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.
[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).
[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):
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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.