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Aldhelm's prose style and its origins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Michael Winterbottom
Michael Winterbottom
Affiliation:
Worcester College, Oxford
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Extract

Eduard Norden's great book Die antike Kunstprosa is grounded on first-hand acquaintance with an astonishingly wide range of literature, both from classical antiquity and from the Middle Ages. But at the authors of Anglo-Saxon England Norden does seem to have drawn the line. ‘The two great writers, Aldhelm and Bede’, he says, ‘write, like all Anglo-Saxons, a stylistically uncultivated (verwildertes) though grammatically correct Latin.’ There is no need to labour the point that Aldhelm and Bede are not to be mentioned thus cavalierly in the same stylistic breath: we are all familiar today with the distinction between the ‘hermeneutic’ Latin of the one and the ‘classical’ Latin of the other. But at least Norden could not fall victim to another widely accepted doctrine that purports to explain the origin of that distinction: the doctrine that Aldhelm's style was influenced by Ireland, Bede's by the continent of Europe. I doubt if this is true even of Bede. But my present business is with Aldhelm; I shall try to show that his literary origins are not to be found in Ireland. At the same time I shall be challenging Norden's claim that his Latin was uncultivated. I shall suggest, indeed, that its cultivation was of a kind that Norden himself would have been uniquely qualified to analyse.

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Research Article
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Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 6 , December 1977 , pp. 39 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 39 note 1 Die antike Kunstprosa, 5th ed. (Stuttgart, 1958) 11, 668.Google Scholar

page 39 note 2 See The Chronicle of Ælhelweard, ed. Campbell, A. (London, 1962), p. xlvGoogle Scholar. For the hermeneutic tradition, see now Michael, Lapidge, ‘The Hermeneutic Style in Tenth-Century Anglo-Latin Literature’, ASE 4 (1975), 67–111Google Scholar. This article is in effect a foreword to Lapidge's survey.

page 39 note 3 Bolton, W. F., A History of Anglo-Latin Literature 597–1066 1 (Princeton, 1967), 68–100Google Scholar, has little to this point, and of the items in his bibliography only an article by D. Mazzoni, written in 1915, is directly relevant: this I have not seen.

page 39 note 4 See, e.g., the snappy parallelism of Aldbelmi Opera, ed. R. Ehwald, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Auct. Antiq. 15, 248, 13 – 249,1 (=Passio S. Victoriae), and the narrative and conversational simplicity of parts of ch. 25 (=Gesta Silvestri). (All my references to Aldhelm are to Ehwald's edition, either by chapter or by page and line.) It remains true, however, that Aldhelm was capable of writing brief sentences of his own accord: see the last paragraph of the letter to Acircius.

page 40 note 1 Ch. I. ‘As I set off some time back to the assembly of bishops, accompanied by brotherly throngs of comrades, I received to my great joy your Benignity's letter to my poor self, and, raising my hands to the skies in my gladness, I took care to pay measureless thanks to Christ for your welfare. In your writing there shone richly forth the holy compact of promised prayers, which you pledged with trustworthy avowals, but also there were revealed, in the wise course of your remarks, the honeyed studies of the holy scriptures.‘

page 40 note 2 For particularly monotonous instances of this grouping see 297,2–5 and 508,4–5. But it is an insistent part of Aldhelm's manner, intimately connected with his technique of expansion.

page 41 note 1 A favourite technique of Aldhelm's to make obvious (especially to a listener) the shape of his sentences: thus very elaborately in ‘si te pertaesum sit affabiliter investigando et ventilando percurrere quod me pertaesum non fuit difficulter commentando et coacervando digerere’ (203,7). See also 236,9 See also 246,8 See also 247,6 (with play on words: ‘terreni caelibes superni caelites fieri compellantur’); 247,25; 253,5; 253,14–15; 258,16–17; 290,7–9; 294,8; 294,19–20; 301,12–15; 318,10; 318,15–16; 320,2–3 (especially buttressed by alliteration: ‘pudicis pudicitiae praemia promerentur et mundis munditiae munera mitterentur’). See further Polheim, K., Die lateinische Reimprosa, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1963), pp. 310–11.Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 There are examples on every page. Aldhelm is particularly fond of alliteration of þ (besides the start of the letter to Eahfrith see e.g. 287,15; see e.g. 301,11 and 311,20) and c (esp. 321,8). But for f see esp. 307,18 and 322,12 for t esp. 305,14 and 317,12–13.

page 41 note 3 melliflua divinarum studia scripturarum (repeated at 203,13) – adjective A, adjective b, noun A, noun B – is classified by Kerlouégan, F. in his pioneering article on this topic (‘Une Mode stylistique dans la prose latine des Pays Celtiques’, Études Celtiques 13 (1972), (275–97) as IIAGoogle Scholar. To his examples from Aldhelm (p. 282, n. 1) I can add 63,3 and 4; 75,2; 84,23 and 24; 240,1 and 24; 302,1; 491,14. In Kerlouégan's class IA – adjective A, adjective B, noun B, noun A (which may be as striking in prose as IIA: see my ‘A “Celtic” Hyperbaton?’, forthcoming in Bull. of the Board of Celtic Stud.) – observe ‘dominicae gnarus cultor vineae’ (269, 10).

page 41 note 4 230, 16–23. ‘Another, with a troop of comrades, rides a caparisoned horse, which, bloodied as it is with spurs and cut about by whips, they decorate [?] with golden curbs (as the witty poet says: ‘with four-footed race the hoof shakes the crumbling plain’): swiftly he covers the ground, looping intricate loops. Another, thronged by naval cohorts of sailors and surrounded by dense columns of rowers, drives his speedy galley or skiff through the glassy ocean surges, and thrusts it along with oar-strokes that throw up foam and seaweed, as the look-out incessantly urges them on and the hammer of the skipper clatters.’

page 42 note 1 Perhaps Aen. 7.278–9 was in Aldhelm's mind? But I agree with Dr Lapidge that comunt is probably corrupt (though compare 480,2). Quadripedante … is a conflation of Aen. 8.596 and 11.875. For orbes orbibus, see Aen. 5.584.

page 42 note 2 1014. The word's appearance in the Digest 39.4.11.2 see Corpus Iuris Civilis I, ed. Krueger, P. and Mommsen, T., 22nd ed. (Weidmann, 1973), p. 650)Google Scholar may suggest a wider circulation than the texts document; but I doubt if Aldhelm knew the word at first hand. Nor is πρωράτηζ a common word in Greek.

page 42 note 3 518. And elsewhere in pre-classical Latin: see Lewis and Short, s.v.

page 42 note 4 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. Lindsay, W. M. (Oxford, 1911)Google Scholar. The references are 19.2.13 (porticulus) and 19.1.3 (nauclerus).

page 42 note 5 Cf. also Adomnan's Life of Columba, ed. , A. O. and Anderson, M. O. (London, 1961), 1.28Google Scholar. For Aldhelm's possible use of Isidore as a source for words see Roger, M., L'Enseignement des lettres classiques d'Ausone à Alcuin (Paris, 1905), p. 297Google Scholar, nn. 1 and 2. For use of Isidore to provide obscure nautical terms in Carolingian poetry see Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, W. R. (London, 1953), p. 129, n. 2.Google Scholar

page 42 note 6 237,11–14. ‘For the dusky shape of the greedy diver is not confounded, the dark nature of the crow is not despised, even though the gloriously diverse peacock excels in the delicate roundness of his circular markings; his beautiful wings now grow tawny like saffron or red with scarlet brilliance, now they gleam with a green liveliness of colour or shine with the yellow appearance of gold.’

page 43 note 1 The topic is a reversal of that dealt with by Ovid in a lost passage alluded to by Quintilian: ‘lana tincta fuco citra purpuras placet, “at si contuleris earn Lacaenae, conspectu melioris obruatur”’ (M. Fabi Quintiliani Institutionis Oratoriae libri duodecim, ed. Winterbottom, M. (Oxford, 1970), 12.10.75).Google Scholar

page 43 note 2 See below, App. I.

page 43 note 3 240,23–5. ‘But, alas, there is nothing safe about the prosperity of a peace once attained, or secure about the felicity of triumphs once won, or unchanging and lasting about a victory over (?) deceptive Fortune.’

page 43 note 4 See Ehwald's note on 262,7, adding 69,4 and 292,15–16.

