CHAPTER XXXII

EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN VERSE

I. METRICAL VERSE.

II. SUBSTITUTION OF ACCENT FOR QUANTITY.

III. SEQUENCE-HYMN AND STUDENT-SONG.

IV. PASSAGE OF THEMES INTO THE VERNACULAR.

In mediaeval Latin poetry the endeavour to preserve a classical style and the irresistible tendency to evolve new forms are more palpably distinguishable than in the prose. For there is a visible parting of the ways between the retention of the antique metres and their fruitful abandonment in verses built of accentual rhyme. Moreover, this formal divergence corresponds to a substantial difference, inasmuch as there was usually a larger survival of antique feeling and allusion in the mediaeval metrical attempts than in the rhyming poems.

As in the prose, so in the poetry, the lines of development may be followed from the Carolingian time. But a difference will be found between Italy and the North; for in Italy the course was quicker, but a less organic evolution resulted in verse less excellent and less distinctly mediaeval. By the end of the eleventh century Latin poetry in Italy, rhyming or metrical, seems to have drawn itself along as far as it was destined to progress; but in the North a richer growth culminates a century later. Indeed the most originative line of evolution of mediaeval Latin verse would seem to have been confined to the North, in the main if not exclusively.

The following pages offer no history of mediaeval Latin poetry, even as the previous chapter made no attempt to sketch the history of the prose. Their object is to point out the general lines along which the verse-forms were developed, or were perhaps retarded. Three may be distinguished. The first is marked by the retention of quantity and the endeavour to preserve the ancient measures. In the second, accent and rhyme gradually take the place of metre within the old verse-forms. The third is that of the Sequence, wherein the accentual rhyming hymn springs from the chanted prose, which had superseded the chanting of the final _a_ of the Alleluia.[280]

I

The lover of classical Greek and Latin poetry knows the beautiful fitness of the ancient measures for the thought and feeling which they enframed. If his eyes chance to fall on some twelfth-century Latin hymn, he will be struck by its different quality. He will quickly perceive that classic forms would have been unsuited to the Christian and romantic sentiment of the mediaeval period,[281] and will realize that some vehicle besides metrical verse would have been needed for this thoroughly declassicized feeling, even had metrical quantity remained a vital element of language, instead of passing away some centuries before. Metre was but resuscitation and convention in the time of Charlemagne. Yet it kept its sway with scholars, and could not lack votaries so long as classical poetry made part of the _Ars grammatica_ or was read for delectation. Metrical composition did not cease throughout the Middle Ages. But it was not the true mediaeval style, and became obviously academic as accentual verse was perfected and made fit to carry spiritual emotion. Nevertheless the simpler metres were cultivated successfully by the best scholars of the twelfth century.

Most of the Latin poetry of the Carolingian period was metrical, if we are to judge from the mass that remains. Reminiscence of the antique enveloped educated men, with whom the mediaeval spirit had not reached distinctness of thought and feeling. So the poetry resembled the contemporary sculpture and painting, in which the antique was still unsuperseded by any new style. Following the antique metres, using antique phrase and commonplace, often copying antique sentiment, this poetry was as dull as might be expected from men who were amused by calling each other Homer, Virgil, Horace, or David. Usually the poets were ecclesiastics, and interested in theology;[282] but many of the pieces are conventionally profane in topic, and as humanistic as the Latin poetry of Petrarch.[283] Moreover, just as Petrarch’s Latin poetry was still-born, while his Italian sonnets live, so the Carolingian poetry, when it forgets itself and falls away from metre to accentual verse, gains some degree of life. At this early period the Romance tongues were not a fit poetic vehicle, and consequently living thoughts, which with Dante and Petrarch found voice in Italian, in the ninth century began to stammer in Latin verses that were freed from the dead rules of quantity, and were already vibrant with a vital feeling for accent and rhyme.[284]

Through the tenth century metrical composition became rougher, yet sometimes drew a certain force from its rudeness. A good example is the famous _Waltarius_, or _Waltharilied_, of Ekkehart of St. Gall, composed in the year 960 as a school exercise.[285] The theme was a German story found in vernacular poetry. Ekkehart’s hexameters have a strong Teuton flavour, and doubtless some of the vigour of his paraphrase was due to the German original.

The metrical poems of the eleventh century have been spoken of already, especially the more interesting ones written in Italy.[286] Most of the Latin poetry emanating from that classic land was metrical, or so intended. Frequently it tells the story of wars, or gives the _Gesta_ of notable lives, making a kind of versified biography. One feels as if verse was employed as a refuge from the dead annalistic form. This poetry was a semi-barbarizing of the antique, without new formal or substantial elements. Italy, one may say, never became essentially and creatively mediaeval: the pressure of antique survival seems to have barred original development; Italians took little part in the great mediaeval military religious movements, the Crusades; no strikingly new architecture arose with them; their first vernacular poetry was an imitation or a borrowing from Provence and France; and by far the greater part of their Latin poetry presents an uncreative barbarizing of the antique metres.

These remarks find illustration in the principal Latin poems composed in Italy in the twelfth century. Among them one observes differences in skill, knowledge, and tendency. Some of the writers made use of leonine hexameters, others avoided the rhyme. But they were all akin in lack of excellence and originality both in composition and verse-form. There was the monk Donizo of Canossa, who wrote the _Vita_ of the great Countess Matilda;[287] there was William of Apulia, Norman in spirit if not in blood, who wrote of the Norman conquests in Apulia and Sicily;[288] also the anonymous and barbarous _De bello et excidio urbis Comensis_, in which is told the destruction of Como by Milan between 1118 and 1127;[289] then the metrically jingling Pisan chronicle narrating the conquest of the island of Majorca, and beginning (like the _Aeneid_!) with

“Arma, rates, populum vindictam coelitus octam Scribimus, ac duros terrae pelagique labores.”[290]

We also note Peter of Ebulo, with his narrative in laudation of the emperor Henry VI., written about 1194; Henry of Septimella and his elegies upon the checkered fortunes of divers great men;[291] and lastly the more famous Godfrey of Viterbo, of probable German blood, and notary or scribe to three successive emperors, with his cantafable _Pantheon_ or _Memoria saecularum_.[292] Godfrey’s poetry is rhymed after a manner of his own.

In the North, or more specifically speaking in the land of France north of the Loire, the twelfth century brought better metrical poetry than in Italy. Yet it had something of the deadness of imitation, since the _vis vivida_ of song had passed over into rhyming verse. Still from the academic point of view, metre was the proper vehicle of poetry; as one sees, for instance, in the _Ars versificatoria_ of Matthew of Vendome,[293] written toward the close of the twelfth century. “Versus est metrica descriptio,” says he, and then elaborates his, for the most part borrowed, definition: “Verse is metrical description proceeding concisely and line by line through the comely marriage of words to flowers of thought, and containing nothing trivial or irrelevant.” A neat conception this of poetry; and the same writer denounces leonine rhyming as unseemly, but praises the favourite metre of the Middle Ages, the elegiac; for he regards the hexameter and pentameter as together forming the perfect verse. It was in this metre that Hildebert wrote his almost classic elegy over the ruins of Rome. A few lines have been quoted from it;[294] but the whole poem, which is not long, is of interest as one of the very best examples of a mediaeval Latin elegy:

