Although study of rhetoric triumphantly survived the victory of Christianity over paganism in the West as well as in the East, it almost succumbed to the collapse of its native environment as the cities of the empire were destroyed or depopulated in the face of barbarian attack beginning in the early fifth century. With the end of orderly civic and economic life not only did public support of education disappear, but the reasons for rhetorical education in its traditional form declined. Fewer councils remained in which an orator could speak, and legal procedures were disrupted; on the other hand, barbarian kings easily acquired a taste for being extolled in Latin prose or verse, even if they did not understand what was being said. Poverty, fear, and poor communications became endemic; libraries were destroyed; books disintegrated and were not recopied; and knowledge of Greek faded throughout the West.
But classical rhetoric did not die. A few private teachers of grammar and rhetoric could probably be found at most times in the cities of Italy and Gaul. In the mid-sixth century Cassiodorus introduced the liberal arts into monastic schools. The prose and poetry of the sixth and seventh centuries show some knowledge of classical rhetoric and occasions for persuasive speech. By the eighth century, the first glimmerings of a new civic life emerged in Italy: Venice in the relative safety of her lagoon had begun to elect her doges and manage her own affairs. In the ninth and tenth centuries Pisa, Pavia, Bologna, and other Italian cities became important commercial centers, and by the eleventh century the commune movement had created assemblies, councils, and courts of law with a jury system in many Italian municipalities. It was in this setting, not totally different from the city-states of antiquity, that rhetoric re-emerged as a practical subject of study in Italian schools and at the University of Bologna in the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.
North of the Alps, in the ninth and tenth centuries the Carolingian Age brought to western Europe the first of several “renaissances” that found a place for rhetoric in the schools on the basis of the need for administrators, teachers, and a literate clergy. Although progress was by no means steady, the restoration of education in the Carolingian Age eventually led to the cathedral schools of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, where rhetoric was a regular discipline within a framework of study of the liberal arts. Rhetoric found application in litigation, in religious disputation, in official letter writing, in preaching, and in poetry. On Invention and Rhetoric for Herennius received new commentaries in this period, and there was a revived interest in Cicero’s other works and that by Quintilian. With the development of universities in the twelfth century, dialectic came to dominate higher education, especially at Paris and Oxford, and rhetoric was chiefly studied as an adjunct to it. Boethius’s work on topics replaced Cicero’s writings as the favored authority for rhetoric, and new preaching manuals were composed emphasizing thematic development of arguments. The thirteenth century, when scholastic philosophy reached the height of its popularity, was something of a low point for classical rhetoric in many parts of Europe despite the recovery of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Latin translation at that time. The fourteenth century, however, saw renewed study of Cicero, not only in the Italian cities, but in France and England, shown again in new commentaries on the traditional authorities, On Invention and Rhetoric for Herennius.1
The medieval program of seven liberal arts can be traced back to the enkyklios paideia, or comprehensive education of classical Greece, that was included in the broad cultural studies of some Romans like Cicero.2 In antiquity, however, the seven arts were an ideal in the minds of philosophers or a program of reading and study for leisured (liberi) adults, not a series of graded levels of study in school, as they became in the later Middle Ages. Grammar and rhetoric were the two stages of ancient education, both supported during the Roman Empire from public funds in towns of any size; but dialectic, the third art of the trivium (as the verbal studies came to be called), was an introduction to philosophy, which was undertaken by only the few. To learn the quantitative arts that became the medieval quadrivium—arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music theory—would have required independent study.
In the second and first centuries before Christ, practical-minded Romans began to put together surveys of Greek research and to create the earliest “encyclopedias.” Cato the Elder composed one for his son, with sections on medicine, agriculture, rhetoric, and perhaps other subjects. Varro, Cicero’s contemporary, wrote an encyclopedia of nine liberal arts, including not only grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, but also sections on medicine and architecture. In the first century after Christ Celsus composed another encyclopedia. All of these texts have been lost except for the section on medicine from Celsus’s work. The earliest surviving encyclopedia is the work of Martianus Capella, written in Carthage between 410 and 439 and thus contemporary with Augustine’s On Christian Learning. The content is drawn from standard sources. In the case of the discussion of rhetoric, contained in the fifth book, the primary source is Cicero’s On Invention, to which is added an account of figures of speech based on the handbook of Aquila Romanus and some other material.
Modern readers have usually reacted with distaste to Martianus Capella’s work, but the very features that make it least attractive today contributed to its medieval popularity. The title is On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury, and the first and second books are a fantastic, cumbersome allegory in which Satire tells Martianus how Mercury desired a wife and at Apollo’s suggestion decided to marry Philology.3 All sorts of divine and allegorical figures are introduced, the most important of whom are seven handmaids who are personifications of the seven liberal arts. In subsequent books each handmaid presents her discipline: grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music, in that order. Two traditions existed about the order of studies in the trivium. In ancient schools, rhetoric ordinarily followed grammar and preceded any study of dialectic, and that order is followed by Cassiodorus and some others; Martianus, on the other hand, follows Varro in making dialectic a bridge between grammar and rhetoric. Boethius and his followers also treat rhetoric third, reflecting a philosophical view that knowledge is first discovered dialectically and then expressed rhetorically.
The technical parts of Martianus’s work are written in a simple, if pedantic style, but the allegorical portions are presented in the highly artificial and obscure Latin that passed for eloquence in late antiquity. Medieval readers appear to have loved the allegory, excused the paganism because of it, and delighted in trying to penetrate the obscurity. The technical books appealed to them because of their superficiality: the account of the arts was concise, authoritative, and capable of being memorized. In any event, the popularity of the work is undoubted: at least 243 manuscripts exist in European libraries. A significant percentage of these come from the ninth and tenth centuries, the Carolingian Age, when the trivium and quadrivium began to emerge and commentaries were written on Martianus’s encyclopedia.
Martianus’s influence helped make rhetoric a part of the medieval liberal arts, but a minor part. The goal of classical education was primarily to train effective citizens; Martianus shows little awareness of that. His objective often seems the personal one of demonstrating his learning, but if a product of the studies he describes can be envisioned at all, the product is an amateur philosopher. To judge from references to it, Martianus’s book on rhetoric was one of the least popular parts of his work. Fortunately, he made clear where a reader should turn for a more authoritative discussion, namely to Cicero, whom he mentions with the highest praise.
Martianus was a pagan, and his authority might not have ensured the survival of the formal study of rhetoric in the Middle Ages if his approach had not been taken up by Cassiodorus a hundred years later. Even the great authority of Augustine would probably not have been enough to ensure a place for rhetoric in religious training if Cassiodorus had not created a system that made minimal intellectual demands and was enforced by the discipline of monastic life.