page 43 note 5 Some assorted parallels, covering doublets and triplets of varying complexity: 245,21–2; 278,11–12; 281,10–11; 281,18–19; 284,6–7; 285,4–5; 289,7–8; 292,2; 295,7–9; 296,15–16 and 20–1; 298,12–15 and 22–3; 309,10–11; (‘concrepante iam pullorum plausu et sonante gallicinio’l). The parallel clauses or phrases are often given further point by alliteration and/or rhyme. It is important for my general thesis that Aldhelm cites an example (rather restrained by his own standards) from Cyprian: ‘fugiant … incestarum cultus, habitus impudicarum, lupanarum insignia, ornamenta meretricum’ (315,12–13); and Cyprian gives the start for the double instance at 316,1–3.

page 44 note 1 Note, e.g., the variety of verbs to express ‘think inferior’ or the like (deformatur, detrimentum patitur, vilescunt, calumniam perpeti putantur, despicitur, iacturam patitur, parvi pendenda putantur, confunditur, contempnitur …) and the opposite (praeferatur, praedicetur, potius fulgescat, praestare credamus, clarius illustrare credalur, praecellere ac praestare videantur …).

page 44 note 2 The introductory formulas are carefully varied; from many examples I cite merely ‘Ambrosium …sub taciturnitatis velamento delitescere non patiar’ (260,5); ‘nec pudeat … Toronici reminisci pontificis’ (260,16); ‘nec praetereundum arbitror … Benedictum’ (268,7); ‘quid referam … Athanasium’ (272,13). The same impulse is observable in the letter to Acircius (e.g. ‘exempla peonis teriti depromantur’) (187,27); ‘promito tandem peonis quarti regulares exemplorum formulas’ (189,21); ‘epitriti primi promulgentur exempla’ (190,22) and ‘partes orationum quae epitriti secundi structuris rite obsecundent … subdantur’ (191,22). It is entirely characteristic of Aldhelm that he should take pride in providing more examples than his sources (78,3) and that in making up instances of different kinds of hexameter (pp. 84–8) he should write thirty variants on the theme ‘Christ saved the world from sin’.

page 44 note 3 239,20–240,8. ‘So, against the dread beast of pride and against these sevenfold brutes of poisonous vices, which strive cruelly to tear apart with their rabid teeth and virulent fangs all who are unarmed, despoiled of the cuirass of virginity and stripped of the shield of chastity, the virgins of Christ and the young champions of the church must fight with muscle and strength. Against, as it were, the ferocious legions of the barbarians, which in their troops never cease to batter the tortoise of the soldiers of Christ with the artillery of guileful fraud, the struggle must go on manfully, fought with the darts of spiritual weaponry and the iron-tipped spears of the virtues. Let us not, like timid soldiers who effeminately dread the shock of war and the call of the trumpeter, inertly offer to the ravening foe the backs of our shoulders rather than the bosses of our shields!’

page 45 note 1 The extended image, which is an amplification of the common picture of Christians as soldiers in battle, carries on to line 16. Such passages may, but need not, have drawn sustenance from Isidore's Etymologies: see above, p. 42, n. 5 and compare recent discussion about the ‘sources’ of the Hisperica Famine. For weapons, see etym. 18.5 seq. and Tertullian, de patientia 14.6 (Corpus Christianorum, 1, p. 315,21 influencing Isidore, synonyma 2.31: I cite the Synonyma by book and chapter from Migne, Patrologia Latina 83, cols. 827–68). In the present passage, with ‘terga pro scutorum umbonibus … praebeamus’ cf. Gildas's ‘terga pro scuto fugantibus dantur’ (30, 10: I cite the de excidio by page and line from Mommsen's edition, MGH, Auct. Antiq. 13 (=Chron. Min. 3), 25–85).

page 45 note 2 I group together various passages where Aldhelm, by various means, produces lists or an abundance of specialized vocabulary 232,8 (disciplines) 241,18 (leaders and led); 245,15 (weeding); 264,15 (agriculture); 269,10 (viticulture); 275,17 (medicine); 287,14 (spinning); 321,9 (building).

page 45 note 3 Cf., e.g., 231,14–232,9 (=Georg. 4.51–5 and 180–3 with other poetic allusions, some explicit; cf. more Vergilian resonances in 490,13–15 and 501,12–502,4); 251,12 (Daniel IV.7–24); 265,6 (=Jerome's life of Paul); 266,16 (where bubulcos et subulcos replaces pastores in Jerome); 305,20– 306,6 (cf. the Vita cited by Ehwald); and, most absurdly, ‘nequaquam flagrans lichinus clancule fuscata tetrae occulitur latebra urnae, qui candelabri summitate cunctis limpido lumine lucere decuit’ (491,21) = ‘neque accendunt lucemam et ponunt eam sub modio, sed super candelabrum, ut luceat omnibus qui in domo sunt’ (Matthew v. 15). As I do not return to this sort of thing in my text, I add a parallel here, from Jonas's life of Columbanus: ‘praecipitavitque … canino more reiecta viscerum putrimenta denuo sumere velle’ (2.19: cited from lonae Vitae Sanctorum Columbani, Vedastis, lobannis, ed. Krusch, B. (Hannover, Leipzig, 1905)) = ‘canis qui revertitur ad vomitum suum’ (Proverbs xxvi.ii)Google Scholar. All this is part of the attempt to break in the bible to the old Kunstprosa: cf. the remarks of Loyen, A., Sidoine Apollinaire et l'esprit précieux en Gaule aux derniers jours de l'Empire (Paris, 1943), pp. 161–4Google Scholar, on Sidonius, ep. 8.14.4 and 9.9.12. Observe, in another context, Fronto's advice ‘ut veterum commata, ut cola synonymorum ratione converteres, ut de volgaribus elegantia, de contaminatis nova redderes’ (The Correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, trans. Haines, C. R. (London and New York, 1920) 11, 76)Google Scholar. Compare, too, the grammatici's exercise of parapbrasis (on which see M. Fabii Quintiliani Institutions Oratoriae liber I, ed. Colson, F. H. (Cambridge, 1924), p. 116).Google Scholar

page 46 note 1 Historia monachorum, cited from PL 21, col. 415. ‘Be it as you choose, he said. For none besides you will be killed. But for you there will be a grave to suit your deserts, not the earth but the bellies of beasts and vultures.’ For bellies as graves, a theme that links the fifth-century sophists with later rhetoricians, see Norden, , Kmstprosa 1, 385.Google Scholar

page 46 note 2 289,10–14. ‘May the fate you chose befall you, he said. While the others peacefully settle the damage caused by the violation of the treaty, you alone shall pay the avenging penalty of bloody death. Further, let the sarcophagus of burial by no means receive [but should we not read the future recipiet?] your accursed body like the bodies of other mortals. Torn by the beaks of birds and gnawed in the gaping jaws of beasts, you will go without the burial that is owed to all.’

page 46 note 3 Éducation et culture dans l'Occident barbare VIe–VIIIe siècles, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1962), p. 423Google Scholar. It is only fair to add that Riché also makes suggestive juxtapositions of Aldhelm and Ennodius (p. 425).

page 46 note 4 It is not a question that we should expect medieval authors to answer for us. But it may be remarked that William of Malmesbury regarded Aldhelm as an instance of the ‘display style’ (pompa) of the English (Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi de Gestis Pontificum Anglorum libri quinque, ed. Hamilton, N. E. S. A., Rolls Ser. 52; 5.196)Google Scholar, not as a writer redolent of the Irish; and drew attention to the way an Irish nobleman sent his writings to Aldhelm ‘ut perfecti ingenii lima eraderetur scabredo Scottica’ (5.191). The extravagant style of Cellanus's letter to Aldhelm, cited by William (ibid.), is an early example of imitation of Aldhelm, not a symptom of Cellanus's Irish nationality.