“Par tibi, Roma, nihil, cum sis prope tota ruina; Quam magni fueris integra fracta doces. Longa tuos fastus aetas destruxit, et arces Caesaris et superum templa palude jacent. Ille labor, labor ille ruit quem dirus Araxes Et stantem tremuit et cecidisse dolet; Quem gladii regum, quem provida cura senatus, Quem superi rerum constituere caput; Quem magis optavit cum crimine solus habere Caesar, quam socius et pius esse socer, Qui, crescens studiis tribus, hostes, crimen, amicos Vi domuit, secuit legibus, emit ope; In quem, dum fieret, vigilavit cura priorum: Juvit opus pietas hospitis, unda, locus. Materiem, fabros, expensas axis uterque Misit, se muris obtulit ipse locus. Expendere duces thesauros, fata favorem, Artifices studium, totus et orbis opes. Urbs cecidit de qua si quicquam dicere dignum Moliar, hoc potero dicere: Roma fuit. Non tamen annorum series, non flamma, nec ensis Ad plenum potuit hoc abolere decus. Cura hominum potuit tantam componere Romam Quantam non potuit solvere cura deum. Confer opes marmorque novum superumque favorem, Artificum vigilent in nova facta manus, Non tamen aut fieri par stanti machina muro, Aut restaurari sola ruina potest. Tantum restat adhuc, tantum ruit, ut neque pars stans Aequari possit, diruta nec refici. Hic superum formas superi mirantur et ipsi, Et cupiunt fictis vultibus esse pares. Non potuit natura deos hoc ore creare Quo miranda deum signa creavit homo. Vultus adest his numinibus, potiusque coluntur Artificum studio quam deitate sua. Urbs felix, si vel dominis urbs illa careret, Vel dominis esset turpe carere fide.”[295]

The elegiac metre was used by Abaelard in his didactic poem to his son Astralabius,[296] and by John of Salisbury in his _Entheticus_. The hexameter also was a favourite measure, used, for instance, by Alanus of Lille in the _Anticlaudianus_, perhaps the noblest of mediaeval narrative or allegorical poems in Latin.[297] Another excellent composition in hexameter was the _Alexandreis_ of Walter, born, like Alanus, apparently at Lille, but commonly called of Chatillon. As poets and as classical scholars, these two men were worthy contemporaries. Walter’s poem follows, or rather enlarges upon the _Life of Alexander_ by Quintus Curtius.[298] He is said to have written it on the challenge of Matthew of Vendome, him of the _Ars versificatoria_. The _Ligurinus_ of a certain Cistercian Gunther is still another good example of a long narrative poem in hexameters. It sets forth the career of Frederick Barbarossa, and was written shortly after the opening of the thirteenth century. Its author, like Walter and Alanus, shows himself widely read in the Classics.[299]

The sapphic was a third not infrequently attempted metre, of which the _De planctu naturae_ of Alanus contains examples. This work was composed in the form of the _De consolatione philosophiae_ of Boëthius, where lyrics alternate with prose. The general topic was Nature’s complaint over man’s disobedience to her laws. The author apostrophizes her in the following sapphics:

“O Dei proles, genitrixque rerum, Vinculum mundi, stabilisque nexus, Gemma terrenis, speculum caducis, Lucifer orbis. Pax, amor, virtus, regimen, potestas, Ordo, lex, finis, via, dux, origo, Vita, lux, splendor, species, figura Regula mundi. Quae tuis mundum moderas habenis, Cuncta concordi stabilita nodo Nectis et pacis glutino maritas Coelica terris. Quae noys (νοῦς) plures recolens ideas Singulas rerum species monetans, Res togas formis, chlamidemque formae Pollice formas. Cui favet coelum, famulatur aer, Quam colit Tellus, veneratur unda, Cui velut mundi dominae tributum Singula solvunt. Quae diem nocti vicibus catenans Cereum solis tribuis diei, Lucido lunae speculo soporans Nubila noctis. Quae polum stellis variis inauras, Aetheris nostri solium serenans Siderum gemmis, varioque coelum Milite complens. Quae novis coeli faciem figuris Protheans mutas aridumque vulgus Aeris nostri regione donans, Legeque stringis. Cujus ad nutum juvenescit orbis, Silva crispatur folii capillo, Et tua florum tunicata veste, Terra superbit. Quae minas ponti sepelis, et auges, Syncopans cursum pelagi furori Ne soli tractum tumulare possit Aequoris aestus.”[300]

Practically all of our examples have been taken from works composed in the twelfth century, and in the land comprised under the name of France. The pre-excellence of this period will likewise appear in accentual rhyming Latin poetry, which was more spontaneous and living than its loftily descended relative.

II

The academic vogue of metre in the early Middle Ages did not prevent the growth of more natural poetry. The Irish had their Gaelic poems; people of Teutonic speech had their rough verse based on alliteration and the count of the strong syllables. The Romance tongues emerging from the common Latin were as yet poetically untried. But in the proper Latin, which had become as unquantitative and accentual as any of its vulgar forms, there was a tonic poetry that was no longer unequipped with rhyme.

Three rhythmic elements made up this natural mode of Latin versification: the succession of accented and unaccented syllables; the number of syllables in a line; and that regularly recurring sameness of sound which is called rhyme. The source of the first of these seems obvious. Accent having driven quantity from speech, came to supersede it in verse, with the accented syllable taking the place of the long syllable and the unaccented the place of the short. In the Carolingian period accentual verse followed the old metrical forms, with this exception: the metrical principle that one long is equivalent to two shorts was not adopted. Consequently the number of syllables in the successive lines of an accentual strophe would remain the same, where in the metrical antecedent they might have varied. This is also sufficient to account for the second element, the observance of regularity in the number of syllables. For this regularity seems to follow upon the acceptance of the principle that in rhythmic verse an accented syllable is not equal to two unaccented ones. The query might perhaps be made why this Latin accentual verse did not take up the principle of regularity in the number of strong syllables in a line, like Old High German poetry for example, where the number of unaccented syllables, within reasonable limits, is indifferent. A ready answer is that these Latin verses were made by people of Latin speech who had been acquainted with metrical forms of poetry, in which the number of syllables might vary, but was never indifferent; for the metrical rule was rigid that one long was equivalent to two short; and to no more and no less. Hence the short syllables were as fixed in number as the long.[301]

The origin of the third element, rhyme, is in dispute. In some instances it may have passed into Greek and Latin verses from Syrian hymns.[302] But on the other hand it had long been an occasional element in Greek and Latin rhetorical prose. Probably rhyme in Latin accentual verse had no specific origin. It gradually became the sharpening, defining element of such verse. Accentual Latin lent itself so naturally to rhyme, that had not rhyme become a fixed part of this verse, there indeed would have been a fact to explain.

These, then, were the elements: accent, number of syllables, and rhyme. Most interesting is the development of verse-forms. Rhythmic Latin poetry came through the substitution of accent for quantity, and probably had many prototypes in the old jingles of Roman soldiers and provincials, which so far as known were accentual, rather than metrical. Christian accentual poetry retained those simple forms of iambic and trochaic verse which most readily submitted to the change from metre to accent, or perhaps one should say, had for centuries offered themselves as natural forms of accentual verse. Apparently the change from metre to accent within the old forms gradually took place between the sixth and the tenth centuries. During this period there was slight advance in the evolution of new verses; nor was the period creative in other respects, as we have seen. But thereafter, as the mediaeval centuries advanced from the basis of a mastered patristic and antique heritage, and began to create, there followed an admirable evolution of verse-forms: in some instances apparently issuing from the old metrico-accentual forms, and in others developing independently by virtue of the faculty of song meeting the need of singing.

This factor wrought with power--the human need and cognate faculty of song, a need and faculty stimulated in the Middle Ages by religious sentiment and emotion. In the fusing of melody and words into an utterance of song--at last into a strophe--music worked potently, shaping the composition of the lines, moulding them to rhythm, insisting upon sonorousness in the words, promoting their assonance and at last compelling them to rhyme so as to meet the stress, or mark the ending, of the musical periods. Thus the exigencies of melody helped to evoke the finished verse, while the words reciprocating through their vocal capabilities and through the inspiration of their meaning, aided the evolution of the melodies. In fine, words and melody, each quickened by the other, and each moulding the other to itself, attained a perfected strophic unison; and mediaeval musician-poets achieved at last the finished verses of hymns or Sequences and student-songs.

There were two distinct lines of evolution of accentual Latin verse in the Middle Ages; and although the faculty of song was a moving energy in both, it worked in one of them more visibly than in the other. Along the one line accentual verse developed pursuant to the ancient forms, displacing quantity with accent, and evolving rhyme. The other line of evolution had no connection with the antique. It began with phrases of sonorous prose, replacing inarticulate chant. These, under the influence of music, through the creative power of song, were by degrees transformed to verse. The evolution of the Sequence-hymn will be the chief illustration. With the finished accentual Latin poetry of the twelfth century it may become impossible to tell which line of rhythmic evolution holds the antecedent of a given poem. In truth, this final and perfected verse may often have a double ancestry, descending from the rhythms which had superseded metre, and being also the child of mediaeval melody. Yet there is no difficulty in tracing by examples the two lines of evolution.

