2. Balance and Rime

2. Balance and Rime

Balance, beloved of occasional orators from Gorgias down,[42] is useful in sharpening the iterations and contrasts of preaching.

Human weakness must realize its limitation.... The counsel of preaching, rather the counsel of the truth itself and of the divine reason, calls on man to yield his own reason. Let him fear not to yield himself entirely, following God entirely, and boasting in the Lord entirely, knowing him in whom he believes as able to keep the deposit of oneself and to give it increase (2 Tim. i. 12). He will restore thyself to thee, and with interest. He takes it as earthly, to restore it in heaven. He takes it in humility, to restore it exalted. He takes it as diminished, to restore it perfected. He takes it as empty, to restore it face to face with God in contemplation. He takes it corrupted, to render it incorruptible. He takes it in wretchedness, to render it happy, transferring a creature of time to the eternal, man unto the godlike. Achard of St. Victor, _De septem desertis_[43] (peroration).

Such balance often leads, through mere inflectional correspondence, to rime. That rime of clause with clause was avoided as a vice even in classical Latin is an exaggeration of Renaissance scrupulosity.[44] The middle age, following rather Augustine and the tradition of the schools of Gaul,[45] found rime desirable, and often sought it to mark parallel or contrast. Simple, ordinary use of it is heard again and again in a sermon by Hilduin.[46]

Porro bruttis animalibus paleam littere relinquamus, et de medulla tritici panem vite confestim filiis porrigamus.

Elinand uses it to point an epigram.[47]

Quæsivit me diabolus, et invenit, et circumvenit; quæsivit me Christus, invenit et subvenit.

Richard of St. Victor’s rime often marks insistently exact balances.

Hic flos factus est nobis medicina, ex illo mel et cera, in ipso potus et esca; medicina in redemptione, potus et esca in justificatione, mel et cera in glorificatione.

Ex hac medicina sanitas sempiternæ incorruptibilitatis; ex ejus esca refectio internæ satietatis; ex ejusmodi potu ebrietas æternæ securitatis; de illius cera splendor summæ claritatis; in ejus melle dulcor indeficientis felicitatis.

PL 196: 1032.

It may mark a progressive iteration. Repeating _florida_ and _transeamus_ from what he has just said, he goes on:

Sternamus itaque viam nostram floribus talibus, et per florida virtutum transeamus, munde et honeste procedamus, ut processionem nostram pulchram et gratam faciamus, et pascha floridum digna celebritate perficiamus. _In Ramis Palmarum_, PL 196: 1059.

Even such insistence remains within the limits of rimed prose; it is only extreme use of a widespread habit. Exceptional, on the other hand, since it repeatedly verges toward verse, is St. Anselm’s Lament of the Magdalen at the tomb.[48]

Audivimus, fratres, Mariam ad monumentum foris stantem; audivimus Mariam foris plorantem.

The device was so easily abused as to call forth more than one warning;[49] but it was so obvious a means of emphasis as to be widely prevalent.