page 47 note 1 L'Enseignement, pp. 295 and 256. Often followed, as by Laistner, M. L. W., Thought and Letters in Western Europe A. D, 500 to 900, 2nd ed. (London, 1957), p. 154Google Scholar. For Aldhelm's ‘Hisperic’ Latin see, e.g., Manitius, M., Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelallers I (Munich, 1911), 139Google Scholar; cf. Lindsay, W. M., Classical Quarterly 17 (1923), 199Google Scholar; Grosjean, P., Celtica 3 (1956), 66–7.Google Scholar

page 47 note 2 Or than the other letters. Roger contrasted it with them (‘les lettres à Géronte etc. sont tout à fait intelligibles’) (p. 295) but he was wrong, at least, to take seriously Aldhelm's assertion in the letter to Leutharius that ‘haec … cursim pedetemptim perstrinximus, non garrulo verbositatis strepitu illecti’ (478,3) to suppose that the ‘garrulous style’ is that of the letter to Eahfrith. The words are only a bow to epistolary convention, which demanded at least a pretence of brevity (cf. ‘epistularis angustia’) (477,4) Aldhelm says much the same in other, longer letters (to Acircius at 84,24 to the nuns of Barking at 249,12 and 320,10). Observe the style of letter 1 and especially of letter 3 (bizarre vocabulary: aporriatis, suffraginibus, mastrucae; alliteration, esp. 480,2–4). There is a certain contrast with the rather less esoteric letter 4 (to King Gerontius: Aldhelm could distinguish between business letters and display pieces, such as his exchange with Cellanus); but even here the long sentences remain, alliteration is not avoided (e.g. 485,1), and learning and exotic vocabulary obtrude (e.g. 483,5–7): observe too the synonymous style of 485,22. For the plainest of which Aldhelm was capable, see the short letters 2, 6, 11 and 13.

page 47 note 3 It is not certain that Aldhelm did know Virgilius directly. Glengus (in whose existence I find it hard to believe) is said by the grammarian (121,10: I cite by page and line from Virgilii Maronis Grammatici opera, ed. Huemer, J. (Leipzig, 1886))Google Scholar to have remarked to ‘cuidam conflictum fugienti’ that ‘gurgo fugax fambulo dignus est’, that is (one would guess from the context) ‘a runaway boaster deserves a beating’. There is no suggestion that this is verse, nor is any other of Glengus's fragments (Virgilius 55,2; 68,14 – both again concerned with war; 161,24) rhythmical, except, arguably, the last: ‘hoste per portas rumpente cives vacillaverunt’. This might be forced into the same mould as Aldhelm's ‘digna fiat, fante Glingio, gurgo fugax fambulo’ (emend merely to ‘dignu’ … Glingo …’: for the dropping of final s see e. g. Æthelwulf, , De Abbatibus, ed. Campbell, A. (Oxford, 1967), line 380 ‘mentibus laxatis’)Google Scholar. But the fact that fante G. is part of the verse shows that Aldhelm is not citing Virgilius (or Glengus), but either (i) a poet (versidicus) from whom Virgilius obtained his knowledge of the dictum, or (ii) – and more likely, in view of the doubts about the existence of Glengus – a poet who versified the dictum as he found it in Virgilius. However, I agree that there is a third possibility, that Aldhelm himself is the versidicus (see Traube, L., Hermes 24 (1889), 647–9Google Scholar; it certainly true that Aldhelm wrote the hexameters that follow, and one might compare the way Salvian cites himself as quidam in degubematione dei (1.16: see e.g. K. Halm's edition in MGH, Auct. Antiq. 1.1), let alone Aldhelm himself at 485,14), and that it was he who versified what he had found in the grammarian.

page 47 note 4 Pp. 487–8. Cf. his introduction, p. xxii.

page 48 note 1 Nine given by Kerlouégan, , ‘Mode stylistique’, p. 282Google Scholar, n. 2, adding 491,14 (also 489,2?).

page 48 note 2 Five given by Kerlouégan, ibid. p. 282, n. 1, adding 302,1.

page 48 note 3 As Ehwald admits. See, e.g., ‘sexies terna vel ter sena … volumina’ (303,13)1

page 48 note 4 pas, clima, onoma, syllogismus, caespes, dodrans, glaucus, piaculum, sablo, baiolare and floriger. In any case there is nothing specifically Hisperic about -ger (or -fer) words; it may be remarked that Aldhelm lists a horde of them at 165,6, doubtless from some grammarian.

page 48 note 5 clima, enigma, problema, dedasculus, extasis, syllogismus, dogma, typhus, arcister (aen. 60; omitted in Ehwald's index), caespes, discipulatus, dapsilis, glaucus, lurco, piaculum, oraculum, sablo, siticulose, vola, baiolare, facessere, propalare, repedare, oramen, spumifer and floriger. Of the rest, there is nothing at all extraordinary about especially nauarchus, trapezita, boatus, deditio, repatriare, vocamen and sagmen.

page 48 note 6 5.11 (see Sancti Columbani Opera, ed. Walker, G. S. M., Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 2)Google Scholar. For dodrans, see now Brown, A. K., MS 37 (1975), 419–32.Google Scholar

page 48 note 7 See further my articles ‘The Preface of Gildas' de excidio’, Trans. of the Cymmrodorion Soc. (1974–1975), 277–87Google Scholar and ‘Columbanus and Gildas’, Vigiliae Christianae 30 (1976), 310–17Google Scholar, together with ‘A “Celtic” Hyperbaton?’ (for which see above, p. 41, n. 3).

page 48 note 8 Gildas, ‘culmina minaci proceritate porrecta in edito forti compage pangebantur’ (28,15); Aldhelm, ‘turrem eidem minaci proceritate in edito porrectam et forti liturae compage constructam erexit’ (301,4; parallel noted by Jenkinson). I do not understand liturae; perhaps, as Mr John Grandy suggests to me, it has some connection with λιθος and means ‘stonework’. For another, less certain borrowing from Gildas see above, p. 45, n. 1. The resemblance between Gildas 67,14 and Aldhelm 249,13 may well be coincidental; so too the shared use of the rare word clustellum (Gildas 66,23; Aldhelm 284,6). But Aldhelm's ‘si nullis te capacibus prolatae promissionis retiaculis perplexum involutumque reminisceris’ (496,9) seems certainly modelled upon Gildas's ‘capacissimis illis, quibus praecipitanter involvi solent pingues tauri moduli tui, retibus’ (45,19). For Aldhelm 320,20 and Gildas 61,21 and 82,20 see my ‘Variations on a Nautical Theme’, Hermathena 120 (1976), 55–8.Google Scholar

page 49 note 1 For Aldhelm's alliteration see above, p. 41, n. 2. For Gildas add, e.g., ‘vultus pilis quam corporum pudenda pudendisque proxima vestibus tegentes’ (35,12) but he is far less lavish in this respect than Aldhelm.

page 49 note 2 11.34. Rufinus's history is edited by Mommsen, T. in Schwartz, E., Eusebius Werke 11 (Leipzig, 1903 and 1908)Google Scholar Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 9.