To illustrate the strain of verse which took its origin in the displacement of metre by accent and rhyme, we must look back as far as Fortunatus. He was born about the year 530 in northern Italy, but he passed his eventful life among Franks and Thuringians. A scholar and also a poet, he had a fair mastery of metre; yet some of his poems evince the spirit of the coming mediaeval time both in sentiment and form. He wrote two famous hymns, one of them in the popular trochaic tetrameter, the other in the equally simple iambic dimeter. The first, a hymn to the Cross, begins with the never-to-be-forgotten

“Pange, lingua, gloriosi proelium certaminis”;

and has such lines as

“Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis

* * * * *

Dulce lignum, dulce clavo dulce pondus sustinens!”

In these the mediaeval feeling for the Cross shows itself, and while the metre is correct, it is so facile that one may read or sing the lines accentually. In the other hymn, also to the Cross, assonance and rhyme foretell the coming transformation of metre to accentual verse. Here are the first two stanzas:

“Vexilla regis prodeunt, Fulget crucis mysterium, Quo carne carnis conditor Suspensus est patibulo.

Confixa clavis viscera Tendens manus, vestigia Redemtionis gratia Hic immolata est hostia.”

Passing to the Carolingian epoch, some lines from a poem celebrating the victory of Charlemagne’s son Pippin over the Avars in 796, will illustrate the popular trochaic tetrameter which had become accentual, and already tended to rhyme:

“Multa mala iam fecerunt ab antico tempore, Fana dei destruxerunt atque monasteria, Vasa aurea sacrata, argentea, fictilia.”[303]

Next we turn to a piece by the persecuted and interesting Gottschalk, written in the latter part of the ninth century. A young lad has asked for a poem. But how can he sing, the exiled and imprisoned monk who might rather weep as the Jews by the waters of Babylon?[304] yet he will sing a hymn to the Trinity, and bewail his piteous lot before the highest pitying Godhead. The verses have a lyric unity of mood, and are touching with their sad refrain. Their rhyme, if not quite pure, is abundant and catching, and their nearest metrical affinity would be a trochaic dimeter.

“1. Ut quid iubes, pusiole, quare mandas, filiole, carmen dulce me cantare, cum sim longe exul valde intra mare? o cur iubes canere?

2. Magis mihi, miserule, fiere libet, puerule, plus plorare quam cantare carmen tale, iubes quale, amor care, o cur iubes canere?

3. Mallem scias, pusillule, ut velles tu, fratercule, pio corde condolere mihi atque prona mente conlugere. o cur iubes canere?

4. Scis, divine tyruncule, scis, superne clientule, hic diu me exulare, multa die sive nocte tolerare. o cur iubes canere?

5. Scis captive plebicule Israheli cognomine praeceptum in Babilone decantare extra longe fines Iude. o cur iubes canere?

6. Non potuerunt utique, nec debuerunt itaque carmen dulce coram gente aliene nostri terre resonare. o cur iubes canere?

7. Sed quia vis omnimode, consodalis egregie, canam patri filioque simul atque procedente ex utroque. hoc cano ultronee.

8. Benedictus es, domine, pater, nate, paraclite, deus trine, deus une, deus summe, deus pie, deus iuste. hoc cano spontanee.

9. Exul ego diuscule hoc in mare sum, domine: annos nempe duos fere nosti fore, sed iam iamque miserere. hoc rogo humillime.

10. Interim cum pusione psallam ore, psallam mente, psallam voce (psallam corde), psallam die, psallam nocte carmen dulce tibi, rex piissime.”[305]

Gottschalk (and for this it is hard to love him) was one of the initiators of the leonine hexameter, in which a syllable in the middle of the line rhymes with the last syllable.

“Septeno Augustas decimo praeeunte Kalendas”

is the opening hexameter in his Epistle to his friend Ratramnus.[306] To what horrid jingle such verses could attain may be seen from some leonine hexameter-pentameters of two or three hundred years later, on the Fall of Troy, beginning:

“Viribus, arte, minis, Danaum clara Troja ruinis, Annis bis quinis fit rogus atque cinis.”[307]

Hector and Troy, and the dire wiles of the Greeks never left the mediaeval imagination. A poem of the early tenth century, which bade the watchers on Modena’s walls be vigilant, draws its inspiration from that unfading memory, and for us illustrates what iambics might become when accent had replaced quantity. The lines throughout end in a final rhyming _a_.

“O tu, qui servas armis ista moenia, Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila. Dum Hector vigil extitit in Troia, Non eam cepit fraudulenta Graecia.”[308]

And from a scarcely later time, for it also is of the tenth century, rise those verses to Roma, that old “Roma aurea et eterna,” and forever “caput mundi,” sung by pilgrim bands as their eyes caught the first gleam of tower, church, and ruin:

“O Roma nobilis, orbis et domina, Cunctarum urbium excellentissima, Roseo martyrum sanguine rubea, Albis et virginum liliis candida: Salutem dicimus tibi per omnia, Te benedicimus: salve per secula.”[309]

This verse, which still lifts the heart of whosoever hears or reads it, may close our examples of mediaeval verses descended from metrical forms. It will be noticed that all of them are from the early mediaeval centuries; a circumstance which may be taken as a suggestion of the fact that by far the greater part of the earlier accentual Latin poetry was composed in forms in which accent simply had displaced the antique quantity.

III

We turn to that other genesis of mediaeval Latin verse, arising not out of antique forms, but rather from the mediaeval need and faculty of song. In the chief instance selected for illustration, this line of evolution took its inception in the exigencies and inspiration of the Alleluia chant or jubilation. During the celebration of the Mass, as the Gradual ended in its last Alleluia, the choir continued chanting the final syllable of that word in cadences of musical exultings. The melody or cadence to which this final _a_ of the Alleluia was chanted, was called the _sequentia_. The words which came to be substituted for its cadenced reiteration were called the _prosa_. By the twelfth century the two terms seem to have been used interchangeably. Thus arose the prose Sequence, so plastic in its capability of being moulded by melody to verse. Its songful qualities lay in the sonorousness of the words and in their syllabic correspondence with the notes of the melody to which they were sung.[310]

In the year 860, Norsemen sacked the cloister of Jumièges in Normandy, and a fleeing brother carried his precious Antiphonary far away to the safe retreat of St. Gall. There a young monk named Notker, poring over its contents, perceived that words had been written in the place of the repetitions of the final _a_ of the Alleluia. Taking the cue, he set to work to compose more fitting words to correspond with the notes to which this final _a_ was sung. So these lines of euphonious and fitting words appear to have had their beginning in Notker’s scanning of that fugitive Antiphonary, and his devising labour. Their primary purpose was a musical one; for they were a device--mnemotechnic, if one will--to facilitate the chanting of cadences previously vocalized with difficulty through the singing of one simple vowel sound. Notker showed his work to his master, Iso, who rejoiced at what his gifted pupil had accomplished, and spurred him on by pointing out that in his composition one syllable was still sometimes repeated or drawn out through several successive notes. One syllable to each note was the principle which Notker now set himself to realize; and he succeeded.

He composed some fifty Sequences. In his work, as well as in that of others after him, the device of words began to modify and develop the melodies themselves. Sometimes Notker adapted his verbal compositions to those cadences or melodies to which the Alleluia had long been sung; sometimes he composed both melody and words; or, again, he took a current melody, sacred or secular, to which the Alleluia never had been sung, and composed words for it, to be chanted as a Sequence. In these borrowed melodies, as well as in those composed by Notker, the musical periods were more developed than in the Alleluia cadences. Thus the musical growth of the Sequences was promoted by the use of sonorous words, while the improved melodies in turn drew the words on to a more perfect rhythmic ordering.