Born in southern Italy around 480, Cassiodorus was well educated himself and held high office in Ravenna under the Ostrogothic kings at the same time as Boethius. But after the victories of the Greek Belisarius he withdrew to a monastery of his own founding at Vivarium in the toe of Italy. This establishment was remarkable for the emphasis it placed on the preservation of texts, both Christian and secular, and on the education of its monks. In addition to collecting, editing, copying, and commenting on texts, Cassiodorus composed, around 551, a work called Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum, or Introduction to Divine and Human Readings.4 It became a basic reference work and educational handbook for centuries and was to be found in almost every medieval library. Cassiodorus addresses his monks about the importance of secular studies as follows:
We can understand much in sacred literature as well as in the most learned interpreters through figures of speech, much through definitions, much through dialectic, much through the science of arithmetic, much through music, much through the science of geometry, much through astronomy; it is thus not unprofitable in the book which follows to touch briefly upon the elements of instruction laid down by secular teachers, that is, upon the arts and sciences, together with their divisions, in order that those who have acquired knowledge of this sort may have a brief review and those who perhaps have been unable to read widely may learn something from the compendious discussion. Beyond any doubt, knowledge of these matters, as it seemed to our Fathers, is useful and not to be avoided, since one finds this knowledge diffused everywhere in sacred literature, as it were in the origin of universal and perfect wisdom. When these matters have been restored to sacred literature and taught in connection with it, our capacity for understanding will be helped in every way. (Institutiones 2.27.1)
Clearly, many of Cassiodorus’s monks had little or no education in such things as grammar or rhetoric, while he himself regarded some knowledge of those subjects as essential for the understanding of the Scriptures. The knowledge he expected, however, was of a very limited sort. In the second book, after a short chapter on grammar based on the standard work of Donatus, he turns to rhetoric, which is treated in hardly greater detail (2.2.1–17). Sources cited are Cicero’s On Invention and On the Orator, Quintilian, Augustine, Martianus, and two of the Minor Latin Rhetoricians, Fortunatianus and Victorinus. Although Cassiodorus had earlier mentioned figures of speech as a subject common to grammar and rhetoric (2.1.2), his discussion of rhetoric is chiefly devoted to summaries of stasis theory and rhetorical argumentation. Thus its logical side is emphasized, but nothing is done to illustrate how this knowledge can be applied to the study of the Scriptures or the teaching of Christianity. The barren nature of the account of rhetoric in all the early medieval encyclopedias is seen in their failure to adapt rhetorical theory to its commoner uses of their time: preaching, panegyric addresses to rulers, and the writing of poetry. Their interest was in preservation of some memory of rhetoric as it had been earlier taught and used.
Boethius was mentioned in Chapter 4 as an important figure in the transmission of philosophical rhetoric to the Middle Ages, but his system of rhetoric deserves more attention here both because of its intrinsic qualities and because it became authoritative among scholastic teachers in the later Middle Ages. Boethius was born in 480, the same year as Cassiodorus, to a noble Roman family, and like Cassiodorus held high office under Theodoric, Ostrogothic king of northern Italy, delivering panegyrics at court and speaking in what passed for a senate. In 522 he was accused of conspiring against the king on behalf of the eastern emperor, was imprisoned, and in 524 was executed. In The Consolation of Philosophy, written in a combination of prose and poetry, he eloquently imagines the visit of Philosophy to him in prison and the consolation that she offered. It had been the boast of classical orators that they could bend the most stubborn heart, but Boethius does not address his eloquence to Theodoric or to his friends at court, as Seneca the Younger, for example, had done when exiled five hundred years earlier. Like Socrates in Phaedo he prepares himself for death. As did many others in late antiquity, he turns from civic life to the contemplation of eternal life. We have seen that his friend Cassiodorus withdrew from public to monastic life, and Gregory the Great, fifty years later, also laid down office in Rome for the cloister.
Boethius was one of the last Romans to know Greek well and to have access to a library of Greek philosophical literature. His introductions, translations, and commentaries were the source of knowledge of Aristotelian logic, including the topics, throughout the Middle Ages. His most important work on rhetoric is the fourth book of De Topicis Differentiis,5 a title that might be translated On Topical Differentiae, differentiae being the basis of categorization in logical divisions of a question. The first three books of this work discuss dialectical topics; book four extends consideration to rhetoric. The main sources are Aristotle’s Topics, Cicero’s On Invention and Topics, and a work on topics by the late Greek philosopher-sophist Themistius. Boethius’s objective is to identify the place of rhetoric within a theory of knowledge, to distinguish it from dialectic, and to catalogue rhetorical topics. The result is a theoretical discussion of philosophical interest rather than a practical handbook. He claims (1206c26) that there is no “tradition from the ancient authors on this subject,” but that is not entirely true. He apparently had no knowledge of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and of the prolegomena being composed by Greeks as introductions to Hermogenic rhetoric, but he could have found the subject discussed in Quintilian’s Institutio.
Boethius distinguishes dialectic from rhetoric on several grounds. Dialectic examines only a general thesis; rhetoric investigates hypotheses that involve particular circumstances. Dialectic is restricted to question and answer; rhetoric constructs a continuous discourse. Dialectic uses complete syllogisms; rhetoric is content with enthymemes in which one proposition is omitted. In dialectic, one person states a thesis and another, the questioner, judges the argument; in rhetoric the judge is someone other than an opponent. Boethius’s description of an enthymeme as a truncated syllogism helped make that the standard view in later times. His failure to differentiate rhetoric from dialectic, which is limited to logical argument, on the basis of the use of ethos and pathos in rhetorical persuasion is a major weakness, with serious implications for some later discussions of invention. It is another sign of his lack of knowledge of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, or his neglect of such major Latin works as Cicero’s On the Orator and Quintilian’s treatise. It was perhaps an oversight, since subsequently (1208c6–8) he defines the work of rhetoric as to teach and to move, and one of the few examples of the use of a topic he cites is the argument that Catiline plotted against the state because he was a person marked by the baseness of vices (121b11). There is no recognition, however, of the character and authority of a speaker as important features of rhetoric but not of dialectic, or that the emotions might be moved in any other way than by argument.
Boethius’s view of rhetoric is summed up in the following paragraph:
The genus of rhetoric is knowledge. There are three species of rhetoric: judicial, epideictic, and deliberative. The matter is the political question, which is called a “case.” The parts of this matter are issues (i.e., forms of stasis). The parts of rhetoric are invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Its instrument is discourse. The parts of the instrument are exordium, narration, partition, confirmation, refutation, and peroration. Its work is to teach and move. The one who does this work (i.e., the agent) is the orator. Its function (or end) is to speak well, sometimes to persuade. (1211b18–28)
The latter point had been explained earlier (1208c22–33): Boethius distinguishes an internal end, “within the orator,” of having spoken well and an external end, “within another,” as having persuaded an audience. Much of the rest of the book is devoted to explication of the topics useful in various forms of stasis. Boethius’s discussion, brief as it is, is beautifully systematic. It is not surprising that it appealed to the scholastics of Paris in the thirteenth century, when the work became the standard text on rhetoric.