page 49 note 3 Alliteration in prose is a treacherous subject (I say nothing of the corresponding phenomenon in Latin poetry; that was very popular in early Latin, fragments of which are used by the grammarians to censure ‘cuiuslibet literae assiduitatem in odium repetitam’: Martianus Capella in, e.g., Rhetores Latini Minores, ed. Halm, Carolus (Leipzig, 1863), p. 474, line 18)Google Scholar. How can one be sure that it is not accidental? If it is intentional, what effect does it aim at? As to the former question, I suspect that F. R. D. Goodyear may take his scepticism a little too far in his discussion in The Annals of Tacitus 1 (Cambridge, 1972), 336–41Google Scholar. As to the latter, I think that, in prose as in poetry, the aim is often to mark off the phrase or colon from what surrounds it, for ease of recitation and reading, rather than anything more elaborate. Most scholarly discussion has centred on alliterative pairs; I am interested in longer series, and the following select list, to illustrate Marouzeau's, J. dictum that ‘chez les écrivains de basse époque, l'allitération sera un des enjolivements du style les plus recherchés’ (Traité de stylistique latine, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1946), p. 49)Google Scholar, is largely taken from my own reading. I lay as much stress on the rhetorical continental passages as on the Irish. Earlier Empire: Cyprian ‘hos eosdem denuo dominus designat et denotat, dicens’ (de catholicae ecclesiae umitate 11 = Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinotum 3.1, p. 219) Panegyrici Latini (Pacatus on Theodosius) ‘praebuisti igitur tu amicis quo plus nec patri praestare potuisses’(2.16.4 = XII Panegyrici Latini, ed. Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1964), p. 95, 1Google Scholar: cf. Pliny, pan. 2.2 ‘nec eadem de principe palam quae prius praedicemus’ = ibid. p. 1, 29); Sulpicius Severus ‘plebem … pravis praedicationibus pervertere’ (chron. 2.48.2: edited by Halm in CSEL 1); Sidonius ‘pictus in pratis, pecorosus in pascuis, in pastoribus peculiosus’ (ep. 2.1.19: edited by Lütjohann in MGH Auct. Antiq. 8). Later period (i) legal: ‘quia constat esse caelitus constituta quicquid apostolica decernit auctoritas’ (see Novellae, ed. Schoell, R. and Kroll, W., Corpus Iuris Civilis 3, 10th ed. (Weidmann, 1972), p. 797Google Scholar) (ii) Italy: Jonas ‘cum … puella cerneret, coepit conditoris clementiam quaerere’ (vita Columbani 2.12); (iii) Africa: Codex Salmasianus ‘convertite cicutesque conspicite’ (Anthologia Latina 1.1, ed. Riese, A., 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1894), p. 83)Google Scholar; (iv) Spain: Eutropius ‘dominum deprecari non destitit’ (de districtione monachorum, line 12: the treatise is edited by Diaz, M. y Diaz in Acta Salmanticensia 12.2 (1958), 220–6)Google Scholar; Braulio, ‘qualia exsistent Fructuosi fructuosa frumenta’(with word-play) (ep. 44 in Epistolario de S. Braulio de Zaragoza, ed. Madoz, J. (Madrid, 1941))Google Scholar; (v) Gaul (or Ireland?): Virgilius Maro grammaticus, often in his citations from perhaps non-existent authors, e.g. ‘primae partis procerae partes pleni pupis erant’ (77,23) and the long piece of Galbungus's gibberish on p. 177 (vi) Ireland: Columbanus ‘cito, carissimi, concordate et convenite’ (ep. 5.13; written on the continent); Cummian ‘cum plebis praecidite prioris praeputiis’ (letter to Seghene: PL 87, col. 978); Cogitosus ‘vota sibi voventes voluntarie’ (vita Brigidae prol. in PL 72, col. 776); de duodecim abusivis saeculi ‘in summo caeli conditi erant culmine’ (Texte und Untersuchungen Zur Gescbichte der altcbristlichen Literatur 34.1 (Leipzig, 1909), 49Google Scholar line 10: Irishness uncertain); ‘Jerome’ on Mark ‘ut ala alterius alam alterius tangat animalis’ (PL 30, col. 589). I do not mean to imply that these examples are all equally striking (or even all intentional), or that they are necessarily typical of the authors from which they are taken. For Apuleius and Valerius of Bierzo, see below, pp. 66 and 70. With my thesis contrast the view of Norden, ‘bei [Aldhelmus und Bonifatius] ist es [sc. alliteration] eine lokale, aus ihrer nationalen Sprache zu erklärende Eigentümlichkeit’ (Kunstprosa 1, 60, n. 1). If I wanted, on the other hand, to argue that alliteration in Aldhelm has Irish roots, I might exploit ‘Isid.’ de numeris 3.36 (edited by McNally, R., Der irische Liber de Numeris (Ph. D. thesis, Munich, 1957)Google Scholar ‘Almus! Ageos! Alleluia! Et in his vocibus A semper precedit’, on which McNally remarks that there is a ‘tendency, which I believe to be Irish, to relate the letters of the alphabet to Christian revelation’ (Theological Stud. 19 (1958), 403–4Google Scholar). But it would be a lost cause.

page 50 note 1 See above, p. 41, n. 3, together with my article there referred to.

page 50 note 2 I include both IA and IIA examples (see above, p. 41, n. 3). To the thirty-four listed in my article, I can now add more in both categories (IIA unless otherwise stated): ad Herennium ‘fragile falsae choragium gloriae comparetur’ (4.63: see Incerti Auctoris de Ratione Dicendi ad C. Herennium libri IV, ed. Marx, F. (Leipzig, 1923))Google Scholar; Quintilian ‘magnos modica quoque eloquentia parit fructus’ (12.11.29; IA); ‘Quintilian’; ‘in breve humani tempus aevi … inposuit’ (M. Fabii Quintiliani Declamationes quae supersunt CXLV, ed. Ritter, C. (Leipzig, 1884), p. 64, 8)Google Scholar; paneg. lat. ‘positus extra Romanum Colchus imperium’ (2.14.2) ‘extinctus aperto dominus parricidio’ (2.30.3) ‘datur debito rebelle agmen exitio’ (2.34.2 IA) ‘〈obiciebantur〉 ingenua indignis cruciatibus corpora’ (3.4.2; IA) ‘paucissima clarorum instrumenta modulorum’ (5.8.4) ‘Romanum barbaris gentibus instat imperium’ (7.14.1; IA) ‘hac Britannicae facultate victoriae’ (8.21.2) ‘mutua praebuistis omnium exempla virtutum’ (10.9.2); Sedulius ‘quibuslibet metricae numeris disciplinac priscorum scelerata temporum gesta … contradant’ (a double example) (opus paschale) (published with the carmen paschale in CSEL 10)); ‘sterilium nuda perfrui siccilate camporum’ (IA; both this and the preceding instance in 1.1); ‘nitidum bonus pastor ovile conservat’ (1.2; IA); ‘glacialibus segetes annvas flavere temporibus’ (1.2; IA); ‘sancti mens intemerata pontificis’ (1.5; IA); ‘squalentia rursus violentis arva fervoribus’ (1.11); ‘magna sui nuntians sacramenta mysterii’ (1.11); ‘nulla nascentis vidit mundi primordia’ (1.22; IA); ‘regia fulvis aula tholis inradiat’ (1.27; cf. the corresponding passage in Sedulius's poem, ‘regia fulvis / emicat aula tholis’ (1.284–5)); Priscian ‘in ipsos sceleratam exercet audaciam deos’ (Rhetores Latini Minores, p. 555,35; IA); ‘uteris … communibus omnium moribus bominum’ (ibid. p. 559,36); Codex lustinianus ‘[libras] … auferendas credidit parca posterioris subtilitas principis’ (ed. Krueger, P. in Corpus luris Chilis 11, 15th ed. (Weidmann, 1970): 2.7.25, dated a.d. 517)Google Scholar; Virgilius Maro grammaticus ‘cum sit magis cunctis bonus opibus amicus’ (80,20); ‘nuptiales scilicet seratissimorum cantus conviviorum ponentes’ (106,10); ‘octo quoque in uno licet epistolas volumine digerere’ (107,3); ‘docuit pleno retboricam mense artem’ (133,22); ‘tota una transvolans bora puncta‘ (177,2; IA). It will be noted (see below) that, out of this random selection of twenty-nine cases, only nine have an enclosed verb. For a few parallels in Greek, see Wenkebach, E., Hermes 43 (1908), 91–4.Google Scholar

page 51 note 1 A-text, line 1 (I cite from Herren, Michael W., The Hisperica Famina: I The A-Text (Toronto 1974))Google Scholar

page 51 note 2 I.e. 253,26. But I concede that in the letter to Eahfrith Kerlouégan's nine instances include four with verb enclosed. For other figures see above, p. 50, n. 2 my ‘A “Celtic” Hyperbaton?’, where the whole case is further argued. Only five of my thirty-four new examples there showed enclosed verb.

page 51 note 3 For a suggestion as to the rationale of that, see my ‘A ”Celtic” Hyperbaton?’.

page 52 note 1 Certainly my impression is that Gildas and Aldhelm do not use the same strange words to any significant extent. That is only an impression; but the list in Herren, , Hisperica Famina, p. 23Google Scholar seems to confirm it.

page 52 note 2 ‘Le Latin du De Excidio Britanniae de Gildas’, Christianity in Britain 300–700, ed. Barley, M. W. and Hanson, R. P. C. (Leicester, 1968), pp. 164–6.Google Scholar

page 52 note 3 Anthol. Lat., ed. Riese, , 1 1, 82.Google Scholar

page 52 note 4 For Sidonius's vocabulary, see the discussion in Loyen, , Sidoine, p. 137Google Scholar, emphasizing categories that could easily be paralleled in Aldhelm: archaism (note his praise of Claudianus Mamertus's ‘nova … verba quia vetusta’ (ep. 4.3.3)), neologism, Graecism, poeticism. On the enthusiasm for archaic words, see Norden, , Kunstprosa 1, 366–7.Google Scholar

page 52 note 5 See below, App. I.

