The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition

Brills Companionsto the

Christian Tradition

A series of handbooks and reference workson the intellectual and religious life of Europe,

500-1700

VOLUME 2

The Rhetoric of Cicero in ItsMedieval and Early Renaissance

Commentary Tradition

Edited by

Virginia CoxJohn O. Ward

LEIDEN BOSTON2006

On the cover: Frontispiece to Cicero, De inventione: Cicero as consul hears the arguments ofCato Uticensis and Caesar in deciding the fate of the Catilinarian conspirators. Extractsfrom the relevant speeches in Sallusts Bellum Catilinae are given in banderoles. The Testesand Accusati sit at Ciceros feet. Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, MS. Barlow 40, fol. 1r.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The rhetoric of Cicero in its medieval and early renaissance commentary tradition /edited by Virginia Cox and John O. Ward.

p. cm. (Brills companions to the Christian tradition, ISSN 1871-6377 ; v. 2)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN-13: 978-90-04-13177-4 (hardback : alk. paper)ISBN-10: 90-04-13177-9 (hardback : alk. paper)1. Cicero, Marcus TulliusCriticism and interpretation. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient. 3.

Rhetoric, Medieval. I. Cox, Virginia. II. Ward, John O., 1940- III. Series.

PA6385.R44 2006875.01dc22

2006044016

ISSN 18716377ISBN-13: 978-90-04-13177-4ISBN-10: 90-04-13177-9

Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The NetherlandsKoninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill,

Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written

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printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

List of Contributors .................................................................... ixAbbreviations .............................................................................. xiiiPreface ........................................................................................ xv

PART ONE

ORIGINS, DEFINITIONS, AND DIFFUSION

Chapter 1 The Medieval and Early Renaissance Study ofCiceros De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium:Commentaries and Contexts .................................................. 3John O. WardAppendix: Catena Glosses on the De inventione of Cicero

and the Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herenniumfrom the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries ...................... 70

Chapter 2 Reading Between the Lines: The Textual History and Manuscript Transmission of Ciceros Rhetorical Works .................................................................... 77Ruth Taylor-Briggs

Chapter 3 Ciceronian Rhetoric in Late Medieval Italy: The Latin and Vernacular Traditions .................................. 109Virginia CoxAppendix: Ciceronian Rhetoric in the Vernacular in

Italy, 12601500 ................................................................ 136

PART TWO

INFLUENCES AND INTERRELATIONSHIPS: CONTEXTS FOR THE UTILIZATION OF THECICERONIAN RHETORICAL JUVENILIA AND

THEIR COMMENTARY TRADITION

Chapter 4 Ciceronian Rhetoric and Ethics: Conduct Literature and Speaking Well .............................. 147Mark D. Johnston

vi contents

Chapter 5 Rhetoric and Dialectic .......................................... 165Karin Margareta Fredborg

Chapter 6 Ciceronian Rhetoric and the Law ...................... 193Hanns Hohmann

Chapter 7 Rhetorical memoria in Commentary and Practice .................................................................................... 209Mary Carruthers

Chapter 8 The Ciceronian Rhetorical Tradition and Medieval Literary Theory ...................................................... 239Rita Copeland

Chapter 9 Latin Composition Textbooks and Ad HerenniumGlossing: The Missing Link? ................................................ 267Martin CamargoAppendices:1. Ancient and Medieval Rhetorical Texts Discussed ........ 2802. Rhetorical Colors Treated in the Works Discussed .... 2813. Treatments of a Sample Figure (repetitio) Compared ...... 2834. Ancient Rhetorics Cited or Quoted in Tria sunt

Ch. 12 (Worcester Cathedral, Chapter Library MS Q.79, fols 143v50r) .................................................. 286

Chapter 10 Poetics, Narration, and Imitation:Rhetoric as ars aplicabilis ........................................................ 289Pivi Mehtonen

Chapter 11 Medieval Thematic Preaching: A Ciceronian Second Coming ...................................................................... 313Margaret Jennings

Chapter 12 The Rhetorical Juvenilia of Cicero and the artes dictaminis .......................................................................... 335Gian Carlo Alessio

Chapter 13 Communication, Consensus, and Conict: Rhetorical Precepts, the ars concionandi, and Social Ordering in Late Medieval Italy .......................................... 365Stephen J. MilnerAppendix: Examples of zibaldoni Containing Sample

Orations and Other Rhetorically Related Material ........ 402

contents vii

Appendix: The Commentaries in Action ................................ 409Virginia Cox and John O. Ward1. The Preface to Victorinus De inventione

Commentary ...................................................................... 4092. The Preface to the Ad Herennium Gloss by Alanus

(of Lille?) from MS London British Library Harley 6324 ...................................................................... 413

3. The Preface to the Ad Herennium Commentary by Guarino da Verona .......................................................... 427

4. The Doctrine of insinuatio, or the indirect opening ...... 4305. The tertium genus narrationis ................................................ 4456. Attitudes towards Antiquity: The Gloss on the

Lucius Saturninus Episode (Ad Herennium 1.12.21, the legal status of denition) ............................................ 452

7. Attitudes towards Antiquity: the color demonstratio(elocutio) ................................................................................ 464

Bibliography of Primary Sources Cited .................................... 469Bibliography of Secondary Works and Editions ...................... 475

Index of Manuscripts ................................................................ 521Index of Persons and Titles ...................................................... 525General Index ............................................................................ 537

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Gian Carlo Alessio is Professor at the Department of Italian Studiesand Romance Philology of the University of Venice (Ca Foscari),Italy. His research interests encompass the history of rhetoric in theMiddle Ages, commentaries on classical and medieval (11th14thcentury) texts and medieval historiographical texts (10th12th century).Among his publications are editions of the following medieval texts:Cronaca di Novalesa (Turin, 1982, 1983, 2003), Bene of Florence,Candelabrum (Padua, 1983), Cronache di S. Gallo (Turin, 2004).

Martin Camargo (Illinois, 1978) is Professor and Head of Englishat the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has publishedon medieval rhetoric and medieval English literature, especially theworks of Chaucer, in journals such as The Chaucer Review, MediaevalStudies, Rhetorica, Speculum, and Traditio. His book-length studies includeThe Middle English Verse Love Epistle (Tbingen, 1991) and MedievalRhetorics of Prose Composition: Five English Artes Dictandi and TheirTradition (Binghamton, 1995). His current research focuses on theteaching of rhetoric at Oxford in the fourteenth and fteenth cen-turies.

Mary Carruthers (Yale, 1965) is Erich Maria Remarque Professorof Literature at New York University. Her research interests rangewidely across medieval literature, the history of rhetoric, and medievaltheories and practices of recollection and cognition. Author of TheBook of Memory (Cambridge 1990) and The Craft of Thought (Cambridge1998), she has co-edited a volume of translations into English ofmnemonic works from the twelfth through the fteenth centuries,The Medieval Craft of Memory (with Jan Ziolkowski, Pennsylvania, 2002).