A fourth person who contributed to the survival of some knowledge of classical rhetoric in the early Middle Ages was Isidore of Seville (ca. 570–636). He was the author of a vast work entitled Origines, or Etymologiae, which, like the works of Martianus and Cassiodorus, served as an encyclopedia of ancient learning through the following centuries. It outlines the trivium and quadrivium in the first three books. The brief account of rhetoric (2.1–22)6 is based on that in Cassiodorus and is really a series of snippets on various subjects with little organization. The longer chapters are on stasis theory, the syllogism, and figures of speech and thought. A chapter on law (2.10) is inserted between the discussion of the syllogism and that of style and implies that Isidore thought rhetorical invention was useful in the courts of his time. Isidore was perhaps writing primarily for the education of the Spanish episcopacy, which was involved in legal and political decision making to a greater extent than elsewhere.7
Classical rhetoric as understood in the early Middle Ages found a limited practical application in a number of oral and written forms. Much of the preaching was then of a very simple sort, but in major ecclesiastical or political centers there was need for a preacher to demonstrate knowledge of theology, biblical exegesis, and perhaps some rhetorical skill. The Second Council of Vaison in 529 extended the right to preach from bishops to priests and provided that if no priest were available, a homily by one of the Fathers was to be read by a deacon. Augustine’s treatise On Christian Learning was an important work in establishing the tradition of homiletic preaching, but its influence was not great before the Carolingian Age. A more widely read work, but one that contributed to reducing the role and influence of rhetoric, was the Cura Pastoralis, or Pastoral Care, by Gregory the Great (pope 590–604). It became a basic handbook of church administration. Although Gregory stresses the importance of preaching and of adapting a sermon to the congregation, he restricts his remarks to the content of sermons and says nothing about their rhetorical qualities.8 Gregory had held high office in Rome, served as an ambassador to Constantinople, played a political role as pope, and encouraged missionary activity. He himself wrote a highly rhetorical Latin, but his attitude toward classical literature was negative, as seen in a celebrated letter rebuking Bishop Desiderius for teaching grammar and poetry (Epistles 11.54).
Before the Carolingian period, rhetoric was studied with a few private teachers and in some monastic schools, which were open to the public but were primarily intended to train those entering the life of the Church. Discussions of stasis theory and forms of argument, like the syllogism, overlapped with dialectic and could serve as an introduction to theological disputation for those who became involved in that activity. The definitions of rhetoric given in the encyclopedias and by Boethius associate it with civic life, and especially with legal procedures, which chiefly took the form of hearings before a civil or ecclesiastical official, and both the judge and the petitioner needed some knowledge of law, of public speaking, and of argumentation. The best picture of the practical uses of judicial rhetoric in the sixth century, as well as the dangers and disruptions on all sides, can be found in History of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, completed in 594.9 To cite one example, Gregory gives (5.18) a full account of the trial of Praetextatus, bishop of Rouen, before an ecclesiastical court. Although no lengthy addresses were permitted, application of stasis theory and rhetorical forms of argument are evident.10 Another application of rhetoric was in the addresses of ambassadors sent back and forth between warring kings and between officials of the Church. Our knowledge of public address in the early Middle Ages is rather limited; it is likely that there was more occasion for it than can be documented from extant sources. It is, however, significant that from the end of the fifth century to the beginning of the Renaissance no one in western Europe, in contrast to the situation in the East, seems to have acquired fame as a civic orator.
Progymnasmata, the systematic exercises in composition, were known in the West in the early Middle Ages. Some teachers may have known the discussion in the second book of Quintilian’s Education of the Orator. The handbook of progymnasmata attributed to Hermogenes was translated into Latin by the grammarian Priscian around A.D. 500; it is said to be found with other works of Priscian in numerous manuscripts and thus may have been widely used.11 It describes how to write fables, narratives, chrias, encomia, comparisons, personifications, and other types of composition, and early medieval writers were certainly familiar with these forms. Fables of the sort attributed to Aesop were known from the earlier Latin collections of Babrius and Phaedrus, and the reading and writing of fables in prose and poetry was popular throughout the Middle Ages. Exercises in narrative and personification would have been useful in the training of a historian like Gregory of Tours, and exercise in encomia for praise poetry, which is found in all periods. Latin poetry in late antiquity had required the application of a thorough knowledge of rhetoric and had exploited rhetorical genres in the composition of panegyrical poetry and principles of arrangement and style in all forms of composition. Throughout the Middle Ages poetry remained a major field for rhetoric. Important rhetorical poets whose works have survived include Ausonius and Claudian in the fourth century and Sidonius Apollinaris in the fifth. This tradition continued even in the darker days that followed. The best example from the late sixth and early seventh century is Venantius Fortunatus, who composed panegyrical poetry with considerable competence at the court of the Merovingian kings.12
Glimpses of the role of rhetoric in Britain in the seventh and eighth centuries can be found in the writings of the Venerable Bede (673–735). His homilies show how he applied a knowledge of rhetoric to preaching, but the only one of his works to discuss rhetoric directly is a small book entitled On Tropes and Figures.13 It was intended to help readers of the Bible identify these devices, and the illustrations are entirely biblical. Bede’s sources were Donatus and Cassiodorus.
More interesting are references to speech in Bede’s great Ecclesiastical History of the English People.14 Missionary preaching is seen in Bede’s description of the arrival in Britain in 597 of the monk Augustine, who became the first archbishop of Canterbury. The pagan king Ethelbert gave the missionary a hearing in an open field on an island (1.25), and Bede vividly describes how Augustine and his company advanced to meet the king, singing the litanies and preceded by a cross of silver and a painted image of Christ. All then sat down, and Augustine preached “the word of life” to the king and his household. Bede apparently had no sources about what Augustine said, though he does quote the reply in which the king refuses to abandon the traditions of his people but grants Augustine the necessities of life and freedom to preach. The later missionary activities of Wilfrid in Frisia are also described by Bede (5.19). Some additional information on missionary preaching in the north in this period can be found in saints’ lives and letters, such as those of Boniface. It seems clear that the rhetoric resembled that of the early Christians, with reliance on claims of authority and external means of persuasion.
An occasion for debate was provided by the synods of the Church, such as that at Whitby in 664 when Bishop Colman of the Scots contended against the same Wilfrid, advocate for Bishop Agilbert of the West Saxons, on the true date for Easter, with King Osway as judge. Bede gives a version of the speeches on both sides (3.25), and one can see that Wilfrid in particular had considerable skill in argumentation. The king reduces the question to the issue of whether Saint Columba, who had brought Christianity to Scotland, had any special authority in his date for Easter to match that of Saint Peter, which Wilfrid had invoked. Bishop Colman has to admit he has none, and the king declares that Wilfrid has prevailed and orders the Church to observe the orthodox date for Easter.
Bede himself never seems to put a very high value on eloquence. As a Christian, he doubtless trusted in the power of the spirit to work belief in the truth. He did, however, value learning, in which he would have included the liberal arts and some secular literature. For example, he describes how (4.2) Theodorus, in 669 the first archbishop to be accepted by all the English Church, encouraged the liberal arts and how he himself as abbot at Jarrow played a major part in educational efforts in Northumberland. Study of rhetoric declined, however, in Britain during the next two hundred years, perhaps partly because of the austere influence of Benedictine monks.15
The political map of Europe was changed in the late eighth century by the military conquests in France, Germany, and Italy of the Frankish king known to history as Charlemagne, “Charles the Great,” who was eventually crowned in Rome as the first “Holy Roman Emperor” on Christmas day 800. He could not reverse the decentralization of government, but he did control the power of the nobles, maintained a degree of law, raised the standard of living, and improved education. As a result, the ninth and tenth centuries in France and Germany saw a modest cultural renaissance from the Dark Ages in art, learning, and literature. Many of the best surviving manuscripts of the Latin classics were made in this period, using the new, easily readable minuscule script, and new writings on rhetoric appeared that continued to draw on the classics but began to adapt the tradition to the needs of the times.
