21) and of the cook who
appropriated
his boat at
Metz (vi.
Metz (vi.
Cambridge Medieval History - v3 - Germany and the Western Empire
Incidentally he speaks of the utility of certain
geographical books in connexion with sacred study, and of the Church
histories of the fifth-century Greek writers, Socrates, Sozomen, and
Theodoret, which he had induced one Epiphanius to render into Latin ;
we know this translation as the Historia Tripartita.
The end of the first division of the Institutions deals with the
practically useful arts of agriculture (gardening) and medicine. The
second part is a summary introduction to the seven Liberal Arts—they
are the same for Cassiodorus as for Martianus Capella-Grammar,
Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy. The
bibliography is here much scantier than in the first book, but even so, some
works are named and used which we no longer have. We do not, as was
said above, find our author definitely prescribing for his monks the study
of the older poets and historians. What we do find is a recognition of
the usefulness of secular as well as of sacred learning, an authorisation
of the enlargement of the field, an encouragement to make use of all
that could be drawn from sources that might subsequently be opened, as
well as from those that were at hand.
Thus Cassiodorus did his best to provide tools and to indicate the
method of using them. An older contemporary had prepared the
workmen and the field. There is no need to recapitulate here what has
already been said (1. 537 sqq. ) of St Benedict and his Rule. Only it is
clear that, but for his work, that of Cassiodorus would not have outlasted
more than a few generations. The Rule was, it seems likely, in force at
Vivarium itself; but whether this was so or not, and whether or not
St Benedict would have accorded a welcome to the scheme of study
outlined by Cassiodorus, the fact remains that the ideas of the latter were
taken up by the Order and were propagated with more or less activity
wherever the Order settled.
There was a third agent in this same century who was a factor of
immense importance (though, even more clearly than Benedict, an
involuntary factor) in the preservation of ancient learning. This was
St Gregory the Great (+604). Gregory was not a “learned” writer.
He knew (he says) no Greek: it is doubtful if his writings have been the
means of handing down a single reference to an ancient author,-even to
a Christian author of the earliest period. His contempt for secular
studies is more than once expressed; he is even credited (by John of
Salisbury, in the twelfth century) with having burned the library of the
CH. XIX.
## p. 488 (#534) ############################################
488
Africa
Palatine Apollo. Yet, but for Gregory and his mission of Augustine,
there would have been no Aldhelm, no Benedict Biscop, no Bede, no
Alcuin, no opening for the enormously important influence of Theodore
of Tarsus and of Hadrian the Abbot.
But, this great service apart, his voluminous works were, if not in
themselves of great literary value, the progenitors of literature which is
of the highest interest. Alfred translated his Pastoral Care ; Aelfric
drew copiously from his Homilies on the gospels. His Moralia on Job
gave occupation to calligraphers and excerptors in Spain and Ireland.
Above all, his four books of Dialogues formed a model for subsequent
writers of the lives of saints as well as a sanction for that mass of miracle
and vision literature in which so much of the imaginations and hopes of
the medieval peoples is preserved for us.
Thus in the persons of Cassiodorus, Benedict, and Gregory, Italy,
which had provided the world with a great literature, furnished also the
means by which that literature was to be preserved. It was her last
contribution to the cause of learning for many years.
We must turn to the other great fields of western learning, and first
to Africa and Spain.
The existence of a flourishing Latin literature in Africa is generally
realised : the names of Tertullian, Apuleius, Cyprian, Augustine,
Martianus Capella stand out as representative in earlier centuries ;
something too has been said (1. 322) of the less-known writers of the
period of the Vandal kingdom, of Dracontius, almost the last of
Christian poets to treat of mythological subjects, and of those (Luxorius
and others) whose fugitive pieces have been preserved in the Latin
anthology of the Codex Salmasianus. We come now to their successors.
From Verecundus, Bishop of Junca (+552), we have an exposition of
certain Old Testament canticles which are commonly attached to the
Psalter and used in the Church services. In this work Verecundus refers
his reader to the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, to Solinus, and to
a form of the famous Physiologus, that manual of allegorised natural
history which in later times afforded a multitude of subjects to
illuminators and sculptors. From this region and period also comes in
all probability a poem on the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last
Judgment, dedicated to Flavius Felix (an official to whom some poems
in the Salmasian Anthology are addressed). It has been handed down
under the names of Tertullian and of Cyprian. Both attributions are
out of the question. The author, whoever he was, had written other
poems, notably one on the four seasons of the year, to which he alludes.
In the resurrection-poem a singular point of interest is that it shews
traces of obligation to the ancient Apocalypse of Peter.
The two epics of Fl. Cresconius Corippus, the Johannis, produced
about 550, and the De laudibus Justini (minoris), of sixteen years later,
are from the purely literary point of view the most remarkable
## p. 489 (#535) ############################################
Spain
489
achievements of African culture in the sixth century. The first tells the
story of the successful campaign of Johannes the magister militum against
the Moors in 546-8. The other, essentially a court-poem, describes the
accession of Justin and the rejoicings and festivities which accompanied
it. In both, but especially in the Johannis, Corippus has modelled
himself upon the antique with extraordinary fidelity, and with
undeniable success.
One other production, of small extent but appreciable importance,
needs to be noticed before we pass from Africa to Spain. This is a short
continuation (extending to but twelve sections) of the catalogue of
distinguished Church writers, which, begun by Jerome, perhaps on a model
furnished by Suetonius, was continued by Gennadius of Marseilles. An
African writer of about 550—it is thought, Pontianus, a bishop-fur-
nished this small supplement. In the next century we shall find Isidore
of Seville and his friend Braulio carrying on the work, and, a generation
later, Hildefonsus of Toledo, whose outlook is almost confined to his own
country. The succession is then broken off, and it is not until the twelfth
century that similar compilations again come into fashion.
The extinction of the Vandal kingdom in Africa meant the trans-
ference of much literary activity to Spain. There must have been many
like the monk Donatus, of whom Hildefonsus tells us that, seeing the
imminence of the barbarian invasion, he took ship for Spain with about
seventy monks and a large collection of books. Certain it is that
towards the end of the sixth century Africa becomes silent, and Spain
begins to speak.
Perhaps the first writer in our period whose sphere of influence was
Spanish—though it was so by adoption only—is Martin, called of Dumio
and of Bracara (Braga), the latter being the see of which he died
archbishop in 580. Like the great Martin of Tours he was a Pannonian
by birth : but after a pilgrimage to Palestine he chose Galicia and the
Arian kingdom of the Suevi as a field for missionary work. He was
successful in bringing the Suevi to orthodoxy; and he seems to have been
a man of both strong and attractive personality. There is a distinction
about his not very voluminous works. Two of them at least are excerpts
from writings of Seneca, the De officiis and De ira. The first treats of
the four Cardinal Virtues, and is addressed to King Miro under the title
of Formula honestae vitae. It is by far the most widely diffused of
Martin's books. The other (which incidentally helps to fill a lacuna
in the text of Seneca) is of comparatively rare occurrence. Besides these
we have ethical tracts of more definitely Christian complexion, also
dedicated to Miro, principally concerned with pride and humility. A
collection of sayings of the hermits, and another of conciliar canons,
testify to Martin's knowledge of Greek. A brief discourse on the Paschal
question states a complicated problem in a strikingly clear form. But
of all that we have from him, Martin's instruction for simple people
a
CH, XIX.
## p. 490 (#536) ############################################
490
Martin of Bracara
(De correctione rusticorum), addressed to Polemius, Bishop of Asturica, has
aroused the greatest interest in modern times. It is indeed a very
notable example of the way in which the negative and positive sides of
Christian teaching were put before the neophytes of the country districts.
Martin begins by setting forth the view of his time as to the origin of the
heathen gods. They are devils who fell with Lucifer : therefore all
observances which entail any show of reverence towards them are so
many denials of the profession of faith made at baptism. He objects-
vainly, as time has shewn—to the ordinary names of the days of the
week, and to the celebration of the first of January as New Year's day;
and further, to the observing of “ days of moths and mice" (the object
of which was to protect clothes and storerooms from their ravages), to
the naming of Minerva over the web on the loom, the lighting of tapers
by rocks and springs, and many like usages, which we meet with later
in canons of councils and indiculi superstitionum : while over and over
again the question is asked, “Is this consistent with your promise at the
font to renounce the devil and all his works? ” Of the positive side of
the teaching more need not be said than that it is admirably adapted to
its purpose. It is interesting to find that nearly the whole of the matter
recurs in a Homily of Caesarius of Arles (542), as well as in a tract of
the Irish missionary Pirminius of Reichenau (+758), called Scarapsus, and
in the sermon of St Eligius of Noyon which his biographer St Audoen
has either preserved or excogitated. This suggests a question whether
Caesarius or Martin is the original source, or whether both may not be
utilising a form agreed upon perhaps by a synodical authority.
Let it be recorded, lastly, that Martin of Bracara held in reverence
his namesake and fellow-countryman, the saint of Tours, and composed
some interesting verses which were inscribed over the south door of the
great basilica there.
Before the death of Martin, the life of Isidore of Seville (c. 570–636)
had begun. He was beyond question the leading transmitter of knowledge
in his century. In the twenty books of his Etymologiae he brought
together a collection of facts (and fictions) which served as the encyclo-
paedia of the whole medieval period. It was long in his hands : his
friend Braulio of Saragossa could only extract a copy of it, and that in an
uncorrected form, by repeated pleadings extending over more than seven
years. He seems to have been at work on it up to his death, and it is
obviously unfinished. There is neither preface nor peroration; some
sections are unwritten, many references not filled in.
To us its great merit is that it has preserved a number of fragments
of early Latin writers: but to many a generation after Isidore its
practical utility was immense. It was by far the handiest--and in
most cases the only accessible-book in which information about natural
history, geography, antiquities, the origins of arts and sciences, could be
found, whereas the outlines of the seven liberal arts (which occupy the
## p. 491 (#537) ############################################
Isidore's Etymologies
491
first three books), the synopsis of history, the elements of religious
knowledge, the legal and medical sections, useful as they were, could
usually be studied in less compendious form. In the compilation of the
Etymologiae a library of very considerable extent was laid under contri-
bution. Much is derived, no doubt, from hand-books: it is not to be
supposed that Isidore possessed the works of an Ennius, a Cinna, a
Livius Andronicus, all of whom he cites. These passages lay ready to
his hand in the form of excerpts in various grammatical and critical
books, especially in the commentary of Servius on the Aeneid. But,
when due allowance has been made for the use of compilations, it is
apparent that the range of authors with whom he had a first-hand
acquaintance is not despicable. Lucretius, often cited in the later
books (though of course seldom in comparison with Lucan and Virgil),
was known to him. The Histories of Sallust and the Pratum (and some
minor works) of Suetonius are probably the most important of the lost
secular works (excluding manuals of rhetoric and grammar) which he can
be shewn to have used. From the De Republica of Cicero he makes but one
short citation. It is not apparent that he possessed any specimen of the
earliest Christian literature which we do not possess : in his continuation
of the literary biographies of Jerome and Gennadius he tells us of
many theological writers in his own time who are no more than names
to us.
reason.