Rita Copeland is Professor of Classical Studies and English at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, and Chair of the Program in ComparativeLiterature. She is the author of Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translationin the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1991, 1995), Intellectuals, Pedagogy, andDissent in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2001), and of many articlesabout medieval literature, medieval literary theory, and the history

x list of contributors

and theory of rhetoric. She is a co-founder and co-editor of the jour-nal New Medieval Literatures, and is co-editor, with Peter Struck, ofThe Cambridge Companion to Allegory, Ancient to Modern (Cambridge, forth-coming). With Ineke Sluiter, she is the editor of Medieval LiteraryTheory: The Grammatical and Rhetorical Traditions (Oxford, forthcoming),an anthology of primary texts in English translation. Her other cur-rent projects include a study of medieval intellectual biography.

Karin Margareta Fredborg (Copenhagen) is senior lecturer at theNiels Steensens Gymnasium (Copenhagen, Denmark), and aliatedto the Saxo Institute of the University of Copenhagen (Departmentof Greek and Latin). She is the editor of The Latin RhetoricalCommentaries by Thierry of Chartres (Toronto, 1988), and the 12th-century anonymous grammar Promisimus (Copenhagen, 1999), andhas published on Northern French, English and Italian grammarsand rhetoric in the Cahiers du Moyen Age Grec et Latin, and in numer-ous edited volumes, such as Peter Dronkes A History of Twelfth-CenturyPhilosophy (Cambridge, 1988).

Hanns Hohmann is Professor in the Department of CommunicationStudies at San Jos State University, and also teaches in the HumanitiesHonors Program there. His central interest focuses on the historicaland theoretical analysis of public argument in general, and of legalrhetoric in particular. He has published studies in numerous jour-nals, including Argumentation, Disputatio, The American Journal of ComparativeLaw, and The Quarterly Journal of Speech.

Margaret Jennings (Bryn, Mawr, 1970) is Professor of English atSt. Josephs College, Brooklyn, New York. Although she has pub-lished on diverse aspects of medieval literature and on the Cathedralof Bourges, her major research interest lies in the medieval preach-ing traditionespecially in the rise and development of the artespraedicandi and the ways in which these texts incorporate Ciceroniandispositio. The Ars Componendi Sermones of Ranulph Higden (edition:Brill, 1991; translation: Peeters, 2003) explores this interest. Her cur-rent project (Peeters, 2006) is an edition/translation of HigdensSpeculum Curatorum.

Mark D. Johnston ( Johns Hopkins, 1978) is Professor of Spanishand Chair in the Modern Languages Department at DePaul University

list of contributors xi

(Chicago). He has published broadly on medieval and RenaissanceCastilian and Catalan literature, the history of rhetoric, and literarytheory, including two major studies of Ramon Llull: The Spiritual Logicof Ramon Llull (Oxford, 1987) and The Evangelical Rhetoric of RomanLlull (Oxford, 1996). He is currently editing an anthology of ver-nacular conduct texts, for publication by the Medieval Academy ofAmerica.

Pivi Mehtonen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Uni-versity of Tampere, Finland. Her research interests are poetics andrhetoric (both theory and history) and philosophy of literature. Sheis the author of Obscure Language, Unclear Literature. Theory and Practicefrom Quintilian to the Enlightenment. (Helsinki, 2003) and Poetria nova.Johdatus keskiajan runousoppiin (Introduction to Medieval Poetics) (Helsinki,2003).

Stephen J. Milner (London, 1996) is Professor of Italian Studies atthe University of Manchester. His main research interest lies in thecultural history of late medieval and Renaissance Italy, particularlyin relation to the practices of public speaking, social and politicalpatronage, and visual culture. He has edited At the Margins: MinorityGroups in Premodern Italy (Minneapolis, 2005), and (with Stephen J.Campbell) Artistic Exchange and Cultural Translation in the Italian RenaissanceCity (Cambridge, 2004). He has also published an edition and trans-lation of Machiavellis Prince for the Everyman Library series (London,1995).

Dr. P. Ruth Taylor-Biggs, Ph.D. Birmingham (1987), is an HonoraryLecturer in Classics at the University of Birmingham. Her currentresearch interests include the textual history and manuscript trans-mission of the Ad Herennium and Valerius Flaccuss Argonautica. Shehas published in journals including the Classical Quarterly, Classica etmedievalia and the Revue dhistoire des textes, and is also the author ofVIA PLANA: Graduated Readings in Advanced Latin (Bristol, 2000).

ABBREVIATIONS

Ad loc. at the place in question (in references)AH Rhetorica ad HerenniumAHR American Historical ReviewANZAMEMS Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval

and Renaissance StudiesAP Ars poetica of HoraceArchives Archives dhistoire doctrinale et littraire du moyen geASI Archivio Storico ItalianoAV Ars versicatoria of Matthew of VendmeBAV Biblioteca Apostolica VaticanaBECh Bibliothque de lcole des ChartesC&M Classica et Medievalia: Revue Danoise de Philologie et dHistoireCIMAGL Cahiers de lInstitut du Moyen ge Grec et Latin (Copenhagen)CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio MedievalisCCSL Corpus Christianorum Series Latina (Brepols)CE of the Christian era = a.d.CM Classica et Medievalia: Revue Danoise de Philologie et dHistoireCNRS Centre National de la Recherche Scientique (Paris)CQ Classical QuarterlyCSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum LatinorumCTC Catalogus Translationum et CommentariorumDA Deutsches Archiv fr Erforschung des MittelaltersDBI Dizionario biograco degli ItalianiDDT De topicis dierentiis of BoethiusDe inv. De inventione of CiceroDOV De ornamentis verborum of Marbod of RennesEtym Etymologies of Isidore of SevilleGSLI Giornale storico della letteratura italianaGW Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke (Leipzig, 1925)HSCPh Harvard Studies in Classical PhilologyIJCT International Journal of the Classical Tradition (Boston)IMU Italia medioevale e umanisticaInc. incunabulum; incipitInst. Or. Institutiones oratoriae of QuintilianJHI Journal of the History of IdeasJRH Journal of Religious History

xiv abbreviations

JWCI Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld InstitutesL Laborint[h]us of Eberhard the GermanLCL Loeb Classical LibraryM Marx [1964] in Bibliography of Modern Works and

EditionsM&RTS Medieval and Renaissance Texts and StudiesMARS Medieval and Renaissance StudiesMGH SRG Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum

GermanicarumMH Museum HelveticumMS(S) manuscript(s)NH Pliny, Naturalis Historiaom omits/omitPC Penguin ClassicsPIMS Pontical Institute of Medieval Studies (Toronto,

