In other words, rhetoric is not operative as composition, but only as style after the fact. Her gifts to the soul are only colores, decor, clausula.
Alain’s own use of rhetoric is consistent with this point of view. Each of his allegorical figures is introduced with the conventional descriptive ecphrasis; and his diffuseness arises from the idea that poetica involves decorative dilation by those colores of which Cicero and Vergil are equally patterns.
The vast Speculum of Vincent of Beauvais[45] is a compend of all knowledge. Its second part, Speculum doctrinale, Mirror of Teaching, devotes two books to the Trivium. Grammatica,[46] including metric, follows Isidore. The following book[47] devotes ninety-eight chapters to logic (logica), ten to rhetoric, twenty-three to poetic. The proportion is significant; and poetica, taken from under the ægis of grammatica, appears as a separate, coördinate section. For rhetoric Vincent, still following Isidore,[48] repeats the classical definition and division. The following chapters (101-108) deal briefly with the elements of a speech, the ideals of oratory, the types of cases, status, syllogisms, loci rhetorici, style.
Vincent then goes on to poetica,
which Alphorabius[49] in his book on the division of the scientiæ puts last among the parts of logica, and which in his book on the origin of the scientiæ he describes thus: “Poetica is the lore of ordering meters according to the proportion of words (dictiones) and the times of feet and of their rhythms (numeri).” Again he says in the former book: “It belongs to poetica to make the hearer through its locutions image something as fair or foul which is not so,[50] that he may believe and shun or desire it. Although certainly it is not so in truth, nevertheless, the minds of hearers are roused to shun or desire what they image.” Moreover poetry has seven species: comedia, tragedia, invectio, satyra, fabula, historia, argumentum.[51] Comedia is poetry reversing a sad beginning by a glad end; but tragedia is poetry lapsing from a glad beginning to a sad end (109). The function, then, of the poet is in this, that with a certain beauty he converts actual events into other species by his slanting figures (end of 110).
Except meter, which belongs under grammatica, and the two forms of drama, which are not thought of as forms of composition, there is nothing to distinguish this poetic from rhetoric.
St. Bonaventure[52] distinguishes four “lights”: (1) the exterior light of a manual art, illuminating with regard to artistic form; (2) the inferior light of knowledge through the senses, illuminating with regard to the patterns of nature; (3) the interior light of philosophical knowledge, illuminating with regard to truth comprehended intellectually; (4) the superior light of grace and revelation, illuminating with regard to truth as a means of salvation.[53] For (3), the “interior light,” his division is stated first in its commonest form. Philosophia is: (a) rationalis (i.e., sermonum), (b) naturalis (i.e., rerum), (c) moralis (i.e., morum). This division[54] he then repeats in another form and order:
Finally he considers it in a third aspect. The domain of moralis is motive; of physica is self-limited and self-sufficient; of sermocinalis is interpretation. The last item he subdivides into:
grammatica, for expression, regarding reason as apprehension, seeking the appropriate;
logica, for instruction, regarding reason as judgment, seeking the true;
rhetorica, for persuasion, regarding reason as motive, seeking the ornate.[55]
Bonaventure does not use the word dialectica. His word for this, not for the whole Trivium,[56] is logica. Though his movendum and motivam suggest association of rhetoric with morals, and remind one of Aristotle’s conception, and Cicero’s, and Quintilian’s, he is content to give rhetoric the narrow and barren field of ornatus, assigning docendum and verum to logic.
The Old French Trésor of Brunetto Latini[57] devotes a far larger proportion of space than Vincent’s Speculum to rhetoric. Book I, surveying the seven arts,[58] includes history, geography, and the zoölogy of the bestiaries. Book II adds to Aristotelian ethics a collection of moral apothegms.[59] Book III opens politics with rhetoric.
Here begins the third book of the Treasure, which speaks of the teachings of good speech and of the government of towns and cities.... Cicero says that the highest lore for governing a city is rhetoric.[60] 467.
They are mistaken who think that to tell fables or old stories ... is matter of rhetoric.... [Rather rhetoric is concerned with] what is said by word of mouth or sent by letter to induce belief, to praise or blame, to advise ... in something that demands decision. 471.
