An introduction to the study of medieval Latin versification

9 Conclusion

NINE a CONCLUSION The Latin versification of the Middle Ages was entirely dependent on school teaching. Because the medieval school continued the traditions of late antiquity, there was no break in the evolution of versification. Throughout the entire Middle Ages, poets continued to write ancient quantitative verses according to the model of Virgil or Sedulius, of Horace or Prudentius. Certain versifiers appropriated a purely classical technique; most of them, however , followed models which were, for them, more modern. As early as the period of the Empire, rhetoric exercised considerable influence on poetry. From rhetoric poets inherited the taste for rhyme, assonance, and other figures, as well as for the plays on words and other devices which were sometimes cultivated to the point of exaggeration and at the cost of good taste. Among classical verse forms the hexameter and the dactylic distich were dominant. This predominance was especially evident at the time of the Carolingian Renaissance, when Virgil and, in a general way, ancient epic were at the center of interest for the learned world. But even in the twelfth century the hexameter remained the principal verse form in the epic genre and in didactic poetry. At the end of this same century Walter of Châtillon succeeded in creating with his Alexandreis an epic that was a formidable rival of the works of antiquity for first place in school teaching. In contrast, during the first centuries of the Middle Ages, few poets attempted to imitate the ancient forms of lyric verses. But, as technical ability grew, these forms gained importance; and in the eleventh century several poets , such as Alphanus of Salerno, demonstrated a remarkable talent in the art of imitating Horace, Prudentius, and Boethius. It is, therefore, somewhat surprising that about the year , when the Latin literature of the Middle  Ages was at its apogee, poets generally abandoned the classical tradition in the field of lyric poetry. This is because they had succeeded in creating some entirely new forms in this field, forms of a particular character and beauty to which antiquity could not produce anything equivalent. One of the essential goals of this work has been to show precisely how the poets freed themselves, step by step, from the shackles in which the ancient tradition had chained lyric poetry and bound it to traditional forms that no longer provided poets with expressions adapted to the new conditions. We recognize already in the hymns of St. Ambrose the beginning of this evolution. These hymns entirely follow the rules of contemporary classical metrics and do not show any rhythmic construction. But they provide evidence of a remarkable independence from the turgid rhetoric that characterized the metrical poetry of his time. St. Ambrose also moves away from more artful classical versification, of which Prudentius, for example, provides us a sample. Simplicity of style and verse is for St. Ambrose a stylistic procedure thanks to which he succeeds in creating a new, more vigorous literary genre which is a strong contrast to the artifice at the end of antiquity. It is not because of the Christian content that he succeeds but because of the song. Through St. Ambrose, the Romans obtained what they had lacked for a long time: a poetry in lyric strophes intended to be sung.1 The second step in the evolution toward a new lyric versification was taken when poets freed themselves from the quantity of the verse. We do not know when and how this happened. Too many phases of this evolution are unfortunately lost to us. But song probably played a certain role, as in the genesis of rhythmic poetry. It has been assumed that the most ancient rhythmic poetry that has been preserved in Latin, that is, the psalm of St. Augustine against the Donatists, in , would have been written to a precise melody. This is not impossible, but it is also conceivable that St. Augustine borrowed the form of his poem from now-lost songs of his Donatist adversaries . However that may be, we cannot point out any quantitative form that could have been the immediate model for St. Augustine. We can, however, do that when it comes to the rhythmic hymns preserved since the fifth and sixth Conclusion /  . I tried to analyze the characteristic traits of the poetry of St. Ambrose in L’hymne ambrosien . centuries. In fact, it seems to be obvious that...