page 52 note 6 I think especially of Gildas 30, 21–31,3 compared with its source in Rufinus, hist. eccl. 2.2–3.

page 53 note 1 I have not seen this comparison made elsewhere. But there is a pregnant remark in Ehwald's preface: ‘In una autem re plane diversus est [sc. Aldhelmus] ab Hibernis: in periodorum constructione et amplitudine, quas tam longas saepe facit, ut vix possint circumspici, quasque per verborum assonantiam et commatum clausulas, in quibus ecclesiasticorum scriptorum, Augustini maxime et Cypriani et Sedulii, morem auxit, quam maxime decorare ausus est’ (p. xxii). My article is a sermon on that text.

page 53 note 2 See above, p. 48, n. 7.

page 53 note 3 Vila S. Emiliani, ed. Vazquez de Parga, L. (Madrid, 1943), p. 4Google Scholar: ‘dictavi ut potui, et plano apertoque sermone, ut in talibus rebus decet haberi’. Braulio did not altogether live up to this principle.

page 53 note 4 Jerome, ‘misimus … Paulum [i. e. the life of Paul] … in quo propter simpliciores quosque multum in deiciendo sermone laboravimus’ (ep. 10.3; the letters are edited e. g. by J. Labourt (Paris, 1949–63)). For the use of saints' lives as exemplars for others, see, e.g., Sulpicius Severus, vita Martini (ed. Fontaine, J., Sources Chrétiennes 133) 1.6.Google Scholar

page 54 note 1 ‘omnium praevius artifex Hibernensium’ (PL 72, col. 789D; IA); ‘sancta certo limite designavit Brigida’ (ibid. col. 790B; IA).

page 54 note 2 ibid. col. 789A. See above, p. 48 and n. 8.

page 54 note 3 Interlaced word order appears in the de locis sanectis (e. g. pp. 66, line 35 and 100, line 32 in the edition by D. Meehan in Scriptores Latini Hiberniae 3) as well as the vita Columbae (for which see Kerlouégan, , ‘Mode stylistique’ p. 281Google Scholar). For another example of the order in Irish writing, see Aileran ‘perfectorum autem est solidus cibus virorum’ (PL 80, col. 338; IA). For Adamnan's Graecisms, see Bruning, G., Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 11 (1917), 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Adamnan's style is of the utmost elegance and clarity, without ostentation or affectation: that is, it is unlike Aldhelm's.

page 54 note 4 But it is notable that even its author can once use Thetis = ‘the sea’ (PL 35, col. 2167). In the de ordine creaturarum there is sporadic bombast (e. g. the start of ch. 14: see Liber de ordine creaturarum, ed. Diaz, Manuel C. Diaz y (Santiago de Compostela, 1972), 204Google Scholar; a boat metaphor, hardly developed as exuberantly as Aldhelm would have done it).

page 54 note 5 Intriguing is the letter of Calmannus alluded to in Bischoff, B., Mittelalterliche Studien (Stuttgart, 1966) 1, 199Google Scholar and partly printed in Bulletins de l' Académie Royale Belgique 10.1 (1843), 368. Quite apart from the interest of the content, the letter is striking for its nonchalant use of the cursus (at a date later than Isidore), and its knowledge of literary convention (‘quantum epistolaris angustia potuit’: cf. above, p. 47, n. 2). I should like to be sure that it is from the Irish homeland, and early in date.

page 55 note 1 PL 87, cols. 969–78. For the delay see col. 969B (silui: cf. Gildas 25,6; but this may be mere convention – compare the delay in the preface to the vita Boniti (MGH, Script. Rer. Mer. 6, p. 119 line 9)). For nycticorax (found, however, in Ps. C1.7), logium (cf. Virgilius Maro grammaticus, 18,14) and the alliteration, see cols. 978A–B.

page 55 note 2 His vita Patricii has a prologue of somewhat Gildasian ring (see my ‘Variations on a Nautical Theme’); his narrative manner is not often ambitious. That is not to say that there is never any gesture towards exalted vocabulary (antropi, RS 89,11, 298), complexity of period (e.g. ‘contigit vero …’ (ibid., p. 278), to be contrasted with the narrative style of p. 275), poeticism (a line of Vergil adorns the funeral scene, as does a heightened description of the sea (pp. 296 and 299)) and a certain naive rhetoric (‘didicit dilexit custodivit’) (p. 496): see above, p. 43, n. 4; also the rhyming clauses of p. 495, line 12ff: see more fully the remarks of Bieler, L., MÆ 43 (1974), 230–2Google Scholar. But such flashes do not make an Aldhelm. Still less ambitious is Tírechán's vita (for the different level of the two compare the telling of the same story by Muirchú (p. 294) and by Tírechán (ibid. p. 325).

page 55 note 3 See, e.g., The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar, trans. Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (London, 1960), pp. 29, 32, 34 and 53Google Scholar. For Fredegar's language, see ibid. pp. xxxii–xxxviii.

page 55 note 4 MGH, Script. Rer. Mer. 1.1, p. 1, 1 cf. ibid., ‘mundo in fine currente’ (471,5).

page 55 note 5 Praef. ‘mundus iam seniscit, ideoque prudenciae agumen in nóbis tepíscit, ne quisquam potest huius tempore nee presumit oratoribus precedentes ésse consímilis’ (p. 2). Observe how the rhythm can outlast control of grammar.

page 56 note 1 And there are other moaners, e. g. Claudianus Mamertus (Sapaudus the only hope in a world succumbing to barbarism and solecism: see the edition of Engelbrecht, A. in CSEL 11, pp. 203–6)Google Scholar; Sidonius (‘artium … quae per aetatem mundi iam senescentis … parum aliquid … memorabile ostentant’: ep. 8.6.3); Gregory the Great (PL 76, cols. 1009–10); Columbanus (end of the world at hand: ep. 5.4); Jonas (Gaul, as ever, in a parlous state: vita Columb. 1.5).; See also Curtius, , European Literature, p. 28.Google Scholar

page 56 note 2 That we cannot blame them alone is formally proved by the appearance of solecisms in acrostics: see in the sixth century Venantius (too kindly judged by Leo in the introduction to MGH, Auct. Antiq. 4.1, xxv; cf. also Bonnet, M., Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours (Paris, 1890), p. 85, n. 2)Google Scholar, and in the seventh century; Valerius of Bierzo (e. g. poem 3 (poems edited by Diaz, Diaz y in Acta Salmanticensia 12.2 (1958), 103–16Google Scholar) ‘pauca de plurimis in praecedentis reperies opuscula (sic) brevitatem’, where the acrostic guarantees the ending -em). More generally, see Lehmann's, P. masterly survey of seventh-century culture in Settimane di studio del centro italiano di studi sull’ alto medioevo 5.2 (Spoleto, 1958), 845–71Google Scholar. For Gaul, see Riché, ibid. 873–88, together with his Éducation, pp. 220–91. Note the sophistae said to have taught Bonitus in the vita of that saint (MGH, Script. Rer. Mer. 6, p. 120, line 14). Riché sees a break about 650, with a renaissance about 700. For lowering standards in sixth-century Italy, see Cassiodorus, (Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. Mynors, R. A. B. (Oxford, 1937)Google Scholar, inst. 1.15.9ff.) on the orthographical difficulties that worried scribes. For the later period, see Norberg, D., Settimane 5.2 (1958), 485–503Google Scholar. Spanish standards were not necessarily higher. Martin of Braga's rusticities in his de correctione rusticorum may not all be as intentional as Barlow, C. W., Martini episcopi Bracarensis opera omnia (Yale, 1950) makes out (pp. 160–3)Google Scholar, to judge by the errors of Braulio (for example in the matter of deponent verbs: see the index to Madoz's edition of the letters, pp. 219–20; and there are similar things in the vita Emiliani).

page 57 note 1 MGH, Epist. 3, 448. ‘But as for me, whose sluggish abilities lie dormant in innate numbness and whose stammering tongue, obstructed by squalid decay amid the hoarse channels of my throat, does not so much speak as grate, how shall I be able to put over in a polished style the divinely inspired services of holy men, seeing that I cannot even expound private business heaped on me by the lot of man ?’