Canada)PL Migne [184468] in Bibliography of Modern Works

and EditionsPMLA Publications of the Modern Languages AssociationPN Poetria Nova of Georey of VinsaufQJS Quarterly Journal of SpeechRhM Rheinisches Museum fr Philologie, Geschichte und griechische

PhilosophieRHT Revue dhistoire des textes (Institut de recherche et dhis-

toire des textes, Paris)RLV Rhetoricorum libri quinque by George of TrebizondRR Rhetorical Review, on line at http://www.nnrh.dk/

RR/index.htmlRSQ Rhetoric Society QuarterlyRTAM Rcherches de thologie ancienne et mdivaleS Stroebel [1915] in Bibliography of Modern Works

and EditionsSc./sc. add or understand (in editions)SM Studi MedievaliSS ScriptoresTLS Times Literary SupplementTMR The Medieval ReviewTSO Typologie des sources du moyen ge occidentalWS Wiener Studien, Zeitschrift fr klassischen Philologie und

Patristik

PREFACE

Ciceronian rhetorical theory persisted as a powerful presence withinmedieval and Renaissance culture despite its seeming lack of rele-vance to contemporary intellectual concerns and practical needs. Itsurvived by adapting to uses far removed from those for which itwas originally devised, and its continuing currency reected its emi-nent pliability. The present volume explores the way in which thisclassical rhetorical theory was accommodated to the needs of a post-classical Christian culture, and the contexts in which this develop-ment took place. It concerns in particular the transmission of Ciceronianrhetorical theory as represented by texts and paraphrases of, or com-mentaries on, the authentic De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium,which since the fourth century was assumed to be authored by Cicero.These works were intensively studied in the medieval and Renaissanceperiods to the near exclusion of other sources for classical rhetori-cal theory. Consideration of Ciceros orationes or his later rhetoricalwritings, or the Instutio oratoria of Quintilian or the works of Hermogenes,would have represented a quite distinct project, one that would haveilluminated the mature Renaissance far better than the medieval andearly Renaissance situation.

Until quite recently it was assumed that rhetoricthe art of per-suading regardless of truthwas alien to a period oriented towardstheological verities, and that the classical legacy to the Middle Ageswas neglected, fragmented, or muted in the arts of letter-writing,preaching, and poetic composition, to be revived in something likeits ancient form during the Italian Renaissance.1 Intellectual trendsin our own day, such as postmodernism2 and deconstruction which

1 Paetow [1910]; Vickers [1988a]. For the revival of classical rhetorical theoryin the U.S. mid-twentieth-century communication schools see Corbett [1965]. Forperceptive recent accounts of the subject see Camargo [2003abc], Mehtonen [2003],and Mehtonen in RR 1, 2 (2003) 19. Also Vickers [1981]; Enos [1999]. Two Frenchprojects confront the task of writing the history of rhetoric: Meyer [1999] andFumaroli [1999]. Cf. also Meyer [1986]. For Germany, see the Tbingen HistorischesWrterbuch der Rhetorik.

2 Harvey [1989]. For the link between Nietzsche, postmodernity, and classicalrhetorical theory see Struever [1970] 3; Kennedy [1999] 289not in Kennedy[1980]; Gilman, Blair, and Parent [1989]; Merrow [2003].

xvi preface

question the status of historical fact in favour of representation anddiscourse, together with a re-evaluation of medieval manuscript evi-dence for the use of classical rhetoric, have altered this perspective,as has the tendency to discount a division between medieval andRenaissance cultural forms. We are now more inclined to seek tracesof rhetorical theories and practices in medieval manuscript relictsand to pay more attention to medieval sensitivities towards languageas a veil for truth. While the medieval study of classical rhetoric isstill less clearly understood than the medieval study of grammar anddialectic, enough is now known to warrant increasing attention tothe role played by classical rhetoric in the medieval and early Renais-sance periods. The main aim of the present volume, therefore, is toexplore the connections between medieval and early Renaissancecommentary on the rhetorical juvenilia of Cicero and major intellec-tual disciplines and practices of the day, including law, dialectic, lit-erary theory and practice, mnemonics, preaching, and political oratory.

We would like to stress the strategic contribution this volume makesto the now controversial historiography of rhetoric. There is anincreasing tendency nowadays to equate rhetoric with any sort ofpersuasive communication.3 No doubt there is a place for a historyof persuasive communication and no doubt the history of classicalrhetoric would be a part of this history, but to merge these two his-tories under the banner of a general history of rhetoric would beto lose sight both of the special nature of classical rhetoric as a phe-nomenon and the special interest of its history, including its interestfor a history of persuasive communication. In a celebrated chapterknown to medieval theorists, Quintilian dened rhetoric as benedicendi scientia.4 Scientia presupposes the existence of transmissabletexts containing theory. Classical rhetoric is a ratiocinative con-struction of a comprehensive preceptive and didactic tradition, whichtakes the form of a disciplina and is passed on by writing. Whetherwe look at Ptahhoteps Egypt, the Sicily of Tisias or Corax, theRome of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, the context in which the medievalars dictaminis was developed, or the circumstances in which classicalrhetoric was either re-discovered or abandoned in the Middle Agesand the Renaissancein every instance the social, educational, andliteracy patterns that permitted the development in question are para-

3 See Kennedy [1999] 127, [1992], and [1998].4 Inst. Or. 2.15.34.

preface xvii

mount, and these are elided if one decides that rhetoric is almostanything that can be described as persuasive. It seems preferable,then, to view the history of rhetoric as the history of the classicaltradition, its predecessors and its aftermath. The present volume will,I hope, further the case for this approach.

The origin of our project was an approach to myself (through thegood oces of a mutual colleague, Constant Mews) from JulianDeahl, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Brill Academic Publishers, to theeect that a series of specialist handbooks in English, aimed atadvanced students and professional scholars, was being commissioned,with the purpose of describing and analysing the origins, spread, andinuences of various categories of commentary on the intellectuallife of the Middle Ages. I could only respond with eager enthusiasm,and was fortunate in later securing the invaluable help as co-editorand contributor, of Professor Virginia Cox, then of the Departmentof Italian, University of Cambridge, who around this time made avisit to Australia and gave an illuminating lecture to a class of mine.Together we managed to assemble a superb team to deal with theproject that derived from the Brill invitation, and the outlines ofwhat we wanted to say were admirably trialled at a workshop gra-ciously hosted in Cambridge by Professor Cox in July 2000. It iswith a deep sense of gratitude and pleasure that I here thank ProfessorCox for the unending good sense and untiring devotion, stimulus,and informed intelligence that has characterized her contribution tothe project, and we both thank with the greatest of pleasure ourcontributors who have endured so much for so long. Finally, allinvolved would like to thank Julian Deahl for conceiving the projectin the rst place, for his own endless patience and for his enthusi-astic interest in our endeavours at all stages of the project.5 The nalstages of the preparation of the manuscript were greatly facilitatedby the editorial oversight and practical guidance of Marcella Mulder.