The following chapters present the ancient division into five parts and the lore of status and quæstio.[61] But at this point the distinctive ancient function of rhetoric begins to fade. After saying that the main division of all expression is into prose and rime, he adds that “the teachings of rhetoric are common to both,” save for the restrictions of meter.[62] The section on dispositio, the ordering of a speech, takes from Martianus Capella not his sober survey, but a single passage which Brunetto perverts by subdivision and by transfer to narrative.
To exploration of the material [of a speech], with discernment of its value for persuasion, is to be joined the ordering of the points, which is the part commonly called dispositio.... The scheme may be either the natural order or devised by the orator’s artifice; natural, when after the beginning comes the statement of facts, then the division, proposition, proof, conclusion and epilogue; by the orator’s artifice, when the things that must be said have been distributed through the parts of the speech.[63]
Here Martianus is apparently extending to the whole plan of a speech the commonplace of ancient rhetoric that the narratio (statement of facts) might be either continuous as a single, distinct part, or distributed for the sake of giving salience to its separate items. Brunetto’s further extension is not his own; it is common stock of the contemporary artes poeticæ.[64] These manuals make much of “natural” and “artificial” order, subdivide each, and apply both to narrative. Brunetto is typical.
“Order [means] everything in its place; but this order is in two manners, one which is natural and another artificial.... The artificial order is divided into eight manners”:
The mechanical division reflects a wide abeyance in theory, not only of poetic shaping and movement, but even of the dispositio of ancient rhetoric; for its real concern is not with composition at all, whether in prose or in verse, but with the phrasing of certain patterns.
Brunetto’s preoccupation with style, and with style mainly as decorative dilation, soon appears in “how to dilate one’s tale in eight ways ... which are called colors of rhetoric.”[65] Among these colores, under demonstrance (demonstratio), is his celebrated, but entirely conventional, ecphrasis on Yseult.
The traditional parts of a speech (exordium, etc.) are used[66] as an approach to dictamen, of which Brunetto appears to be thinking through much of what follows. The concluding chapters on statecraft are far from a discussion of politics. Rather they set forth the conduct of a seigneur. Thus they fail to carry out the relations of rhetoric to government which in his opening he borrows from Cicero. Book III, then, of the Trésor lapses further and further from the ancient conception of rhetoric with which it begins. The rhetoric which it actually presents, and which it applies to poetry as well as to dictamen,[67] is a meager, though pleasant, review of style.[68]
What rhetoric appears in these surveys to lack most is distinct function. Writers as different as John of Salisbury and Brunetto Latini seem to think of it as polishing, decorating, especially dilating, what has been already expressed. It comes in after the real job is done; it has lost its ancient function of composing. The ancient lore of inventio kept rhetoric in contact with subject matter and with actual presentation. This had so much less scope in feudal society that the lore easily lapsed, or was perverted. The only large field for its exercise was preaching. Education, therefore, naturally threw its weight on grammatica for boys, on dialectica for men. Between the two rhetoric was crowded into narrow room. Whether it would still have vindicated itself if it had been the rhetoric of Aristotle, or oftener the rhetoric of Quintilian, can be only conjectured. Actually it was the rhetoric of De inventione and ad Herennium, and inculcated the sophistic of Sidonius. That may explain why there was no medieval rhetorician who really advanced the study.
[1] Fulbert, c. 960-1028. His distinguished successor Ives, who ruled Chartres 1090-1115, had been, with Anselm, a pupil of Lanfranc at Bec, and had himself taught there (Clerval, 146).
That Chartres had the whole Organon even before Gilbert de la Porrée, Richard l’Evêque, and John of Salisbury is shown by Clerval, 244 seq.
Haskins notes in the twelfth century the primacy of the cathedral schools (Laon, Tours, Chartres, Orléans, Paris) over the monastic.
(The Normans in European History, 177; The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, 49.)
[2] The traditional manuals and authors continue: Donatus, Priscian, Martianus Capella (not much used), Bede, De arte metrica; Livy, Valerius Maximus, Orosius, Gregory of Tours; Vergil, Ovid, Horace, Terence, Statius; Fortunatus, Sedulius, Arator, Prudentius, Boethius. Prælectio appears at its best in John of Salisbury’s account of the teaching of Bernard of Chartres (below pages 160-164). See the admirable summaries, period by period, in Clerval.
