BOOK IV. _ANALYTICA

In contrast to the ten long chapters of III, IV is divided into forty-two short ones: i-v, _analytica_ in general; vi-viii, _demonstrativa_; ix-xx, the progress of knowledge: sensus, imaginatio, prudentia, ratio, intellectus; xxi-xxiii, _hypothetica_, _sophistica_; xxiv-xlii, critical review: objectors to Aristotle the place of _logica_ in teaching, typical conceptions of ratio, and of truth and error, the relation of ratio to veritas.

This last book iterates the importance of correlation (xxviii. 982 B). “But though _logica_ is useful generally, he who is ignorant of other arts[37] is not so much helped by it toward philosophy as he is hindered by a habit of verbosity and presumption. For _logica_ is almost useless if it be alone. It stands out when it shines by the power of correlated studies.”

John’s slighting of rhetoric cannot be explained merely by his preoccupation with logic. Why was he thus preoccupied in a consistent and progressive scheme of the whole Trivium? He begins with a _logica_ embracing all studies of words; he devotes a whole book to _grammatica_; in his last pages he is speaking of an _organon_ that shall be a minister to _eloquentia_. Yet _rhetorica_ he merely mentions when he must. That he was aware of its ancient importance in such a scheme as his is evident from his large use of Quintilian’s _Teaching of Rhetoric_. No other medieval writer gave this work more attention. The much-quoted chapter (I. xxiv) on _prælectio_ uses not only Quintilian’s ideas, but his very words;[38] and other correspondences are no less significant. The following list, though not complete, is typical.

QUINTILIAN, _INST. ORAT._ _METALOGICUS_

I. iii. 3-5 II. viii. 865 B-C

Illud ingeniorum ... decrescit. Hoc est quod ... decrescit.

I. viii. 13-14 I. xxiv. 853 D-854 A

In prælegendo grammaticus ... In prælegendo grammaticus ... memoriam agitet. memoriam auditorum.

17-21 855 B-D

Præcipue vero illa ... Id quoque inter prima ... aliqua nescire. aliqua ignorare [with substitution of Augustine for Didymus, who is relegated to 864 C].

The correspondences above, verbatim for considerable stretches, involve here and there transpositions or other variations. The following are quotations or adaptations.

I. iv. 5-6 I. xxv. 856 D

Quo minus sunt ferendi ... in libro _De institutione oratoris quam ostentationis. Ne quis ..._ Ait ergo: “Ne quis igitur ... scientiam possit. [and the two sentences are quoted in reverse order].”

II. iii. 3 II. vii. 864 D

Propter quod Timotheum ... Refert Quintilianus [quotation with slight verbal variation].

II. iv. 5-7 IV. xxviii. 932 B

Nec unquam ... quod exculpi. Teneræ tamen ætati ... improbitas conquiescat [correspondence evident in idea, occasionally in word].

X. i. 83 II. ii. 859 A

Quid Aristotelem?... quid de eo dicat Quintilianus: clariorem putem. “Quid Aristotelem?... [exact quotation].”

X. i. 125-131 I. xxii. 852 B

Ex industria Senecam ... [Discusses Quintilian’s view (“ut quod voluit efficit. pace Quintiliani loquar”) with occasional reminiscence of his words.]

Even if these correspondences were confined to Quintilian’s first and second books, there would still be no sufficient ground for the inference that John, consulting him primarily for _grammatica_ and further for his general ideas on education, did not think of him as a rhetorician. For Quintilian not only presents rhetoric from the beginning; he frequently in these first books cites and quotes Aristotle as a rhetorician. But the matter seems to be put beyond doubt by the use of Book X. It is only fair to assume of so careful a scholar reading the first books and one of the last, and occupied with Quintilian’s idea of educational sequence, that he read the whole work.[39]

Having read and admired one of the chief ancient works on rhetoric, why did he leave rhetoric out of his own scheme? The answer is probably in the contemporary conditions to which the _Metalogicus_ is adjusted, and especially in the contemporary state of rhetoric. It seems not to have been in the twelfth century worth more than mention from a John of Salisbury seeking a vital sequence of studies. It lacked what he sought above all, vital relations. If he had known Aristotle’s _Rhetoric_, he might conceivably have sought to recall the ancient study to its better ancient aim. What he found vital in Quintilian’s rhetoric he transferred to _grammatica_ or to _dialectica_, partly, no doubt, because the transfer was actually going on, partly, one may think, because he saw in these other studies the real opportunities of his time for composition. The current lore of ornament which passed for rhetoric could hardly detain his consideration.

