Medieval rhetoric and poetic to 1400

References and Abbreviations

The art of letter-writing, especially the composition of official and other ceremonious letters, was of cardinal importance in the middle age. Even to-day, when letters of affairs are facilitated and multiplied by devices for dictation and despatch, it has a field smaller than the medieval in proportion to the other means of communication. Since these conditions lasted into modern times, letter-writing kept its importance throughout the Renaissance; but its art, developed in Latin antiquity and keeping for all affairs of moment the Latin language, became in the middle age a necessary ally alike to law and to diplomacy. Dictamen was a recognized profession and an habitual means of education. The model for the official correspondence of the western world was the Papal Chancery. The chief center of teaching was Bologna.[1] Though there was rivalry at Orléans, there was a recognized primacy of stilus Romanus.

No medieval form of writing has come down to us more abundantly in manuscripts; and none is more abundantly available in print. In addition to the collections of letters by famous men, or included with them, are many form-letters preserved as models.[2] Medieval epistolary habits are thus amply exemplified as the most widespread applications of the study of style. As a fine art medieval diplomatic correspondence is seen at its finest in the letters of John of Salisbury. The expertness that illuminated even routine affairs and determined the direction of great ones was recognized in his own day. The Archbishop of Rheims, writing to the Pope concerning the exile of the Archbishop of Canterbury, leaves the form of his letter to John.[3] At an earlier crisis of that exile, when Becket cried out against Henry’s influence at Rome, the indignation of the great prelate was submitted to the great secretary; and he was too faithful a friend to forget his art.

Having shown a list of grievances to be ineffective as composition, he adds immediately that accusations are dangerous as style. But not stopping with criticism, he took the great hazard upon himself in the following letter to the same Cardinal.

Medieval letters, long studied for history, should be better known as literature.

Less available, though for our purposes more directly important, are the manuals. Called generically ars dictaminis (or dictandi), or summa dictaminis, they are sometimes brief introductions to the formularies, sometimes substantial and detailed separate works. The latter have much less often than the formularies been printed. The ampler manuals apply to letter-writing a review of both grammar and rhetoric. This is instructive in Conrad’s Summa de arte prosandi.[5] The Boncompagnus,[6] so widely used that Boncompagno’s name, like Donatus, became a common noun, is amplified rather by diffuseness and by abundance of specimens. The Rhetorica novissima[7] of the same author is at once over-divided and ill-digested. Equally diffuse and equally relying on specimens, it appeals to students of law by deliberate and often inept variations from the traditional lore of rhetoric. The vogue of Thomas of Capua is hardly explained by the meager printed text of his Dictator.[8] None of these is at once so ample and so specific as a work by a Florentine of the Bolognese school, perhaps Bene of Florence, entitled Candelabrum.[9]

A. The Rhetoric of Dictamen

The international affairs of the Roman Curia demanded and developed professional notarii.[10] Their first and abiding concern was precision. Legal correctness of language, exactitude, systematic verification and record, precaution against tampering and forgery, all demanded an elaborate technical skill. This was ars notaria in the stricter sense, an important branch of the practise of law, especially of canon law.[11] Beyond legal correctness and dignity it developed style befitting Rome. Privileges,[12] decrees, mandates, dispensations, commissions, and other forms observed exact appropriateness and rhythms that were at once marks of authenticity and models. The same care extended to diplomatic correspondence. The documents in both fields, a mine for students of medieval history, amply attest the importance of dictamen as a profession.[13]

So wide a demand would of itself have maintained schools of professional technic. But since the technic demanded preliminary general training, it became a development of rhetorica. Not only so; it divided with preaching the whole field of daily prose composition. In current application oral composition was preaching, written composition was dictamen. The two were the typical medieval fields for the ancient lore of persuasion. The manuals of dictamen often begin by defining it in the general sense of writing.[14] Dividing all writing into (1) metricum, the ancient quantitative verse still taught as a branch of grammatica, (2) rithmicum, the accentual rimed verse of the hymns, and (3) prosaicum, they confine themselves to the third, and make it equivalent to letter-writing (prosaicum vel epistolare). To this they apply the current ancient authorities, De inventione and Ad Herennium, adding for its maxims of aptness Ars poetica. The ampler manuals include the sacred list of figures obligatory in the poetriæ.[15] Otherwise the application of the ancient rhetoric is practical and pointed.

