3. NARRATIVE HEXAMETERS AND ELEGIACS

3. NARRATIVE HEXAMETERS AND ELEGIACS

But the characteristic verse of the period is hexameter or elegiac. Thus Theodulf composed even the familiar Palm Sunday hymn.

Gloria, laus et honor tibi sit, rex Christe redemptor, Cui puerile decus prompsit osanna pium....

MGH _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 558.

Alcuin devotes fifty-five hexameters to a _conflictus_ between spring and winter, and celebrates York in over sixteen hundred.[28] The elegiacs may seek Ovidian recurrences.[29]

_Præsul amate, precor_, huc tu diverte, viator: Sis memor Albini ut, _præsul amate, precor_. _O mea cara domus_, habitatio dulcis, amata, Sis felix semper, _O mea cara domus_.

Alcuin, _ibid._ 250.

_Ordiar unde tuos_, sacer O Benedicte, triumphos? Virtutum cumulos _ordiar unde tuos_? _Euge beate pater_, meritum qui nomine prodis! Fulgida lux secli, _euge beate pater_!

Paulus Diaconus, _ibid._ 36.

Of the many narrative poems employing these measures the commonest were the _passiones_, or saints’ legends, usually with at least a rhythmic bent, and by the tenth century habitually _rhythmi_ with internal rime. The tenth-century _Vita et passio sancti Christophori_ of Walter of Speier, though it abundantly exemplifies both the metrical training and the study of Latin poets that he mentions in his introduction, shows also the trend of the time.

More quidem reg_um_ gestabat sceptra Syror_um_ Fascibus indign_us_ publicis rex, nomine Dagn_us_, Celans corda lup_i_ simulatis vultibus agn_i_, Et dum plumat_am_ portarent colla coron_am_, Texerat occult_e_ serpentem forma columb_æ_. Iam quid plura quer_ar_? Tigribus rabidis fuit is p_ar_.

II. 1-6; Ermini, page 82, 240-245.[30]

Some, at least, of these longer poems were cumulative school exercises. A promising theme in the imitative verse that was commonly part of the study of the Latin poets would be commented by the _grammaticus_, revised according to his criticism, and kept by him for later rehandling or extension.[31] Thus the verse, even with the rhythmical habit established, attended to Latin quantities. Thus also classical reminiscences, especially Vergilian, are frequent; and Walter shows the continued vogue of Prudentius. For the hexameters most typical of the period are literary exercises.

C. _DIALECTICA_

Logic followed the Boethian tradition handed down by Isidore.[32] Alcuin, though his manual is meager, repeats in his tract on the Trinity St. Augustine’s view of the importance of this study[33] for the defense of the faith. Rabanus makes it theoretically central.

_Dialectica_ is the training of the reason to investigate, define, and express, and to be able to distinguish the true from the false. This, then, is the training of trainings; it teaches how to learn. This exhibits and unfolds the nature, aim, and scope of reason itself. It knows; its aims and virtue are both to know and to make knowers. _De clericorum institutione_ III. xx; PL 107: 397 C.

But the turn of _dialectica_ to dominate the Trivium was not yet.

D. _RHETORICA_

Alcuin’s adaptation of the _De inventione_ of Cicero, Walafrid Strabo’s enumeration of the five ancient parts of rhetoric, do not prove the use of the whole ancient program. Even the ancient texts would not of themselves carry on the ancient method. The “_quæstiones civiles_” often quoted from Cicero’s opening definition could hardly carry their ancient content either in a society disturbed by the invasions or in a society reorganizing under feudalism. Moreover the teaching of _rhetorica_, even when it kept touch with Roman method, was likely to lean on the _declamatio_ handed down by the schools of Gaul.[34] For all these reasons the ancient lore naturally most sought and most used was _elocutio_, the counsels of style. The function of _rhetorica_ is usually described by some such verb as _ornare_.

Little beyond this is suggested by the summary of Rabanus. Repeating once more that the field of rhetoric is _quæstiones civiles_, he adds:

Nevertheless [rhetoric] is not outside the scope of training for the Church. For whatever an orator or preacher of the divine law sets out capably and fitly in teaching, whatever he expresses aptly and elegantly in letters, conforms to this art. _De clericorum institutione_ III. xix; PL 107: 396 C.