Notker died in 912. His Sequences were prose, yet with a certain parallelism in their construction; and, even with Notker in his later years, the words began to take on assonances, chiefly in the vowel sound of _a_. Thereafter the melodies, seizing upon the words, as it were, by the principle of their syllabic correspondence to the notation, moulded them to rhythm of movement and regularity of line; while conversely with the better ordering of the words for singing, the melodies in turn made gain and progress, and then again reacted on the words, until after two centuries there emerged the finished verses of an Adam of St. Victor.

Thus these Sequences have become verse before our eyes, and we realize that it is the very central current of the evolution of mediaeval Latin poetry that we have been following. How free and how spontaneous was this evolution of the Sequence. It was the child of the Christian Middle Ages, seeing the light in the closing years of the ninth century, but requiring a long period of growth before it reached the glory of its climacteric. It was born of musical chanting, and it grew as song, never unsung or conceived of as severable from its melody. Only as it attained its perfected strophic forms, it necessarily made use of trochaic and other rhythms which long before had changed from quantity to accent and so had passed on into the verse-making habitudes of the Middle Ages.[311] If there be any Latin composition in virtue of origin and growth absolutely un-antique, it is the mediaeval Sequence, which in its final forms is so glorious a representative of the mediaeval Hymn. And we shall also see that much popular Latin poetry, “Carmina Burana” and student-songs, were composed in verses and often sung to tunes taken--or parodied--from the Sequence-hymns of the Liturgy.

There were many ways of chanting Sequences. The musical phrases of the melodies usually were repeated once, except at the beginning and the close; and the Sequence would be rendered by a double choir singing antiphonally. Ordinarily the words responded to the repetition of the musical phrases with a parallelism of their own. The lines (after the first) varied in length by pairs, the second and third lines having the same number of syllables, the fourth and fifth likewise equal to each other, but differing in length from the second and third; and so on through the Sequence, until the last line, which commonly stood alone and differed in length from the preceding pairs. The Sequence called “Nostra tuba” is a good example. Probably it was composed by Notker, and in his later years; for it is filled with assonances, and exhibits a regular parallelism of structure.

“Nostra tuba Regatur fortissime Dei dextra et preces audiat Aura placatissima et serena; ita enim nostra Laus erit accepta, voce si quod canimus, canat pariter et pura conscientia. Et, ut haec possimus, omnes divina nobis semper flagitemus adesse auxilia.

* * * * *

O bone Rex, pie, juste, misericors, qui es via et janua, Portas regni, quaesumus, nobis reseres, dimittasque facinora Ut laudemus nomen nunc tuum atque per cuncta saecula.”[312]

Here, after the opening, the first pair has seventeen syllables, and the next pair twenty-six. The last pair quoted has twenty; and the final line of seventeen syllables has no fellow. A further rhythmical advance seems reached by the following Sequence from the abbey of St. Martial at Limoges. It may have been written in the eleventh century. It is given here with the first and second line of the couplets opposite to each other, as strophe and antistrophe; and the lines themselves are divided to show the assonances (or rhymes) which appear to have corresponded with pauses in the melody:

“(1) Canat omnis turba

(2a) Fonte renata (2b) Laude jucunda Spiritusque gratia et mente perspicua

(3a) Jam restituta (3b) Sicque jactura pars est decima coelestis illa fuerat quae culpa completur in laude perdita. divina.

(4a) Ecce praeclara (4b) Enitet ampla dies dominica per orbis spatia,

(5a) Exsultat in qua (5b) Quia destructa plebs omnis redempta, mors est perpetua.”[313]

A Sequence of the eleventh century will afford a final illustration of approach to a regular strophic structure, and of the use of the final one-syllable rhyme in _a_, throughout the Sequence:

1

“Alleluia, Turma, proclama leta; Laude canora, Facta prome divina, Jam instituta Superna disciplina,

2

Christi sacra Per magnalia Es quia de morte liberata Ut destructa Inferni claustra Januaque celi patefacta!

3

Jam nunc omnia Celestia Terrestria Virtute gubernat eterna. In quibus sua Judicia Semper equa Dat auctoritate paterna.”

* * * *[314]

As the eleventh century closed and the great twelfth century dawned, the forces of mediaeval growth quickened to a mightier vitality, and distinctively mediaeval creations appeared. Our eyes, of course, are fixed upon the northern lands, where the Sequence grew from prose to verse, and where derivative or analogous forms of popular poetry developed also. Up to this time, throughout mediaeval life and thought, progress had been somewhat uncrowned with palpable achievement. Yet the first brilliant creations of a master-workman are the fruit of his apprentice years, during which his progress has been as real as when his works begin to make it visible. So it was no sudden birth of power, but rather faculties ripening through apprentice centuries, which illumine the period opening about the year 1100. This period would carry no human teaching if its accomplishment in institutions, in philosophy, in art and poetry, had been a heaven-blown accident, and not the fruit of antecedent discipline.

The poetic advance represented by the Sequences of Adam of St. Victor may rouse our admiration for the poet’s genius, but should not blind our eyes to the continuity of development leading to it. Adam is the final artist and his work a veritable creation; yet his antecedents made part of his creative faculty. The elements of his verses and the general idea and form of the sequence were given him;--all honour to the man’s holy genius which made these into poems. The elements referred to consisted in accentual measures and in the two-syllabled Latin rhyme which appears to have been finally achieved by the close of the eleventh century.[315] In using them Adam was no borrower, but an artist who perforce worked in the medium of his art. Trochaic and iambic rhythms then constituted the chief measures for accentual verse, as they had for centuries, and do still. For, although accentual rhythms admit dactyls and anapaests, these have not proved generally serviceable. Likewise the inevitable progress of Latin verse had developed assonances into rhymes; and indeed into rhymes of two syllables, for Latin words lend themselves as readily to rhymes of two syllables as English words to rhymes of one.

There existed also the idea and form of the Sequence, consisting of pairs of lines which had reached assonance and some degree of rhythm, and varied in length, pair by pair, following the music of the melodies to which they were sung. For the Sequence-melody did not keep to the same recurring tune throughout, but varied from couplet to couplet. In consequence, a Sequence by Adam of St. Victor may contain a variety of verse-forms. Moreover, a number of the Sequences of which he may have been the author show survivals of the old rhythmical irregularities, and of assonance as yet unsuperseded by pure rhyme.

Before giving examples of Adam’s poems, a tribute should be paid to his great forerunner in the art of Latin verse. Adam doubtless was familiar with the hymns[316] of the most brilliant intellectual luminary of the departing generation, one Peter Abaelard, whom he may have seen in the flesh. Those once famous love-songs, written for Heloïse, perished (so far as we know) with the love they sang. Another fate--and perhaps Abaelard wished it so--was in store for the many hymns which he wrote for his sisters in Christ, the abbess and her nuns. They still exist,[317] and display a richness of verse-forms scarcely equalled even by the Sequences of Adam. In the development of Latin verse, Abaelard is Adam’s immediate predecessor; his verses being, as it were, just one stage inferior to Adam’s in sonorousness of line, in certainty of rhythm, and in purity of rhyme.

The “prose” Sequences were not the direct antecedents of Abaelard’s hymns. Yet both sprang from the freely devising spirit of melody and song; and therefore those hymns are of this free-born lineage more truly than they are descendants of antique forms. To be sure, every possible accentual rhythm, built as it must be of trochees, iambics, anapaests, or dactyls, has unavoidably some antique quantitative antecedent; because the antique measures exhausted the possibilities of syllabic combination. Yet antecedence is not source, and most of Abaelard’s verses by their form and spirit proclaim their genesis in the creative exigencies of song as loudly as they disavow any antique parentage.

For example, there may be some far echo of metrical asclepiads in the following accentual and rhyme-harnessed twelve-syllable verse:

“Advenit veritas, umbra praeteriit, Post noctem claritas diei subiit, Ad ortum rutilant superni luminis Legis mysteria plena caliginis.”

But the echo if audible is faint, and surely no antique whisper is heard in

“Est in Rama Vox audita Rachel flentis Super natos Interfectos Ejulantis.”

Nor in

“Golias prostratus est, Resurrexit Dominus, Ense jugulatus est Hostis proprio; Cum suis submersus est Ille Pharao.”