His knowledge of Greek has been doubted, and, I think, with
The evidence for it is almost confined to citations of Greek
words to furnish etymologies. It cannot be shewn that he either owned
Greek books or translated from Greek authors for the purpose of his
work.
Had he lived long enough to provide the Etymologiae with its
prologue, it is likely enough that after the manner of the elder Pliny
he would have given us the list of the authors on whom he had drawn.
As it is, we have to base our estimate of the extent of his library upon
a document which leaves a good deal to the imagination. We have the
verses which were painted (probably) on the cornices or doors of his
book-presses. Each of these cupboards, in accordance with a fashion
attested by a good deal of archaeological evidence, seems to have been
ornamented with a medallion portrait of a famous author, whose worth
was celebrated in one or more elegiac couplets. The number of sections
or tituli warrants us in reckoning that Isidore owned at least fourteen
and perhaps sixteen presses, and we shall be safe in assuming that at this
date the contents were in book-form (codices) and not rolls (volumina).
Taking the number of books in each press at 30—not an unreasonable
estimate--we reach the very respectable total of 420 or 480 for the
whole collection. As to the contents, the tituli suggest that theology
predominated. The secular writers named are few (jurists and physicians)
and there is nothing to suggest the presence of works now lost. That
a
CH, XIX.
## p. 492 (#538) ############################################
492
Isidore and his friends
a
is no more than natural; the effigy on the book-case represents but
(
a fraction of its contents.
Among the remaining writings of Isidore the books De naturis rerum
and the histories merit special mention. The first is a survey of cosmical
a
phenomena in which, besides extant sources, the Pratum of Suetonius is
employed (as in the Etymologiae). The popular name of the treatise,
Liber rotarum, is derived from the many circular diagrams with which it
was illustrated. In some connexion with it stands an interesting little
poem by the Visigoth king Sisebut (612-620) who had asked Isidore
to write the treatise, and addressed the poem-chiefly dealing with
eclipses—to him, very likely upon receiving the complete book. It is
possible that the poem as we have it is but a fragment of a larger work.
Sisebut was, we see, a patron of letters and may have been a copious
writer, but all that we have from him, besides the poem, is a life of
St Desiderius of Vienne, and a few epistles.
Of Isidore's two historical works the first is a Chronicle of the world,
divided, in a fashion subsequently adopted and popularised by Bede,
into six ages. A brief summary of it is inserted into the fifth book of
the Etymologiae. For the more recent portions of it the Chronicles of
Idatius, of Victor of Tonnensia in Africa, and of John of Biclarum (the
last a Spanish contemporary of Isidore himself) have been utilised. The
other is a sketch of the history of the Visigoths, Vandals, and Suevi.
His commentaries and religious works (with the possible exception of
the Synonyma, the idea of which he says was suggested to him by
a treatise of Cicero) are not important to our present subject.
Isidore's principal friend, Braulio of Saragossa, has left us little
besides letters and a few short biographies in the book De viris illustribus.
He had, however, among his clergy one who ranks as the one considerable
Spanish Latin poet of the century. This was Eugenius, who in 647, in
spite of Braulio's fervent protests, was removed by King Chindaswinth
to preside over the see of Toledo. Chindaswinth, like Sisebut, evi-
dently had some feeling for literature: we find him ordering Eugenius
to produce a readable and orthodox edition of the poems of the Arian
Dracontius, which were then only current in Spain in a mutilated form.
The edition was made, and attained a wide celebrity. Of the works
which it comprised, the Laudes Dei were turned into a Hexaëmeron and
somewhat shortened ; the Satisfactio was abridged and provided with
prefaces in prose and verse, and a conclusion : instead of Gunthamund,
,
Theodosius the younger was made to figure as the recipient.
We have, besides this, an original work of Eugenius, which is the
metrical portion of a collection of his miscellaneous short writings. The
prose half is lost. The poems, in many metres, are for the most part
brief. They deal with all manner of subjects, religious and secular.
Intrinsically they perhaps hardly deserve mention, but there is a notable
fact about them, that they travelled far beyond Spain at an early date.
a
a
a
## p. 493 (#539) ############################################
Julian of Toledo
493
1
Aldhelm uses them in the collection of riddles which he embodied in a
grammatical tract addressed to “Acircius"i (Aldfrid of Northumbria)
before the end of the seventh century. Eugenius died in 657.
A pupil of his, who ultimately succeeded to his see (680–690), Julian
of Toledo, left works upon theology, history, and grammar. In the
first category the book called Prognosticon futuri saeculi was by far the
most celebrated. The three divisions of which it consists--on death, on
the intermediate state of souls and on the final judgment—are made up
to a very large extent of “testimonies" from Scripture and from standard
writers. Cyprian and Origen are the earliest of these, and Gregory the
latest. Augustine is naturally the principal source; Jerome, Cassian,
and Julianus Pomerius complete the list. It was to be expected that
in a country in which Priscillianism had had great currency, and roused
great opposition to the apocryphal literature, Julian should shun all
reference to these writings. As his interesting prefatory letter tells us,
his main object was to present in a collected form the opinions of Catholic
doctors upon the subject he was treating.
The three books De comprobatione sextae aetatis, directed against his
own countrymen (he was of Jewish extraction), are interesting as proving
his acquaintance with Greek patristic literature. He translates passages
from the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius and from the tract of
Epiphanius on Weights and Measures; and, besides these, he makes
considerable quotations from Tertullian. The two books of artikeljeva
(a noteworthy title) consist of attempts to reconcile contradictory texts
of Scripture: they contain no very remarkable citations.
Of more direct interest to us is his history of the rebellion of Duke
Paul against King Wamba (673), written in a less conventional style at
no great length of time after the events it records. The fashion of
writing in rhymed or assonant clauses which is conspicuous in the later
chronicles, e. g. that called of “ Isidorus Pacensis," appears here possibly
for the first time to a marked extent.
The fame of this book was naturally confined to Spain. Not so that
of the Ars grammatica. Both in form and in contents it is remarkable.
The form is that of a dialogue between master and pupil; but, as in
many later grammars, it is the pupil who puts the questions, the master
,
who answers them. Traube's explanation of this fashion is interesting :
he attributes it to a misapprehension. The dialogue form was borrowed
from the Greeks, and with it the initials M and A, which stood for
μαθητής and διδάσκαλος. The accident that the Latin words Magister
and Discipulus have the same initials rendered the inversion of questioner
and answerer an easy one.
In respect of its contents, the Ars Juliani transmits much matter
from older grammarians, Victorinus and Audax, for example. The
1 The a circio of the dedication, says Mazzoni (in Didascaleion 1914), probably
+
“(to the ruler of) north-western (Northumbria). "
means
CH. XIX.
## p. 494 (#540) ############################################
494
St Valerius
illustrative quotations are drawn from secular and Christian poets;
even authorities contemporary with the writer, as Eugenius of Toledo,
are cited. If it be the fact that the grammar was extensively used by
Aldhelm within a very short time after its composition, it may be during
the lifetime of Julian, we have a striking tribute to the reputation it
enjoyed, and a yet more striking evidence of a literary commerce
between Spain and Britain : a commerce of which the traces, liturgical
and other, have yet to be collected and appreciated.
In liturgy, lastly, important reforms of the Toletan Use are attributed
to Julian by his biographer Felix. But details are wanting. In the
range of his activity, but not in the permanence of his achievement,
Julian surpasses Isidore.
An obscure but interesting figure at this period is the Abbot
St Valerius (+ 695) from whom we have some amusing autobiographical
writings. Whether by his own fault, or, as he would have us believe,
by that of his neighbours, Valerius was condemned to a very turbulent
existence. He was continually being hounded out of some retreat in
which he had settled, deceived by his favourite pupils, robbed of his
books, and generally victimised. There is a personal note in his
narratives which engages the attention. They also supply us with
evidence of the existence of at least one rare book in the writer's milieu.
In one of several visions of the next world which he records is an image
which cannot but be derived from a certain Apocalypse of Baruch, now
extant only in Greek and Old Slavonic. The seer, a youth named
Baldarius, is permitted to watch the rising of the sun from close by.
The orb comes up very swiftly and immensely bright; and it is preceded
by a huge bird, red in colour but darker towards the tail, whose function
is to mitigate the intense heat of the sun by flapping its wings. The
bird is the Phoenix, as we learn from Baruch, and, so far as is known
at present, this particular fable is peculiar to Baruch. It is fair to infer
the survival of this rare Apocalypse in Spain in the seventh century:
whether or not under Priscillianist influence, non liquet.
The chain of Spanish writers has now been traced down to the end
of the seventh century, and we have seen evidence of the preservation of
considerable collections of ancient literature, both pagan and Christian,
in the peninsula. Much of this must have had a continuous existence
in the country, but much also must have been imported from Africa
under the stress of invasion. That same stress now fell upon Spain.
The Moorish invasion, culminating in the great defeat of the Christian
arms in 711, put an end to literary enterprise for the time. Spain
dropped out of the race. But she had made one great contribution to
the equipment of European scholarship in the Etymologiae of Isidore.
What is the record of the region which we now call France during
the corresponding period ? The educational apparatus with which she
was provided at the beginning of it was as complete as any country
## p. 495 (#541) ############################################
Venantius Fortunatus
495
>
could shew. The works of an Alcimus Avitus and of a Sidonius
Apollinaris, however exiguous their intrinsic value, are the last links in
an unbroken chain reaching back to the rise of the great schools of
Gaul. After them comes the break.
The sixth century produced two writers of note who mark it in
different ways. Venantius Fortunatus, born in Italy, it is true, but for
.
the best part of his life a resident at Poitiers, is known to the generality
as the author of two hymns, the Pange lingua on the Cross, the Vexilla
regis used on Passion Sunday. We have from him, however, a very large
mass of poetry besides these. His Life of St Martin of Tours in four
books of heroic verse is for the most part merely a paraphrase of the
prose Life and Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus. But his eleven books
of miscellaneous pieces are full of originality and human interest. They
form a chronicle of his friendly relations with the widowed queen of
Chlotar I, St Radegund, and others of that house, as well as with
Gregory of Tours and many prominent churchmen of France. A
considerable number of the poems were sent as letters—thanks for
presents and the like. Others are panegyrics, others descriptions of
pleasant places : yet others are inscriptions designed for churches, such as
commonly form a large ingredient in collections of Christian Latin verse.
The best, however, and those from which we gain the most kindly impres-
sion of the personality of Fortunatus, are those which were called forth
by the deaths of the friends and kindred of Radegund. These are
uniformly entitled Epitaphs, but their length forbids us to suppose
that
they can have been inscribed on tombs. They may have been recited ;
but their real purpose is that of the Consolationes of an earlier time.
They were meant to be circulated in writing among those whom the
death had touched most nearly. These, with his hymns, constitute the
best claim of Fortunatus to be remembered as a writer. Yet his skill in
handling light verse should not pass unmentioned. His abuse of the
river Gers (Egircio, 1.
21) and of the cook who appropriated his boat at
Metz (vi. 8) are quite worth reading.