For in fact the ancient lore was immediately and practically applicable. It did not, as in the poetriæ, have to be perverted. Of the traditional five parts of ancient rhetoric, inventio, dispositio, and elocutio, though not pronuntiatio and memoria, bear directly on letters, whereas the first two have nothing properly to do with verse-writing. Elocutio is applied practically by being focused on the cardinal ancient virtue of appropriateness; artistically, by elaborating compositio as prose rhythm. Immediately adaptable were the five parts of a speech. The exordium is always cardinal in a letter as benevolentiæ captatio. Narratio applies exactly in its proper sense of statement of the facts. Petitio, though it has less scope, is quite pertinent. Conclusio, though varying most from its ancient function, has some general correspondence. In a word, the classical doctrine for the parts of a speech applied to a letter by mere reduction of scale.

Dictamen was equally practical in actual teaching. Besides giving exercises in correctness, it compelled attention to elegance. Its study of appropriateness was readily extended by such imaginary adaptations as were inculcated in the ancient prosopopœia, and thus provided in writing the kind of practise sought orally in the ancient controversiæ.[16] John of Garlandia’s confused combination of verse and prose in a single manual[17] is insufficient to prove that the two were often taught concurrently; and the higher tone of the artes dictandi suggests that they were addressed to older pupils.

B. Digest of Candelabrum I-V[18]

Book I. Choice of Words, Rhythmical Composition of Sentences

Dictamen is defined with the usual inclusiveness as apt and elegant writing, inseparable from subject matter, depending on native ability, teaching, and practise, using to some extent all five traditional parts of rhetoric, but mainly style (elocutio).

All the rest of Book I is devoted to compositio as rhythm.

Considering the positions of nominatives and of oblique cases, of relative clauses, of infinitives, of locutions fixed in certain places by usage, the author quotes Geoffroi de Vinsauf: “A noble gravity comes from order itself when what is joined by syntax is separated by order.”[21] A word ending in a consonant should be followed by one beginning with a vowel, and vice versa. The cursus should not be continuously swift or slow but varied:

So the dictator will add, subtract, or transpose.

He will consider the rhythms of terminations:[22]

The rule for cadences (de finibus distinctionum) is that they must satisfy.

These considerations open the large principle, fundamental in ancient rhetoric and clearly discerned by this writer, that sentence skill consists in composing rhythmical units in a total movement, i.e., in composing by heard clauses.

In punctuation the author prefers the simple and sparing Roman use, and deprecates applying to dictamen the rules followed in pointing the religious offices.[25]

The final consideration of this section is of sentence length. Book I closes with general advice.

Book II. Figures

The second book, on stylistic ornament (ornatus, dignitas) is devoted to the traditional figures. These are the same list from the Rhetorica ad Herennium as serves for the poetriæ, and are rehearsed in the same order.

Book III. Salutatio

The three kinds of dictamen are: (1) prose, i.e., free composition (sermo communis, or solutus); (2) metrical; (3) rhythmical (genus rithmicum), which observes syllabic equality and rime.[26] “Since we have nothing, however, to do with the two others, ... let us now proceed to the prose dictamen, the dictamen of letters; for that is demanded of all and recognized as of great utility. It increases eloquence, promotes favor, enlarges honors, and often enriches the needy.” The typical parts of a letter—there may be more, or fewer—are salutatio, exordium, petitio, conclusio. This whole book is devoted to prescriptions for the first. The salutatio must always be in the third person. Its order is determined by the relation of the rank or dignity of the sender to that of the recipient, though this in certain cases is waived. It is careful of titles and of their appropriate modifiers.