The passage is reminiscent of St. Augustine’s _De doctrina christiana_;[35] and eight later chapters (xxix-xxxvi) follow this closely, sometimes continuously and word for word. But Rabanus is at once less specific and narrower as to style. As to composition in the large he says hardly anything; and he seems to miss the cogency of Augustine’s own order.

The larger and more vital conception of rhetoric, which was at least before the eyes of Rabanus, seems more to beckon Loup de Ferrières. Man of letters in his intellectual eagerness[36] as well as in his style, and teacher as well, he makes requisitions on the libraries of his friends. The Quintilian that he needs is not the volume of selections, but all twelve books;[37] the Cicero, not only the common _De inventione_, but also the book whose recovery by Poggio in the fifteenth century was one of the literary events of the Renaissance, the _De oratore_.[38] If these two cardinal works of the better ancient tradition were not much sought, at least they were available.

The “three styles” seem already to have been transferred in school from rhetoric to poetic, and exemplified from Vergil.[39] Mature practise was already attentive to prose rhythm. Abbo of Fleury, much preoccupied with this, was also fond of alliteration, and sometimes marked his balances with rime.

Qua peracta pœnitentia, populos suæ dioceseos mandat, mandando convocat, convocando suppliciter persuadet, ut triduano jejunio a se divinæ indignationis iracundiam removeant, removendo avertant, quatenus sacrificio spiritus contribulati placatus Dominus illi suam gratiam concederet, qua corpus beati martyris tangere et lavare auderet; qui licet tantis virtutibus floreret in mundo, vili tamen et sibi incongruo continebatur mausoleo. _Abbonis Floriacensis Passio Sancti Edmundi._[40]

Though the extremes of this passage go beyond Abbo’s normal practise, they appear also in tenth-century ceremonious letters.[41]

E. THE POETIC OF GERMANIC EPIC

This is the period also of Germanic epic: the Anglo-Saxon _Beowulf_ (probably eighth century), _Waldere_, _Finnsburgh_, and _Maldon_, the _Hildebrand_ (early ninth century) of the continental Germans, the Scandinavian “Elder Edda.”[42] Though little connection is apparent between these verse narratives and the Latin poetic with which they are contemporary, there may have been some.[43] Anglo-Saxon epic is of the time of Bede. The Walter legends are known largely through the Latin hexameters of Ekkehard;[44] and other learned clerks found native epic worth while not only as history, but as literature.

What has been preserved shows the primary epic appeal of legend not exotic and imported, but handed down in folklore still orally active. This is not at all to say that they are history as opposed to fiction. Their historical value, however great, is accidental. Their facts, already centuries old, have been shaped by tradition. Their Sigurd or Hildebrand is seen through a magnifying mist. Epic is never, in our modern sense, history. It is the glorification in song of a hero; and primary epic has its own authentic appeal from singing a hero that still belongs to the poet and to his hearers and still beckons their communal dreams.

Thus Germanic epic, taking us farther back through legend into myth, gives a more immediate sense of oral tradition. There is even an eery likeness, as of the most ancient poetic repeating itself, between the minstrel in the _Beowulf_ and the minstrel in the _Odyssey_.

But after they had put from them the desire of meat and drink, the muse stirred the minstrel to sing the songs of famous men, even that lay whereof the fame had then reached the wide heaven, namely the quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, son of Peleus.... Then Odysseus of many counsels spake to Demodocus, saying: “Demodocus, I praise thee far above all mortal men, whether it be the Muse, the daughter of Zeus, that taught thee, or even Apollo; for right duly dost thou chant the faring of the Achæans, even all that they wrought and suffered, and all their travail, as if, methinks, thou hadst been present, or heard the tale from another. Come now, change thy strain, and sing of the fashioning of the horse of wood, ... even the guileful thing that goodly Odysseus led up into the citadel, when he had it laden with the men who wasted Ilios!”... So spake he, and the minstrel, being stirred by the god, began and showed forth his minstrelsy. He took up the tale where it tells how the Argives of the one part set fire to their huts, and went aboard their decked ships and sailed away, while those others, the fellowship of renowned Odysseus, were now seated in the assembly-place of the Trojans, all hidden in the horse, for the Trojans themselves had dragged him to the citadel. _Odyssey_ viii. 72-75, 484-504 (Butcher and Lang’s prose translation).