Upon the whole the notable thing about Fortunatus is his avoidance
of what was becoming a pseudo-classical vein. The form of his poems is
old (the elegiac metre predominates), and rococo ornaments in the
shape of allusions to mythology are not wanting; but we are impressed
by the absence of artificiality, and by the presence of a freshness and
simplicity which we miss in Sidonius and Avitus. The poems prepare
us for a new epoch, while they ha not lost
ach with the old.
Of Gregory of Tours († 594), the other famous writer of this century
and country, it may be said with more truth that he had lost touch with
the old. That is, at any rate, his own opinion. A well-known passage
,
A
in the Prologue to his History of the Franks represents his contempo-
raries as saying, “Alas for our days ! for the study of letters is gone
from among us. " He is, moreover, given to apologising on his own
CH. XIX.
## p. 496 (#542) ############################################
496
Gregory of Tours
account for his "rustic” and incorrect style. This, to be sure, is a
common pose, and it has been held that in Gregory's case it is but
a pose, and that the copyists of his works are responsible for many
of the monstra we encounter in them. Yet can this be so ? does not
the particularity with which he specifies mistakes-false concords, misuse
of prepositions and of cases--go to shew that he at least was in earnest ?
Certainly his self-accusations are borne out by every page of his writings.
He had read some good authors, in particular Virgil; he knew some books
which no longer exist. In a little tract which deals mainly with
astronomy he shews considerable acquaintance with that science, and
quotes a lost chronicler, Julius Titianus. He had, too, a collection of
Latin lyric poetry, which he lent to his friend Fortunatus. And it is
possible (though not very relevant to our present purpose) that he knew
some Syriac: a Syrian (there were not a few then resident in France,
and one became bishop of Paris) helped him to translate the legend of
the Seven Sleepers from Syriac into Latin. This, however, is little
more than a curiosity: Gregory certainly made no use of Syriac
literature. His lament is undoubtedly justified: “ Periit studium
litterarum a nobis. ” The gulf between him and Fortunatus, in respect
of command of correct Latin, is immense.
To dwell upon the value of the Historia Francorum would be quite
out of place here, where we are thinking of Gregory as a link in the
transmission of ancient knowledge. It is more relevant to suggest in
passing a comparison between this and the next national history that
was written-that of Bede; for the slight work of Isidore hardly comes
into consideration. In Gregory we see letters on a level confessedly
low ; in Bede a height has been reached which is rivalled only, in these
centuries, by the best work of the Carolingian Renaissance.
The popularity of Gregory's History in medieval times was far
inferior to that of his hagiological writings, which furnished much
material to the compilers of breviaries and to such writers as Jacobus de
Voragine. Besides the seven which he himself enumerates, dealing with
St Julian of Le Mans, St Martin of Tours, the Martyrs, the Confessors,
and the Anchorites, there is one—the Miracles of St Andrew—which
may be confidently assigned to him, and which is perhaps more
important than any of the others to the historian of Christian litera-
ture. It is our best source for the knowledge of a second or third
century Greek romance, the Acts of Andrew; once eagerly read, but
ultimately condemned by the Church, and only transmitted to us in
fragments, and expurgated epitomes, such as this of Gregory. Not
that Gregory read it in Greek. He had before him, no doubt, a
complete Latin version, made, it is likely, for Manichaeans to read :
since, in Manichaean circles, the apocryphal romances about the
Apostles were adopted as substitutes for the Canonical Acts. Not
long after Gregory's date—it may be even in his lifetime—a complete
## p. 497 (#543) ############################################
Decay of Latin
497
orthodox collection of abstracts of these Acts, with others added to
them, was put together, probably in France, in which the Miracles of
Andrew were incorporated. We know it under the misleading name of
the Apostolic History of Abdias. The investigation of its origin, and
the determination of its text, have not as yet been completely carried
out. As a source of inspiration for artists and romancers it deserves
(though it does not usually obtain) a special recognition among the
literary documents of its time.
I shall be pardoned for passing over the feeble efforts of the
continuators of Gregory's History (the so-called Fredegarius and the
rest) in favour of two writings which attest at once the survival of
a knowledge of Greek in France and an extremely low standard of
culture. The one is known as the Barbarus Scaligeri (from its style
.
and its first editor). It is a Chronicle of the world, rendered from an
almost contemporary Greek original in a fashion and in a Latin of
which it is difficult to exaggerate the badness. The other is a very
similar version, made by the aid of a glossary, of the Phaenomena of
Aratus, and of a Commentary thereon. It can be dated by the fact
that Isidore is used in it, and that Bede uses it. Did we not possess
the Greek original of this extraordinary work, many passages of it
would defy interpretation. The literalness is extreme: 'Apátou
Palvóueva appears as Arati ea quae videntur. This we might perhaps
unravel, but we should be more than ready to suspect corruption in
the phrase “ in quo apud Diodorum” which is the rendering of év tệ
Tipòs Acódwpov, or in this “nihil aliud quorum Eudoxi videntur facere,”
which is the equivalent of μηδέν έτερον των Ευδόξου φαινομένων
TOLNO avta. Nevertheless, absurd as is the interpreter's achievement,
his very attempt is creditable and interesting. We have no clue to
the identity of the man who made it, nor to the part of France in
which he lived.
It has been transmitted to us in more than one copy, as well as in a
revised form due to a scholar of the Carolingian period. The Barbarus
of Scaliger survives in but one manuscript, which is not impossibly the
autograph of the translator.
There is another writer, of southern France, who is the centre of an
unsolved problem-Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. That he must be
reckoned to France seems now to be the accepted view, though the
evidence at command is scanty. An obscure phrase in which he says
th he will set forth “bigerro sermone” the letters of the alphabet, is
taken to contain the name which survives as Bigorre, and to point to the
south-west of France: a plainer indication is his reference to the Gauls
as " nostri. ” Importance is also rightly attached to the fact that Abbo
of St Germain in the tenth century calls him Tolosanus. That he was
a Christian, and a Catholic-not an Arian-may be regarded as certain.
But, though he gives us a great many other details about himself, his
a
C. MED. H. VOL, III. CH. XIX.
32
## p. 498 (#544) ############################################
498
Virgilius Maro Grammaticus
teachers, and his contemporaries, hardly one of them can be taken
seriously.
Upon a first reading of his works (they are wholly devoted to
grammatical subjects, and consist of two series of Epitomae and
Epistles) the reader feels that he is confronted with a piece of pure mystifi-
cation. A striking, but yet fairly typical example of the extravagances
we encounter is the passage in which he describes, on the authority of a
certain Virgil of Asia, the “ twelve Latinities. " The first of these is the
usitata, that in which (ordinary) Latin writings are “inked” (atramen-
tantur). Of the eleven others, ten, it is safe to say, have never been used
either by Virgilius or anyone else. The second, called assena or notaria,
may possibly be intended to mean the Tironian notes ; it employs a single
letter for a whole word. But the lumbrosa, which expands a single word
into four or five, the sincolla, which condenses a whole line into two syl-
lables, and the rest of the series, correspond to nothing in heaven or earth'.
Not only is the vocabulary of Virgilius abnormal; the authors whom
he cites have left no trace anywhere else. There is a Cicero, and a
Horace; there are three Virgils and three Lucans, and so on : but none
of them are identical with those known to fame. There are, too,
numerous grammarians, of whom Aeneas, Galbungus, and Terrentius
are among the most prominent; but what is told of them does not
carry conviction to the mind. Galbungus and Terrentius disputed for
fourteen consecutive days and nights as to whether ego had a vocative.
Regulus of Cappadocia and Sedulius of Rome went without food and
sleep for a similar period while they were discussing the inchoative and
frequentative forms of the verb: three soldiers in the employ of each
were in attendance ready to arbitrate by force of arms if required.
In all, some ninety writers and teachers are named or quoted. Do
they correspond to anything that ever existed? Of late a suggestion
has found favour that they represent an academy which had its head-
quarters at Toulouse, and that the great names of Cicero, Lucan, Virgil
and so on, were adopted by its members, just as Charlemagne and his
friends called themselves David, Homer, Flaccus, and Naso. Perhaps,
it is added, the Carolingian fashion was a conscious imitation of the
Tolosan. If this be the truth of the matter, it is surely very strange
that while we do hear of Virgilius himself before the end of the seventh
century, no single trace of any of his "authorities” has ever been pointed
out. Moreover, he claims a high antiquity and a wide range of influence
for his school of thought: he traces his writers back to the time of
Romulus, nay, even to the days before the Flood. Some of them lived
at Troy, others in Egypt, Arabia, India. The variety, again, of books
which he quotes is large; there are poems, histories, epistles, orations,
as well as works on grammar; far too many-supposing them to be
1 A notion recently broached that Arabic influence is discernible in his nomen-
clature of metres (and numerals) has yet to be sifted.
## p. 499 (#545) ############################################
Date and use of Virgilius
499
real—to have disappeared without leaving some sign. In short, the
complete isolation of Virgilius compared with his pretensions enforces
the belief that his authorities like his Latinities are from first to last
impositions pure and simple. Such imposition—I allude to the in-
vention of authorities—was an expedient not unknown to the world
of grammarians and scholiasts. The tract of the African Fulgentius
(cent. vi. ) De dubiis nominibus contains, side by side with genuine passages
from Plautus and other early writers, quotations which, it is agreed, are
fabrications of Fulgentius's own. A scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid helps
himself over the difficulties of the poem (and they are many) by
explanatory tags which he fathers upon Propertius, Lucretius, Homer,
Callimachus, etc. , etc. The procedure in both cases is not easily dis-
tinguishable from that of Virgilius.
It is curious to find that in spite of all this he was taken seriously.
Not only does Aldhelm (+ 709) quote him, but also Bede, a man less
likely to be attracted by eccentricity, and so do almost all the Irish
grammarians of the Carolingian period—a point which will demand
further attention. To the later Middle Ages he was quite unknown ;
we have no manuscripts or quotations after the eleventh century? .
We have not yet approached the question of the date at which he
lived. Zimmer in an elaborate investigation (published posthumously)
contends for the fifth to sixth centuries. His main thesis is that western
Gaul had, both commercially and intellectually, a profound influence upon
Ireland long before the age of Patrick. He seeks to shew, in particular, ,
that the grammatical theories of Virgilius affected the language and
methods of Irish writers. He finds traces of them in the Amra or
panegyric on St Columba († 597), that obscure Irish poem by Dallan
Forgaill
, of which we have but a series of enigmatical fragments glossed
by successive commentators. He believes that he has found actual mention
of Virgilius in Irish books under the name of Ferchertne file; and he lays
stress on the undoubted fact that our manuscript authorities for the
text of Virgilius shew traces of transmission through Irish channels.
