literary media. All who could write understood perfectly the better Latin from which these popular dialects were slowly differentiating themselves. And as they progressed to languages, still their life and progress lay among peoples whose ancestral tongue was the proper Latin, which all educated men and women still understood and used in the serious business of life.\n\nBut sooner or later men will talk and sing and think and compose in the speech which is closest to them. The Romance tongues became literary through this human need of natural expression. There always had been songs in the old Vulgar Latin; and such did not cease as it gradually became what one may call Romance. Moreover, the clergy might be impelled to use the popular speech in preaching to the laity, or some unlearned person might compose religious verses. Almost the oldest monument of Old French is the hymn in honour of Ste. Eulalie. Then as civilization advanced from the tenth to the twelfth century, in southern and northern France for example, and the langue d'oc and the langue d'oil became independent and developed languages, unlearned men, or men with unlearned audiences, would unavoidably set themselves to composing poetry in these tongues. In the North the chansons de geste came into existence; in the South the knightly Troubadours made love-lyrics. Somehow, these poems were written down, and there was literature for men's eyes as well as for men's ears.\n\nIn the twelfth century and the thirteenth, the audiences for Romance poetry, especially through the regions of southern and northern France, increased and became diversified. They were made up of all classes, save the brute serf, and of both sexes. The chansons de geste met the taste of the feudal barons; the Arthurian Cycle charmed the feudal dames; the coarse fabliaux pleased the bourgeoisie; and chansons of all kinds might be found diverting by various people. If the religious side was less strongly represented, it was because the closeness of the language to the clerkly and liturgical Latin left no such need of translations as was felt from the beginning among peoples of Germanic speech. Still the Gospels, especially the apocryphal, were put into Old French, and miracles de Notre Dame without number; also legends of the saints, and devout tales of many kinds.\n\nThe accentual verses of the Romance tongues had their source in the popular accentual Latin verse of the later Roman period. Their development was not unrelated to the Latin accentual verse which was superseding metrical composition in the centuries extending, one may say, from the fifth to the eleventh. Divergences between the Latin and Romance verse would be caused by the linguistic evolution through which the Romance tongues were becoming independent languages. Nor was this divergence uninfluenced by the fact that Romance poetry was popular and usually concerned with topics of this life, while Latin poetry in the most striking lines of its evolution was liturgical; and even when secular in topic tended to become learned, since it was the product of the academically educated classes. Much of\nthe vernacular (Romance as well as Germanic) poetry in the\nMiddle Ages was composed by unlearned men who had at\nmost but a speaking acquaintance with Latin, and knew\nlittle of the antique literature. This was true, generally, of\nthe Troubadours of Provence, of the authors of the Old\nFrench chansons de geste, and of such a courtly poet as\nChr\u00e9tien de Troies; true likewise of the great German\nMinnesingers, epic poets rather, Gottfried von Strassburg,\nWolfram von Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide.\n\nOn the other hand, vernacular poetry might be written\nby highly learned men, of whom the towering though late\nexample would be Dante Alighieri. An instance somewhat\nnearer to us at present is Jean Clopinel or de Meun, the\nauthor of the second part of the Roman de la rose. His\nextraordinary Voltairean production embodies all the learning\nof the time; and its scholar-author was a man of genius, who\nincorporated his learning and the fruit thereof very organically\nin his poem.\n\nBut here, at the close of our consideration of the\nmediaeval appreciation of the Classics, and the relations\nbetween the Classics and mediaeval Latin literature, we are\nnot occupied with the very loose and general question of the\namount of classical learning to be found in the vernacular\nliteratures of western Europe. That was a casual matter\ndepending on the education and learning, or lack thereof, of\nthe author of the given piece. But it may be profitable to\nglance at the passing over of antique themes of story into\nmediaeval vernacular literature, and the manner of their\nrefashioning. This is a huge subject, but we shall not go\ninto it deeply, or pursue the various antique themes through\ntheir endless propagations.\n\nAntique stories aroused and pointed the mediaeval\nimagination; they made part of the never-absent antique\ninfluence which helped to bring the mediaeval peoples on\nand evoke in them an articulate power to fashion and create\nall kinds of mediaeval things. But with antique story as\nwith other antique material, the Middle Ages had to turn it\nover and absorb it, and also had to become themselves with\npower, before they could refashion the antique theme or Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/236 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/237 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/238 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/239 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/240 Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 2.djvu/241 The latter mediaevalized and feudalized the tale. Nor were they halted by any absurdity, or conscious of the characterlessness of the puppets of the tale.\n\nFurther to pursue the fortunes of antique themes in mediaeval literature would lead us beyond bounds. Yet mention should be made of the handling of minor narratives, as the Metamorphoses of Ovid. They were very popular, and from the twelfth century on, paraphrases or refashionings were made of many of them. These added to the old tale the interesting mediaeval element of the moral or didactic allegory. The most prodigious instance of this moralizing of Ovid was the work of Chr\u00e9tien L\u00e9gouais, a French Franciscan who wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In some seventy thousand lines he presented the stories of the Metamorphoses, the allegories which he discovered in them, and the moral teaching of the same.\n\nEqually interesting was the application of allegory to Ovid's Ars amatoria. The first translators treated this frivolous production as an authoritative treatise upon the art of winning love. So it was perhaps, only Ovid was amusing himself by making a parable of his youthful diversions. Mediaeval imitators changed the habits of the gilded youth of Rome to suit the society of their time. But they did more, being votaries of courtly love. Such love in the Middle Ages had its laws which were prone to deduce their lineage from Ovid's verses. But its uplifted spirit revelled in symbolism\u00a0; and tended to change to spiritual allegory whatever authority it imagined itself based upon, even though the authority were a book as dissolute, when seriously considered, as the Ars amatoria. It is strange to think of this poem as the very far off street-walking prototype of De Lorris's Roman de la rose.","title":"The Mediaeval Mind/Chapter 32","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":7966}