So Hrothgar’s minstrel is represented as singing songs of former heroes to awaken joy in hall along the mead-bench. Among those thus inserted in the _Beowulf_ is the lay of King Finn, which has come down also in another form. As the Greek minstrel turns old songs to the praise of the hero present before him, so the warriors celebrating in hall Beowulf’s killing of Grendel turn the legend of Sigmund.

At times one of the king’s thanes, whose memory was full of songs, laden with vaunting rhymes, who knew old tales without number, invented a new story, closely bound up with fact. The man deftly narrated the adventures of Beowulf, and cunningly composed other skilful lays with interwoven words. _Beowulf_, 867-874 (Tinker’s prose translation).

In such passages we seem to be near the roots of verse narrative.

The verse narratives of the Germanic peoples during this period are poetically homogeneous. _Hildebrand_, indeed, is more stinted than _Beowulf_, and the north inclines more than the west toward lyric; but they all have essentially the same poetic.[45] Their epic conception is typically not of a progressive story, but of a situation. The hero is imagined in a crisis. Sometimes abrupt or stinted, they nevertheless prevail by unity. This mainspring of their poetic is their habitual means toward tragic intensity.[46] Even more constant is their movement in detail. The verse consists of two staves separated by a marked cæsura, but corresponding by alliteration. The alliteration is not, as in Latin verse, an added suggestion; it is constituent; it makes the verse.

Him ða Scyld ᵹewat to ᵹescæphwile felahror feran on frean wære; hi hyne þa ætbæron to brimes faroðe, swæse ᵹesiþas, swa he selfa bæd, þenden wordum weold wine Scyldinᵹa, leof landfruma lanᵹe ahte. þær æt hyðe stod hrinᵹedstefna isiᵹ and utfus, æþelinᵹes fær:

_Beowulf_, 26-33 (Wülcker’s revised text).

No less essential is the two-stave movement, so strong in Germanic habit that it may well have been influential in handling even Latin hexameters with cæsura reinforced by rime.[47] In Anglo-Saxon the staves show distinct recurrent types; and the verses generally tend, as above, to “run on,” whereas the Old Norse are oftener composed in the fashion of the “closed couplet.” But these differences are unimportant beside the constant binary movement. The verses are not equal in number of syllables; their stress rhythm is patterned in alliterated pairs.

Then departed Scyld at his appointed hour, glorious to go unto God’s keeping. Together they bore him to breaking surges, bosom companions, as he bade himself while he wielded words, warden of Scyldings, loved land-ruler, long their master. At the roadstead bode his ringèd bow, icy, eager, atheling’s ship. They laid him there, beloved chieftain, bringer of booty, on the breast of the ship, mighty by the mast. There were many treasures from long voyages laden beside him. Ne’er heard I that comelier keel provided hacking weapons and harness warlike, brands and byrnies. On his bosom lay store unstinted that must start with him on the flood’s realm to float outward.[48]

_Beowulf_, 26-42.

All primary epic is thus concrete. It speaks habitually in the immediate terms of the five senses. But the habit of images crystallized among the Germanic poets in a conventional epic diction. Their style is deliberately removed from common speech. Its most obvious traits are designation by descriptive compounds and accompaniment by descriptive epithets. A lord is “land-ruler,” as above, or “prize-giver,” or “hoard-ward.” His warrior is “hall-counselor,” “earl’s hope,” “rugged-in-war.” The ominous raven is “sallow-brown, swarthy.” Ships especially command a whole store of such phrases as those of the seventh and eighth lines above. Germanic epic has a distinct poetic language.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Bede (c. 673-735), Wearmouth.

Alcuin (c. 735-804), York, Schools of the Palace, St. Martin’s at Tours.

Rabanus (c. 780-856), Fulda.

Loup (805-862), Fulda, Ferrières.

Remi (841-908), Auxerre, Reims.