The text, long preserved in Ireland, he would suggest, passed to the
Continent in the train of the Irish missionaries. To our grammarian, ,
too, he would refer the epigrams in which Ennodius (473–521) ridicules
“ a certain foolish man who was known as Virgilius. ”
Clearly much of this argument is inappreciable by those ignorant of
Celtic languages. To the general contention one objection has been
urged which makes its appeal to a wider circle, and which, if upheld,
must do away with the greater part of Zimmer's hypothesis. It is that
Virgilius makes use of the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (+ 636). If
so, he takes his place in the seventh century, after Isidore and before
Aldhelm. An examination of the long list of passages cited by
Manitius from the Etymologies, and supposed by him to have been
1 An abridged text of 1465 in a Bodleian MS. (D'Orville 147) is an exception.
CH, XIX.
32-2
## p. 500 (#546) ############################################
500
A Cosmography
borrowed thence by Virgilius, has failed to convince me that Virgilius,
and not Isidore, is the borrower. Practically all the passages contain
derivations of words (legitera = littera and the like). They are
thoroughly germane to the manner of Virgilius ; nor is it a consideration
of any weight that Isidore nowhere names Virgilius as his source, for
in this respect his practice is by no means consistent. In short, though
it may be shewn on other grounds that Zimmer has placed Virgilius too
early, I cannot think that his theory is invalidated by the appeal to
Isidore; and I feel justified in provisionally adopting his date.
Ireland has been named, and will for a time engage our whole
attention ; but before we leave France and Virgilius, a word must be
said of a book which has perhaps a claim to be regarded as a product
of his school. At least it reminds us of him by its language and by
its solemn absurdity. The work in question is the Cosmography of
“Aethicus Ister. ” I use inverted commas because it is not certain
that the form “ Aethicus” is what was intended by the author of the
text, who may have meant to write “ Ethicus” and have used that word
as a synonym for “philosopher. ” The Cosmography comes to us in the
shape of an abstract or series of extracts from a larger work, purporting
to have been made by St Jerome (or at least by a a “Hieronymus
presbyter”). In spite of the efforts of Wuttke to uphold this attribu-
tion and to identify the places and peoples who are mentioned, it is not
possible to regard Aethicus as anything but a romancer or to put him
earlier than the seventh century. His wild Latin, full of hapax legomena,
elaborate alliteration and short assonant clauses, his fables about
countries, tribes, and creatures, partly borrowed from Solinus and the
Alexander-romances, but largely peculiar to himself, and his display of
absurd learning (exemplified by the bogus Scythian alphabet with which
he ends his book), all stamp him as a charlatan. He probably wrote in
France: it seems that the first writer who quotes him is Frankish-one
of the continuators of the chronicler who is called Fredegarius.
At the same time, it would be no surprise to learn that he had Irish
connexions. Indeed, definite allusions to Ireland have been pointed out
in his writings and in those of Virgilius. Aethicus represents himself as
having crossed from Spain to Ireland, and having studied the books
(eorum volumina volvens) which he found there (a phrase which may
reasonably be taken to imply that Ireland enjoyed a reputation for
culture in his time)'. The two passages adduced from Virgilius are
both of doubtful import. One says that in the composition and elocu-
tion of the. . . . the verb holds the first place. The statement is true of
Irish, and the word represented by dots is given in the manuscripts as hi
bonorum, hiborum, in iborum, respectively. The conjecture Hibernorum
lies ready to hand; yet the possibility of Hiberorum or Iberorum must
1 For all that, he says of the island "Inperitos habet cultores, et instructoribus
habet destitutos habitatores. ” (p. 19, Wuttke. )
## p. 501 (#547) ############################################
Irish learning
501
be considered, especially as we have seen that Virgilius elsewhere
mentions the speech of his neighbours, the Basques. The other passage, ,
in which he quotes a verse by one Bregandus Lugenicus, has been
thought to contain an Irish tribal name. But strong collateral evidence
is needed to bring this out of the category of Virgilius's ordinary
mystifications.
We now approach the problem of the classical culture of Ireland.
How, when, and whence did it come into being ? Many generations of
scholars have been contented to regard the mission of Patrick (in 430-460)
as marking the accession of Ireland to the world of learning. It has
been realised, indeed, that Patrick himself was no scholar, but he has
been thought of as the parent of scholars, the progenitor of the great
monastic schools which sprang up all over Ireland in the sixth century-
Clonard (520), Clonmacnois (544), Clonfert (c. 550), Bangor (c. 560).
Before Patrick (or at least before Palladius), it has been commonly
believed, Ireland, lying outside the sphere of Roman political influence,
was also untouched by Roman culture. A readjustment of this view
has become necessary. Patrick was not the Apostle of Ireland in the
sense that before he landed there were no Christians in the island.
Apart from such results as may have attended the obscure mission
of Palladius (whom Zimmer would identify with Patrick), there were
pre-Patrician churches and pre-Patrician saints. It would indeed be
strange, if at a time when Christianity was highly organised and
flourishing both in Britain and in western Gaul—countries in active
intercourse with Ireland—there had been no sporadic evangelisation, no
formation here and there of small Christian communities, As a matter
of fact there are in the undoubted writings of Patrick allusions to
existent Christianity, and in particular to men who, we gather from
Patrick's language, possessed a higher degree of culture than he did.
There is, too, a persistent tradition (though the documents which
contain it are not of the earliest) that certain saints, Ailbe, for instance,
and Declan, were in Ireland before Patrick.
Into the precise value of this tradition I cannot attempt to in-
quire; to do so would be to exaggerate its importance for our purpose.
I should be giving the impression that missionary enterprise was the
sole factor in bringing the learning of the Continent into Ireland. This
would be a mistake. We have seen that stress has been laid in recent
years by Zimmer upon the commercial relations which undoubtedly
linked the island with Gaul, as well as with Britain ; while yet more
recently, attention has been called to a definite statement by an
anonymous writer, evidently of Gaul, such as has not been hitherto
producible: to the effect that in the early years of the fifth century
an exodus of scholars from the Continent took place under the pressure
of barbarian invasion, which affected the area under consideration.
The Huns, says our new authority, began that devastation of the whole
а
CH, XIX.
## p. 502 (#548) ############################################
502
Greek in Ireland
Empire which was carried on by the Vandals, Goths, and Alani; “and
owing to their ravages, all the learned men on this side the sea fled, and
in the countries beyond sea, namely, Ireland, and wherever else they betook
themselves, brought to the inhabitants of those regions an enormous
advance in learning. ” This statement, printed from a Leyden manuscript
as long ago as 1866, was, it seems, only noticed by Zimmer at the end
of his life. The importance of it may be over-estimated, but cannot be
denied. For the first time we have definite testimony that the culture
of Bordeaux, Toulouse, Autun, Lyons--in other words, the best learning
attainable in the West—did actually make its way in some shape into
Ireland. And we have, besides, the reminder which was needed, that the
missionaries were not solely or primarily the channels by which it came.
The words throw light upon Patrick's own challenge to the rhetorici who
knew not the Lord; but, more than all, they supply an explanation of the
undoubted presence in Ireland in the sixth century of a certain type of
learning. The fact that that learning was widely and rapidly diffused
over the country was due in no small degree to this, that it went hand
in hand with evangelisation. Had missionary effort not been there to
prepare the soil, it is impossible to suppose that men would have been
found so ready to study the grammar and rhetoric of Latin, or the
elements of Greek. But when these were presented to them as part of
the apparatus of the new faith, they were assured of a reception, and
subsequently gained citizenship by their own merits.
It will not be possible to call attention to every indication of higher
learning in Ireland; but it will be worth while to devote some space
to the vexed question, how far this learning included a knowledge of
Greek.
The question is not, it must be premised, a simple one. We must
remember, on the one hand, that some of the most striking specimens of
Irish Greek learning were produced on the Continent, and on the other,
that, in and after the lifetime of Theodore and Hadrian (668-690) when
Greek was made accessible to the English, there is a possibility of
English influence upon Ireland. In any case it remains the most
reasonable account of the knowledge of Greek on the part of a Johannes
Eriugena or a Sedulius Scottus, that it was acquired in Ireland and
transferred thence to the Continent.
In the first place, we can hardly doubt that Graeco-Latin glossaries
had made their way to Ireland in very early times. The occurrence of
Greek words in Irish writings of the sixth century is best accounted for
on this hypothesis. We meet with such Greek words in the hymn Altus
prosător of Columba, in that of St Sechnall on Patrick and in more than one
of those in the Bangor Antiphonary. Their raison d'être from the point of
view of the writers of these compositions is to deck the page. They are the
spangles on the cloak, no essential part of the fabric, and they do not by
themselves necessarily imply a knowledge of the structure of the Greek lan-
## p. 503 (#549) ############################################
Traces of Greek learning
503
mean more.
a
guage on the part of those who use them. They may mean little more than
does the use of Greek letters for colophons- the ΦΙΝΙΘ ΔΕΩ ΓΡΑΘΥAC
of a Breton monk in 952, and the like. Yet as a fact they probably do
It seems likely that with the glossaries (taking the word
glossary as the equivalent of a bare vocabulary) there came to Ireland
a more valuable guide to the Greek language, in the shape of a manual
containing conversations and narratives, fables of Aesop, dicta of the
Emperor Hadrian, stories of the Trojan war, compiled as far back as
the year 207. We have it under the formidable modern title of
Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana. It has been transmitted through
“insular” channels, and was in the hands of Sedulius Scottus in the
ninth century, as is thought, before he left Ireland for the Continent.
The suggestion has been made that this and other Greek writings were
brought to Ireland by Byzantine
by Byzantine monks taking refuge from the
Iconoclastic persecution about the middle of the eighth century: but of
such refugees there is small trace. Certain entries in Martyrologies, and
the existence of a “ Greek church” at Trim in Meath, have been adduced
in favour of the hypothesis, but no such evidence as can be called
conclusive. There seems, moreover, no reason why a monk should have
brought the Hermeneumata with him, whereas it is just the book that is
likely to have formed part of the equipment of a fifth century rhetorician
from Gaul.
Instances have been brought forward of Irishmen who were clearly
acquainted with Greek. We will examine them briefly. Pelagius is the
foremost, both in date and in eminence. He came to Italy about the year
400, and it is on record that in 415 he took part in a controversy at
Jerusalem which was carried on in Greek. It will be allowed that, even
granting that Pelagius was Irish and not British by extraction, he had
every opportunity of acquiring Greek after he had left Ireland.
We find, next, that the commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia
upon the Psalms was preserved and transcribed in a revised and shortened
Latin form at Bobbio. The actual work of translation and revision has
been ascribed to St Columban. That point is doubtful: but the
commentary was certainly studied by Irish writers on the Continent, and
it is possible that the translation was actually made upon Irish soil. It
had a wide influence. The researches of Dr Robert M. L. Ramsay and
Dr J. Douglas Bruce have demonstrated the use of it by English
glossators of the Psalter (perhaps by Bede himself) down to the
eleventh century.
In a gospel book of the eighth century at Würzburg is a note to
the effect that Mosuin Mac Armin (Abbot of Bangor, who died in 610)
learned by heart a Paschal computus drawn up by a Greek sage-
probably Theophilus of Antioch. " Coupled with the presence of Greek
words in the antiphonary of Bangor, this statement has a certain force,
and it should be noticed that the date of Mosuin excludes the pos-
CH.
geographical books in connexion with sacred study, and of the Church
histories of the fifth-century Greek writers, Socrates, Sozomen, and
Theodoret, which he had induced one Epiphanius to render into Latin ;
we know this translation as the Historia Tripartita.