The library at Bec in the twelfth century had Priscian, Isidore, Martianus Capella (with Remi’s commentary), Anselm De grammatica, and Claudian (PL 150: 775-782).
[3] Clerval, 111-113, suggests an influence on the earlier forms of liturgical sequences.
[4] Colson (ed. of Book I, Cambridge, 1924) finds no clear indication of Quintilian in the eleventh century; and the large use of him by John of Salisbury in the twelfth (below, page 169) is not specifically related to rhetoric. Cicero is limited to De inventione and the commentary of Victorinus (Clerval, 115). The Rhetorica ad Herennium is the source of the Colores of Onulf, who taught at Speier c. 1050. The Bec library had in the twelfth century “utraque rhetorica” (i.e., De inv. and Ad Herenn.), Cicero, De partit. orat., Suetonius, and the letters of Sidonius. At Chartres Thierry cites Quintilian and, according to Clerval, 233, Cicero, De oratore. The latter, with Quintilian, appears in A list of textbooks from the close of the twelfth century, Haskins in Harvard Stud. Class. Phil. 20:92.
[5] Clerval, 115-116.
[6] *100 as described in Clerval, 117. Besides Fulbert’s verses, it has (*10) two short treatises: De rhetoricæ cognatione, and Locorum rhetoricorum distinctio. The Topica, of course, are common ground between rhetoric and logic.
[7] Gilbertus Porretanus, c. 1075-1154, Chancellor at Chartres 1126, teacher at Paris 1141, Bishop of Poitiers 1142; Liber sex principiorum, Comment. IV libr. Boeth., Liber de causis. See Clerval, 163-168, and Poole. Clerval suggests that Gilbert, as well as Thierry and Bernard Silvester, had relations with the Toulouse translators of Arabic books into Latin.
[8] Terricus Carnotensis, Breton, scolarum magister at Chartres 1121, taught rhetoric at Paris c. 1140, died c. 1150; Comment. De invent. and Rhet. ad Herenn.; Heptateuchon c. 1141 (Chartres MSS. *497, 498) described in Clerval, 220 seq., with a synoptic table of contents.
[9] Donatus and Priscian.
[10] Cic. De invent. and Partit. Orat., Rhet. ad Herenn., the summary of Severianus, and Martianus Capella.
[11] The usual Boethian items.
[12] Translated in Clerval, 221.
[13] Hugh of St. Victor, Saxon, c. 1096-1141, entered the Abbey of St. Victor at Paris c. 1116 and taught there; works PL 175-177. See especially Mignon, whose second chapter is a good summary of studies before Hugh. A critical study of the MSS. by Hauréau (B.), Les œuvres de H. de St. V., Paris, 1886 (a revision of a study published in 1859), shows that Eruditio didascalica has only six parts, the seventh added in PL being a separate work. See also Fourier Bonnard, Histoire de l’abbaye royale et de l’ordre des chanoines réguliers de St. Victor de Paris, Paris (n. d.); and the index to Manacorda. John of Salisbury refers to Hugh, and uses part of his classification.
[14] The division, which is common in the middle age (e.g., John of Salisbury, Metalogicus, II. ii), is in Quintilian, Inst. Or. XII. 2. 10.
[15] About 1159. For John see Poole, the index to Clerval, and the antiquated, but still suggestive study of Schaarschmidt, J. S. nach Leben und Studien ..., Leipzig, 1862. Webb (C. C. I.) has edited the Policraticus, Oxford, 1909, with an introduction especially valuable for John’s reading, and announced an edition of the Metalogicus, for which meantime the only available text is in PL 199, referred to in this section by column. The letters, also in PL 199, were printed with Gerbert’s and Stephen of Tournai’s in 1611 (Paris, Ruette). The Historia pontificalis, printed in MGH as anonymous, has been edited by Poole, Oxford University Press, 1927. Policraticus IV, V, VI, with selections from VII and VIII, are translated, with an introduction, by Dickinson (J.) as The statesman’s yearbook of J. of S., New York, 1927.