In 781, Charlemagne invited Alcuin, called Albinus in Latin (ca. 732–804), to take charge of the Palace School at Aachen in Germany. Alcuin had been trained in Britain by successors of Bede, and brought a tradition of ancient learning that had languished on the continent. He not only taught many individuals at Charlemagne’s court but seems to have contributed to De Litteris Collendis, the emperor’s mandate encouraging verbal education, issued about 795.16 The objective of the mandate was to encourage churches and monasteries to provide instruction in grammar and rhetoric so that individuals could attain their full capacity to read and understand the holy writ. Even among ecclesiastics the level of literacy was low; a literate clergy for the future was certainly a major goal, but Charlemagne was doubtless concerned also for the education of future officers of the imperial administration. Instruction in grammar was the primary aim, but the mandate mentions “figures, tropes, and other things like them commonly found in the sacred writings.” Although no specific provisions were made for enforcement of the mandate, it contributed to improved educational opportunities offered by the Church. Eventually monastic schools including Bec in Normandy and Bobbio in Italy and cathedral schools including Chartres and Rheims in France became major educational institutions. Rhetoric did not recover its old influence, but it had an established place as a link between grammar and dialectic, which the controversial needs of the Church gradually elevated into the most important of the liberal arts in the later medieval period.
Toward the end of his life Alcuin wrote his Disputation on Rhetoric and on Virtues in the form of a dialogue between himself and Charlemagne.17 Though rather little read in succeeding centuries, this work is important as the first attempt to consider the secular uses of rhetoric in the Middle Ages. In the opening pages Charlemagne points out that the strength of the art of rhetoric lies entirely in dealing with civil questions. He himself is involved in such matters on a daily basis and he would therefore like Alcuin to open to him “the gates of the rhetorical art of dialectical subtlety.” In what follows Charlemagne asks brief questions and Alcuin replies, with agreement by the king and sometimes further comments. Although the dialogue probably never took place in this form, it is likely that Alcuin had discussed the need for instruction in rhetoric with Charlemagne and knew he would approve. The practical utility of the subject is mentioned again at the end of section 3, and Alcuin has specifically adapted the judicial rhetoric of antiquity to contemporary conditions at some points.18 It is possible, however, to read the work as an effort by Alcuin to encourage Charlemagne to recreate a system of legal procedure resembling that of Roman times. Although the distinction of three kinds of oratory is made (§ 5), the actual discussion is limited to judicial rhetoric. That rhetoric had application to preaching, letter writing, or poetic composition is not mentioned.
The dialogue gives a brief systematic account of rhetorical invention derived from Cicero’s On Invention, supplemented with material from the handbook of Julius Victor for subjects not discussed by Cicero. In contrast to Boethius, Alcuin stresses the function of character and authority in persuasion (see, e.g., § 26). One brief passage on sophistic discourse (§ 35) is inserted to show the absurdities to which dialectical controversy could be reduced. Such controversy had apparently become a fashion in the court, foreshadowing the development of scholasticism. On the subject of memory Alcuin quotes Cicero (§ 39) but was unaware of mnemonic systems.19 He has considerably more to say about delivery (§§ 41–43), which had been neglected by previous medieval writers,20 revealing that public address had some importance in his time, and he recommends practical exercises in speaking. Charlemagne replies that it seems to him the young should, from an early age, be practiced in the kind of speaking that is important in civil cases and secular business. This may mean that Alcuin had reintroduced declamation into rhetorical studies and is here attributing approval of it to Charlemagne. After surveying the five parts of rhetoric, Alcuin concludes with a brief consideration of the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance, also based on Cicero and here recommended as a good subject for practice in speaking (§ 44). Thus, without expressly noting it, some material for panegyric is provided and Alcuin can be read as commending qualities of the ideal ruler in his patron.
A second important writer on rhetoric in the Carolingian period was Hrabanus Maurus (778–856), a student of Alcuin. He was German in origin and became abbot of Fulda, near Frankfurt, where he wrote a handbook of church liturgy and practice for Germans entering the priesthood. The third book of this work, De Clericorum Institutione, or On the Education of Clerics, is the major treatment of preaching in the early Middle Ages.21 There are first short chapters on each of the liberal arts. That on rhetoric (3.19) points out that it is useful not only for civil questions but for the ecclesiastical discipline, and stresses that it should be part of the trivium of introductory studies but not allowed to take up the attention of an adult preacher. What follows (3.27–39) consists largely of excerpts from Augustine’s On Christian Learning in the order of Augustine’s text, including the account of the three kinds of style and the duties of the orator, with borrowings from Cassiodorus and Gregory the Great. Most preaching was, of course, homiletic, but an example of a panegyric sermon survives in Hrabanus’s Encomium of the Holy Cross.
Adaptation of classical rhetoric to medieval needs was more extensively attempted by a German monk at the monastery of St. Gall named Notiker, probably to be identified as Notker Labeo who lived from around A.D. 950 to 1022. He was the author of a New Rhetoric, a short treatise that reorganizes traditional classical doctrine in an original way, illustrates it from Scripture and contemporary life, and provides terminology in German for monks with a weak understanding of Latin.22 In the preface, Notiker, who had translated Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology and Mercury into German, laments the loss of “Rhetorica” in allegorical terms: “It is difficult to describe her as she was, for much time has passed since she ceased to be.” He outlines a cyclical theory of the history of rhetoric, beginning with an original natural eloquence, then (throughout the classical period) the reign of “her artificial daughter,” and finally, after that became extinct, the return of natural eloquence in his own age.23 The time, he thought, was ripe for a new succession as he will present it, which is to take the form of the study of the “material” of rhetoric and of the “art” of controversial speech. Notker envisioned rhetoric as broadly concerned with resolution of any controversy. Its goal is to reconcile differences, to reach consensus on wise policy, and to demonstrate who is worthy of appointment to civil and religious office. Although the latter point is most unusual, envisioning as it does speeches praising candidates for office, these goals are, of course, the judicial, deliberative, and epideictic functions of traditional rhetoric. Notker regarded rhetoric as applicable to monastic activities in writings, studying, and communal relationships, as well as in aiding understanding of the diverse kinds of learning for which a monastery was responsible.24 For all the intrinsic interest of his work, it seems to be unique in its conceptions and was little known outside St. Gall.