Gerbert (c. 940-1003), Reims. See Julien Havet’s _Lettres de Gerbert (983-997)_, with his valuable introduction, Paris, 1889. For a suggestive summary of the greater schools and their teaching, with valuable bibliographical notes, see Ermini, vi-xvi, 69-70.

[2] _Opera_, Basel, 1563 (whence PL), vol. II, page 343, end of the last book (IV, περὶ διδάξεων) of _De elementis philosophiæ_.

Loup’s first letter to Einhard puts _rhetorica_ second (MGH, _Epist._ tom. VI, pars prior, page 8); and so does Rabanus, _De clericorum institutione_, III. xviii (PL 107: 395 B).

[3] _Passio S. Christophori, carmen rhythmicum_, rec. C. Strecker, MGH, Poet. lat. med. æv., vol. IV, Part II. 809.

The introduction is included among the selections printed in Ermini.

Walter’s reference to psalmody is at line 15; to _fabula_, at 55; to _prælectio_, at 91; to _declamatio_, at 140. For all these, except the first, see the indexes to ARP and to the present volume.

[4] See above, page 87. Alcuin’s verses on York (MGH, _Poet. lat. æv. Carol._ I. 169) enumerate in the eighth-century library there: Donatus, Eutyches, Phocas, Pompeius, Priscian, Probus, Victorinus, Servius. The ninth-century library of St. Amand had Eutyches, Marius Plotius [Sacerdos], Priscian, Servius, and Victorinus (Desilve, _De schola Elnonensi Sancti Amandi_, Louvain, 1890, page 51).

[5] Clerval, _Les écoles de Chartres_, 22; and, for the eleventh century, 47, 48, 56, etc.

[6] _De doctrina christiana_, III. xxix.

[7] PL. 90: 175; Halm, 607.

[8] Grammatica est scientia interpretandi poetas atque historicos et recte scribendi loquendique ratio. Hæc et origo et fundamentum est artium liberalium. _De clericorum institutione_, III. xviii (PL, 107: 395 B).

[9] Above, section A, close.

[10] _De arte metrica_ (PL, 90: 156. 4; Keil, VII. 234).

[11] Above, page 110. The distinction seems to be made by Walafrid Strabo, _Libellus de exordiis et incrementis rerum ecclesiasticarum_ (840-842), cap. 26, pp. 506-508 (MGH, _Capitularia regum francorum_, II, Appendix); and by Hucbald (IXth century):

Astipulare meis, quia non sunt carmina, rhythmis ... Quod si, ut puto, nequit carmen jam jure vocari, Sit satis huic saltem censeri nomine rithmi.

Quoted by Desilve, _De schola Elnonensi Sancti Amandi_, p. 57.

[12] Keil, VII. 259. The passage in Diomedes is in Keil, I. 482.

[13] Iamb for spondee in the third foot, as in line 8, is a liberty adopted from classical verse by Bede (_Adesto, Christe, vocibus_) and by Paulus Diaconus (_Fratres, alacri pectore_). Even Sedulius Scotus, as to whose metrical expertness there can be no doubt, uses this liberty in a classical poem (_Ventosa cum desæviat_, MGH, _Poet. lat. Car._ III. 162). Rendered rhythmically, their hymns often suggest the shift of stress that seems to be intended in the Irish hymns.

[14] See above, page 119.

[15]

Nos dicamus Christo laudem genitoris unico, Mundi legitur librorum qui creator paginis, Cuius fine clemens venit liberare perditos....

Petrus Diaconus, MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 48.

Sensi, cuius verba cepi exarata paginis, Nam a magno sunt directa, quæ pusillus detulit; Fortes me lacerti pulsant, non imbellis pueri....

Paulus Diaconus, _ibid._ 49.

The interesting application of the measure by Paulinus of Aquileia to extended narrative, though generally keeping the final dactyl, pays otherwise no more regard to quantity.

Fuit domini dilectus languens a Bethania Lazarus beatus sacris olim cum sororibus, Quas Iesus æternus amor diligebat plurimum, Martha simul et Mariam felices per sæcula.

_Ibid._ 133.

These are all of the eighth century. Compare, in the ninth, Rabanus (Claras laudes ac salubres, posco, fratres dicite, _ibid._ II. 235; AH 50: 203), and Sedulius Scotus (Conditor supernus orbis imperator omnium, _ibid._ III. 159).