The variety of Abaelard’s verse seems endless. One or two further examples may or may not suggest any antecedents in those older forms of accentual verse which followed the former metres:

“Ornarunt terram germina, Nunc caelum luminaria. Sole, luna, stellis depingitur, Quorum multus usus cognoscitur.”

In this verse the first two lines are accentual iambic dimeters; while the last two begin each with two trochees, and close apparently with two dactyls. The last form of line is kept throughout in the following:

“Gaude virgo virginum gloria, Matrum decus et mater, jubila, Quae commune sanctorum omnium Meruisti conferre gaudium.”

Next come some simple five-syllable lines, with a catching rhyme:

“Lignum amaras Indulcat aquas Eis immissum. Omnes agones Sunt sanctis dulces Per crucifixum.”

In the following lines of ten syllables a dactyl appears to follow a trochee twice in each line:

“Tuba Domini, Paule, maxima, De caelestibus dans tonitrua, Hostes dissipans, cives aggrega.

Doctor gentium es praecipuus, Vas in poculum factus omnibus, Sapientiae plenum haustibus.”

These examples of Abaelard’s rhythms may close with the following curiously complicated verse:

“Tu quae carnem edomet Abstinentiam, Tu quae carnem decoret Continentiam, Tu velle quod bonum est his ingeris Ac ipsum perficere tu tribuis. Instrumenta Sunt his tua Per quos mira peragis, Et humana Moves corda Signis et prodigiis.”

In general, one observes in these verses that Abaelard does not use a pure two-syllable rhyme. The rhyme is always pure in the last syllable, and in the penult may either exist as a pure rhyme or simply as an assonance, or not at all.[318]

Probably Abaelard wrote his hymns in 1130, perhaps the very year when Adam as a youth entered the convent of St. Victor, lying across the Seine from Paris. The latter appears to have lived until 1192. Many Sequences have been improperly ascribed to him, and among the doubtful ones are a number having affinities with the older types. These may be anterior to Adam; for the greater part of his unquestionable Sequences are perfected throughout in their versification. Yet, on the other hand, one would expect some progression in works composed in the course of a long life devoted to such composition--a life covering a period when progressive changes were taking place in the world of thought beyond St. Victor’s walls. We take three examples of these Sequences. The first contains occasional assonance in place of rhyme, and uses many rhymes of one syllable. It appears to be an older composition improperly ascribed to Adam. The second is unquestionably his, in his most perfect form; the third may or may not be Adam’s; but is given for its own sake as a lovely lyric.[319]

The first example, probably written not much later than the year 1100, was designed for the Mass at the dedication of a church. The variety in the succession of couplets and strophes indicates a corresponding variation in the melody.

1

“Clara chorus dulce pangat voce nunc alleluia, Ad aeterni regis laudem qui gubernat omnia!

2

Cui nos universalis sociat Ecclesia, Scala nitens et pertingens ad poli fastigia;

3

Ad honorem cujus laeta psallamus melodia, Persolventes hodiernas laudes illi debitas.

4

O felix aula, quam vicissim Confrequentant agmina coelica, Divinis verbis alternatim Jungentia mellea cantica!

5

Domus haec, de qua vetusta sonuit historia Et moderna protestatur Christum fari pagina: ‘Quoniam elegi eam thronum sine macula, ‘Requies haec erit mea per aeterna saecula.

6

Turris supra montem sita, Indissolubili bitumine fundata Vallo perenni munita, Atque aurea columna Miris ac variis lapidibus distincta, Stylo subtili polita!

7

Ave, mater praeelecta, Ad quam Christus fatur ita Prophetae facundia: ‘Sponsa mea speciosa, ‘Inter filias formosa, ‘Supra solem splendida!

8

‘Caput tuum ut Carmelus ‘Et ipsius comae tinctae regis uti purpura; ‘Oculi ut columbarum, ‘Genae tuae punicorum ceu malorum fragmina!

9

‘Mel et lac sub lingua tua, favus stillans labia; ‘Collum tuum ut columna, turris et eburnea!’

10

Ergo nobis Sponsae tuae Famulantibus, o Christe, pietate solita Clemens adesse dignare Et in tuo salutari nos ubique visita.

11

Ipsaque mediatrice, summe rex, perpetue, Voce pura Flagitamus, da gaudere Paradisi gloria. Alleluia!”[320]

The second example is Adam’s famous Sequence for St. Stephen’s Day, which falls on the day after Christmas. It is throughout sustained and perfect in versification, and in substance a splendid hymn of praise.

1

“Heri mundus exultavit Et exultans celebravit Christi natalitia; Heri chorus angelorum Prosecutus est coelorum Regem cum laetitia.

2

Protomartyr et levita, Clarus fide, clarus vita, Clarus et miraculis, Sub hac luce triumphavit Et triumphans insultavit Stephanus incredulis.

3

Fremunt ergo tanquam ferae Quia victi defecere Lucis adversarii: Falsos testes statuunt, Et linguas exacuunt Viperarum filii.

4

Agonista, nulli cede, Certa certus de mercede, Persevera, Stephane; Insta falsis testibus, Confuta sermonibus Synagogam Satanae.

5

Testis tuus est in coelis, Testis verax et fidelis, Testis innocentiae. Nomen habes coronati: Te tormenta decet pati Pro corona gloriae.

6

Pro corona non marcenti Perfer brevis vim tormenti; Te manet victoria. Tibi fiet mors natalis, Tibi poena terminalis Dat vitae primordia.

7

Plenus Sancto Spiritu, Penetrat intuitu Stephanus coelestia. Videns Dei gloriam, Crescit ad victoriam, Suspirat ad praemia.

8

En a dextris Dei stantem, Jesum pro te dimicantem, Stephane, considera: Tibi coelos reserari, Tibi Christum revelari, Clama voce libera.

9

Se commendat Salvatori, Pro quo dulce ducit mori Sub ipsis lapidibus. Saulus servat omnium Vestes lapidantium, Lapidans in omnibus.

10

Ne peccatum statuatur His a quibus lapidatur, Genu ponit, et precatur, Condolens insaniae. In Christo sic obdormivit, Qui Christo sic obedivit, Et cum Christo semper vivit, Martyrum primitiae.”

* * * *[321]

The last example, in honour of St. Nicholas’s Day, is a lovely poem by whomsoever written. Its verses are extremely diversified. It begins with somewhat formal chanting of the saint’s virtues, in dignified couplets. Suddenly it changes to a joyful lyric, and sings of a certain sweet sea-miracle wrought by Nicholas. Then it spiritualizes the conception of his saintly aid to meet the call of the sin-tossed soul. It closes in stately manner in harmony with its liturgical function.

1

“Congaudentes exultemus vocali concordia Ad beati Nicolai festiva solemnia!

2

Qui in cunis adhuc jacens servando jejunia A papilla coepit summa promereri gaudia.

3

Adolescens amplexatur litterarum studia, Alienus et immunis ab omni lascivia.

4

Felix confessor, cujus fuit dignitatis vox de coelo nuntia! Per quam provectus, praesulatus sublimatur ad summa fastigia.

5

Erat in ejus animo pietas eximia, Et oppressis impendebat multa beneficia.

6

Auro per eum virginum tollitur infamia, Atque patris earumdem levatur inopia.

7

Quidam nautae navigantes, Et contra fluctuum saevitiam luctantes, Navi pene dissoluta, Jam de vita desperantes, In tanto positi periculo, clamantes Voce dicunt omnes una:

8

‘O beate Nicolae, Nos ad maris portum trahe De mortis angustia. Trahe nos ad portum maris, Tu qui tot auxiliaris, Pietatis gratia.’

9

Dum clamarent, nec incassum, ‘Ecce’ quidam dicens, ‘assum Ad vestra praesidia.’ Statim aura datur grata Et tempestas fit sedata: Quieverunt maria.

10

Nos, qui sumus in hoc mundo, Vitiorum in profundo Jam passi naufragia, Gloriose Nicolae Ad salutis portum trahe, Ubi pax et gloria.