There were a number of other significant figures in the revival of classical rhetoric in the Carolingian period, too many to be discussed in this survey. A better knowledge of Ciceronian rhetoric was a goal of some teachers, who sought out better texts and made new, improved copies. Servatus Lupus of Ferrières is an example in the ninth century.25 He owned a partial text of Quintilian and wrote to the pope in search of a complete version. In the tenth century Gerbert of Reims, who became Pope Sylvester II in 999, obtained texts of On the Orator, Topics, and orations of Cicero and revived the practice of declamation in his school.26
Latin survived, in what is called “Vulgar Latin,” as a spoken language in Italy well into the Middle Ages and with it some study of the verbal arts of the classical period. Adaptation of these to Italian was not difficult. As mentioned earlier, civic life resumed in Italian cities in the ninth and tenth centuries, creating practical needs for secular speech and writing. Conversely, Italian scholars did not develop the consuming interest in dialectic and systematic theology that came to dominate study of the liberal arts in northern Europe.
An Italian of peculiar interest in the history of rhetoric was Anselm of Besate (ca. 1000–1060), who had been trained in secular rhetoric and around 1047 wrote a work entitled Rhetorimachia, or The Battle of Rhetoric, in three books.27 Anselm had a personality similar to that of some of the later Italian humanists: he has much to say in praise of his learning, morals, and achievements, and he shows himself to be ambitious, combative, and touchy. Rhetorimachia takes the form of an invective against the rhetorical ignorance and moral failings of his cousin Roti-land and a defense of Anselm’s own learning and morality. He calls the work a controversia (like those in Roman schools) and presents it as a model of judicial rhetoric based on teachings of the late Latin grammarian Servius, Cicero, Quintilian, Victorinus, Grillius, and Boethius. In the first book he attacks the form and style of a letter from Rotiland on the basis of rhetorical principles and the validity of Rotiland’s claim to understand rhetoric better than he himself does, and he ends by attacking Rotiland’s claims to moral virtue. The second book begins with a dream in which Anselm sees the allegorical figures of Dialectic, Rhetoric, and Grammar in Elysium; they beg him to return to earth since without him their skills will not be known to human beings. The rest of Book 2 is a defense against moral charges imagined to have been made against Anselm by Rotiland. The third book is an attack on Rotiland’s character and ends with an epilogue in which Anselm claims that his work has illustrated on a small scale the extensive teaching of the rhetorical authorities of the past. The work seems to have had little or no influence on later rhetorical writing, but it provides a vivid glimpse of how one scholar viewed the uses of speech and writing in eleventh-century Italy.
Classical rhetoric was primarily an oral art that taught how to compose and deliver a speech before a living audience. Although these conditions existed to a limited extent in medieval Italy, the use of the art of persuasion in writing, especially in petitions, letters, and archival documents was somewhat more important. In the eleventh century revival of interest in and knowledge of Roman law began to overshadow rhetoric in the study of civic or ecclesiastical communication. Justinian’s Digest, unknown in western Europe in the early Middle Ages, became an important influence on jurisprudence. Twelfth-century Bologna produced Irnerius, who first taught rhetoric and the other arts but later became the greatest medieval authority on Roman law. To meet the needs of lawyers, notaries, and ecclesiastical officials, the discipline of rhetoric turned to creation of a rhetorical art of letter writing, known as the dictamen or ars dictaminis.
Hierarchical, literate societies around the world develop polite conventions for address, used in court ceremonial and in letters. The earliest examples can be found in political and commercial correspondence in the Near East in the second millennium B.C. It was important to use the correct title in addressing a superior, to put the name of the person claiming higher status first, whether addressee or writer, and often to include the hope that the recipient was well and assure him of the goodwill of the writer. Similar conventions can be found in ancient Greek letters, where the salutation was sometimes given further rhetorical development. The most familiar examples are the opening lines of the epistles of Saint Paul; for example, “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 1:1–2).
Greek and Latin rhetorical treatises, concentrating on judicial oratory, usually omit discussion of the rhetoric of letters; the chief exceptions are short passages in Demetrius’s Greek work On Style (§§ 223–35) and in the late Latin handbook of Julius Victor (ch. 27). There are, however, several short Greek handbooks devoted to classifying kinds of letters and giving examples of how to write them;28 these were probably used in training scribes in the East. Something like them may once have existed in Latin, but formal letter writing was probably largely learned by imitation of model letters. The Middle Ages put high value on respect for rank and the use of the right words in written or oral formal address. Extensive correspondence was carried on by the papal court, the courts of rulers and nobles, scholars, and individuals seeking privileges or redress of wrongs. To be effective, such letters had to observe the conventions expected at the time and be well written. To help meet this need, medieval teachers developed a new kind of rhetorical instruction, the rhetorical art of letter writing known as dictamen (from Latin dictare, meaning to dictate a letter to a scribe).29 Some of the later dictaminal works were written in verse, presumably to encourage memorization.30
Formal study of dictamen seems to have begun first in the school of the monastery of Monte Cassino in southern Italy, and its first great teacher was apparently Alberic, who lived around the middle of the eleventh century. Alberic’s Flowers of Rhetoric deals primarily with ornamentation of the style of letters, his Breviarium deals with the content and form, including the use of prose rhythm.31 In the twelfth century, dictamen, like law, was taught in the University of Bologna. Classical rhetorical precepts about the parts of an oration and figures of speech as found in the classical Latin rhetorical handbooks were adapted into a standard five-part epistolary structure: the salutatio, or greeting, with the names and titles of the addressee and writer in the proper sequence; the captatio benevolentiae, or exordium, designed to make the reader attentive, receptive, and well-disposed; the narratio, explaining the facts and situation; the petitio, or specific request, demand, or announcement; and a relatively simple conclusio. Alberic gives most attention to the first two parts.