5 I would like to thank Nick Gordon, Walter Kudrycz, David McRuvie, andJohn Scott for perceptive comments and much help with various stages of the pre-sent project, and Catherine Jereys for making such a splendid job of the indices.

PART ONE

ORIGINS, DEFINITIONS, AND DIFFUSION

CHAPTER 1

THE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY RENAISSANCE STUDY OF CICEROS DE INVENTIONEAND THE RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM:

COMMENTARIES AND CONTEXTS

John O. Ward

The aim of the present volume, as indicated in the preface above,is to evaluate and situate the inuence of perhaps the most impor-tant element in the classical rhetorical corpus for medieval intellec-tuals, writers, and speakers: the early rhetorical works (or juvenilia)of Cicero, the De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium attributedto him, both written within a very few years of each other duringthe second decade of the last century of the Roman Republic. Itmay come as something of a surprise for a modern reader to learnthat a leading scholar, humanist and educator such as Guarino daVerona lectured in the fteenth century for over thirty years on aclass-book that was by that time over fteen hundred years old,anonymous and textually defective. But it carried the name andauthorisation of Cicero Rhetor and that was enough. How can theinuence of this Ciceronian canon be tracked, and how might thetremendous power it wielded over medieval and Renaissance thoughtand literary practices be explained?

The inuence of these two Ciceronian texts can in part be tracedby way of the numerous surviving manuscripts, incunabula and six-teenth-century books containing them, often with extensive com-mentaries and glosses written over the ensuing fteen hundred yearsand more.1 Nevertheless, notions of inuence can sometimes be mis-leading: persuasive practices often gained momentum in medievaland Renaissance times with little input from the classical legacy.2

1 See Reeve [1988] 10924; Ward [1978], [1983], [1995c]; and Alessio [1979].For the work of a pioneer in the present eld see Grosser [1953].

2 For example dictamen; preaching; scholastic disputatio; court etiquette, changingfashions in dress, conduct, and behaviour (see ch. 4 below). For the observationthat classical (rhetorical) mnemonic theory was not widely generative of medievalmnemonic systems, see Carruthers [1998] 12; also ch. 7 below. J. R. ODonnellmaintained that William of Auvergnes Rhetorica divina was also not dependent upon

4 john o. ward

Further, as Mark Longaker has recently observed, The most impor-tant questions to ask about past pedagogies are: what did they do?Whom did they serve? What institutions did they empower.3 Theseare aspects readers should keep in mind when using the present vol-ume. The mere survival of Ciceronian rhetoric is less important herethan the user-contexts that rendered it a valid approach to con-temporary problems. Medieval culture was pragmatic, and dippinginto the lore of the pastan ever-present temptation to intellectu-als of that time in ways hard to appreciate todaywas seldom moti-vated by mere antiquarianism or pedantry. The uses made of theclassical rhetorical tradition are bound to be linked with importantmoments in cultural, political, or social history, and readers shouldtake time to tease these links out. Many leads will be provided inthe present volume to assist with this task, and it is for this reasonthat a chapter dealing with the vernacular paraphrases of the Cice-ronian rhetorical juvenilia has been included. Indeed, the methodadopted here may be described as an elucidation of context froma close examination of the manuscript relicts of the medieval andearly Renaissance study of classical rhetorical theory.

We may begin with three general observations. First, the Latinart of rhetoric was perhaps the best equipped of the seven liberalarts on which medieval education is often claimed to have beenbased.4 The key texts used in the other arts compare unfavourablyin scope, elegance, and calibre with the rhetorical/oratorical worksof Cicero himself and his subsequent admirer Quintilian, the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, the Rhetores latini minores, BoethiussDe dierentiis topicis, Augustines De doctrina Christiana, and a whole

Ciceronian rhetoric (Actes [1969] 153, but see also Briscoe and Jaye [1992] 9596).For an introduction to the nature of the medieval ars orandi see Tugwell [1978].

3 Longaker [2001] 123.4 On the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages see Wagner [1986] and Abelson

[1906]. Also: Curtius [1973] chs. 3, 4, 8, 12, 14, and excursuses V and VI; Actes[1969] 5, 44592, 98791; for the fate of the system in the later period see ibid.763, 777, 873 (Isidore, Aelfric) 5153 (Alcuin and the ninth-century De nuptiiscommentators) 121, 152, 785 (the eleventh century) 12756 (esp. 148), 53191,75362 (Brian P. Hendley John of Salisburys Defense of the trivium), 797827 (thetwelfth century) 162265, 593737, 83341, 84354, 88756, 116184, 119197(on the thirteenth to fteenth centuries, particularly the former, for which see nowalso Black [2001] ch. 4). More generalized papers of interest are contained in Actes[1969] 85572 (including Edmund Reiss Conict and its Resolution in MedievalDialogues 86372) and 9591005; for the iconography of the arts see 30555,42943.

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 5

range of practical exemplars from Vergil and Lucan to Ennodius,together with a host of other poets, practitioners, and letter-writers.Secondly, and despite our rst observation, rhetoric was a dicultart: because it survived by way of texts written in Roman times, awillingness to deal with a terrifying apparatus of knowledge aboutthe remote Roman republican past was an essential element in anyunderstanding of the fundamentals of the art;5 philological human-ismin the Renaissance sensewas thus part and parcel of thestudy of this art, rendered all the more daring by the fact that evenin antiquity rivals and opponents had attempted to deny eitherrhetorics status as an art or its utility, or both.6 For this reason,rhetoric stood out from the other liberal arts: it was a potentiallydangerous art because it taught one to persuade others that the not-true might indeed be true, and it was closely associated with acultural worldthat of late Republican Romewhich many con-temporaries felt had disappeared or had lost its relevance forever.