The end of the first division of the Institutions deals with the
practically useful arts of agriculture (gardening) and medicine. The
second part is a summary introduction to the seven Liberal Arts—they
are the same for Cassiodorus as for Martianus Capella-Grammar,
Rhetoric, Dialectic, Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, Astronomy. The
bibliography is here much scantier than in the first book, but even so, some
works are named and used which we no longer have. We do not, as was
said above, find our author definitely prescribing for his monks the study
of the older poets and historians. What we do find is a recognition of
the usefulness of secular as well as of sacred learning, an authorisation
of the enlargement of the field, an encouragement to make use of all
that could be drawn from sources that might subsequently be opened, as
well as from those that were at hand.
Thus Cassiodorus did his best to provide tools and to indicate the
method of using them. An older contemporary had prepared the
workmen and the field. There is no need to recapitulate here what has
already been said (1. 537 sqq. ) of St Benedict and his Rule. Only it is
clear that, but for his work, that of Cassiodorus would not have outlasted
more than a few generations. The Rule was, it seems likely, in force at
Vivarium itself; but whether this was so or not, and whether or not
St Benedict would have accorded a welcome to the scheme of study
outlined by Cassiodorus, the fact remains that the ideas of the latter were
taken up by the Order and were propagated with more or less activity
wherever the Order settled.
There was a third agent in this same century who was a factor of
immense importance (though, even more clearly than Benedict, an
involuntary factor) in the preservation of ancient learning. This was
St Gregory the Great (+604). Gregory was not a “learned” writer.
He knew (he says) no Greek: it is doubtful if his writings have been the
means of handing down a single reference to an ancient author,-even to
a Christian author of the earliest period. His contempt for secular
studies is more than once expressed; he is even credited (by John of
Salisbury, in the twelfth century) with having burned the library of the
CH. XIX.
## p. 488 (#534) ############################################
488
Africa
Palatine Apollo. Yet, but for Gregory and his mission of Augustine,
there would have been no Aldhelm, no Benedict Biscop, no Bede, no
Alcuin, no opening for the enormously important influence of Theodore
of Tarsus and of Hadrian the Abbot.
But, this great service apart, his voluminous works were, if not in
themselves of great literary value, the progenitors of literature which is
of the highest interest. Alfred translated his Pastoral Care ; Aelfric
drew copiously from his Homilies on the gospels. His Moralia on Job
gave occupation to calligraphers and excerptors in Spain and Ireland.
Above all, his four books of Dialogues formed a model for subsequent
writers of the lives of saints as well as a sanction for that mass of miracle
and vision literature in which so much of the imaginations and hopes of
the medieval peoples is preserved for us.
Thus in the persons of Cassiodorus, Benedict, and Gregory, Italy,
which had provided the world with a great literature, furnished also the
means by which that literature was to be preserved. It was her last
contribution to the cause of learning for many years.
We must turn to the other great fields of western learning, and first
to Africa and Spain.
The existence of a flourishing Latin literature in Africa is generally
realised : the names of Tertullian, Apuleius, Cyprian, Augustine,
Martianus Capella stand out as representative in earlier centuries ;
something too has been said (1. 322) of the less-known writers of the
period of the Vandal kingdom, of Dracontius, almost the last of
Christian poets to treat of mythological subjects, and of those (Luxorius
and others) whose fugitive pieces have been preserved in the Latin
anthology of the Codex Salmasianus. We come now to their successors.
From Verecundus, Bishop of Junca (+552), we have an exposition of
certain Old Testament canticles which are commonly attached to the
Psalter and used in the Church services. In this work Verecundus refers
his reader to the Natural History of Pliny the Elder, to Solinus, and to
a form of the famous Physiologus, that manual of allegorised natural
history which in later times afforded a multitude of subjects to
illuminators and sculptors. From this region and period also comes in
all probability a poem on the Resurrection of the Dead and the Last
Judgment, dedicated to Flavius Felix (an official to whom some poems
in the Salmasian Anthology are addressed). It has been handed down
under the names of Tertullian and of Cyprian. Both attributions are
out of the question. The author, whoever he was, had written other
poems, notably one on the four seasons of the year, to which he alludes.
In the resurrection-poem a singular point of interest is that it shews
traces of obligation to the ancient Apocalypse of Peter.
The two epics of Fl. Cresconius Corippus, the Johannis, produced
about 550, and the De laudibus Justini (minoris), of sixteen years later,
are from the purely literary point of view the most remarkable
## p. 489 (#535) ############################################
Spain
489
achievements of African culture in the sixth century. The first tells the
story of the successful campaign of Johannes the magister militum against
the Moors in 546-8. The other, essentially a court-poem, describes the
accession of Justin and the rejoicings and festivities which accompanied
it. In both, but especially in the Johannis, Corippus has modelled
himself upon the antique with extraordinary fidelity, and with
undeniable success.
One other production, of small extent but appreciable importance,
needs to be noticed before we pass from Africa to Spain. This is a short
continuation (extending to but twelve sections) of the catalogue of
distinguished Church writers, which, begun by Jerome, perhaps on a model
furnished by Suetonius, was continued by Gennadius of Marseilles. An
African writer of about 550—it is thought, Pontianus, a bishop-fur-
nished this small supplement. In the next century we shall find Isidore
of Seville and his friend Braulio carrying on the work, and, a generation
later, Hildefonsus of Toledo, whose outlook is almost confined to his own
country. The succession is then broken off, and it is not until the twelfth
century that similar compilations again come into fashion.
The extinction of the Vandal kingdom in Africa meant the trans-
ference of much literary activity to Spain. There must have been many
like the monk Donatus, of whom Hildefonsus tells us that, seeing the
imminence of the barbarian invasion, he took ship for Spain with about
seventy monks and a large collection of books. Certain it is that
towards the end of the sixth century Africa becomes silent, and Spain
begins to speak.
Perhaps the first writer in our period whose sphere of influence was
Spanish—though it was so by adoption only—is Martin, called of Dumio
and of Bracara (Braga), the latter being the see of which he died
archbishop in 580. Like the great Martin of Tours he was a Pannonian
by birth : but after a pilgrimage to Palestine he chose Galicia and the
Arian kingdom of the Suevi as a field for missionary work. He was
successful in bringing the Suevi to orthodoxy; and he seems to have been
a man of both strong and attractive personality. There is a distinction
about his not very voluminous works. Two of them at least are excerpts
from writings of Seneca, the De officiis and De ira. The first treats of
the four Cardinal Virtues, and is addressed to King Miro under the title
of Formula honestae vitae. It is by far the most widely diffused of
Martin's books. The other (which incidentally helps to fill a lacuna
in the text of Seneca) is of comparatively rare occurrence. Besides these
we have ethical tracts of more definitely Christian complexion, also
dedicated to Miro, principally concerned with pride and humility. A
collection of sayings of the hermits, and another of conciliar canons,
testify to Martin's knowledge of Greek. A brief discourse on the Paschal
question states a complicated problem in a strikingly clear form. But
of all that we have from him, Martin's instruction for simple people
a
CH, XIX.
## p. 490 (#536) ############################################
490
Martin of Bracara
(De correctione rusticorum), addressed to Polemius, Bishop of Asturica, has
aroused the greatest interest in modern times. It is indeed a very
notable example of the way in which the negative and positive sides of
Christian teaching were put before the neophytes of the country districts.
Martin begins by setting forth the view of his time as to the origin of the
heathen gods. They are devils who fell with Lucifer : therefore all
observances which entail any show of reverence towards them are so
many denials of the profession of faith made at baptism. He objects-
vainly, as time has shewn—to the ordinary names of the days of the
week, and to the celebration of the first of January as New Year's day;
and further, to the observing of “ days of moths and mice" (the object
of which was to protect clothes and storerooms from their ravages), to
the naming of Minerva over the web on the loom, the lighting of tapers
by rocks and springs, and many like usages, which we meet with later
in canons of councils and indiculi superstitionum : while over and over
again the question is asked, “Is this consistent with your promise at the
font to renounce the devil and all his works? ” Of the positive side of
the teaching more need not be said than that it is admirably adapted to
its purpose. It is interesting to find that nearly the whole of the matter
recurs in a Homily of Caesarius of Arles (542), as well as in a tract of
the Irish missionary Pirminius of Reichenau (+758), called Scarapsus, and
in the sermon of St Eligius of Noyon which his biographer St Audoen
has either preserved or excogitated. This suggests a question whether
Caesarius or Martin is the original source, or whether both may not be
utilising a form agreed upon perhaps by a synodical authority.
Let it be recorded, lastly, that Martin of Bracara held in reverence
his namesake and fellow-countryman, the saint of Tours, and composed
some interesting verses which were inscribed over the south door of the
great basilica there.
Before the death of Martin, the life of Isidore of Seville (c. 570–636)
had begun. He was beyond question the leading transmitter of knowledge
in his century. In the twenty books of his Etymologiae he brought
together a collection of facts (and fictions) which served as the encyclo-
paedia of the whole medieval period. It was long in his hands : his
friend Braulio of Saragossa could only extract a copy of it, and that in an
uncorrected form, by repeated pleadings extending over more than seven
years. He seems to have been at work on it up to his death, and it is
obviously unfinished. There is neither preface nor peroration; some
sections are unwritten, many references not filled in.
To us its great merit is that it has preserved a number of fragments
of early Latin writers: but to many a generation after Isidore its
practical utility was immense. It was by far the handiest--and in
most cases the only accessible-book in which information about natural
history, geography, antiquities, the origins of arts and sciences, could be
found, whereas the outlines of the seven liberal arts (which occupy the
## p. 491 (#537) ############################################
Isidore's Etymologies
491
first three books), the synopsis of history, the elements of religious
knowledge, the legal and medical sections, useful as they were, could
usually be studied in less compendious form. In the compilation of the
Etymologiae a library of very considerable extent was laid under contri-
bution. Much is derived, no doubt, from hand-books: it is not to be
supposed that Isidore possessed the works of an Ennius, a Cinna, a
Livius Andronicus, all of whom he cites. These passages lay ready to
his hand in the form of excerpts in various grammatical and critical
books, especially in the commentary of Servius on the Aeneid. But,
when due allowance has been made for the use of compilations, it is
apparent that the range of authors with whom he had a first-hand
acquaintance is not despicable. Lucretius, often cited in the later
books (though of course seldom in comparison with Lucan and Virgil),
was known to him. The Histories of Sallust and the Pratum (and some
minor works) of Suetonius are probably the most important of the lost
secular works (excluding manuals of rhetoric and grammar) which he can
be shewn to have used. From the De Republica of Cicero he makes but one
short citation. It is not apparent that he possessed any specimen of the
earliest Christian literature which we do not possess : in his continuation
of the literary biographies of Jerome and Gennadius he tells us of
many theological writers in his own time who are no more than names
to us.
reason.