Dictamen was primarily concerned with the conventions of diplomatic and legal correspondence, both civil and ecclesiastical. The papal court in particular sought high standards of accuracy and dignity in letters issued and received there. There was thus considerable demand for persons trained in the proper forms of communication, and the art was taught in schools and universities and described in numerous handbooks. There were also catalogs of titles to be used in addressing recipients as well as “formularies,” or collections of commonplaces for use in letters, and like Greek handbooks of progymnasmata, works on dictamen often included models for imitation. This is true, for example, of the treatises of Adalbertus Samaritanus and of Hugh of Bologna, two of the most famous writers on dictamen in the early twelfth century. About the middle of the thirteenth century ars dictaminis, as a study at the University of Bologna, was replaced by ars notaria, concerned with how a notary should draw up legal, commercial, and diplomatic documents; this included dictaminal rules but was legally oriented. In the fourteenth century Peter de Labrancha, captain of the Commune of Bologna, assembled the people and announced that rhetoric was indispensable to states and people, but had ceased to be studied in the university. He was, therefore, appointing a scholar named Bartolinus to a chair in rhetoric at a salary of thirty pounds a year. He was to give two lecture courses a year on Rhetoric for Herennius and teach dictamen and public speaking, “so that both commoners and the literate and any person at all might learn the art from him.”32 Meanwhile, the study of dictamen had begun also in France, where a more artificial style was encouraged,33 and in England, where it was introduced by Peter of Blois to the curriculum at Oxford in the late twelfth century and later studied as an aid to English composition.34
Although the handbooks of dictamen were devoted to letter writing, they often defined that art broadly as the art of writing and distinguished several genres, including qualitative poetry, accentual poetry, and rhythmical prose, before concentrating on the latter as appropriate in letter writing. Ever since Aristotle, writers on rhetoric had recognized that good prose should be rhythmical. Beginning in late antiquity, however, feeling for the quantity of long and short syllables, the basis of meter in classical Greek and Latin, waned and was replaced by an increased perception of stress accent in words, as found in modern poetry. Patterns of stress accent then became the basis of a new system of prose rhythm, replacing the quantitative system described by Cicero and Quintilian. This new system of prose rhythm is called the cursus; it involves rhythmical flow of stress on certain syllables at the end of a phrase, clause, or sentence, and its three main forms can be illustrated by the English phrases “hélp and defénd us,” which is cursus planus; “góverned and sánctified,” which is cursus tardus; and “púnished for our offénses,” which is cursus velox. First developed in Latin, the cursus was imitated in the formal prose of English and other languages in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance; it is, for example, a feature of the style of the King James Version of the English Bible.35
Although the dictamen is the most distinctive development of Italian medieval rhetoric, the circumstances of life in Italian cities required a variety of forms of public address; these included funeral orations, speeches for academic occasions, and other kinds of epideictic, as well as speeches by ambassadors and some judicial oratory. Writings on rhetoric in the thirteenth century included models for such speeches and rules for their composition.36 Guido Faba (ca. 1190–1244), author of an important handbook of dictamen, also wrote model letters and speeches,37 and model speeches can be found in other works intended for instruction of city officials.38 One of the more interesting works is the Rhetorica Novissima (1235) by the eccentric and aggressive Boncompagno of Signa, modestly intended as a replacement for Cicero.39 It consists of thirteen short “books” on the origin of law, the parts of rhetoric, exordia, narratives, arguments, panegyric and invective, and memory. Much of it is in the form of question and definition. Although the work applies to letter writing, the material would be useful to an advocate in a court of law. Boncompagno had earlier compiled a collection of model salutations for letters and also a Rota Veneris, or Wheel of Venus, which is a manual on how to write love letters. Another sign of thirteenth-century Italian interest in judicial rhetoric is the Ars Arengandi, or Art of Haranguing, by Jacques de Dinant, who was apparently a monk and teacher of rhetoric in Bologna in the late thirteenth century.40 It consists of a short introductory poem and extracts from Rhetoric for Herennius on the parts of rhetoric and the form of judicial oratory. Dinant also wrote on dictamen and composed the first full-scale commentary to Rhetoric for Herennius. Brunetto Latini (1220–94), teacher of Dante, wrote a treatise in French on the liberal arts, called Trésor41 and translated into Italian portions of Cicero’s On Invention and three of Cicero’s speeches. His works mark the beginning of the study of rhetoric in the vernacular languages.
The teaching of technical rhetoric in Italy in the later Middle Ages is an important antecedent for the flowering of rhetoric in Italy in the Renaissance. The humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries added their great enthusiasm for classical models and their acquaintance with many more texts to a living art of speaking and writing that had already adapted some features of Ciceronian rhetoric to contemporary needs.
The eleventh and twelfth centuries in France were in many ways the high point of medieval culture: the period of the greatest achievements in art and architecture, of the foundation of the University of Paris, of the flowering of scholastic philosophy, and of original works of vernacular literature.42 As a result of the Norman Conquest of Britain in 1066, there were close cultural ties between France and England, and the revival of rhetorical studies in these countries eventually made itself felt also in Spain.43
Italian study of rhetoric may have contributed to increased interest in the discipline in French schools in the eleventh century. Lanfranc, for example, born in Pavia around 1005, was educated in rhetoric and law in Italy before going to Bec in Normandy to teach. He became acquainted with William the Conqueror and ended his life as archbishop of Canterbury, from 1070 to 1089. But the schools of northwestern France, and especially the cathedral school of Chartres, already were giving serious attention to the trivium and quadrivium when Lanfranc arrived there.44 The leading figure in the rise of Chartres to eminence was Fulbert, bishop from 1006 to 1028. He was followed by other distinguished teachers over the next century and a half, among them Bernard, Bernard’s brother Thierry, and their student, John of Salisbury.45 The fullest discussion of the liberal arts as understood in the Middle Ages is probably that found in the enormous, uncompleted encyclopedia by Thierry, the Heptateuchon, written about the middle of the twelfth century and as yet unpublished.46 Quintilian’s Education of the Orator, though known only in a mutilated text, was unusually popular in Chartres, especially its discussion of elementary education and grammar.47 Quintilian influenced the teaching of Bernard and John and was frequently cited by John in his major works, Metalogicon and Policraticus. Orations of Cicero were copied and extensively studied, and ancient collections of declamations were also read; these included the work by Seneca the Elder and declamations wrongly attributed to Quintilian. There is some evidence that practice of declamation on fictitious themes took place in some schools of the twelfth century.48
Thierry also authored a commentary to Cicero’s On Invention, the only example of such a commentary available in a modern edition,49 and mention of it here provides an opportunity to say something about the commentary tradition in rhetoric.50 Although commentaries were written on the writings of Martianus Capella, Boethius, and a few other texts, Cicero’s On Invention was the overwhelming favorite until the middle of the twelfth century, when commentaries to Rhetoric for Herennius, which was then believed to be by Cicero, began to replace it. The earliest extant commentaries to On Invention are those by Victorinus, dating from the fourth century, and Grillius, written in the early sixth century. These, especially that by Victorinus, were studied throughout the Middle Ages and influenced the content of later commentaries, which began to become common in the early twelfth century. A large number of commentaries composed between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries survive in manuscript, often only a single manuscript of any one work. They originated in the lectures of teachers in schools throughout western Europe, but they have been revised and edited by their authors into a fuller form for readers, either students or other teachers. Some are quite elaborate, with extended prefaces, quotation of a lemma—words or phrases of the text—and detailed explication of it, often with examples or with digressions on related matters of interest to the writer. In addition to these comprehensive running commentaries there are also manuscripts containing On Invention and Rhetoric for Herennius with extensive marginal notes.