A third observation concerns the basically chronological approachadopted in the present chapter. The following general divisions havebeen employed: [I] the period from the De doctrina Christiana downto the time of Lawrence of Amal (rst half of the eleventh cen-tury)the Augustinian-Victorine age; [II] the period from the timeof Magister Menegaldus to that of Magister Alanus and the earlydays of the artes poetriae (roughly from ca. 10501215)the catena-commentary age;7 [III] the period from ca. 1215 to around 1500the High Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. Regional dierencesremain important, although there is no space here to draw them out.8

5 For an extreme example of this see the appendix to this volume below, sec-tion 6.

6 Cf. Quintilian Inst. or. 2.1521.7 See appendix to the present chapter.8 On the peculiar situation of England before the conquest see Knappe [1994],

[1996], [1998], [1999]; and Campbell [1978]. Germany and eastern Europe, likeEngland, were places where Latin had to be learned as a foreign language, andthe result was an unusual cultural emphasis, productive of exceptions, such asHrotsvit and Otto of Freising as well as rhetors working distinctly within theGerman/east European context, on all of which see Ward [1972a] 1:17177, [1993],and [1994]; Jae [1974] and [1978]; and Bennett [1989]. Italy and France sharethe focus at dierent periods, the region of northern France playing a precociouspart in the humanist rhetorical revival of the twelfth century (with Italy playing amore muted role, Ward [1972b] appendix D and the so-called Lucca summa: cf.Ward [1995c] 12426; Alessio [2003]; and Fredborg [2003b]). These roles werereversed after the middle years of the thirteenth century. Spain, idiosyncratic atleast down to the reconquista, to all appearances functions as an appendage to Italy

6 john o. ward

Antique Definitions9

Augustines Neoplatonic and crypto-Christian teacher, the eminentVictorinus, around the middle of the fourth century a.d.10 dividedthe practitioners of the art of persuasive communication into threegroups: the rhetor who teaches literature [litteras] and hands downthe arts of eloquence; the sophista from whose hands practice [exerci-tium] in [the art of ] speaking [dicendi] is had;11 and the orator who

in the later period, with the occasional representative gure from Sardinia (Ward[1983] 134, the date there being incorrect: substitute 1344 for 1444).

9 See now Camargo [2003c].10 On Augustine and Victorinus see ch. 8 below.11 The role of the sophista in Victorinus description is not clear. In normal par-

lance the word derived from the term used to describe contemporaries of Pericles(Athens, fth century b.c.) who took private pupils and made money from teach-ing the art of words (i.e., what could be done with words in the interests of per-suasion). By the early Empire it had come to mean a Greek practitioner of rhetoric,who made a claim to being a wise man, i.e., who laid some claim to a philo-sophical tradition that went back beyond Aristotle himself (Kennedy [1972] ch. 8;also Kennedy [1991] 3536). Thus, unlike rhetoric, sophistry and the sophistderived from words implying wisdom, instruction: hE sophiacleverness, skill, wis-dom, perfect scientic knowledge, philosophy; sophizOI instruct, make learned,become clever, contrive, deceive; ho sophistEsone who is clever, professes tomake people wise, teaches the arts and sciences. Then, following widespread crit-icism of the role of the sophist, criticism today evident in the writings of the fourth-century philosopher Plato, ho sophistEs came by slippage to mean a sophist,quibbler, cheat (throughout here in transcriptions from the Greek, capitals indicatelong vowels). In this sense, then, the sophist was, paradoxically since both wordsare Greek, simply the Greek equivalent of the Roman rhetor (According to Burkert[1972] 169, the terminological shift from describing the seven sages as sophistaito sophoi began in the fourth century b.c. This was due to the co-option of the[former] term to denote the Sophists, whose negative reception may have corruptedthe older use of the term to denote the seven sages [Yuen-Collingridge (2001) 14];according to Campbell [2001] 70 Gorgias held that deceit can be admirable ifused for aesthetic reasons; see Ward [1988]). Much of the rhetorical teaching ofthe day, however, whether Greek or Latin, consisted of training in certain kinds ofexercises (Marrou [1956] 201), and certainly, both grammarian and rhetor aimedat complete uency and practical skill in what they taught (and the art of thesophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one whomakes money from an apparent but unreal wisdomAristotle De sophist. elench.165a). Rhetoric was not a knowledge learned for its own sake as such, but a train-ing put to continual use. Hence it may be that rhetors came to employ teachingassistants whose sole purpose was to take pupils through the exercises once therhetor had introduced the students to them. Extraordinary lectures, afternoon revi-sion, and collationes in the medieval tradition were perhaps comparable. The tra-dition of medieval commentation on, and interest in, Aristotles De sophisticis elenchis,which mentions the interests of those whom we call sophists in a certain class ofarguments is, of course, relevant here, but its treatment lies outside the compass ofthe volume and falls more properly into the realm of argumentation and dialectical

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 7

in public and private [legal] cases makes use of a full and perfecteloquence.12 Orators, therefore, were those who had absorbed andput into practice a training in public speaking, whether it was exer-cised in the law courts, senatorial deliberations and public assem-blies, or on imperial court occasions or in front of troops. Thetraining these orators had received began with intense grammaticalstudies and reading in the canon of approved classical authors.13 Itthen progressed to a thorough and crucial grounding in the pre-ceptive tradition of public speaking, called, in Greek hE RhetorikEtechnE (the art of rhetoric, [public] speaking) from the Greek rhEsis(saying, speaking, word, speech), rhEtoreuO (I am a public speaker,I speak in public, I practise oratory), rhetorikos (t for a publicspeaker [rhetor], public speaking, oratorical, rhetorical) etc.Although the Latins had periphrases for the word RhetorikE (such asars dicendi or articiosa eloquentia or oratoria, -ae), they usually preferredsimply to latinise the Greek terms: rhetorica, -ae or rhetorice, -es, rhetorico-are (I speak oratorically or like an orator), rhetoricus -a -um, rhetorice(rhetorically), etc. Cicero, in his De oratore,14 speaks of isti magistri,qui rhetorici vocantur, that is, those masters who are called rhetori-cians. A little later he refers to eos, qui rhetores nominarentur, etqui dicendi praecepta traderent [those who were styled rhetoriciansand propounded rules of eloquence].15 Yet just before our rst pas-sage Cicero has Scaevola refer to the ornamenta dicendi [the trap-pings of eloquence] and argue that Aristotle and Theophrastus wrotemore of value to the orator quam omnes dicendi magistros, thanall the masters of [the art of ] speaking.

history (see Copeland [2002]; Ebbesen [1987]; Poste [1987] asks (p. 100) Did thesophist ever exist? Was there ever a class of people who professed to be philoso-phers and to educate, but instead of method or a system of reasoned truth, onlyknew and only taught, under the name of philosophy, the game of eristic?. NoteAbelards contrast between the disputationis disciplina on the one hand and, onthe other, sophismata, the captiosa conclusio, the person qui sophistice loquitur:Theologia Christiana ed. Buytaert [1969b] 185).

12 Ed. Halm [1863] 156.2325. For a translation see appendix to this volumebelow, section 1.

13 Marrou [1956]; Actes [1969] 533.14 De oratore 1.12.52.15 Ibid. 1.18.84later Guarino da Verona would draw a distinction between

loqui, to speak ordinarily, and dicere, to speak with art: see MS Oxford, BodleianLibrary, Canon.misc. 165 f.1v: pauci dicunt, multi autem loquuntur. For Guarinoscommentary, see appendix to this volume below, section 3.