The book closes with a protest. Merely to consult a formulary is a poor substitute for studying the art of salutatio. It is like swimming with corks. “The ideal (forma) of salutatio which we have here worked out, well grasped and held, will save writers both from borrowed plumage and from deficiency.”

Book IV. Exordium, Narratio, Petitio, Conclusio

The exordium is such a prelude to the statement of the facts as will make the hearer[28] open-minded, well disposed, and attentive.

Narratio, statement of the facts,[32] should be concise, transparently clear, and plausible (brevis, dilucida, verisimilis). The application of the ancient maxim is to the connection of narratio with exordium by proper conjunctions and in several possible cases. Similarly are set forth the ways of connecting it with the following petitio, which is summarily defined. Conclusio in a letter is not, as in a speech, the logical result of proof. Rather it is the satisfaction of whatever expectations have been aroused. It may be affirmative, negative, or conditional, so long as it is a satisfying close. Modes of connecting it with the rest of the letter again have most space.

Book V. Summary Review of the Preceding Books

The fifth book, reviewing all these items in the same order, constitutes a summary manual, a summa dictaminis.

This book by itself provides about the same quantity of precept as suffices in other manuals to introduce collections of specimens; but it is exceptionally systematic.[33]

C. Cursus

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the practise of cursus became more technical, and the use of the term more special. The Chancellor appointed by Pope Urban II was John of Gaetà (Giovanni Gaetano), who had learned dictamen from Alberic of Monte Cassino,[34] and who was specifically commissioned to “reform the style of ancient grace and elegance in the Apostolic See” and to “restore the Leonine rhythm with its lucid rapidity.”[35] The dominant chancery style, thus reformed, embodied the principle of rhythmical close in three types of prose cadence:

The first sentence of a mandate of Innocent III shows all three.

The indignant closing paragraph of Dante’s letter to the Florentines begins:

The fixing of these three cadences in Roman use would of itself have given them a vogue beyond letter-writing. Moreover they were chosen not at random, but as typical fulfilments of rhythmical expectation. For they appear also, though not exclusively, in the collects of the liturgy and in the daily offices.[39] The collect for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany has all three.

The longer measures of the collect composed in 1264 by St. Thomas Aquinas for Corpus Christi fall upon velox.

The English translation, following this cadence in the first measure and the third, departs in the second.

Hearing these cadences over and over, preachers of course used them often in Latin sermons. Thus the cadences that were obligatory in ceremonious letters, and habitual in other use, confirmed the conception and practise of Latin prose as rhythmical.

The rhythmical conception of prose, as the middle age knew well, had been dominant in classical antiquity. But medieval Latin prose, though its tradition came through the schools of Gaul, had had its own development. As in verse,[42] so in prose, the shift of rhythmical control to stress opened, not a breach, but a new artistic life. Medieval Latin ran as a living language with the movement of living speech. This was recognized even by the grammarians.[43] So the thirteenth-century manuals of dictamen kept the terminology of ancient metric to describe accentual rhythms[44] because Latin to them was present as well as past, and seemed to reach indefinitely into the future. The future, by the time of the Renaissance, was seen to be with the vernacular for poetry. More slowly it was seen to be there also for prose. Meantime Latin poetic and rhetoric came to be studied by revival of antiquity. Revival translates Renaissance exactly. Italian scholars, and after them French and English, sought to turn Latin prose back to Cicero. Though they thus accomplished some most worthy ends, their theory and their practise interrupted Latin prose composition. Their contemptuous rejection of medieval rhythms hastened the processes by which Latin became a “dead” language. In the middle age it was living. A conspicuous evidence of its vitality, not merely a legal technic, but the formulation of a rhythmical habit, was the cursus.