page 57 note 2 ibid. ‘A bird will never safely cut through the open routes of the air that are granted to him unless his mother has gone before on her wings to lead the way.’

page 57 note 3 vita lobanni: abbatis 18 (for this see above, p. 45, n. 3). I have used Krusch's apparatus to complete his text where it is lacunose. ‘There was in him (to tell the strictest truth) the odour of all virtues, and mortification of the body [but read ‘flagrantia: corporis castigationem ieiuniis …’ ?]. He bore fasting and prayer, as in his youth, so in his old age. He taught his subjects by his example to flee by all means gluttony, vainglory and pride, the worst of vices, which, he knew, had trapped Adam in paradise. He warned the people entrusted to him to be careful not to imitate Adam, who had fallen through these very three vices, and had been separated and cast out from the joy of paradise. For if souls dedicated to God obeyed their greed and succumbed to the gluttony of the stomach, if spurred on by vainglory they were upset by the weaknesses of the mind, if they were wounded by the evil of pride, they would be cut off from the company of the just, deprived of all the joy of perpetual light, and condemned to everlasting torment.’

page 58 note 1 So Riché: ‘les tournures compliquées … se ressentent d'un contact avec les rhéteurs italiens du VIe siècle’ (Éducation, p. 391).

page 58 note 2 E.g. 2.18 (Honorius, A.D. 634). Elsewhere, e.g., the letter of Martin I, dated 649 (MGH, Script. Rer. Mer. 5, 452–6).

page 58 note 3 MGH, Epist. 3, 671 and 672. ‘For charity is known from sincere works only when an untarnished rule of faith is shown forth by a catholic mouth. A mere profession breeds great joy for the other side, when the cursed plague of Arianism is driven out from a noble lineage …’ ‘The catholic church purifies with a mother's love and cures those who have long been torn by the hooked prickles of briars, wounded by the barbed stings of scorpions, poisoned(?) by the forked mouths of the serpent.’

page 59 note 1 Hisperica Famina, p. 21. See generally my review, MÆ 45 (1976), 105–9.Google Scholar

page 59 note 2 Hisperica Famina, pp. 17–18. See, earlier, Fontaine, J., Vigiliae Christianae 14 (1960), esp. p. 77, n. 28.Google Scholar

page 59 note 3 That stylus was largely a matter of rhyme, but Polheim, Reimprosa, p. 298, is right to say that in Isidore himself rhyme is subordinate to the general ‘Reihungstechnik’.

page 59 note 4 Synon. 1.7 (cf. Verg. Aen. 4.373).

page 60 note 1 I sympathize, that is, with the emphases of Homs, J. M. Casas, Actas del primer congreso español de estudios clasicos (Madrid, 1958), pp. 518–23Google Scholar. For him Isidore attempts ‘informal un tratado ampliatorio del Trivio, con un contenido espiritual, susceptible de interpretación mistica’ (p. 523). See also Fontaine, , SM 6.1 (1965), esp. 194Google Scholar. Compare the mixture of practice and moral education in the grammatical schools of antiquity (‘ii quoque versus ad imitationem scribendi proponentur non otiosas velim sententias habeant, sed honestum aliquid monentis’: Quintilian 1.1.35; so too with chriae).

page 60 note 2 Cf. the letter of ‘Cicero’ to Vettius prefaced to the Synonyma Ciceronis (cited by Brugnoli, G., Atti del I congresso Internazionale di studi ciceroniani 1 (Rome, 1961), 285)Google Scholar: ‘collegi haec verba quae pluribus modis dicerentur, quo uberior promptiorque fiat oratio verborum consertione’; Fronto, ‘nonne te … studiorum solaciis fulciebas, synonymis colligendis’ (II, 76; also 11, 82).

page 60 note 3 Fontaine, discussing the influence of Gregory the Great on Isidore, remarks: ‘comme si la langue de Grégoire s'était modelée directement sur les rythmes sémitiques de la poésie du Livre de Job’ (SM 6.1, 177). Earlier, Macalister, R. A. S., The Secret Languages of Ireland (Cambridge, 1937), p. 81Google Scholar, connected the Hisperica Famina with the psalms. In Isidore, see esp. synon. 1.64. And in Ildefonsus (PL 96, col. 81B) note how smoothly the style of Proverbs merges with the synonymous style (though Norden (Kunstprosa 1, 509) remarks on the difference between Hebrew and Greek parallelism).

page 60 note 4 E.g., ‘… quantae caecitatis sunt qui alieno provectu deficiunt, aliena exsultatione contabescunt: quantae infelicitatis sunt qui melioratione proximi deteriores fiunt, dumque augments alienae prosperitatis aspiciunt, apud semet ipsos anxie afflicti cordis sui peste moriuntur. Quid istis infelicius quos dum conspecta felicitas afficit poena nequiores reddit?’ (PL 77, col. 63B). Cf. the defence of repetition in ‘Jerome’ on Mark, ‘melliflua sapientiae eloquia gustata diligentius multimodum saporem reddunt’ (PL 30, col. 618B).

page 61 note 1 For Ildefonsus see Polheim, , Reimprosa, p. 300Google Scholar. For the style elsewhere cf. (contemporary with Ildefonsus) Baudonivia ‘quid me … cum tantis lacrimis rogas, gemens requiris, fusis precibus poscis, pro me tanto cruciatu affigis’ (MGH, Script. Rer. Mer. 2, 391, 24). Perhaps also Aileran (ob. 665) ‘ardentes diaboli sagittae, ignita inimici iacula’ (PL 80, col. 336). Isidore could well have been influenced by the style of his brother Leander, which, always rhetorical, shows distinct signs of ‘synonymity’ at, e.g., PL 72, cols. 878c and 880c.

page 61 note 2 See Bischoff, , Mittelalterliche Studien 1, 181Google Scholar. The work was also known to Defensor of Lièges: see Rochais's, H. M. index to his edition of the Liber Scintillarum (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 117.1), 253.Google Scholar

page 61 note 3 See 81, 15.

page 61 note 4 The relevant information is handily presented by Rigg, A. G., Speculum 45 (1970), 573CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It may be significant that there is an eighth-century manuscript from Spain containing the Ciceronian Synonyma (Lowe, E. A., Codices Latini Antiquiores VI, no. 705).Google Scholar

page 61 note 5 Lists of the same kind may have fed the Famina too: see the ‘Glossa synonima Ciceroni’ (sic) in London, British Library, Harley 5792, beginning at 267V, published by Goetz, G., Corpus Glossariorum Lalinorum 1 (Leipzig, 1923), 81–5Google Scholar. Thus for sea we are given ‘mare amfitritem equor fluctuosa estiosa voraga’ (269V).

page 61 note 6 So Grosjean, P., Celtica 3 (1956), 55Google Scholar, see Herren, , Hisperica Famina, 18–19Google Scholar. Observe the remarks of Virgilius Maro grammaticus, 42,3 (auctores use rare words not to harm readers, but to help them when they come across them again) and 76,10 (obfuscation intended to test learners: cf. also 137,14).

page 62 note 1 2.47. with the note ad loc. in [Cicero] Ad C. Herennium de Ratione Dicendi, trans. Caplan, Harry (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1954). Cf. 3.23Google Scholar. The use of amplificatio to signify linear extension of material is medieval, but, as the discussion by Arbusow, L., Colores rbetorici, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1963), pp. 21 ffGoogle Scholar. shows, the precepts of the ad Herennium were not forgotten.

page 62 note 2 He is also well aware that expansion may lead to bombast. His example of that (4.15) shows how little advance later writers made in this department; besides the intrusive archaism, note in Neptunias lacunas = ‘into the sea’, and cf. Gildas's Titbica valles.

page 63 note 1 Isidore called it synonymia (etym. 2.21.6), giving as example ‘nihil agis, nihil moliris, nihil cogitas’ (Cic. Cat. 1.8) and better ‘non feram, non patiar, non sinam’ (ibib. 1.10).

page 63 note 2 See below, App. II, as well as my discussion of Valerius of Bierzo and Apuleius below.

page 64 note 1 European Literature, pp. 195–200. Also, generally, Arbusow, Colores, pp. 26–8.