8 john o. ward

The term rhetor, then, had certain pejorative overtones in Romanusage. It is in this connection perhaps no accident that the very termrhetoric appears in Greek culture at exactly that moment when theteaching of the skill became a contentious issue: the earliest occur-rences [of the term rhEtorikE ] are in Platos Gorgias.16 Schiappa arguesthat rhEtoreia and rhEtoreuein were, like rhEtorikE, fourth-century neol-ogisms coined in the wake of growing reection about the teachingof discourse and the training of orators. This original usage wasquite restricted, and Only well after the fourth century, when theterm rhEtOr became a more generic label for any speaker, do suchterms as RhEtoreia, rhEtorikE, and RhEtoreuein become increasingly aes-theticized or depoliticized and thus more akin to the contemporaryuses of the words oratory, rhetoric, and orate.17

Latin and Greek terms thus oscillate, but for antiquity and theLatin Middle Ages, the rhetor was, as Victorinus asserts, the onewho passed on the preceptive tradition of learned public speaking,as it was laid down in manuals that went back to Hermagoras ofTemnos (ca. 150 b.c.) and ultimately to Aristotle and Tisias the Crowor Tisias and Corax, in Syracuse, at the beginning of the fth cen-tury b.c.18 This is to say that just as the term rhetoric is Greek, sothe art was, and even though Cicero and Quintilian (amongst oth-ers) sought to tear it out of its technographic Greek manual tradi-tion, and even though the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium, acontemporary of the young Cicero, from time to time presented him-self as a Latin rather than a Greek rhetor, the taught art of rhetoricremained substantially as it was devised in Greek culture, and witha predominantly judicial cast. To quote Marrou

There was no real Latin rhetoric. It was an art that had been inventedand developed and brought nearer and nearer to perfection by theGreeks. The work of the rhetores latini of the rst century b.c. and laterof Cicero had simply been to develop a technical vocabulary, and this

16 Kennedy [1998] 3.17 Schiappa [1999] ch. 9, pp. 156, 161. Tacitus, of course, continues the Roman

contempt for quos rhetoras vocant (Dialogus de oratoribus 30) and uses the worddisertus pejoratively (ibid. 32) (as Manegaldus was later to do (Ward [1972a] 2:59),though, like the De inventione at 1.1.1, in the superlative).

18 Cf. Kennedy [1964] ch. 3 and Worthington [1994] 49. Schiappa [1999] ch. 3 has recently argued against any regular use of the term or art of rhetoricas early as the fth century b.c.

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 9

they had done by transposing the Greek vocabulary into their ownlanguage, word for word, and often quite slavishly.19

Victorinus is therefore summing up a complicated legacy for his suc-cessors. For our purposes here, we need to realise that although therewere other educational and career options open to the Roman upperclass child, rhetoric was the most prestigious general educational sub-ject.20 The longer it lasted as a taught art, however, the more baroqueit became, and the conversion of Augustine from a successful rhetorto a committed Christian bishop and teacher marked the end of avery long epoch and a very protracted preceptive tradition,21 onethat was perfectly evident in Ciceros own day, when rhetoric wasa dangerous Greek art that Roman gravitas should oppose.22 It shouldthus be clear to readers of the present volume that the major empha-sis here will be upon a very specic construction of the art ofrhetoric, the construction put upon it by its inventors, the Greeks.

19 Marrou [1956] 286, 43536.20 Marrou [1956] chs. 68; Ward [1972a] 1:7388, 107111.21 Leupin [2003] reads the Confessions as Augustines attempt at exorcising the

ghost of antiquity (e.g., the Ciceronian father gure), which arises on every pageof the text (review by Pivi Mehtonen in RR 1, 2, p. 7). See ch. 8 below for RitaCopelands brilliant demonstration of the inuence of Ciceros juvenilia on Augustineshermeneutics. The De doctrina Christiana has been described as the rst truly medievaltreatise about the communication arts (Glenn [1997] 88 and cf. Schildgen [1997]151, esp. 15253, 159; Dronke [1973] 318 ), and one that despite Augustinesgreat familiarity with the Graeco-Roman tradition and despite his own intentions,introduces a tension between truth and rhetoricity (or to use Conleys phrase[1994a, 100], eloquence and certitude). Tensions remained in post-classical cul-ture [ibid. 143]), thus marking out the territory of medieval rhetoric in ways thatare potentially very dierent from the eld in which that tradition operated (a cru-cial wrench for Graeco-Roman rhetorical theory was eected by Bede in his Deschematibus et tropisHalm [1863] 607, trans. Benson, Miller, and Prosser [1973]96 ). Or, to put it another way, . . . by christianizing rhetoric, Augustine did notmoralise it. Classical rhetoric was a morally neutral system that became ideally pos-itive (from a moral point of view) only when utilized by practising orators. Theideas of Cicero and Quintilian concerning the vir bonus distinguished the perfectorator from the mere practitioner of rhetoric. Augustine appropriated a languageof statecraft that sought to improve society by the propagation of virtue in indi-viduals. By applying rhetoric to the reading of texts associated with the ascent ofthe soul into the City of God, Augustine manufactured a hermeneutic process thatfocussed upon the readers responsibility for their action taken, action that wasinuenced by persuasion. All actions taken on earth were ultimately meaningful for,and fused with the heavenly or infernal position of the agent. This created a tri-partite, structured reality in which rhetoric and will formed an interceding nexusbetween good and evil that became the basis of medieval discourse (Gordon [2003]).For editions and translations of the De doctrina christiana see Ward [1995c] 27; Green[1963] and [1997]; and Martin and Daur [1962].

22 Suetonius De rhetoribus 1 in Rolfe [1920] 2:43437.

10 john o. ward

From Augustine to Lawrence of Amalfi (fifth to eleventh centuries)23

What share had the works of Cicero himself in the rhetoric of thisrst period? Initially at least, not a very substantial one, if we sur-vey the contents of Halms Rhetores Latini Minores (Halm [1863]).Nevertheless, as will become clear from the survey of Carolingianrhetorical resources presented below, the antique commentaries onthe De inventione by Augustines teacher Victorinus24 and the lateByzantine grammarian Grillius25 at least kept that text alive. Further,as chapter 2 below will show, the Ad Herennium must have repre-sented quite a discovery for the late antique teachers of classicalrhetorical theory, for whom the minor Latin rhetoricians, QuintiliansInstitutes, and the speeches, letters, and mature rhetorical writings ofCicero would have been the only alternative recourse.