His knowledge of Greek has been doubted, and, I think, with
The evidence for it is almost confined to citations of Greek
words to furnish etymologies. It cannot be shewn that he either owned
Greek books or translated from Greek authors for the purpose of his
work.
Had he lived long enough to provide the Etymologiae with its
prologue, it is likely enough that after the manner of the elder Pliny
he would have given us the list of the authors on whom he had drawn.
As it is, we have to base our estimate of the extent of his library upon
a document which leaves a good deal to the imagination. We have the
verses which were painted (probably) on the cornices or doors of his
book-presses. Each of these cupboards, in accordance with a fashion
attested by a good deal of archaeological evidence, seems to have been
ornamented with a medallion portrait of a famous author, whose worth
was celebrated in one or more elegiac couplets. The number of sections
or tituli warrants us in reckoning that Isidore owned at least fourteen
and perhaps sixteen presses, and we shall be safe in assuming that at this
date the contents were in book-form (codices) and not rolls (volumina).
Taking the number of books in each press at 30—not an unreasonable
estimate--we reach the very respectable total of 420 or 480 for the
whole collection. As to the contents, the tituli suggest that theology
predominated. The secular writers named are few (jurists and physicians)
and there is nothing to suggest the presence of works now lost. That
a
CH, XIX.
## p. 492 (#538) ############################################
492
Isidore and his friends
a
is no more than natural; the effigy on the book-case represents but
(
a fraction of its contents.
Among the remaining writings of Isidore the books De naturis rerum
and the histories merit special mention. The first is a survey of cosmical
a
phenomena in which, besides extant sources, the Pratum of Suetonius is
employed (as in the Etymologiae). The popular name of the treatise,
Liber rotarum, is derived from the many circular diagrams with which it
was illustrated. In some connexion with it stands an interesting little
poem by the Visigoth king Sisebut (612-620) who had asked Isidore
to write the treatise, and addressed the poem-chiefly dealing with
eclipses—to him, very likely upon receiving the complete book. It is
possible that the poem as we have it is but a fragment of a larger work.
Sisebut was, we see, a patron of letters and may have been a copious
writer, but all that we have from him, besides the poem, is a life of
St Desiderius of Vienne, and a few epistles.
Of Isidore's two historical works the first is a Chronicle of the world,
divided, in a fashion subsequently adopted and popularised by Bede,
into six ages. A brief summary of it is inserted into the fifth book of
the Etymologiae. For the more recent portions of it the Chronicles of
Idatius, of Victor of Tonnensia in Africa, and of John of Biclarum (the
last a Spanish contemporary of Isidore himself) have been utilised. The
other is a sketch of the history of the Visigoths, Vandals, and Suevi.
His commentaries and religious works (with the possible exception of
the Synonyma, the idea of which he says was suggested to him by
a treatise of Cicero) are not important to our present subject.
Isidore's principal friend, Braulio of Saragossa, has left us little
besides letters and a few short biographies in the book De viris illustribus.
He had, however, among his clergy one who ranks as the one considerable
Spanish Latin poet of the century. This was Eugenius, who in 647, in
spite of Braulio's fervent protests, was removed by King Chindaswinth
to preside over the see of Toledo. Chindaswinth, like Sisebut, evi-
dently had some feeling for literature: we find him ordering Eugenius
to produce a readable and orthodox edition of the poems of the Arian
Dracontius, which were then only current in Spain in a mutilated form.
The edition was made, and attained a wide celebrity. Of the works
which it comprised, the Laudes Dei were turned into a Hexaëmeron and
somewhat shortened ; the Satisfactio was abridged and provided with
prefaces in prose and verse, and a conclusion : instead of Gunthamund,
,
Theodosius the younger was made to figure as the recipient.
We have, besides this, an original work of Eugenius, which is the
metrical portion of a collection of his miscellaneous short writings. The
prose half is lost. The poems, in many metres, are for the most part
brief. They deal with all manner of subjects, religious and secular.
Intrinsically they perhaps hardly deserve mention, but there is a notable
fact about them, that they travelled far beyond Spain at an early date.
a
a
a
## p. 493 (#539) ############################################
Julian of Toledo
493
1
Aldhelm uses them in the collection of riddles which he embodied in a
grammatical tract addressed to “Acircius"i (Aldfrid of Northumbria)
before the end of the seventh century. Eugenius died in 657.
A pupil of his, who ultimately succeeded to his see (680–690), Julian
of Toledo, left works upon theology, history, and grammar. In the
first category the book called Prognosticon futuri saeculi was by far the
most celebrated. The three divisions of which it consists--on death, on
the intermediate state of souls and on the final judgment—are made up
to a very large extent of “testimonies" from Scripture and from standard
writers. Cyprian and Origen are the earliest of these, and Gregory the
latest. Augustine is naturally the principal source; Jerome, Cassian,
and Julianus Pomerius complete the list. It was to be expected that
in a country in which Priscillianism had had great currency, and roused
great opposition to the apocryphal literature, Julian should shun all
reference to these writings. As his interesting prefatory letter tells us,
his main object was to present in a collected form the opinions of Catholic
doctors upon the subject he was treating.
The three books De comprobatione sextae aetatis, directed against his
own countrymen (he was of Jewish extraction), are interesting as proving
his acquaintance with Greek patristic literature. He translates passages
from the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius and from the tract of
Epiphanius on Weights and Measures; and, besides these, he makes
considerable quotations from Tertullian. The two books of artikeljeva
(a noteworthy title) consist of attempts to reconcile contradictory texts
of Scripture: they contain no very remarkable citations.
Of more direct interest to us is his history of the rebellion of Duke
Paul against King Wamba (673), written in a less conventional style at
no great length of time after the events it records. The fashion of
writing in rhymed or assonant clauses which is conspicuous in the later
chronicles, e. g. that called of “ Isidorus Pacensis," appears here possibly
for the first time to a marked extent.
The fame of this book was naturally confined to Spain. Not so that
of the Ars grammatica. Both in form and in contents it is remarkable.
The form is that of a dialogue between master and pupil; but, as in
many later grammars, it is the pupil who puts the questions, the master
,
who answers them. Traube's explanation of this fashion is interesting :
he attributes it to a misapprehension. The dialogue form was borrowed
from the Greeks, and with it the initials M and A, which stood for
μαθητής and διδάσκαλος. The accident that the Latin words Magister
and Discipulus have the same initials rendered the inversion of questioner
and answerer an easy one.
In respect of its contents, the Ars Juliani transmits much matter
from older grammarians, Victorinus and Audax, for example. The
1 The a circio of the dedication, says Mazzoni (in Didascaleion 1914), probably
+
“(to the ruler of) north-western (Northumbria). "
means
CH. XIX.
## p. 494 (#540) ############################################
494
St Valerius
illustrative quotations are drawn from secular and Christian poets;
even authorities contemporary with the writer, as Eugenius of Toledo,
are cited. If it be the fact that the grammar was extensively used by
Aldhelm within a very short time after its composition, it may be during
the lifetime of Julian, we have a striking tribute to the reputation it
enjoyed, and a yet more striking evidence of a literary commerce
between Spain and Britain : a commerce of which the traces, liturgical
and other, have yet to be collected and appreciated.
In liturgy, lastly, important reforms of the Toletan Use are attributed
to Julian by his biographer Felix. But details are wanting. In the
range of his activity, but not in the permanence of his achievement,
Julian surpasses Isidore.
An obscure but interesting figure at this period is the Abbot
St Valerius (+ 695) from whom we have some amusing autobiographical
writings. Whether by his own fault, or, as he would have us believe,
by that of his neighbours, Valerius was condemned to a very turbulent
existence. He was continually being hounded out of some retreat in
which he had settled, deceived by his favourite pupils, robbed of his
books, and generally victimised. There is a personal note in his
narratives which engages the attention. They also supply us with
evidence of the existence of at least one rare book in the writer's milieu.
In one of several visions of the next world which he records is an image
which cannot but be derived from a certain Apocalypse of Baruch, now
extant only in Greek and Old Slavonic. The seer, a youth named
Baldarius, is permitted to watch the rising of the sun from close by.
The orb comes up very swiftly and immensely bright; and it is preceded
by a huge bird, red in colour but darker towards the tail, whose function
is to mitigate the intense heat of the sun by flapping its wings. The
bird is the Phoenix, as we learn from Baruch, and, so far as is known
at present, this particular fable is peculiar to Baruch. It is fair to infer
the survival of this rare Apocalypse in Spain in the seventh century:
whether or not under Priscillianist influence, non liquet.
The chain of Spanish writers has now been traced down to the end
of the seventh century, and we have seen evidence of the preservation of
considerable collections of ancient literature, both pagan and Christian,
in the peninsula. Much of this must have had a continuous existence
in the country, but much also must have been imported from Africa
under the stress of invasion. That same stress now fell upon Spain.
The Moorish invasion, culminating in the great defeat of the Christian
arms in 711, put an end to literary enterprise for the time. Spain
dropped out of the race. But she had made one great contribution to
the equipment of European scholarship in the Etymologiae of Isidore.
What is the record of the region which we now call France during
the corresponding period ? The educational apparatus with which she
was provided at the beginning of it was as complete as any country
## p. 495 (#541) ############################################
Venantius Fortunatus
495
>
could shew. The works of an Alcimus Avitus and of a Sidonius
Apollinaris, however exiguous their intrinsic value, are the last links in
an unbroken chain reaching back to the rise of the great schools of
Gaul. After them comes the break.
The sixth century produced two writers of note who mark it in
different ways. Venantius Fortunatus, born in Italy, it is true, but for
.
the best part of his life a resident at Poitiers, is known to the generality
as the author of two hymns, the Pange lingua on the Cross, the Vexilla
regis used on Passion Sunday. We have from him, however, a very large
mass of poetry besides these. His Life of St Martin of Tours in four
books of heroic verse is for the most part merely a paraphrase of the
prose Life and Dialogues of Sulpicius Severus. But his eleven books
of miscellaneous pieces are full of originality and human interest. They
form a chronicle of his friendly relations with the widowed queen of
Chlotar I, St Radegund, and others of that house, as well as with
Gregory of Tours and many prominent churchmen of France. A
considerable number of the poems were sent as letters—thanks for
presents and the like. Others are panegyrics, others descriptions of
pleasant places : yet others are inscriptions designed for churches, such as
commonly form a large ingredient in collections of Christian Latin verse.
The best, however, and those from which we gain the most kindly impres-
sion of the personality of Fortunatus, are those which were called forth
by the deaths of the friends and kindred of Radegund. These are
uniformly entitled Epitaphs, but their length forbids us to suppose
that
they can have been inscribed on tombs. They may have been recited ;
but their real purpose is that of the Consolationes of an earlier time.
They were meant to be circulated in writing among those whom the
death had touched most nearly. These, with his hymns, constitute the
best claim of Fortunatus to be remembered as a writer. Yet his skill in
handling light verse should not pass unmentioned. His abuse of the
river Gers (Egircio, 1.
21) and of the cook who appropriated his boat at
Metz (vi. 8) are quite worth reading.