page 64 note 2 Mayr-Harting, H., The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England (London, 1972), p. 203Google Scholar, alluding to riddle 14, seems to imply that Aldhelm knew of peacocks only from Isidore. But in the de virg. Aldhelm tells us far more of the fowls than he could have learned from etym. 12.7.48. I do not know if he ever saw such a bird; but he could have drawn upon descriptiones like that in Tertullian. For peacocks in Greek, see also Lucian, de dom. 11; Aelian, de nat. anim. 5.21 (έоικεν àνθηρώ λειμώνι I owe this reference to Mr R. J. Lane Fox).

de pallio 3.1 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 2, p. 738). ‘The peacock is clothed in feathers: a splendid garment at that, darker than any purple where the neck is aflower, more gilded than any gold edging where the back is ablaze, more lavish than any flowing train where the tail is in repose, multi-coloured, parti-coloured, never the same hue.’

page 64 note 4 De doctrina Christiana, 2.118 (ed. Green, W. M. in CSEL 80).Google Scholar

page 64 note 5 Compare the remarks of Venantius on the famous orators who seek ‘ut magna dicendo de minimis videantur ostendere sui fluminis ubertatem’(vita Marc. 2: ed. Krusch, B.Google Scholar, MGH, Auct. Antiq. 4.2) with the aspiration of the earliest sophists to make a lot even out of tiny subjects (Plato, symp. 177B and other texts relating to Polycrates assembled in Radermacher, L., Artium Scriptores (Vienna, 1951), pp. 128–32).Google Scholar See also above, p. 46, n. 1.

page 64 note 6 How Aldhelm placed himself in this tradition is quite unclear: was it his reading or the teaching of Theodore and Hadrian that put him on this path ? He can hardly have learned it from rhetorical handbooks alone; indeed, Roger, , L'Enseignement, p. 292Google Scholar, saw no trace of rhetorical, as opposed to grammatical, lore (cf. Riché, Éducation, p. 436). Contrast the Spaniards: Braulio shows conscious awareness of the rhetorical rules for laudatio of the lowborn (vita Emil. 7; cf. Quintilian 3.7.10, perhaps mediated by Jerome, ep. 60.8.1); Julian of Toledo alludes to the 1075B****rhetorical rules for prooemia (PL 96, col. 707c) and cites Cicero on types of case (709c). Aid- helm's knowledge of commata and cola, which he parades (272,18) almost as flagrantly as Venantius (MGH 4.1 p. 1,6) is of course grammatical. He is (as Roger remarks) well aware of the figures: but they had their place in grammar too. Note antimetabole (249,12) and a weird sort of polyptoton ‘municipes quorum municipatus in Tribulano municipio erat’ (308,23: cf. Braulio, ‘cuius nobilem ortum nobilior vitae nobilitavit cursus’ (vit. Emil. 7) and Jonas, , ‘cum egregiae regni regimina regeret’ (pit. Ved. 7)).Google Scholar

page 65 note 1 See generally Fontaine, J., Antike und Absndland 12 (1966), 84Google Scholar and especially Aherne, C. M., Valerius of Bierzo (Washington, 1949)Google Scholar, which contains not always efficient editions of the autobiographical works. It is not merely arbitrary to see Valerius as successor to Sisebut; for his knowledge of the king's writings, see Diaz, Diaz y, Settimane 5.2 (1958), 837Google Scholar; Hillgarth, , Settimane 17.1 (1970), 308. For that matter, Aldhelm knew a line of Sisebut's verse (though he attributed it to Isidore: see 80,1); while in Italy Jonas alluded to the Vita Desiderii (vit. Columb. 1.27).Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 Correct behaviour for a hermit: see, e.g., the vita Antonii 24 = PL 73, col. 148B; Jerome, , vit. Hil. 30 = PL 23, cols. 43–4Google Scholar; Ennodius, , vit. Ant. 31 (MGH, Auct. Antiq. 7 p. 189,8)Google Scholar; Jonas, , vit. Columb. 1.10; vita Wandregiseli (MGH, Script. Rer. Mer. 5 p. 17,37).Google Scholar

page 65 note 3 Ada Salmanticensia 12.2 (1958), 56–61.Google Scholar

page 65 note 4 Ibid. p. 56. ‘When once, as was seen in the previous narrative (?), from the first beginning of the building of the church, there blazed up in the east such a sincere longing for the kingdom of heaven, and the fear of the Lord so terrified the hearts of the peoples that not only was a vast and numberless army of monks multiplied through frequent and constant gatherings in monasteries, but also various desert spots were thickly covered with the penitentiaries of perfect hermits, and when in this border country of the extreme west a few small beginnings of holy religion sprouted up, a few elect and perfect men built in desert places, with the help of God, scattered monasteries, from which our Redeemer has received into the kingdom of heaven many souls that had been purified from the dross of sins.’

page 66 note 1 For Aldhelmic sentence construction see especially the famous letter that shows knowledge of the Peregrinatio Aetberiae (ed., e.g., in AB 29 (1910), 393–9)Google Scholar; e.g. ‘itaque dum olim almifica fidei catholicae <pullularent> crepundia, lucifluaque sacrae religionis inmensa claritas [a lacuna should be marked here: cf. the parallel passage in the vita Fructuosi, ed. in Diaz, M. C. Diaz y, La vida de San Frmtuoso de Braga (Braga, 1974), ch. 1, line 4)] huius occiduae plagae sera processione tandem refulsisset extremitas, eadem beatissima sanctimonialis Etheria, flamma desiderii gratiae divinae succensa, maiestatis domini opitulante virtute, totis viribus intrepido corde inmensum totius orbis arripuit iter.’ In the de vana saeculi sapientia, note the alliteration (‘inmensae magnitudinis murorum munitione constructa, omnique lapide pretioso perspicua pulchritudine exornata’ PL 87, col. 429B) and the order of ‘ad diversaque … crudelissima inferorum genera tormentorum’ (430D).Google Scholar

page 66 note 2 I have not noticed oddities of order in the autobiographical works. For alliteration see ‘sub hoc monasterio ingentis praecipitii procerrima profunditas patet, quem pavor est homini desuper intueri’ (ordo 9). For cursus, see Aheme, Valerius of Bierzo, pp. 35–6Google ScholarDiaz, Diaz y, Ada Salmanticensia 12.2, 99.Google Scholar

page 66 note 3 P. 38. See also p. 29 on poems 4 and 6.

page 66 note 4 ordo 1. ‘a place … situated … at the top of a mountain, bare of human habitation, baked in the harshness of complete sterility, stripped of all growth of brush, not green with any pleasant groves, nor marked by a growth of grass, and, finally, a place struck by the violent tempests of all the winds threatening from every side, and often smitten by storms of pelting rain and by tremendous blizzards, and at the same time gripped by all the rigors of intolerable cold’ (trans. Aheme).

page 67 note 1 Cf. ‘vulgari ritu in obscena teatricae luxuriae vertigine rotabatur dum circumductis hue illucque brachiis, alio in loco lascivos conglobans pedes, vestigiis lubricantibus circuens, tripudio compositis et tremulis gressibus subsiliens, nefaria cantilena mortiferae ballimatiae [Isidore, etym. 3.22.11] dira carmina canens, diabolicae pestis exercebat luxuriae’ (ordo 6): rhyme, some variation on a theme, and choice vocabulary (compare a dancing scene in Apuleius), met. 10.29 (see Apulei Platonici Madaurensis opera quae supersunt 1, ed. Helm, R., 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1931)). Further ordo 4 (ergastulo, lautomiae, carcerem).Google Scholar

page 67 note 2 But the word is disputable: see Diaz, Diaz y, Emérita 16 (1948), 230–3Google Scholar and Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal IV (1953), 59–65Google Scholar. Valerius may not have known the specific meaning (cf. nemoris. herbarum) but merely taken the word from a list of growing things; see my remarks on the vocabulary of the Hisperica Famina in MÆ 45 (1976), 109.Google Scholar

page 67 note 3 Dicta ad Doiwdeum, PL 87, col. 432. ‘The whole lovely district was decorated with the various appearances of many kinds of vegetation and undying flowers [text uncertain]: everything shone in brilliant beauty, with the red glow of roses, the brilliant white of lilies, mixed hues of purple and yellow.’