11

Illam nobis unctionem Impetres ad Dominum, Prece pia, Qua sanavit laesionem Multorum peccaminum In Maria.

12

Hujus festum celebrantes gaudeant per saecula, Et coronet eos Christus post vitae curricula!”[322]

The foregoing examples of religious poetry may be supplemented by illustrations of the parallel evolution of more profane if not more popular verse. Any priority in time, as between the two, should lie with the former; though it may be the truer view to find a general synchronism in the secular and religious phases of lyric growth. But priority of originality and creativeness certainly belongs to that line of lyric evolution which sprang from religious sentiments and emotions. For the vagrant clerkly poet of the Court, the roadside, and the inn, used the forms of verse fashioned by the religious muse in the cloister and the school. Thus the development of secular Latin verse presents a derivative parallel to the essentially primary evolution of the Sequence or the hymn.

It was in Germany that the composition of Sequences was most zealously cultivated during the century following Notker’s death; and it was in Germany that the Sequence, in its earlier forms, exerted most palpable influence upon popular songs.[323] In these so-called Modi (_Modus_ == song), as in the Sequence, rhythmical compositions may be seen progressing in the direction of regular rhythm, rhyme, and strophic form. As in the Sequences, the tune moulded the words, which in turn influenced the melody. The following is from the _Modus Ottinc_, a popular song composed about the year 1000 in honour of a victory of Otto III. over the Hungarians:

“His incensi bella fremunt, arma poscunt, hostes vocant, signa secuntur, tubis canunt. Clamor passim oritur et milibus centum Theutones inmiscentur.

Pauci cedunt, plures cadunt, Francus instat, Parthus fugit; vulgus exangue undis obstat; Licus rubens sanguine Danubio cladem Parthicam ostendebat.”

Another example is the _Modus florum_ of approximately the same period, a song about a king who promised his daughter to whoever could tell such a lie as to force the king to call him a liar. It opens as follows:

“Mendosam quam cantilenam ago, puerulis commendatam dabo, quo modulos per mendaces risum auditoribus ingentem ferant.

Liberalis et decora cuidam regi erat nata quam sub lege hujusmodi procis opponit quaerendam.”

* * * *[324]

Here the rhyme still is rude and the rhythm irregular. The following dirge, written thirty or forty years later on the death of the German emperor, Henry II., shows improvement:

“Lamentemur nostra, Socii, peccata, amentemur et ploremus! Quare tacemus? Pro iniquitate corruimus late; scimus coeli hinc offensum regem immensum. Heinrico requiem, rex Christe, dona perennem.”[325]

We may pass on into the twelfth century, still following the traces of that development of popular verse which paralleled the evolution of the Sequence. We first note some catchy rhymes of a German student setting out for Paris in quest of learning and intellectual novelty:

“Hospita in Gallia nunc me vocant studia. Vadam ergo; flens a tergo socios relinquo. Plangite discipuli, lugubris discidii tempore propinquo. Vale, dulcis patria, suavis Suevorum Suevia! Salve dilecta Francia, philosophorum curia! Suscipe discipulum in te peregrinum, Quem post dierum circulum remittes Socratinum.”[326]

This Suabian, singing his uncouth Latin rhymes, and footing his way to Paris, suggests the common, delocalized influences which were developing a mass of student-songs, “Carmina Burana,” or “Goliardic” poetry. The authors belonged to that large and broad class of _clerks_ made up of any and all persons who knew Latin. The songs circulated through western Europe, and their home was everywhere, if not their origin. Some of them betray, as more of them do not, the author’s land and race. Frequently of diabolic cleverness, gibing, amorous, convivial, they show the virtuosity in rhyme of their many makers. Like the hymns and later Sequences, they employed of necessity those accentual measures which once had their quantitative prototypes in antique metres. But, again like the hymns and Sequences, they neither imitate nor borrow, but make use of trochaic, iambic, or other rhythms as the natural and unavoidable material of verse. Their strophes are new strophes, and not imitations of anything in quantitative poetry. So these songs were free-born, and their development was as independent of antique influence as the melodies which ever moulded them to more perfect music. Many and divers were their measures. But as that great strophe of Adam’s _Heri mundus exultavit_ (the strophe of the _Stabat Mater_) was of mightiest dominance among the hymns, so for these student-songs there was also one measure that was chief. This was the thirteen-syllable trochaic line, with its lilting change of stress after the seventh syllable, and its pure two-syllable rhyme. It is the line of the _Confessio poetae_, or _Confessio Goliae_, where nests that one mediaeval Latin verse which everybody still knows by heart:

“Meum est propositum in taberna mori, Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, Tunc cantabunt laetius angelorum chori, ‘Sit Deus propitius huic potatori.’”

It is also the line of the quite charming Phyllis and Flora of the _Carmina Burana_:

“Erant ambae virgines et ambae reginae, Phyllis coma libera, Flora compto crine: Non sunt formae virginum, sed formae divinae, Et respondent facie luci matutinae.”[327]

Another common measure is the twelve-syllable dactylic line of the famous _Apocalypsis Goliae Episcopi_:

“Ipsam Pythagorae formam aspicio, Inscriptam artium schemate vario. An extra corpus sit haec revelatio, Utrum in corpore, Deus scit, nescio. In fronte micuit ars astrologica; Dentium seriem regit grammatica; In lingua pulcrius vernat rhetorica, Concussis aestuat in labiis logica.”

An example of the not infrequent eight-syllable line is afforded by that tremendous satire against papal Rome, beginning:

“Propter Sion non tacebo, Sed ruinam Romae flebo, Quousque justitia Rursus nobis oriatur, Et ut lampas accendatur Justus in ecclesia.”

Here the last line of the verse has but seven syllables, as is the case in the following verse of four lines:

“Vinum bonum et suave, Bonis bonum, pravis prave, Cunctis dulcis sapor, ave, Mundana laetitia!”

But the eight-syllable lines may be kept throughout, as in the following lament over life’s lovely, pernicious charm, so touching in its expression of the mortal heartbreak of mediaeval monasticism:

“Heu! Heu! mundi vita, Quare me delectas ita? Cum non possis mecum stare, Quid me cogis te amare?

* * * *

Vita mundi, res morbosa, Magis fragilis quam rosa, Cum sis tota lacrymosa, Cur es mihi graciosa?”[328]

IV

Our consideration of the different styles of mediaeval Latin prose and the many novel forms of mediaeval Latin verse has shown how radical was the departure of the one and the other from Cicero and Virgil. Through such changes Latin continued to prove itself a living language. Yet its vitality was doomed to wane before the rivalry of the vernacular tongues. The _vivida vis_, the capability of growth, had well-nigh passed from Latin when Petrarch was born. In endeavouring to maintain its supremacy as a literary vehicle he was to hold a losing brief, nor did he strengthen his cause by attempting to resuscitate a classic style of prose and metre. The victory of the vernacular was announced in Dante’s _De vulgari eloquentia_ and demonstrated beyond dispute in his _Divina Commedia_.

A long and for the most part peaceful and unconscious conflict had led up to the victory of what might have been deemed the baser side. For Latin was the sole mediaeval literature that was born in the purple, with its stately lineage of the patristic and the classical back of it. Latin was the language of the Roman world and the vehicle of Latin Christianity. It was the language of the Church and its clergy, and the language of all educated people. Naturally the entire contents of existing and progressive Christian and antique culture were contained in the mediaeval Latin literature, the literature of religion and of law and government, of education and of all serious knowledge. It was to be the primary literature of mediaeval thought; from which passed over the chief part of whatever thought and knowledge the vernacular literatures were to receive. For scholars who follow, as we have tried to, the intellectual and the deeper emotional life of the Middle Ages, the Latin literature yields the incomparably greater part of the material of our study. It has been our home country, from which we have made casual excursions into the vernacular literatures.