The commentaries give a glimpse of how rhetoric was taught in the twelfth century and later and how this knowledge seemed relevant to the times. As John Ward has shown,51 the commentaries provide a kind of general education about the past and the present, including the customs, practices, and literature of the classical past and contemporary times; they discuss canon and civil law, monastic usages, the nature of time, the relationship between the letter of the text and the intent of the author, and how teaching is imparted; they apply rhetorical issues to biblical or religious situations; they provide vocational training for ecclesiastics in memorizing texts, in delivery, in scriptural exegesis, in theological debate, in the writing of letters and documents, in deliberative oratory at councils and synods, in church and state politics, and in the delivery of sermons. Particularly important was their possible application to legal cases involving clerics. Some examples of pleadings in canon law have survived from the twelfth century; they rely on argument from the letter of the law, show the structure of classical judicial oratory, and make some use of figures of speech, but are otherwise of a very simple sort.52
The Boethian tradition of subordinating rhetoric to dialectic had adherents throughout the Middle Ages and grew stronger beginning in the eleventh century. Fulbert of Chartres made a digest of the fourth book of Boethius’s On Topical Differentiae, and Abelard wrote a commentary on it. There were also more pointed critics of rhetoric. In the eleventh century, for example, Onulf of Speyer advised against use of figures of speech and criticized rhetorical debate as inimical to Christian peace and tranquility.53 In the twelfth century, in his versified allegory of the liberal arts, Anticlaudianus, Alan of Lille reduced rhetoric to specious adornment.54 A statute of 1215 describing the curriculum of the young University of Paris indicates that rhetoric was only a subject of lectures outside the standard course and was to be based on Boethius.55
The texts of Aristotle’s logical works in Latin translations were fundamental to teaching philosophy in Paris and elsewhere, and efforts were made to acquire Latin translations of other works by Aristotle that had been heard about from Arabic commentators or were thought to exist in Byzantium. About 1240, Hermannus Allemanus (Herman the German) made a Latin translation of an Arabic commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric attributed to Al-Farabi. Soon thereafter the Rhetoric itself was translated for the first time. This is known as the “old translation,” sometimes attributed to Bartholomew of Messina, though the name of the translator is not known with certainty. Around 1270, William of Moerbeke produced a second translation, which became more widely known and survives in many manuscripts. William, who was born in Flanders, was a member of the Dominican religious order and had spent several years in Greek-speaking areas; he learned the language and was urged by Thomas Aquinas to translate texts of Aristotle. In addition to the Rhetoric he produced rather literal versions of Aristotle’s Politics and Metaphysics and of some Greek commentators on Aristotle. About ten years later Aegidius (or Giles of Rome, as he is sometimes known) wrote a Latin commentary on William’s version. The emphasis of this commentary, along with the groupings of the Rhetoric with other texts in bound manuscript volumes of Aristotle, seems to make it clear that the Rhetoric was read in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries primarily as a moral and political treatise because of the discussion of those subjects in Books 1 and 2 and that it was little used for study of rhetoric.56
Thomas Aquinas (1224–74) was the most famous and influential of the scholastic philosophers of Paris. He can hardly be said to have had much interest in rhetoric, but he was familiar with Cicero’s On Invention, which he quotes in discussing law and justice, natural law, custom, and related subjects.57 In his Summa Theologica 1.9–10 he discusses the use of metaphor in the Scriptures and whether a word in the Bible can have more than one meaning. His conclusion, which was substantially the view Augustine advanced in On Christian Learning, is that metaphor is a device of poetry, which he calls the least of all the sciences, but that sacred doctrine required the truth to be veiled as an exercise for thoughtful minds and as a defense against the ridicule of unbelievers. He also concluded that a word in the Scriptures can have a literal, an allegorical, a tropological or moral, and an anagogical sense, the latter relating to eternal glory. He noted, however, that some theologians combined the allegorical and anagogical into one. Elsewhere in the same work (2.2) he discusses memory, drawing on Rhetoric for Herennius, but his interest in memory, like that of most medieval thinkers, was ethical, not rhetorical.58
The most characteristic contributions to rhetoric in the Latin Middle Ages are the numerous and extensive commentaries to On Invention and Rhetoric for Herennius, the handbooks on letter writing (ars dictaminis), the handbooks on verse composition (ars poetriae), and the handbooks on thematic preaching (ars praedicandi). The first two have been discussed above; this chapter will conclude with brief consideration of the last two of these developments.
Medieval poets, whether writing in Latin or in the vulgate languages, were trained in the liberal arts of grammar and rhetoric in which they learned the use of topics and arguments, the principles of arrangement and amplification, the names and uses of tropes, the figures of speech, the concept of the grand, middle, and plain style, the use of topics and forms of argument, and the conventions of literary genres. To a considerable extent, a work’s ability to apply and vary this teaching, to employ allegory, and to incorporate allusions to biblical and classical literature was what made it seem “literary” to the ears and eyes of medieval audiences. Erich Auerbach’s Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages is a standard discussion of many of these features of composition. Young students of grammar and rhetoric, usually about the age of junior high school students in America today, were practiced in Latin prose composition along the lines of the traditional progymnasmata and in verse composition. They might, for example, be assigned to compose a poem in praise of a swallow. All instruction and all exercises were in Latin. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, handbooks of verse composition began to be composed.59 The versified Art of Poetry by the first century B.C. Roman poet Horace was studied throughout the Middle Ages and provided a model for the later handbooks; they repeat some of its precepts but omit discussion of drama, which takes up a large portion of Horace’s work.
The earliest medieval handbook of poetry to survive is the Ars Versificatoria by Matthew of Vendome, who taught grammar at Orleans and Paris in the mid-twelfth century.60 Matthew wrote for elementary students, providing definitions and topics and discussing the forms of words, the use of figures and tropes, the faults in style, and the overall execution of the subject.
The Poetria Nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, written in the early thirteenth century, was addressed to more advanced students and is written in verse, thus exemplifying some of the principles it lays down.61 Geoffrey begins with some general remarks: the ideas of a poem should be planned out in detail and the parts arranged before being written down; then the poetic art should be applied to clothe the matter with words. In what follows he discusses arrangement; amplification by use of repetition, periphrasis, comparison, apostrophe, digression, and descriptive passages; and ornaments of style, divided into “difficult” ones, such as metaphor and metonymy, and “easy” ones, which are the figures of thought. Then there is discussion of decorum, of the appropriate treatment of persons and things, and of meter. Finally come sections on memory and delivery. The work thus progresses through the rhetorical canons of arrangement, style, memory, and delivery; discussion of invention is spread throughout, chiefly in the form of illustrations of what to say.
A third work is by John of Garland, who criticizes other grammarians for taking too narrow a view of the subject. His treatise is entitled On Art Prosaic, Metrical, and Rhythmical and is divided into the following parts: the doctrine of invention; the method of selecting material; arranging and ornamenting the material; parts of letters and faults in letter writing; amplification and abbreviation; memory; and examples of letters and of metrical and rhythmical composition.62
Among other arts of poetry are the works of Gervaise of Melkey and Eberhard the German.63 Collectively, these works are interesting because they are the creation of an innovative genre of rhetorical teaching; because medieval poets—the authors of the French romans and Chaucer, for example—had studied them and used their techniques, even though the accomplishment of great poets goes beyond anything these handbooks envision; and finally because they foreshadow the development of literary criticism in the Renaissance.