[16] See the preceding section. John mentions Hugh at 833 A, 924 B. The word disserere Hugh and John may have taken, as John took other things at the opening of Book II, from Isidore (see above, page 97); but the ultimate source of the phrase ratio disserendi is probably Cicero’s Topica: “omnis ratio diligens disserendi duas habet partes, unum inveniendi alteram iudicandi.” Top. 2. Cf. Fin. 1. 7. 22; Fat. 1. 1. Disserere seems limited to dialectica in De orat. I. 9 (see Wilkins’s note); but using the same word in II. 157, Cicero points out that the proper function of dialectica is analysis (iudicium, not inventio). In Orator 113, discussing the common ground of rhetoric and logic, he says “utrumque in disserendo est,” and goes on to distinguish logic as ratio disputandi from rhetoric as ratio dicendi. Dicere is generally his word for rhetoric. Quintilian, whom John uses largely, probably has in mind the same distinction in X. 1. 81, though in other places he uses disserere more generally.
[17] I. xvii (847 C), xxiv (854 B), II. x (868 B).
[19] In this respect Metalogicus is conspicuously different from Policraticus.
[20] These “Cornificians” are mentioned 825 C, 827 A, 852 B, 857 A. See Clerval 182, 211, 227.
[21] Quadam proportione rationis, 841 B.
[22] This poetic is none the less rhetoric for being confirmed by quotations from Horace (Ars poetica, 102-105, 108-111; see ARP 245). The general doctrine of appropriateness was the basis of the specific recipes for encomium (above, page 31).
[23] Cf. Vincent of Beauvais below, section D. 2.
[24] The following translation renders entire the most specific extant account of prælectio in the middle age. Long selections from it in French translation will be found in Clerval, 225-227; a shorter selection, with the corresponding Latin text, in Faral, Les arts poétiques du xiie et du xiiie siècle, Paris, 1924, 99-101. Haskins, 135, has a short selection in English translation.
For prælectio, see the index to ARP and to this volume.
[25] Illustratio is Quintilian’s word (and Cicero’s, he says) in VI. ii. 32, where he is exhibiting the same sort of development as is here indicated by John. For historia, argumentum, fabula see the index. That these were elementary school exercises suggests that the subject of this sentence (Illi) refers not to authors, but to schoolboys engaged in developing a materia; but the reference can hardly be determined in PL, in which the whole sentence seems to me dubious.
[26] Probandi colores. The word colores in this sense, unusual at this time, is characteristic of Seneca Rhetor, to whom John refers in II. viii. But the solution of a passage apparently corrupt may well await a better text.
[27] Cf. III. vi (904 C). Et sicut juxta ethicum: discipulus prioris est posterior dies.
[28] Declinatio is the eighth item, under Priscian, in the list from Thierry’s Heptateuchon cited above, page 153.
[29] For clausula see the indexes to ARP and to this volume; for John’s own cadences, below, Chapter VIII.
[30] Œconomia.
[32] For inventio and iudicium see Hugh above, page 154, and note 16. Quintilian III. iii. 5 objects to the application of this to rhetoric.
[34] Vocum et intellectuum.
[35] Ficta, hypothetical? Sophistica seems to be intended in the following clause.
[36] Thesis.
[37] Reading aliarum.
[38] This is pointed out by Colson in his edition of Quintilian’s first book, Cambridge, 1924, page 1, note 2. It is the stranger that the quotations should not have been noticed before since John himself calls attention to them: “ut verbo utamur Quintiliani,” “ab auctoritate ejusdem Quintiliani” (I. xxiv. 853 D).
[39] Illustratio in I. xxiv (854 A/B) is probably a reminiscence of Quintilian VI. ii. 32, to judge not only from the word, but from the context in both passages. Cf. 844 A, 851 C, 860 C, 910 D.
[40] Alanus de Insulis (about 1128-1202), Cistercian at Citeaux, sometimes called “doctor universalis,” wrote mainly on theology. Anticlaudianus was edited by Wright in the second volume of his Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century, London, (Rolls Series), which contains also De planctu naturæ. The latter has been translated by D. M. Moffat in Yale Studies in English, New York, 1908.
The citations in this section are by column from PL 210. For the Summa de arte predicatoria see below, Chapter IX. C.
[41] See above, Chapter III. B. 1.