Upon the whole the notable thing about Fortunatus is his avoidance
of what was becoming a pseudo-classical vein. The form of his poems is
old (the elegiac metre predominates), and rococo ornaments in the
shape of allusions to mythology are not wanting; but we are impressed
by the absence of artificiality, and by the presence of a freshness and
simplicity which we miss in Sidonius and Avitus. The poems prepare
us for a new epoch, while they ha not lost
ach with the old.
Of Gregory of Tours († 594), the other famous writer of this century
and country, it may be said with more truth that he had lost touch with
the old. That is, at any rate, his own opinion. A well-known passage
,
A
in the Prologue to his History of the Franks represents his contempo-
raries as saying, “Alas for our days ! for the study of letters is gone
from among us. " He is, moreover, given to apologising on his own
CH. XIX.
## p. 496 (#542) ############################################
496
Gregory of Tours
account for his "rustic” and incorrect style. This, to be sure, is a
common pose, and it has been held that in Gregory's case it is but
a pose, and that the copyists of his works are responsible for many
of the monstra we encounter in them. Yet can this be so ? does not
the particularity with which he specifies mistakes-false concords, misuse
of prepositions and of cases--go to shew that he at least was in earnest ?
Certainly his self-accusations are borne out by every page of his writings.
He had read some good authors, in particular Virgil; he knew some books
which no longer exist. In a little tract which deals mainly with
astronomy he shews considerable acquaintance with that science, and
quotes a lost chronicler, Julius Titianus. He had, too, a collection of
Latin lyric poetry, which he lent to his friend Fortunatus. And it is
possible (though not very relevant to our present purpose) that he knew
some Syriac: a Syrian (there were not a few then resident in France,
and one became bishop of Paris) helped him to translate the legend of
the Seven Sleepers from Syriac into Latin. This, however, is little
more than a curiosity: Gregory certainly made no use of Syriac
literature. His lament is undoubtedly justified: “ Periit studium
litterarum a nobis. ” The gulf between him and Fortunatus, in respect
of command of correct Latin, is immense.
To dwell upon the value of the Historia Francorum would be quite
out of place here, where we are thinking of Gregory as a link in the
transmission of ancient knowledge. It is more relevant to suggest in
passing a comparison between this and the next national history that
was written-that of Bede; for the slight work of Isidore hardly comes
into consideration. In Gregory we see letters on a level confessedly
low ; in Bede a height has been reached which is rivalled only, in these
centuries, by the best work of the Carolingian Renaissance.
The popularity of Gregory's History in medieval times was far
inferior to that of his hagiological writings, which furnished much
material to the compilers of breviaries and to such writers as Jacobus de
Voragine. Besides the seven which he himself enumerates, dealing with
St Julian of Le Mans, St Martin of Tours, the Martyrs, the Confessors,
and the Anchorites, there is one—the Miracles of St Andrew—which
may be confidently assigned to him, and which is perhaps more
important than any of the others to the historian of Christian litera-
ture. It is our best source for the knowledge of a second or third
century Greek romance, the Acts of Andrew; once eagerly read, but
ultimately condemned by the Church, and only transmitted to us in
fragments, and expurgated epitomes, such as this of Gregory. Not
that Gregory read it in Greek. He had before him, no doubt, a
complete Latin version, made, it is likely, for Manichaeans to read :
since, in Manichaean circles, the apocryphal romances about the
Apostles were adopted as substitutes for the Canonical Acts. Not
long after Gregory's date—it may be even in his lifetime—a complete
## p. 497 (#543) ############################################
Decay of Latin
497
orthodox collection of abstracts of these Acts, with others added to
them, was put together, probably in France, in which the Miracles of
Andrew were incorporated. We know it under the misleading name of
the Apostolic History of Abdias. The investigation of its origin, and
the determination of its text, have not as yet been completely carried
out. As a source of inspiration for artists and romancers it deserves
(though it does not usually obtain) a special recognition among the
literary documents of its time.
I shall be pardoned for passing over the feeble efforts of the
continuators of Gregory's History (the so-called Fredegarius and the
rest) in favour of two writings which attest at once the survival of
a knowledge of Greek in France and an extremely low standard of
culture. The one is known as the Barbarus Scaligeri (from its style
.
and its first editor). It is a Chronicle of the world, rendered from an
almost contemporary Greek original in a fashion and in a Latin of
which it is difficult to exaggerate the badness. The other is a very
similar version, made by the aid of a glossary, of the Phaenomena of
Aratus, and of a Commentary thereon. It can be dated by the fact
that Isidore is used in it, and that Bede uses it. Did we not possess
the Greek original of this extraordinary work, many passages of it
would defy interpretation. The literalness is extreme: 'Apátou
Palvóueva appears as Arati ea quae videntur. This we might perhaps
unravel, but we should be more than ready to suspect corruption in
the phrase “ in quo apud Diodorum” which is the rendering of év tệ
Tipòs Acódwpov, or in this “nihil aliud quorum Eudoxi videntur facere,”
which is the equivalent of μηδέν έτερον των Ευδόξου φαινομένων
TOLNO avta. Nevertheless, absurd as is the interpreter's achievement,
his very attempt is creditable and interesting. We have no clue to
the identity of the man who made it, nor to the part of France in
which he lived.
It has been transmitted to us in more than one copy, as well as in a
revised form due to a scholar of the Carolingian period. The Barbarus
of Scaliger survives in but one manuscript, which is not impossibly the
autograph of the translator.
There is another writer, of southern France, who is the centre of an
unsolved problem-Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. That he must be
reckoned to France seems now to be the accepted view, though the
evidence at command is scanty. An obscure phrase in which he says
th he will set forth “bigerro sermone” the letters of the alphabet, is
taken to contain the name which survives as Bigorre, and to point to the
south-west of France: a plainer indication is his reference to the Gauls
as " nostri. ” Importance is also rightly attached to the fact that Abbo
of St Germain in the tenth century calls him Tolosanus. That he was
a Christian, and a Catholic-not an Arian-may be regarded as certain.
But, though he gives us a great many other details about himself, his
a
C. MED. H. VOL, III. CH. XIX.
32
## p. 498 (#544) ############################################
498
Virgilius Maro Grammaticus
teachers, and his contemporaries, hardly one of them can be taken
seriously.
Upon a first reading of his works (they are wholly devoted to
grammatical subjects, and consist of two series of Epitomae and
Epistles) the reader feels that he is confronted with a piece of pure mystifi-
cation. A striking, but yet fairly typical example of the extravagances
we encounter is the passage in which he describes, on the authority of a
certain Virgil of Asia, the “ twelve Latinities. " The first of these is the
usitata, that in which (ordinary) Latin writings are “inked” (atramen-
tantur). Of the eleven others, ten, it is safe to say, have never been used
either by Virgilius or anyone else. The second, called assena or notaria,
may possibly be intended to mean the Tironian notes ; it employs a single
letter for a whole word. But the lumbrosa, which expands a single word
into four or five, the sincolla, which condenses a whole line into two syl-
lables, and the rest of the series, correspond to nothing in heaven or earth'.
Not only is the vocabulary of Virgilius abnormal; the authors whom
he cites have left no trace anywhere else. There is a Cicero, and a
Horace; there are three Virgils and three Lucans, and so on : but none
of them are identical with those known to fame. There are, too,
numerous grammarians, of whom Aeneas, Galbungus, and Terrentius
are among the most prominent; but what is told of them does not
carry conviction to the mind. Galbungus and Terrentius disputed for
fourteen consecutive days and nights as to whether ego had a vocative.
Regulus of Cappadocia and Sedulius of Rome went without food and
sleep for a similar period while they were discussing the inchoative and
frequentative forms of the verb: three soldiers in the employ of each
were in attendance ready to arbitrate by force of arms if required.
In all, some ninety writers and teachers are named or quoted. Do
they correspond to anything that ever existed? Of late a suggestion
has found favour that they represent an academy which had its head-
quarters at Toulouse, and that the great names of Cicero, Lucan, Virgil
and so on, were adopted by its members, just as Charlemagne and his
friends called themselves David, Homer, Flaccus, and Naso. Perhaps,
it is added, the Carolingian fashion was a conscious imitation of the
Tolosan. If this be the truth of the matter, it is surely very strange
that while we do hear of Virgilius himself before the end of the seventh
century, no single trace of any of his "authorities” has ever been pointed
out. Moreover, he claims a high antiquity and a wide range of influence
for his school of thought: he traces his writers back to the time of
Romulus, nay, even to the days before the Flood. Some of them lived
at Troy, others in Egypt, Arabia, India. The variety, again, of books
which he quotes is large; there are poems, histories, epistles, orations,
as well as works on grammar; far too many-supposing them to be
1 A notion recently broached that Arabic influence is discernible in his nomen-
clature of metres (and numerals) has yet to be sifted.
## p. 499 (#545) ############################################
Date and use of Virgilius
499
real—to have disappeared without leaving some sign. In short, the
complete isolation of Virgilius compared with his pretensions enforces
the belief that his authorities like his Latinities are from first to last
impositions pure and simple. Such imposition—I allude to the in-
vention of authorities—was an expedient not unknown to the world
of grammarians and scholiasts. The tract of the African Fulgentius
(cent. vi. ) De dubiis nominibus contains, side by side with genuine passages
from Plautus and other early writers, quotations which, it is agreed, are
fabrications of Fulgentius's own. A scholiast on the Ibis of Ovid helps
himself over the difficulties of the poem (and they are many) by
explanatory tags which he fathers upon Propertius, Lucretius, Homer,
Callimachus, etc. , etc. The procedure in both cases is not easily dis-
tinguishable from that of Virgilius.
It is curious to find that in spite of all this he was taken seriously.
Not only does Aldhelm (+ 709) quote him, but also Bede, a man less
likely to be attracted by eccentricity, and so do almost all the Irish
grammarians of the Carolingian period—a point which will demand
further attention. To the later Middle Ages he was quite unknown ;
we have no manuscripts or quotations after the eleventh century? .
We have not yet approached the question of the date at which he
lived. Zimmer in an elaborate investigation (published posthumously)
contends for the fifth to sixth centuries. His main thesis is that western
Gaul had, both commercially and intellectually, a profound influence upon
Ireland long before the age of Patrick. He seeks to shew, in particular, ,
that the grammatical theories of Virgilius affected the language and
methods of Irish writers. He finds traces of them in the Amra or
panegyric on St Columba († 597), that obscure Irish poem by Dallan
Forgaill
, of which we have but a series of enigmatical fragments glossed
by successive commentators. He believes that he has found actual mention
of Virgilius in Irish books under the name of Ferchertne file; and he lays
stress on the undoubted fact that our manuscript authorities for the
text of Virgilius shew traces of transmission through Irish channels.