[16] The hymn has nine stanzas; but the latter part, beginning _Angularis fundamentum_, is also sung separately.

[17] Interesting use of rime both as occasional echo and as regular correspondence is heard in the hymn, from a tenth-century manuscript, _O redemptor, sume carmen_, AH 51: 80.

[18] E.g., Sedulius Scotus. Blume suggests that the hymn above is by the author of _Ecce iam noctis_, page 121.

Alcuin’s Sapphic _Christe salvator hominis ab ore_ (MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ I. 313; AH 50: 154) is less scrupulous in quantities than might be expected of him if he intended a _metrum_. It is entitled _Ymnus_.

[19] Chapter IV. C. 3. Compare, in the same volume of MGH, _Refulget omnis luce mundus aurea_ (137); in volume III, _O tu qui servas armis ista mœnia_ (703, late eighth century); in AH 51: 121, _Adnue, Christe, sæculorum Domine_; and, in Duemmler’s _Rhythmorum eccl. ævi carolini specimen_ (Berlin, 1881), _Audi me deus, peccatorem nimium_ (6), and _Agnus et leo, mitis et terribilis_ (12). These instances taken together seem to me to make against W. Meyer’s different reading (_Spanisches zur Geschichte der ältesten mittellateinischen Rythmik_, 111) of the poem below as a “rhythmic pentameter.”

[20] Ascribed erroneously to St. Ambrose (_De arte metrica_, Keil VII. 255). For the poem of Boethius, _Heu quam præcipiti mersa profundo_, see above, Chapter IV. A.

[21] MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ III. 158. So _Vestri tecta nitent luce serena_, III. 169, and others.

[22] _Cathemerinon_ v and in the preface to Book I _Contra Symmachum_. The meter is – – – ⏑ ⏑ – – ⏑ ⏑ – ⏑ ⏑. Compare the first ode of Horace. So Paulus Albarus in an acrostic poem on St. Eulogius, _Almi nunc revehit festa polifera_ (MGH, _ibid._, III. 139). Boethius uses the measure with a shorter alternate line (III, _metrum_ viii); and it is otherwise varied, by a shorter line at the end of the stanza, in the eighth-century hymn _Sanctorum meritis inclyta gaudia_ (Britt, 159), and in the ninth-century hymn _Festum nunc celebre magnaque gaudia_ (MGH, _ibid._ II. 249). All these hymns are exceptionally correct in quantities; and the measure, unusual in hymns, may well have been composed metrically.

[23] See Traube (in _Philolog. Untersuch. aus dem Mittelalter_, Munich 1891), who associates with it _O admirabile Veneris ydolum_.

Cf. Abelard’s _O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata_. AH. 48: 163.

[24] The recollection that Poe wished thus to render the first ode of Horace might well give pause, were it not that Poe, though doubtless an ignoramus in Latin metric, was a poet and was interpreting Horace rhythmically.

[25] Godescalc (822-870) is in MGH, _Poet. lat. Carol._ III. 724.

[26] AH 50: 220.

[27] _Ibid._ 221.

[28] _Ibid._ 270, 169.

[29] ARP 217.

[30] Riming hexameters appear generally, though not always, throughout Ermini: in the Latin _Gesta Apollonii_ versifying the romance of Apollonius of Tyre (113); in Uffing’s _Carmen de sancto Liudgero_ (131); even in the accomplished Hrotsvitha.

[31] Ermini xvi, xviii, 43, 74, 110, 111. In the following century, school exercise in prosopopœia is suggested by some of the verse of Baudry de Bourgeuil (1046-1130); e.g., the Ovidian XLII, XLIII, CLIX, CLX, pages 29, 39, 141, 145 in the edition of Phyllis Abrahams, Paris, 1926.

[32] Above, Chapter III. B.

[33] _Libellus de sancta Trinitate_, cited by Gaskoin, _Alcuin_, 127.

[34] Above, Chapter III. A.

[35] Book IV; see above, Chapter II.

[36] “Erinnert an die Tätigkeit der italienischen Humanisten.” _Manitius_ I. 486.