Against the surviving Graeco-Roman rhetorical preceptive tradi-tion, we may set St. Augustines revolution:26 the supersession ofthe praecepta rhetoris and the transformation of the grammatical/rhetor-ical curriculum into a (scriptural) hermeneutic system. Associated with

23 See in general Conley [1994a] ch. 4 and Ward [1995c] ch. 2.24 Halm [1863] 153304; see appendix to this volume below, section 1.25 A partially preserved commentary on the De inventione extending to atque eorum

usus arrogans (De inv. 1.16.22, S20b.1920), that is to say, barely into the intrin-sic aspects of the art, the attainment of good-will (under the heading of exordium).The gloss, perhaps larger than Victorinus, especially on the Ciceronian preface,and less marked by general didactic systematics, or by an interest in philosophicaland logical matters, than the gloss by Victorinus, preserved for later students analternative approach to the De inventione, one embedded more fully in the traditionof grammatical and rhetorical school teaching and the study of antiquity; it dis-plays some measure of continuity with the rhetorical tradition as it must have existedbetween the time of Cicero and Quintilian. Grillius played a specic role in reviv-ing the study of Greek rhetorical theory in the Latin world: Courcelle [1969] 327.The prologue to Grillius De inventione commentary (says Courcelle) was conceivedas the introduction to a commentary on Hermogenes Staseis, and in the body ofthe commentary on the De inventione Grillius uses commentators on Hermogenes,cites Hermogenes by name and introduces Greek rhetorical theory into his com-mentary, quite independently of what he found already in the text he was com-menting. Grillius oruit must have been, at the latest, the same as that of Priscian,his eastern, Christian, colleague, perhaps ca. 450515. See Keil [185580] 2.35.24;Courcelle [1969] 328; Kaster [1988] 405410, with bibliography (Kaster is curi-ously ignorant of Martins edition of Grillius commentary [1927]); Ward [1995c]8889; Halm [1863] 598.20; and Martin [1927] 27.6. See also lately Pereira andYamuza [2003], who stress Grillius dependence upon Hermogenes and Minucianfor his doctrine of asystata; and the edition and monograph by Jakobi [2002], [2005].

26 Ward [1995c] 8384, 310.

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 11

this was the transformation of scholarly reading [scientia as an objec-tive thing to which individuals contribute] into devotional reading[in which the text is absorbed into the self and contributes towardsbehaviour and morality of self ]: . . . the edice of ones life . . . afully personal creation; not knowledge but charity; memory amachine for inventio, not a device for storing the products ofinventio.27 It is perhaps to be expected that the rhetorical work ofCicero inuencing Augustines revolution was the Orator rather thanthe De inventione.28

The Augustinian emphasis in the Graeco-Roman rhetorical legacydid not dominate, even in later antiquity. It has to be paralleledwith other traditions: the preceptive tradition of the Rhetores latiniminores; the Ciceronian tradition of the De inventione commentators(Marcommanus through to Grillius), with such attention as antiquitylavished upon the mature Ciceronian oratorical/rhetorical works, theorationes, and Quintilians Institutes;29 the grammatical-euphuistic rhetor-ical tradition of the colores and the baroque poetic and prose com-positions that were dependent upon them; the dictaminal tradition,initially related only in a shadowy fashion to the preceptive rhetoricaltradition;30 and the topical tradition, represented by the De dierentiistopicis and other works of Anicius Manlius Boethius in the early sixthcentury, with their emphasis upon the topical elements of the De inv.1.24.34 et seqq., and the Topica itself.31 It is thus a selective, if impor-tant, stream within this complex that has been chosen for attentionin the present volume.

Indeed, if we survey the Graeco-Roman sources in rhetoric avail-able to the keen student of the art of persuasive communicationaround the time of the innovative early Carolingians (ca. 750850),

27 Carruthers [1998] 2123; Copeland [1991] 4245, 15461; Gadamer [1999];Jordan [1980]; Morrison [1982]; Rist [1994]; Stock [1996] and [1998]; Sweetman[1997]; Tracy [1997].

28 See further Carruthers [1998] 280.29 Julius Victor in Halm [1863] 371448; Ward [1972a] 1:8288. Walzers com-

ment on the relationship between Cicero and Quintilian is interesting in view ofthe medieval reception of both authors: The Institutes is, then, a synthesis of Cicerosideal of the liberally educated orator with the Stoic ideal of the Wise Man. Indeed,in the Prooemium to Book XII Quintilian virtually states that his contribution tothe rhetorical tradition is his melding of Stoic ethical theory and rhetoric (Walzer[2003] 35).

30 Ward [1972a] 1:11618. See ch. 12 below for later developments which broughtthe art more closely in line with traditional Graeco-Roman rhetorical theory.

31 Stump [1978] and [1988].

12 john o. ward

we nd a fascinating complex of sources in Latin (and rememberthat almost no one in the medieval Latin West at this stage madeany practice of regularly using Greek sources directly). Perhaps thebest introduction to this complex of sources, and a vantage pointfrom which to survey the use made of Ciceros rhetorical writings,is the grammatico-rhetorical collection of texts found in the cele-brated manuscript from which Charles Halm printed eight of hisminor latin rhetoricians in 1863,32 MS Paris, Bibliothque Nationale,lat 7530.33 This manuscript is signicant because it amply reectslate antique grammatical and rhetorical interests/theory prior to thepopularity of the Ciceronian juvenilia, which, perhaps as a result ofthe Carolingian renaissance,34 soon came to sideline the rhetoreslatini minores.

Written in Beneventan script at the abbey of Monte Cassinobetween a.d. 779 and 796,35 MS 7530 contains some fty-eight sep-arate items, which Holtz has divided up into forty grammar-connecteditems,36 nine rhetorical items, one dialectical item, seven quadrivialitems, one hymn in honour of the blessed martyr Eulalia, and oneitem describing the liberal arts.37 Although the order of items dis-plays some oddities, Holtz is satised that the copyist has by andlarge followed the normal order of the liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric,dialectic, and then the scientic disciplines.38 According to Holtz,39

the MS reects a great moment in the history of Monte Cassinoabbey, when it was at the height of its fame, visited by pilgrims andeven the Emperor Charlemagne himself, closely linked with courtgures such as Paul the Deacon, and selected by rulers as the placeto send their sons. The collection itself reste un livre du matre, qui

32 See Halm [1863].33 Holtz [1975]; . . . un codice strutturato sulla base di precise esigenze dottri-

nali e di scuola (Passalacqua [1987] I, xxx).34 See Tromp [1973].35 Holtz [1975] 106, 147.36 Ibid. 140. I have grouped #48 Formata episcoporum with the rhetorical items

because it follows them and has a dictaminal interest. Holtz considers it heteroge-neous. I have included the poem on good pastors (#57) with the grammatical items,but it could equally be a rhetorical item (an exercise in poetic ekphrasis? ). I alsoinclude among the grammatical items #4 (incipit thvestes variididascalie de latragdie de Varius), which Holtz excludes. On links between grammar and rhetoricin the medieval period see Witt [1988] 3032, 54 etc.; and for the later periodBlack [2001].