These existed, however, from the earliest mediaeval periods, beginning, if one may say so, in oral rather than written documents. We read that Charlemagne caused a book to be made of Germanic poems, which till then presumably had been carried in men’s memories. The _Hildebrandslied_ is supposed to have been one of them.[329] In the Norse lands, the Eddas and the matter of the Sagas were repeated from generation to generation, long before they were written down. The habit, if not the art, of writing came with Christianity and the Latin education accompanying it. Gradually a written literature in the Teutonic languages was accumulated. Of this there was the heathen side, well represented in Anglo-Saxon and the Norse; while in Old High German the _Hildebrandslied_ remains, heathen and savage. Thereafter, a popular and even national or rather racial poetry continued, developed, and grew large, notwithstanding the spread of Latin Christianity through Teutonic lands. Of this the _Niebelungenlied_ and the _Gudrun_ are great examples. But individual still famous poets, who felt and thought as Germans, were also composing sturdily in their vernacular--a lack of education possibly causing them to dictate (_dictieren_, _dichten_) rather than to write. Of these the greatest were Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide. With them and after them, or following upon the _Niebelungenlied_, came a mass of secular poetry, some of which was popular and national, reflecting Germanic story, while some of it was courtly, transcribing the courtly poetry which by the twelfth century flourished in Old French.

Thus bourgeoned the secular branches of German literature. On the other hand, from the time of Christianity’s introduction, the Germans felt the need to have the new religion presented to them in their own tongues. The labour of translation begins with Ulfilas, and is continued with conscientious renderings of Scripture and Latin educational treatises, and also with such epic paraphrase as the _Heliand_ and the more elegiac poems of the Anglo-Saxon Cynewulf.[330] Also, at least in Germany, there comes into existence a full religious literature, not stoled or mitred, but popular, non-academic, and non-liturgical; of which quantities remain in the Middle High German of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.[331]

Obviously the Romance vernacular literatures had a different commencement. The languages were Latin, simply Latin, in their inception, and never ceased to be legitimate continuations and developments of the popular or Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. But as the speech of children, women, and unlettered people, they were not thought of as literary media. All who could write understood perfectly the better Latin from which these popular dialects were slowly differentiating themselves. And as they progressed to languages, still their life and progress lay among peoples whose ancestral tongue was the proper Latin, which all educated men and women still understood and used in the serious business of life.

But sooner or later men will talk and sing and think and compose in the speech which is closest to them. The Romance tongues became literary through this human need of natural expression. There always had been songs in the old Vulgar Latin; and such did not cease as it gradually became what one may call Romance. Moreover, the clergy might be impelled to use the popular speech in preaching to the laity, or some unlearned person might compose religious verses. Almost the oldest monument of Old French is the hymn in honour of Ste. Eulalie. Then as civilization advanced from the tenth to the twelfth century, in southern and northern France for example, and the _langue d’oc_ and the _langue d’oil_ became independent and developed languages, unlearned men, or men with unlearned audiences, would unavoidably set themselves to composing poetry in these tongues. In the North the _chansons de geste_ came into existence; in the South the knightly Troubadours made love-lyrics. Somehow, these poems were written down, and there was literature for men’s eyes as well as for men’s ears.

In the twelfth century and the thirteenth, the audiences for Romance poetry, especially through the regions of southern and northern France, increased and became diversified. They were made up of all classes, save the brute serf, and of both sexes. The _chansons de geste_ met the taste of the feudal barons; the Arthurian Cycle charmed the feudal dames; the coarse _fabliaux_ pleased the bourgeoisie; and _chansons_ of all kinds might be found diverting by various people. If the religious side was less strongly represented, it was because the closeness of the language to the clerkly and liturgical Latin left no such need of translations as was felt from the beginning among peoples of Germanic speech. Still the Gospels, especially the apocryphal, were put into Old French, and _miracles de Notre Dame_ without number; also legends of the saints, and devout tales of many kinds.

The accentual verses of the Romance tongues had their source in the popular accentual Latin verse of the later Roman period. Their development was not unrelated to the Latin accentual verse which was superseding metrical composition in the centuries extending, one may say, from the fifth to the eleventh. Divergences between the Latin and Romance verse would be caused by the linguistic evolution through which the Romance tongues were becoming independent languages. Nor was this divergence uninfluenced by the fact that Romance poetry was popular and usually concerned with topics of this life, while Latin poetry in the most striking lines of its evolution was liturgical; and even when secular in topic tended to become learned, since it was the product of the academically educated classes. Much of the vernacular (Romance as well as Germanic) poetry in the Middle Ages was composed by unlearned men who had at most but a speaking acquaintance with Latin, and knew little of the antique literature. This was true, generally, of the Troubadours of Provence, of the authors of the Old French _chansons de geste_, and of such a courtly poet as Chrétien de Troies; true likewise of the great German Minnesingers, epic poets rather, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide.

On the other hand, vernacular poetry might be written by highly learned men, of whom the towering though late example would be Dante Alighieri. An instance somewhat nearer to us at present is Jean Clopinel or de Meun, the author of the second part of the _Roman de la rose_. His extraordinary Voltairean production embodies all the learning of the time; and its scholar-author was a man of genius, who incorporated his learning and the fruit thereof very organically in his poem.

But here, at the close of our consideration of the mediaeval appreciation of the Classics, and the relations between the Classics and mediaeval Latin literature, we are not occupied with the very loose and general question of the amount of classical learning to be found in the vernacular literatures of western Europe. That was a casual matter depending on the education and learning, or lack thereof, of the author of the given piece. But it may be profitable to glance at the passing over of antique themes of story into mediaeval vernacular literature, and the manner of their refashioning. This is a huge subject, but we shall not go into it deeply, or pursue the various antique themes through their endless propagations.

Antique stories aroused and pointed the mediaeval imagination; they made part of the never-absent antique influence which helped to bring the mediaeval peoples on and evoke in them an articulate power to fashion and create all kinds of mediaeval things. But with antique story as with other antique material, the Middle Ages had to turn it over and absorb it, and also had to become themselves with power, before they could refashion the antique theme or create along its lines. All this had taken place by the middle of the twelfth century. As to choice of matter, twelfth-century refashioners would either select an antique theme suited to their handling, or extract what appealed to them from some classic story. In the one case as in the other they might recast, enlarge, or invent as their faculties permitted.

Mediaeval taste took naturally to the degenerate productions of the late antique or transition centuries. The Greek novels seem to have been unknown, except the _Apollonius of Tyre_.[332] But the congenially preposterous story of Alexander by the Pseudo-Callisthenes was available in a sixth-century Latin version, and was made much of. Equally popular was the debasement and intentional distortion of the Tale of Troy in the work of “Dares” and “Dictys”; other tales were aptly presented in Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_; and the stories of Hero and Leander, of Pyramus and Thisbe, of Narcissus, Orpheus, Cadmus, Daedalus, were widely known and often told in the Middle Ages.

The mediaeval writers made as if they believed these tales. At least they accepted them as they would have their own audiences accept their recasting, with little reflection as to whether truth or fable. But was the work of the refashioners conscious fiction? Scarcely, when it simply recast the old story in mediaevalizing paraphrase; but when the poet went on and wove out of ten lines a thousand, he must have known himself devising.

The mediaeval treatment of classic themes of history and epic poetry shows how the Middle Ages refashioned and reinspired after their own image whatever they took from the antique. If it was partly their fault, it was also their unavoidable misfortune that they received these great themes in the literary distortions of the transition centuries. Doubtless they preferred encyclopaedic dulness to epic unity; they loved fantasy rather than history, and of course delighted in the preposterous, as they found it in the Latin version of the _Life and Deeds of Alexander_. As for the Tale of Troy, the real Homer never reached them: and perhaps mediaeval peoples who were pleased, like Virgil’s Romans, to draw their origins from Trojan heroes, would have rejected Homer’s story just as “Dares” and “Dictys,” whoever they were, did.[333] The true mediaeval _rifacimenti_, to wit, the retellings of these tales in the vernacular, mirror the mediaeval mind, the mediaeval character, and the whole panorama of mediaeval life and fantasy.

The chief epic themes drawn from the antique were the Tales of Troy and Thebes and the story of Aeneas. In verse and prose they were retold in the vernacular literatures and also in mediaeval Latin.[334] We shall, however, limit our view to the primary Old French versions, which formed the basis of compositions in German, Italian, English, as well as French. They were composed between 1150 and 1170 by Norman-French _trouvères_. The names of the authors of the _Roman de Thebes_ and the _Eneas_ are unknown; the _Roman de Troie_ was written by Benoit de St. More.