The text, long preserved in Ireland, he would suggest, passed to the
Continent in the train of the Irish missionaries. To our grammarian, ,
too, he would refer the epigrams in which Ennodius (473–521) ridicules
“ a certain foolish man who was known as Virgilius. ”
Clearly much of this argument is inappreciable by those ignorant of
Celtic languages. To the general contention one objection has been
urged which makes its appeal to a wider circle, and which, if upheld,
must do away with the greater part of Zimmer's hypothesis. It is that
Virgilius makes use of the Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (+ 636). If
so, he takes his place in the seventh century, after Isidore and before
Aldhelm. An examination of the long list of passages cited by
Manitius from the Etymologies, and supposed by him to have been
1 An abridged text of 1465 in a Bodleian MS. (D'Orville 147) is an exception.
CH, XIX.
32-2
## p. 500 (#546) ############################################
500
A Cosmography
borrowed thence by Virgilius, has failed to convince me that Virgilius,
and not Isidore, is the borrower. Practically all the passages contain
derivations of words (legitera = littera and the like). They are
thoroughly germane to the manner of Virgilius ; nor is it a consideration
of any weight that Isidore nowhere names Virgilius as his source, for
in this respect his practice is by no means consistent. In short, though
it may be shewn on other grounds that Zimmer has placed Virgilius too
early, I cannot think that his theory is invalidated by the appeal to
Isidore; and I feel justified in provisionally adopting his date.
Ireland has been named, and will for a time engage our whole
attention ; but before we leave France and Virgilius, a word must be
said of a book which has perhaps a claim to be regarded as a product
of his school. At least it reminds us of him by its language and by
its solemn absurdity. The work in question is the Cosmography of
“Aethicus Ister. ” I use inverted commas because it is not certain
that the form “ Aethicus” is what was intended by the author of the
text, who may have meant to write “ Ethicus” and have used that word
as a synonym for “philosopher. ” The Cosmography comes to us in the
shape of an abstract or series of extracts from a larger work, purporting
to have been made by St Jerome (or at least by a a “Hieronymus
presbyter”). In spite of the efforts of Wuttke to uphold this attribu-
tion and to identify the places and peoples who are mentioned, it is not
possible to regard Aethicus as anything but a romancer or to put him
earlier than the seventh century. His wild Latin, full of hapax legomena,
elaborate alliteration and short assonant clauses, his fables about
countries, tribes, and creatures, partly borrowed from Solinus and the
Alexander-romances, but largely peculiar to himself, and his display of
absurd learning (exemplified by the bogus Scythian alphabet with which
he ends his book), all stamp him as a charlatan. He probably wrote in
France: it seems that the first writer who quotes him is Frankish-one
of the continuators of the chronicler who is called Fredegarius.
At the same time, it would be no surprise to learn that he had Irish
connexions. Indeed, definite allusions to Ireland have been pointed out
in his writings and in those of Virgilius. Aethicus represents himself as
having crossed from Spain to Ireland, and having studied the books
(eorum volumina volvens) which he found there (a phrase which may
reasonably be taken to imply that Ireland enjoyed a reputation for
culture in his time)'. The two passages adduced from Virgilius are
both of doubtful import. One says that in the composition and elocu-
tion of the. . . . the verb holds the first place. The statement is true of
Irish, and the word represented by dots is given in the manuscripts as hi
bonorum, hiborum, in iborum, respectively. The conjecture Hibernorum
lies ready to hand; yet the possibility of Hiberorum or Iberorum must
1 For all that, he says of the island "Inperitos habet cultores, et instructoribus
habet destitutos habitatores. ” (p. 19, Wuttke. )
## p. 501 (#547) ############################################
Irish learning
501
be considered, especially as we have seen that Virgilius elsewhere
mentions the speech of his neighbours, the Basques. The other passage, ,
in which he quotes a verse by one Bregandus Lugenicus, has been
thought to contain an Irish tribal name. But strong collateral evidence
is needed to bring this out of the category of Virgilius's ordinary
mystifications.
We now approach the problem of the classical culture of Ireland.
How, when, and whence did it come into being ? Many generations of
scholars have been contented to regard the mission of Patrick (in 430-460)
as marking the accession of Ireland to the world of learning. It has
been realised, indeed, that Patrick himself was no scholar, but he has
been thought of as the parent of scholars, the progenitor of the great
monastic schools which sprang up all over Ireland in the sixth century-
Clonard (520), Clonmacnois (544), Clonfert (c. 550), Bangor (c. 560).
Before Patrick (or at least before Palladius), it has been commonly
believed, Ireland, lying outside the sphere of Roman political influence,
was also untouched by Roman culture. A readjustment of this view
has become necessary. Patrick was not the Apostle of Ireland in the
sense that before he landed there were no Christians in the island.
Apart from such results as may have attended the obscure mission
of Palladius (whom Zimmer would identify with Patrick), there were
pre-Patrician churches and pre-Patrician saints. It would indeed be
strange, if at a time when Christianity was highly organised and
flourishing both in Britain and in western Gaul—countries in active
intercourse with Ireland—there had been no sporadic evangelisation, no
formation here and there of small Christian communities, As a matter
of fact there are in the undoubted writings of Patrick allusions to
existent Christianity, and in particular to men who, we gather from
Patrick's language, possessed a higher degree of culture than he did.
There is, too, a persistent tradition (though the documents which
contain it are not of the earliest) that certain saints, Ailbe, for instance,
and Declan, were in Ireland before Patrick.
Into the precise value of this tradition I cannot attempt to in-
quire; to do so would be to exaggerate its importance for our purpose.
I should be giving the impression that missionary enterprise was the
sole factor in bringing the learning of the Continent into Ireland. This
would be a mistake. We have seen that stress has been laid in recent
years by Zimmer upon the commercial relations which undoubtedly
linked the island with Gaul, as well as with Britain ; while yet more
recently, attention has been called to a definite statement by an
anonymous writer, evidently of Gaul, such as has not been hitherto
producible: to the effect that in the early years of the fifth century
an exodus of scholars from the Continent took place under the pressure
of barbarian invasion, which affected the area under consideration.
The Huns, says our new authority, began that devastation of the whole
а
CH, XIX.
## p. 502 (#548) ############################################
502
Greek in Ireland
Empire which was carried on by the Vandals, Goths, and Alani; “and
owing to their ravages, all the learned men on this side the sea fled, and
in the countries beyond sea, namely, Ireland, and wherever else they betook
themselves, brought to the inhabitants of those regions an enormous
advance in learning. ” This statement, printed from a Leyden manuscript
as long ago as 1866, was, it seems, only noticed by Zimmer at the end
of his life. The importance of it may be over-estimated, but cannot be
denied. For the first time we have definite testimony that the culture
of Bordeaux, Toulouse, Autun, Lyons--in other words, the best learning
attainable in the West—did actually make its way in some shape into
Ireland. And we have, besides, the reminder which was needed, that the
missionaries were not solely or primarily the channels by which it came.
The words throw light upon Patrick's own challenge to the rhetorici who
knew not the Lord; but, more than all, they supply an explanation of the
undoubted presence in Ireland in the sixth century of a certain type of
learning. The fact that that learning was widely and rapidly diffused
over the country was due in no small degree to this, that it went hand
in hand with evangelisation. Had missionary effort not been there to
prepare the soil, it is impossible to suppose that men would have been
found so ready to study the grammar and rhetoric of Latin, or the
elements of Greek. But when these were presented to them as part of
the apparatus of the new faith, they were assured of a reception, and
subsequently gained citizenship by their own merits.
It will not be possible to call attention to every indication of higher
learning in Ireland; but it will be worth while to devote some space
to the vexed question, how far this learning included a knowledge of
Greek.
The question is not, it must be premised, a simple one. We must
remember, on the one hand, that some of the most striking specimens of
Irish Greek learning were produced on the Continent, and on the other,
that, in and after the lifetime of Theodore and Hadrian (668-690) when
Greek was made accessible to the English, there is a possibility of
English influence upon Ireland. In any case it remains the most
reasonable account of the knowledge of Greek on the part of a Johannes
Eriugena or a Sedulius Scottus, that it was acquired in Ireland and
transferred thence to the Continent.
In the first place, we can hardly doubt that Graeco-Latin glossaries
had made their way to Ireland in very early times. The occurrence of
Greek words in Irish writings of the sixth century is best accounted for
on this hypothesis. We meet with such Greek words in the hymn Altus
prosător of Columba, in that of St Sechnall on Patrick and in more than one
of those in the Bangor Antiphonary. Their raison d'être from the point of
view of the writers of these compositions is to deck the page. They are the
spangles on the cloak, no essential part of the fabric, and they do not by
themselves necessarily imply a knowledge of the structure of the Greek lan-
## p. 503 (#549) ############################################
Traces of Greek learning
503
mean more.
a
guage on the part of those who use them. They may mean little more than
does the use of Greek letters for colophons- the ΦΙΝΙΘ ΔΕΩ ΓΡΑΘΥAC
of a Breton monk in 952, and the like. Yet as a fact they probably do
It seems likely that with the glossaries (taking the word
glossary as the equivalent of a bare vocabulary) there came to Ireland
a more valuable guide to the Greek language, in the shape of a manual
containing conversations and narratives, fables of Aesop, dicta of the
Emperor Hadrian, stories of the Trojan war, compiled as far back as
the year 207. We have it under the formidable modern title of
Hermeneumata Pseudo-Dositheana. It has been transmitted through
“insular” channels, and was in the hands of Sedulius Scottus in the
ninth century, as is thought, before he left Ireland for the Continent.
The suggestion has been made that this and other Greek writings were
brought to Ireland by Byzantine
by Byzantine monks taking refuge from the
Iconoclastic persecution about the middle of the eighth century: but of
such refugees there is small trace. Certain entries in Martyrologies, and
the existence of a “ Greek church” at Trim in Meath, have been adduced
in favour of the hypothesis, but no such evidence as can be called
conclusive. There seems, moreover, no reason why a monk should have
brought the Hermeneumata with him, whereas it is just the book that is
likely to have formed part of the equipment of a fifth century rhetorician
from Gaul.
Instances have been brought forward of Irishmen who were clearly
acquainted with Greek. We will examine them briefly. Pelagius is the
foremost, both in date and in eminence. He came to Italy about the year
400, and it is on record that in 415 he took part in a controversy at
Jerusalem which was carried on in Greek. It will be allowed that, even
granting that Pelagius was Irish and not British by extraction, he had
every opportunity of acquiring Greek after he had left Ireland.
We find, next, that the commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia
upon the Psalms was preserved and transcribed in a revised and shortened
Latin form at Bobbio. The actual work of translation and revision has
been ascribed to St Columban. That point is doubtful: but the
commentary was certainly studied by Irish writers on the Continent, and
it is possible that the translation was actually made upon Irish soil. It
had a wide influence. The researches of Dr Robert M. L. Ramsay and
Dr J. Douglas Bruce have demonstrated the use of it by English
glossators of the Psalter (perhaps by Bede himself) down to the
eleventh century.
In a gospel book of the eighth century at Würzburg is a note to
the effect that Mosuin Mac Armin (Abbot of Bangor, who died in 610)
learned by heart a Paschal computus drawn up by a Greek sage-
probably Theophilus of Antioch. " Coupled with the presence of Greek
words in the antiphonary of Bangor, this statement has a certain force,
and it should be noticed that the date of Mosuin excludes the pos-
CH.