The letters of Loup are in MGH (_Epist._ VI, Pars Prior, ed. Duemmler, 1900). See also Levillain, _Étude sur les lettres de Loup de Ferrières_, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes 72 (1901): 445-509; 73 (1902): 69-118, 289-330, 537-586.

[37] _Epist._ 62, to Altsig about 849: “Quintiliani institutionum oratoriarum libros xii.” Cf. _Epist._ 103, to Benedict III.

[38] _Epist._ 1, to Einhard: “Tullii de rhetorica liber ... eiusdem auctoris de rhetorica tres libri in disputatione ac dialogo de oratore.” The latter is unmistakable. It is sufficient evidence even if the “Tullium de oratore” of _Epist._ 103 be regarded as uncertain.

[39] The misapplication, very common later (see the index), seems to be intended by Walter of Speier.

Præterea triplicis succincta veste coloris Omnibus excellens docuit nos musa Maronis.

_Vita et Passio Sancti Christophori_ I. 104.

For the “three styles” see ARP 56, 57-59, 228; and above, 56, 67.

[40] In _Memorials of St. Edmund’s Abbey_, ed. T. Arnold (Rolls Series, 96), I. 22. See the references to Abbo in G. H. Gerould’s _Abbot Ælfric’s rhythmic prose_, Modern Philology 22 (May, 1925): 352-366; and, for the prose of Loup de Ferrières, W. Meyer, _De clausula in Lupi epistolis rhythmica_, Gött. gelehrt. Anzeig., 1893, page 22.

[41] E.g., Summæ sanctitatis, scientiæ, pietatis et ordinis culmine sublimato domino.... Nunc ergo puerum istum, viscera mea, filium consobrinæ meæ, solam et maximam curam meam, commendo quibus estis plenissimi visceribus misericordiæ vestræ, ut vestram vitam et vos ‘primis miretur ab annis,’ mansuetudinem vigore decoratam, doctrinam operibus commendatam, austeritatem dulcedine temperatam, taciturnitatem modestam, locutionem utilem vel necessariam, victus et somni parcitatem, mediocritatem vestitus, ieiuniorum et orationum per dies et noctes instantiam, largitionem elemosinarum, susceptionem hospitum, solamen lugentium, peregrinis et egentibus, plebibus et clero, monachis et virginibus, viduis et orphanis, comitibus et regibus, servis et liberis, coniugibus et continentibus, mediocribus et maximis, Iudæis et gentilibus vos unum omnia perdiscat effectum. Quod si aliquid apud vos, ubi omnes proficiunt, doctrinæ morumque profectus, Deo largiente, ceperit, debitorem vobis de eo Christum facitis, qui eum talem educaveritis, ut non solum sibi, sed et aliis possit utilitati fieri. MGH, Legum sectio v, formulæ, 409 (Collectio Sangallensis Salomonis III tempore).

For prose rhythm in medieval letters see below, Chapter VIII. C.

[42] The poetic of Irish epic during this period is more difficult to determine. From the existing forms, which are later, we may divine that its conceptions were at once mythical and romantic, and that its incidental verse—its main course was in prose—had already an elaborate technic.

The generally typical epic traits are suggestively presented by W. P. Ker, _Epic and Romance_, London, 1897; the specifically Anglo-Saxon ones, by R. W. Chambers, _Beowulf_, Cambridge, 1921. Both give extracts and references.

[43] Chambers, reviewing the parallels with classical epic explored by Klaeber, finds “no tangible or conclusive proof of borrowing. But the influence may have been none the less effective for being indirect” (330).

[44] Ekkehard I of St. Gall, _Waltharius_, MGH, _Script._ II. 117. For other editions, translations, and studies see Ermini, who reprints considerable selections.

[45] “For purposes of poetry there was only one nation—the Germanic—split into many dialects and groups, but possessed of a common metre, a common style, a common standard of heroic feeling.” Chambers, 99.

[46] For the tragic tendency see Ker, 86.

[47] See above, page 140.

[48] The beginning of the passage is quoted above in the original. The object of this rendering is to follow exactly, verse by verse, the original rhythm. Though such imitation must sooner or later break down, for short stretches it indicates specifically the salient verse habits.