[43] Alain’s order is the usual (1) grammatica, (2) dialectica, (3) rhetorica. His logica is dialectica, not the inclusive term of Hugh and John. Its auctores (III. ii. 510 A) are Porphyry, Aristotle, Zeno, Boethius.
[44] III. ii. 512-513.
[45] About 1190-1264. The Speculum was printed at Strasburg in 1473, and by the Benedictines at Douai in 1624.
[46] Book III (II in the Benedictine edition).
[47] Book IV (III in the Benedictine edition).
[48] Vincent refers in Chapter 100 to Quintilian. “Tullius in libro de oratore” (100 and 127) is probably not a reference to De oratore. In 101 “Tullius in rhetorica prima,” and in 127 “idem in rhetorica secunda,” are the usual references to De inventione and ad Herennium. For the references to Quintilian see Bassi, Giornale storico, XXIII, 186, and Colson’s introduction to his edition of Quintilian’s first book, page lii.
[51] For the three school exercises that conclude this list see the indexes to ARP and to this volume; for the rest of the classification, Bede, above, Chapter V. B. 1.
[52] 1221-1274. The Opusculum de reductione artium ad theologiam is number 4 (pages 317-325) in volume 5 of the Works edited by the College of St. Bonaventure, Quaracchi (Florence), 1891.
[54] For the classifications of Hugh of St. Victor and John of Salisbury see above, sections B and C.
[56] That he does not intend logica in the larger sense of Hugh and John will be clear from comparative study of the three forms of his division, and also from Collationes in hexaëmeron (in the same volume), IV. 18-25. This briefly sums up rhetorica according to its ancient topics, including the three fields and the five parts. Here again dialectica is not used, and logica merely supersedes it.
[57] 1230-1294. The Trésor is edited, with an introduction, by Chabaille in the Collection des documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, Paris, 1863. References in this section are to the pages of this edition. The Italian version, also widely current, is edited by L. Gaiter, Bologna, 1878. See also F. Maggini, La rettorica italiana di B. L. (Pub. del R. Istituto di studi superiori), Florence, 1913.
[58] The proem, beginning with theology as the highest lore of theorica, makes the usual enumeration under mathematica, divides practica, “la seconde science de philosophie,” into “éthique . économique . politique,” and so arrives at rhetoric, but with some confusion as to logic.
[59] See Chabaille, xv.
[60] Villani may be merely repeating this when he says: “Egli fu cominciatore e maestro in digrossare i Fiorentini, e farli scorti in bene parlare et in sapere guidare e reggere la nostra repubblica secondo la politica.” VIII. x.
[61] Brunetto’s main source is Cicero De invent.
[62] La grans partisons de touz parleors ... en prose ... en rime; mais li enseignement de rectorique sont commun andui, sauf ce que la voie de prose est large et pleniere, si comme est ore la commune parleure des gens; mais li sentiers de rime est plus estroiz et plus fors. 481.
[63] His igitur ad fidem faciendam prudenter inuentis ordo rerum est sociandus, quæ pars dispositio uocitatur ... duplex igitur huius partis est ratio; aut enim naturalis est ordo aut oratoris artificio comparatur: naturalis, cum post principium narratio, partitio, propositio, argumentatio, conclusio epilogusque consequitur; artificio oratoris, cum per membra orationis quæ dicenda sunt digerimus. V. 506 (Teubner, ed. Dick, 248).
[64] See below, Chapter VII. B.
[65] “Comment l’om puet acroistre son conte en viij manieres ... qui sont apelees color de rectorique.” The first of these, aornement, is defined so bluntly that the humorous implication may be intentional: “tout ce que l’om porroit en iij moz ou en iiij, ou a mult po de paroles dire, il les acroist par autres paroles plus longues et plus avenans qui dient ce meisme.” 486.
[66] 490.
[67] For dictamen, see below, Chapter VIII.
[68] Jean d’Antioche in his introduction to the translation of De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium (end of XIIIth century) has two divisions of Philosophye: (A) into ethique morale, rationele, and naturele; (B) as follows:—
Delisle in Notices et Extraits, 36:216.
Neither Le mariage des sept arts nor Henri d’Andeli’s Bataille des sept arts contains any information about teaching.