What he discerns in _grammatica_, and had found in the teaching of Bernard, is of course training in precision. But though he makes much of this, he does not slight the value of concreteness for presentation; he sees the importance of studying style by imitation; and he adopts from Quintilian a word not common in medieval treatises, _œconomia_. All these point to composition; and composition seems to have been one of the essential applications of the master’s analysis. The _prælectio_ as John describes it is tinged with Quintilian because it realizes fully the ancient function of _grammatica_ with the poets.

In the rapidly expanding teaching of _dialectica_ also he sees opportunity for composition. To this end, very likely, he urges repeatedly that the debates of the schools keep touch with reality by insisting on subject matter through correlation with other studies. Above all he desires that language studies be unified and progressive, that they call for expanding correlation of _inventio_ and _iudicium_. The study that in his time actually demanded and exercised these was not _rhetorica_, which was by way of ignoring both; it was _dialectica_.

D. THIRTEENTH CENTURY SURVEYS

1. The _Anticlaudianus_ of Alain de Lille

The allegorical survey entitled by Alain[40] _Anticlaudianus_ has but superficial likeness to the _De nuptiis philologiæ et Mercurii_[41] of Martianus Capella. Each presents the seven liberal arts in allegory; each is in nine books; but there is no real resemblance, nor any indication of Alain’s having used Martianus except as a stock source. The allegory of Martianus is confined to his first two books, and is purely decorative; the allegory of Alain pervades his whole work as a controlling idea. That idea is the function of education in the redemption of mankind. The sub-title “de officio viri boni et perfecti” is akin to Hugh’s[42] “animæ perfectio.” The consistent, elaborate theological symbolism shows some force of conception and, in spite of occasional excursions into style, some ardor and elevation. The four thousand hexameters are usually above the medieval fatal fluency in this verse. The survey, though it has not Hugh’s originality and does not attempt John’s unification, is equally serious.

The seven arts are summoned to provide _Prudentia_ with a chariot for her quest on behalf of man. _Grammatica_ supplies the pole; _Logica_, the axle, which _Rhetorica_ adorns with gems and gold; the Quadrivium, the four wheels. The horses, the five senses, are then harnessed by _Ratio_. When the upward journey has reached the term of human powers, _Prudentia_, leaving her chariot, is conducted by _Theologia_ into the empyrean, to the saints, to Mary, to God himself. Obtaining of God the formation of the new man, _Prudentia_ returns to seek gifts for the _anima creata_. _Natura_ gives it a body. _Concordia_ and _Pudicitia_, _Ratio_ and _Honestas_, coöperate in gifts with the seven arts. The dubious gifts of _Fortuna_ are assisted by _Ratio_. Thereupon the vices declare war, which is concluded by the victory of the opposed virtues.

Alain incidentally defines the character of each of the seven arts, and summarizes its scope. Each has its function—except _rhetorica_. The other members of the Trivium[43] provide the car of Prudentia with essential pole and axle; the Quadrivium supplies essential wheels; but all that _Rhetorica_ has to offer is quite unessential adornment. Though Alain rehearses the traditional parts of her ancient lore,[44] he sums up her actual occupation in two lines of cardinal significance.

Supremasque manus apponit, opusque sororum Perficit, atque semel factum perfectius ornat.

III. ii. 511 D.

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_.

Adsunt rhetoricæ cultus floresque colorum, Verba quibus stellata nitent; et sermo decorem Induit, et multa splendescit clausula luce.

VII. vi. 554 D.

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.

Verbi pauperiem redimit splendore _colorum_ Tullius, et dictis ornatus fulgura donat. Virgilii musa mendacia multa _colorat_, Et facie veri contexit pallia falso.

I. iv. 491 C.

2. The _Speculum Doctrinale_ of Vincent of Beauvais

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.

3. St. Bonaventure _de Reductione Artium ad Theologiam_

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:

(a) _physica_, for knowing the causes of being;

(b) _logica_, for knowing the theory of understanding;

(c) _practica_, for knowing the conduct of living.

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.

4. The _Trésor_ of Brunetto Latini

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”:

(1) to say at the beginning what was at the end, (2) to begin with what was in the middle, (3) to base your story on the beginning of a proverb, (4) to base it on the middle of the proverb, (5) to base it on the end of the proverb, (6) (7) (8) so for three uses of an example. 482.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[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).

[18] For John’s use of Quintilian, see below, page 169.

[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.