Another medieval activity that recast classical doctrine for its own needs was preaching.64 As mentioned earlier, Augustine’s treatise On Christian Learning had been used by Hrabanus Maurus, and it became widely known in the later Middle Ages, but Augustine’s lofty stylistic concepts were beyond the reach of most medieval preachers. Gregory the Great’s Cura Pastoralis had greater influence but did not contain a theory of preaching. Its most important rhetorical feature was Gregory’s insistence on the importance of adapting a sermon to the audience. Otherwise, in the early Middle Ages there seems to have been a decline in preaching as in other arts. When they revived in the eleventh century, preaching did too. One of the most effective sermons preached in the Middle Ages was that by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095, which precipitated the First Crusade.65 Handbooks of preaching began to appear in the twelfth century, and from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries they were compiled in large numbers. During this period, preaching became a popular art throughout western Europe. This phenomenon can be associated with the rise of new preaching orders, including the Franciscans and Dominicans, the spread of mysticism, the influence of scholasticism, and a generally improved level of culture.66
The early stages of the development are represented by works by Guibert of Nogent (ca. 1084) and Alan of Lille (ca. 1199). Guibert’s Book about the Way a Sermon Ought to be Given, written as an introduction to his commentary on Genesis, discusses the purpose of preaching and the forms of scriptural interpretation, four of which are distinguished: the historical or literal, the allegorical, the tropological or moral, and the anagogical or mystical.67 These four levels are developments of the three levels distinguished by Origen. They first appear in Latin in the fourth century, and, with occasional minor variations, became standard principles of exegesis.68
Alan of Lille has been mentioned earlier as the author of an allegorical poem on the seven liberal arts entitled Anticlaudianus. His treatise On the Preacher’s Art was strongly influenced by Gregory the Great’s Cura Pastoralis.69 Much of it consists of models of how to rebuke sinners, in which Alan seems to follow a systematic method of distinguishing different meanings of a word and supporting each with citation of other scriptural passages. His logical divisions are reminiscent of the topics of rhetoric as found in Cicero or Boethius, but he has nothing to say about the organization of a sermon or about style.
In the early thirteenth century handbooks of “thematic” preaching began to appear, perhaps first in England, with the manuals of Alexander of Ashby and Thomas Chabham of Salisbury.70 These works adapt the parts of the oration as described in Rhetoric for Herennius to the needs of preachers addressing medieval congregations, much as dictaminal works adapted them to the needs of letter writers and recipients. The works reflect an interest in the form and technique of sermons, not just the contents, and foreshadow the “thematic” preaching that became popular at the University of Paris and elsewhere in a few years.71 What is meant by “thematic” preaching is systematic, logical preaching, as opposed to the informality and lack of structure of the homily. The theme takes the form of a quotation from Scripture. The preacher then divides the theme into a series of questions, which may be as numerous as the number of words in the quotation. He takes up each of these divisions in turn, interpreting them by other quotations from Scripture and applying them to the life of his congregation. Richard of Thetford’s Art of Amplifying Sermons (ca. 1245) describes eight modes of amplifying divisions of the theme.
Thematic preaching was not directed at converting the audience. The congregation was assumed to believe in Christ, as the vast majority of people in medieval Europe did. The preacher instructs them about the meaning of the Bible, with emphasis on moral action. Just as dictamen combined features of rhetoric, social status, and law to meet a perceived need in writing letters, so the preaching manuals drew on a variety of disciplines to outline their new technique. Biblical exegesis was one; scholastic logic was another—thematic preaching, with its succession of definitions, divisions, and syllogism can be regarded as a more popular form of scholastic disputation; and a third was rhetoric as known from Cicero and Boethius, seen in rules for arrangement and style. There was also some influence from grammar and other liberal arts in the amplification of divisions of the theme.
Handbooks of preaching were very common in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. No one of them, however, was widely circulated to become the standard work on the subject. An easily available example of a late medieval treatise on preaching, one representative of the genre, is The Form of Preaching by Robert of Basevorn, dating from around 1322.72 Robert’s primary interest is the method of constructing thematic sermons. In the prologue he compares the method of preaching on every subject to logic, which is the method of syllogizing on every subject. He defines preaching as “the persuasion of the multitude, within a moderate length of time, to worthy conduct”; it is thus moral and instructional. There follows a brief consideration (chs. 2–5) about who can be a preacher and a description (6–13) of earlier methods of preaching: those of Christ, Saint Paul, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux. This section ends with a quotation from Pope Leo: “This is the virtue of eloquence, that there is nothing foreign to it that cannot be extolled. Who will hesitate to say that wisdom and eloquence together move us more than either does by itself? Thus we must insist upon eloquence and yet not depart from wisdom, which is the better of the two.” The statement is derived from Cicero’s remarks in the preface to On Invention and consistent with the teaching of Augustine. Indeed, Robert cites Augustine’s formulation of the duties of the preacher, derived from Cicero’s duties of the orator: to teach, to please, and to move.
The body of Robert’s treatise consists of twenty-two “ornaments employed in the most carefully contrived sermons.” These are a strange mixture of devices with antecedents in classical rhetoric relating to invention, arrangement, style, and delivery but all applied to the statement of a theme, its divisions, and the amplification of the divisions. Examples are given, and the treatment of most of the ornaments involves a further process of division. The fourth ornament, for example, is “introduction” (31). It can be formed by authority, by argument, or by both together, and each of these is further divided. Fifteen of the ornaments, Robert says (50), apply to the form or execution of the sermon. The last seven contribute to its beauty. These are coloration, including the rhetorical figures, for which the reader is referred to the fourth book of Rhetoric for Herennius; voice moderation as described by Augustine; gesture as described by Hugh of Saint Victor; humor as described by Cicero; allusion to Scripture; a firm impression, which seems to be systematic repetition of allusion to a scriptural passage; and reflection, or consideration of who is speaking to whom, what is being said, and for how long. Robert’s treatise seems to have been a practical aid to the composition of the kind of sermon approved in his time. He mentions Oxford and Paris as two centers of preaching, each characterized by a slightly different style.
Aristotle divided the subject of rhetoric into that which did not demand a judgment from the audience and that which did. The former was epideictic. The latter either involved judgments of the past, which was judicial rhetoric, or of the future, which was deliberative. The adaptations of classical rhetoric in the later Middle Ages seem to call for a different basis of distinction. For that age, it would be truer to say that the art of rhetoric was regarded as either oral or written. If oral, its main forms were those of preaching and oral controversy, though we have seen in Italy the appearance of opportunities for political and legal oratory, and these probably existed elsewhere as well to some extent. If written, rhetoric could be in either verse or prose. If in verse, it inherited some traditions of ancient epideictic and poetics and manifested itself in topics, tropes, and figures. If in prose, it was best found in the epistle. Thus, the three most characteristic forms of rhetoric in the later Middle Ages were preaching, epideictic poetry, and letters. In none of these areas did theory or criticism make a significant advance; in all three forms systems that were regarded as useful for the times were devised.
Of the three elements in the rhetorical act—speaker, speech, and audience—that of the speaker, characteristic of the sophistic strand of rhetoric, lost ground in the western Middle Ages, though the tradition was preserved in the East. The speech itself, the central focus of the technical or handbook tradition, remained central in western thinking, an attitude probably reinforced by medieval study of grammar and dialectic. Some interest in the audience is demonstrated by writers on dictamen and on preaching. Philosophical rhetoric is represented in the Middle Ages primarily by the view of some thinkers, especially the scholastic philosophers, that rhetoric was a part of dialectic.