3. Textbooks

3. Textbooks

a. GRAMMATICA AND DIALECTICA

In this period were written the Latin grammars authoritative throughout the middle age, those of Donatus and Priscian.[40] The former, used generally in two parts as an introductory manual, was so current, indeed, as to become common property and to reduce its author’s name to a common noun.[41] Priscian came to be used as a second book.[42]

The ancient tradition including in the scope of _grammatica_ not only meters and some of the figures of speech, but also the study of poetry through _prælectiones_,[43] is recognized in several of the preliminary definitions.

What is grammatica? The lore of interpreting poets and story-writers and the theory of writing and speaking correctly.[44]

St. Augustine refers to this induction into poetry as habitual.

Without some training in poetic you would not dare to attempt the function of grammarian. Asper, Cornutus, Donatus, and others without number are required, that any poet whose verse appears to seek the applause of the theater may be understood.[45]

For such teaching the favorite author was Vergil; the favorite authority, the “Ars Poetica” of Horace.

From this period come also the standard medieval textbooks of logic. The logic of Aristotle was mediated to the whole middle age by the translations and commentaries of Boethius. “He translated the Εἰσαγωγή of Porphyry and the whole of Aristotle’s _Organon_. He wrote a double commentary on the Εἰσαγωγή and commentaries on the _Categories_ and the _De interpretatione_ of Aristotle, and on the _Topica_ of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences.”[46] The medieval order of studies was: Porphyry’s Introduction, the Categories, Interpretation, Syllogisms, Topics.

b. RHETORICA

Quintilian was known to both Ausonius and Sidonius, and doubtless generally to the rhetors of Gaul.[47] But his work is addressed rather to teachers than to pupils. More available for the schools was Cicero’s youthful compend _De inventione_. The early and continued use of this is widely attested. Its contents are as follows:

_Book I._ i-vi scope, function, and relations of rhetoric; vii its five parts; viii-xiii investigation (with _status_ and _quæstio_); xiv the parts of a speech; xv-xviii exordium; xix-xxi statement of facts; xxii-xxiii division; xxiv-xli proof (with adaptation to the persons and the case, and with the kinds of argument); xlii-li rebuttal; lii-lv conclusion (with appeal to feeling).

_Book II_ (expansion of I in pleading). i-iv introductory review, the Aristotelian type and the Isocratean type, the fields of oratory, the determining of the issue (_status_); v-xvi issues of fact (_status coniecturalis_) in relation to motive, person, evidence; xvii-xx issues of terms (_status definitivus_); xxi-xxxvi issues involving more general considerations (_status generalis_); xxxvii-xxxix profit (_præmium_) in relation to advantages in themselves and to the person concerned, in general and with reference to particular opportunities; xl-li disputed written evidence; lii typical subjects of deliberative oratory; liii-lvii honor, utility, necessity; lix encomium and invective.

To this was added in general medieval use the _Rhetorica ad Herennium_, probably by Cornificius, but thought throughout the middle age to be Cicero’s.[48] When this began its medieval vogue is difficult to determine. Since it is not mentioned by either Cassiodorus or Isidore, it may not have been generally current before the Carolingian revival. Meantime the fourth century added, besides the commentary of Victorinus on the _De inventione_, the compendious catechism of Fortunatianus;[49] and the fifth century, the longer work of Julius Victor.[50]

B. THE TRIVIUM IN COMPENDS OF THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS

The relations of rhetoric to grammar on the one hand and to logic on the other must be considered in determining its function at any period of its history. The ancient _grammatica_, for instance, included at its best not only metric and some of the figures of speech, but a certain induction into poetry. Its field of composition was pretty definitely marked out in traditional elementary exercises.[51] _Rhetorica_ as conceived by Aristotle or by Cicero concerns itself of necessity with logic. With Quintilian not only proof and refutation, but that estimate of the whole line of argument for which he provides systematic analysis under the traditional head of _status_, are largely logical. Logic may be used for analysis without presentation. This, indeed, is abstractly its proper function, and indicates its relation to philosophy; but in actual practise, or in a given system of teaching, its relation may be rather to rhetoric, and conversely rhetoric, by yielding its field of _inventio_ to logic, may be reduced to the study of style.

So the estimate of the rhetoric or the poetic of a given period must consider the contemporary view of the whole Trivium. This obligation is obvious where the Trivium is conceived as a unified group of studies; but it is no less important where the three studies are pursued without explicit relations. Indeed, one of the measures of effective functioning in any one of them is the fostering or the ignoring of their relations. A survey of the history of the Trivium in this aspect distinguishes the lingering of ancient educational traditions in the fourth and fifth centuries and their lapse in the sixth and seventh, then that increasing range of cathedral and especially monastic schools which received its historic impulse from Charlemagne. The great monastic schools come to their prime in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; in the thirteenth they yield to the universities. The dominant member of the Trivium in the earliest of these periods is the _rhetorica_ of decadent antiquity; from the seventh into the tenth it is _grammatica_; from the eleventh on, it is _dialectica_.