page 67 note 4 For other Valerian descriptioms see de coelesti revelatione (PL 87, col. 436B) (sun), de Bonello monacho (PL 87, col. 43 3D) (rich room), ordo 11 (green solitude), replicatio 16 (garden). For gardens elsewhere, e. g. Augustine, serm. 304.3 = PL 38, col. 1396 (mystic); Jerome, vit. Hil. 43 = PL 23, col. 51; vita Boniti ch. 16; and (of course) Curtius, European Literature, p. 200.

page 67 note 5 For the poems see above, p. 56, n. 2. The þ-poem is 7; see also 5, with most stanzas restricted to a single initial letter.

page 67 note 6 ‘Visigothic Spain and Early Christian Ireland’, Proc. of the R. Irish Acad. 62 (1961–1903), 167–94Google Scholar, at 191. See also Riché, , Education, pp. 408–9:Google Scholar Valerius's spiritual likeness to Irish monks.

page 68 note 1 Apulei Apologia, with introduction and commentary by Butler, H. E. and Owen, A. S. (Oxford, 1914), pp. xliv–lxvi.Google Scholar I refer to them, and to the not altogether satisfactory Der Stil des Apuleius von Madaura of Bernhard, M. (Stuttgart, 1927), except for some matters of special relevance to my present thesis, for which see subsequent notes.Google Scholar

page 68 note 2 Another striking continuity: in the letter to Acircius Aldhelm gives a splendid list of types of animal noise, ‘ut maiorum auctoritas tradidit’ (179.19: i. e. in some sort of descent from Suetonius: see Ehwald, ad loc). He does it because he wants to: it is a pure digression, started off by mention of the word rudibundus as an ionic a minore. Ehwald gives poetic parallels for interest in animal noises (e. g. Ausonius); in prose note Apuleius, , fiorida (Apulei Platonici Madaurensis opera quae supersunt 11.2 ed.Helm, R., (Leipzig, 1910)), pp. 32,9Google Scholar; 33,6 (with typically varied tricolon); cf. also p. 17,26; Sidonius, ep, 2.2.14 (compared stylistically with Apuleius by Norden, Kunstprosa 11, 639, n. 4); Ruricius, , ep. 1.5.2 and 6 (ed. Krusch in MGH, Auct. Antiq. 8)Google Scholar; Cassiodorus, , variae 1.45.6 (ed. Mommsen in MGH, Auct. Antiq. 12)(with a further twist).Google Scholar

page 68 note 3 Cf. ‘aper … toris callosae cutis obesus, pilis inhorrentibus corio squalidus, setis insurgentibus spinae hispidus, dentibus attritu sonaci spumeus, oculis aspectu minaci flammeus…’ (8.4; cf. ad Herennium, ‘dentibus aduncis, aspectu venenato, spiritu rabido’ (4.62), in an instance of imago); ‘lectus Indica testudine perlucidus, plumea congerie tumidus, veste serica floridus’ (10.34): ‘mulieres candido splendentes amicimine, vario laetantes gestamine, verno florentes coronamine …’ (11.9; this and the others to be compared with the similitudo at ad Her. 4.60). The clauses may be shorter, as, e.g., ‘micantibus oculis et rubentibus bucculis et renidentibus crinibus …’ (3.19); for that style see below, p. 74.

page 69 note 1 11.3. ‘Many-coloured, woven of fine linen, now bright with dazzling whiteness, now yellow with the brilliance of saffron, now aflame with the red of roses, and – something that dazzled even my gaze at such a distance – a jet-black cloak, splendid with its dusky sheen.’

page 69 note 2 de deo Socratis 23 Apulei Platonici Madawensis opera quae supersunt in, ed. Thomas, P. (Leipzig, 1908). ‘In buying horses we do not gaze at the trappings or inspect the polish of the belly-band or contemplate the riches that adorn the neck, if varied collars of gold, silver and precious stones hang down, if artfully worked ornaments lie about head and neck, if the bridles are engraved, if the housings are dyed, if the girths are gilded. No, taking all the equipment off, we look at the horse himself bare, at his body and character, to make sure he is good to look at, lively at the gallop, and strong to ride. First of all, as to the body, if there is a “clean-cut head, short belly, plump back, and the fine beast's proud front is rippling with muscle”, then if he has a double ridge across his loins; for I want him to be comfortable as well as swift to ride.’ The quotation is from Georgia 3.80–1.Google Scholar

page 69 note 3 Cf. ‘lyra eius auro fulgurat, ebore candicat, gemmis variegat’ (flor. 3) (cf. again ad Herennium, ‘citharam tenens exornatissimam auro et ebore distinctam’ (4.60)).

page 69 note 4 But Apuleius's learning tends to show up in lists, often displaying the style mentioned above at the end of p. 68, n. 3. Thus ’vittas mollis et verbenas pinguis et tura mascula…’ (apol. 30: cf. 35, shellfish).

page 70 note 1 Cf. ‘variae fuere sententiae, ut primus … censeret…, secundus … suaderet, tertius … iuberet, quartus … praeciperet’ (met. 6.31).

page 70 note 2 met. 11.14. ‘I was rooted to the spot in complete bewilderment, and kept silent. My mind could not find room for so great and so sudden a joy. I did not know what particular preface I should first pronounce, from where I should draw an exordium for my new speech, with what words I should inaugurate my newborn tongue most prosperously, in what grand terms I should express thanks to so powerful a goddess.’

page 70 note 3 E.g., ‘Cupido … cubiculi custodia clausus cohercebatur acriter’ (met. 6.11); ‘neque comparari neque perfici passus est pudore perditae hereditatis, quam <praemium> paucorum mensium, quibus socer Pontiani fuit, magno quidem pretio noctium computarat’ (apol. 97).

page 70 note 4 Cf. ‘fortunarum lubricas ambages et instabiles incursiones et reciprocas vicissitudines ignoras’ (met. 1.6; cf. my example (d) above, p. 43, from Aldhelm) ‘hominem tam numerosa arte multiscium, totiugi scientia magnificum, tot utensilium peritia daedalum’ (flor. 9); ‘ipsis inlecebris deterreor et stimulis refrenor et incitamentis cohibeor’ (flor. 18). Cf. (a little less synonymously) ‘hoc enim nee a patre hereditarium est nee a casu pendulum nee a suffragio anniculum nee a corpore caducum nee ab aetate mutabile’ (de deo Socr. 23); ‘nuntio Psyche laeta florebat et divinae subolis solacio plaudebat et futuri pignoris gloria gestiebat et materni nominis dignitate gaude bat’ (met. 5.12).

page 70 note 5 All the same, Theodore did have his rhetorical interests: see Bischoff, Mittelalterliche Studien 1, 208; cf. Cook, A. B., PQ 2 (1923), 1–25Google Scholar. For Hadrian's background, see, ibid., esp. pp. 248–9. In employing the term ‘Asianist’, I have aimed to be provocative rather than precise. But I see that I am in the company of Loyen, Sidoine, e. g. ch. 7, and Riché, , Education, pp. 359Google Scholar (juxtaposed with Hispericism) and 391, n. 246. Contra, Mohrmann, C., Vigiliae Christianae 16 (1962), 230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 70 note 6 This paper was, in various stages of development, read at King's College, London, on 8 May 1975, at the University of Cambridge, under the auspices of the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, on 21 November 1975, and to the Mediaeval Society in Oxford on 19 February 1976. As a counterweight to the ponderous apparatus of notes, I have left the text something of the epideictic flavour of the lectures. Both text and notes have much benefited from the learning of Dr Michael Lapidge, to whose careful reading I am much indebted.

page 71 note 1 Described with perfect clarity by Hagendahl, H., La Correspondance de Ruricius, (Goteborg, 1952), pp. 32–50.Google Scholar

page 71 note 2 Prose Rbytbm in Medieval Latin from the 9th to the 13th Century (Stockholm, 1975).Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 All sentence ends were counted except where stated otherwise, with the exclusions practised by Janson (p. 32; but I include sentences ending with a question mark). My results have not been checked, and give only a preliminary indication.

page 72 note 2 Neither he nor Cassiodorus bans hiatus elsewhere in the sentence.

page 73 note 1 ‘Aldhelm's favour for the trispondaicus may place him in the ‘northern’ tradition discussed for the period after 850 by Janson, pp. 50–8. Further research on the period before 850 would he necessary before Aldhelm's rhythm could be used to throw further light on his literary affiliations.