These poems present a universal substitution of mediaeval manners and sentiment. For instance, one observes that the epic participation of the pagan gods is minimized, and in the _Roman de Troie_ even discarded; necromancy, on the other hand, abounds. A more interesting change is the transformation of the love episode. That had become an epic adjunct in Alexandrian Greek literature as early as the third century before Christ. It existed in the antique sources of all these mediaeval poems. Nevertheless the romantic narratives of courtly love in the latter are mediaeval creations.

The _Eneas_ relates the love of Lavinia for the hero, most correctly reciprocated by him. The account of it fills fourteen hundred lines, and has no precedent in Virgil’s poem, which in other respects is followed closely. Lavinia sees Aeneas from her tower, and at once understands a previous discourse of her mother on the subject of love. She utters love’s plaints, and then faints because Aeneas does not seem to notice her. After which she passes a sleepless night. The next morning she tells her mother, who is furious, since she favours Turnus as a suitor. The girl falls senseless, but coming to herself when alone, she recalls love’s stratagems, and attaches a letter to an arrow which is shot so as to fall at Aeneas’s feet. Aeneas reads the letter, and turns and salutes the fair one furtively, that his followers may not see. Then he enters his tent and falls so sick with love that he takes to his bed. The next day Lavinia watches for him, and thinks him false, till at last, pale and feeble, he appears, and her heart acquits him; amorous glances now fly back and forth between them.[335]

To have this jaded jilt grow sick with love is a little too much for us, and Aeneas is absurd; but the universal human touches us quite otherwise in the sweet changing heart of Briseida in the _Roman de Troie_. There is no ground for denying to Benoit of St. More his meed of fame for creating this charming person and starting her upon her career. Following “Dares,” Benoit calls her Briseida; but she becomes the Griseis of Boccaccio’s _Filostrato_; and what good man does not sigh and love her under the name of Cressid in Chaucer’s poem, though he may deplore her somewhat brazen heartlessness in Shakespeare’s play.

It is not given to all men, or women, in presence or absence, in life and death, to love once and forever. One has the stable heart, another’s fancy is quickly turned. Sometimes, of course, our moral sledge-hammers should be brought to bear; but a little hopeless smile may be juster, as we sigh “she (it is more often “he”) couldn’t help it.” Such was Briseida, the sweet, loving, helpless--coquette? jilt? flirt? these words are all too belittling to tell her truly. Benoit knew better. He took her dry-as-dust characterization from “Dares”; he gave it life, and then let his fair creature do just the things she might, without ceasing to be she.

The abject “Dares” (Benoit may have had a better story under that name) in his catalogue of characters has this: “Briseidam formosam, alta statura, candidam, capillo flavo et molli, superciliis junctis, oculis venustis, corpore aequali, blandam, affabilem, verecundam, animo simplici [O ye gods!], piam.” He makes no other mention of this tall, graceful girl, with her lovely eyes and eyebrows meeting above, her modest, pleasant mien, and simple soul; for simple she was, and therein lies the direst bit of truth about her. For it is simple and uncomplex to take the colour of new scenes and faces, and of new proffered love when the old is far away.

Now see what Benoit does with this dust: Briseida is the daughter of Calchas, a Trojan seer who had passed over to the Greeks, warned by Apollo. He is in the Grecian host, but his daughter is in Troy. Benoit says, she was engaging, lovelier and fairer than the _fleur de lis_--though her eyebrows grew rather too close together. “Beaux yeux” she had, “de grande manière,” and charming was her talk, and faultless her breeding as her dress. Much was she loved and much she loved, although her heart changed; and she was very loving, simple, and kind:

“Molt fu amée et molt ameit, Mes sis corages li changeit; Et si esteit molt amorose, Simple et almosniere et pitose.”[336]

Calchas wants his daughter, and Priam decides to send her. There is truce between the armies. Troilus, Troy’s glorious young knight, matchless in beauty, in arms second only to his brother Hector, is beside himself. He loves Briseida, and she him. What tears and protestations, and what vows! But the girl must go to her father.

On the morrow the young dame has other cares--to see to the packing of her lovely dresses and put on the loveliest of them; over all she threw a mantle inwoven with the flowers of Paradise. The Trojan ladies add their tears to the damsel’s; for she is ready to die of grief at leaving her lover. Benoit assures us that she will not weep long; it is not woman’s way, he continues somewhat mediaevally.

The brilliant cortège is met by one still more distinguished from the Grecian host. Troilus must turn back, and the lady passes to the escort of Diomede. She was young; he was impetuous; he looks once, and then greets her with a torrential declaration of love. He never loved before!! He is hers, body and soul and high emprize. Briseida speaks him fair:

“At this time it would be wrong for me to say a word of love. You would deem me light indeed! Why, I hardly know you! and girls so often are deceived by men. What you have said cannot move a heart grieving, like mine, to lose my--friend, and others whom I may never see again. For one of my station to speak to you of love! I have no mind for that. Yet you seem of such rank and prowess that no girl under heaven ought to refuse you. It is only that I have no heart to give. If I had, surely I could hold none dearer than you. But I have neither the thought nor power, and may God never give it to me!”[337]

One need not tell the flash of joy that then was Diomede’s, nor the many troubles that were to be his before at last Briseida finds that her heart has indeed turned to this new lover, always at hand, courting danger for her sake, and at last wounded almost to death by Troilus’s spear. The end of the story is assured in her first discreetly halting words.

Enough has been said to show how far Benoit was from _Omers qui fu clers merveillos_, and what a story in some thirty thousand lines he has made of the dry data of “Dares” and “Dictys.” His Briseida, with her changing heart, was to rival steadier-minded but not more lovable women of mediaeval fiction--Iseult or Guinevere. And although the far-off echo of Briseid’s name comes from the ancient centuries, none the less she is as entirely a mediaeval creation as Lancelot’s or Tristram’s queen. Thus the Middle Ages took the antique narrative, and created for themselves within the altered lines of the old tale.[338]

The transformation of themes of epic story in vernacular mediaeval versions is paralleled by mediaeval refashionings of historical subjects which had been fictionized before the antique period closed. A chief example is the romance of Alexander the Great. The antique source was the conqueror’s _Life and Deeds_, written by one who took the name of Alexander’s physician, Callisthenes. The author was some Egyptian Greek of the first century after Christ. His work is preposterous from the beginning to the end, and presents a succession of impossible marvels performed by the somewhat indistinguishable heroes of the story. Its qualities were reflected in the Latin versions, which in turn were drawn upon by the Old French rhyming romancers. The latter mediaevalized and feudalized the tale. Nor were they halted by any absurdity, or conscious of the characterlessness of the puppets of the tale.[339]

Further to pursue the fortunes of antique themes in mediaeval literature would lead us beyond bounds. Yet mention should be made of the handling of minor narratives, as the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid. They were very popular, and from the twelfth century on, paraphrases or refashionings were made of many of them. These added to the old tale the interesting mediaeval element of the moral or didactic allegory. The most prodigious instance of this moralizing of Ovid was the work of Chrétien Légouais, a French Franciscan who wrote at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In some seventy thousand lines he presented the stories of the _Metamorphoses_, the allegories which he discovered in them, and the moral teaching of the same.[340]

Equally interesting was the application of allegory to Ovid’s _Ars amatoria_. The first translators treated this frivolous production as an authoritative treatise upon the art of winning love. So it was perhaps, only Ovid was amusing himself by making a parable of his youthful diversions. Mediaeval imitators changed the habits of the gilded youth of Rome to suit the society of their time. But they did more, being votaries of courtly love. Such love in the Middle Ages had its laws which were prone to deduce their lineage from Ovid’s verses. But its uplifted spirit revelled in symbolism; and tended to change to spiritual allegory whatever authority it imagined itself based upon, even though the authority were a book as dissolute, when seriously considered, as the _Ars amatoria_. It is strange to think of this poem as the very far off street-walking prototype of De Lorris’s _Roman de la rose_.