37 Holtz [1975] 117: un montage de textes isidoriens et cassiodoriens.38 Ibid. 140.39 Ibid. 149.

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 13

pourra y trouver une riche matire pour nourrir ses cours.40 Thiswas not the last time that Monte Cassino would furnish rich expe-riences for those who took rhetoric out into the world (Lawrence ofAmal in the eleventh century and Jacques de Dinant in the laterthirteenth are others that come to mind here), but it is a revealingmoment. Monte Cassino, like other major abbeys of the day, wasat the centre of the Carolingian intellectual world. In this regard itwas closer in nature to the university of the later Middle Ages. Wemay rest assured that whoever compiled MS 7530, or ordered it tobe compiled, was at the cutting edge of ideas about the liberal arts,especially grammar (the key to them all), but not excluding rhetoric(which in this respect was ahead of dialect and the quadrivium).The elementary and anonymous character of many pieces makes usthink of the monastery schoolmaster who has allowed himself to beguided not by any urge to reproduce faithfully the works of the past,but by a concern to collect together texts concretely and directlyuseful in the teaching carried out at the abbey.41

What does MS 7530 tell us about rhetorical interests? It is clearthat the teaching in question was overwhelmingly oriented towardsLatin epideictic composition: Halms fth treatise42 is a collection ofscemata dianoeas quae ad rethores pertinent, taken from someancient rhetorical schoolmasters collection, from Isidore and fromQuintilians Institutes; dianoea [-ae] is described in Lewis and Shortas that by which a fact is exhibited instead of a conception,43 andexamples from Vergil (Aeneid ), Cicero (Pro Quinctio and Cato inThermum post censuram) are to be found, with a denition,44 inIulius Runianus de guris sententiarum et elocutionis 18. Theexcerpta rhetorica45 deal with composing ekphrases 46 in praise of avariety of topicsanimals, townsand with constructing literary com-parisons (e.g., between Ulysses and Ajax). There is also an interest-ing note here about history, describing it along the lines of rhetoricalnarrationes, and placing its nis [use] as ut ex ea sequendas aut

40 Ibid. 143.41 Ibid. 143.42 Halm [1863] V [= 7530 #40].43 Lewis and Short [1933] 569a.44 Haec gura t proprie, cum prononitur non id quod eri oportet, sed quod

t, Halm [1863] 43. 2122.45 Halm [1863] XX 587.10588.16 [=7530 #41].46 See Baldwin [1928] 17.

14 john o. ward

fugiendas res cognoscamus aut ad usum eloquentiae adiuvemurto help us grasp or avoid things, and to help us cultivate eloquence.47

It is obviously the latter that recommends the fragment in the pre-sent context. Even more intriguing is a note De epistolis, describ-ing propriety and elegance in epistolary communication. An excerptis also to be found here dealing with civilis quaestio and a num-ber of other aspects of technical rhetoric,48 in the manner of Fortu-natianus, whose entire work forms the major rhetorical set-piece ofMS 7530,49 apart from the rgle pour la mise en forme des lettrespiscopales . . . compos courant Ve sicle dans une chancellerie pis-copale proche de la Papaut.50 The Praeexercitamina of Hermogenes,as translated into Latin by Priscian,51 is a similar text. It had anuneven usage-pattern, being popular mainly in the Carolingian andRenaissance periods (the ninth and fteenth centuries).52 Being anaid to certain types of composition, with a view to both oratoricaland general employment, such a text was easily superseded in timesof intense rhetorical study by the Ciceronian juvenilia for rhetoricand by other kinds of text for related communication arts. Thecarmen de guris53 is a hexametric poem dening and exemplify-ing the colores and apparently dating from the last quarter of thefourth century a.d. Emporii de ethopoeia [etc.]54 is a selection ofadvice from Emporius the orator concerning character delineation,common places, demonstrative and deliberative oratory.

What are we to make of this odd assemblage? At rst sight it maybe presumed to have acted as additional support/illustration for workbased on more usual texts (De inventione? Ad Herennium? ). Since thosetexts, however, were neither so evident nor so textually complete as

47 Halm [1863] XX, 588.17589.31 [= 7530 #44].48 Halm [1863] XX, 58587.9 [= 7530 #46].49 #43, Halm [1863] 81134.50 #48; Holtz [1975] 122.51 Ed. Halm [1863] 55160.52 Of the forty-ve MSS extant, twelve are from the ninth century and nineteen

from the fteenth, with from one to three from the other centuries, except for thethirteenth, from which no MSS derive. The De guris numerorum, the De metris Terentii,and the Praeexercitamina were conceived together by Priscian upon the invitation ofQ. Aurelius Memmius Symmachus, possibly before a.d. 485 (Passalacqua [1987]xiiixiv). For the MSS of the Praeexercitamina see Passalacqua [1987] xxixxxx. Iwould like to thank here Manfred Kraus for much help with this topic.

53 Halm [1863] IV, 6370 [= 7530 #42].54 Halm [1863] XVIII, 56174 [= 7530 #45].

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 15

they later became,55 and are not included in MS 7530, it seemsmore likely that the master (or masters) whose eorts lay behind thislatter manuscript was (were) introducing rhetorical teaching, in closeconjunction with grammatical exercises, and from texts characteris-tic of late Roman antiquity. These texts were designed principallyto assist with the composition of letters, histories, epideictic and delib-erative pieces that were deemed to have some currency among thecourt literati of the Carolingian period, if only because of the cur-rency of such texts in the later Roman empire. Their grammatical(compositional, dictaminal) context is clear, and the 7530 master wasin the rst place a careful teacher of all aspects of grammar, orthog-raphy, metrics, and textual editing. His rhetorical essays were con-ceived in this context, but he seems to have wanted a text that wouldexplain the entire rhetorical system, and chose Fortunatianus (whoapart from Martianus Capella was the only Latin rhetor to deal withductus).56 Alcuin himself chose the De inventione and Julius Victors Arsrhetorica,57 the Ad Herennium being presumably inaccessible, too long,or inappropriate in that it lacks the long and interesting preface thatgraces the De inventione. There is not much to support the idea thatthe 7530 master made full use of the whole rhetorical curriculum,but he seems to have wanted key late antique information about itas his compositional and dictaminal teaching was trespassing uponits territory. It must have seemed that the export of pupils andmasters-to-be from the abbey to the various courts around Europewould sooner or later require instruction in what seemed to be animportant late antique generalist art, adapted to the duties of a lit-erate courtier, secretary, diarist, or chancery member. Rhetoric rec-ommended itself, therefore, because of an emerging employmentsituation, to the high politics and upgraded cultural projects of theCarolingian courts. It seems to have emerged as an advanced com-positional option within the grammatical curriculum of the day.

This reconstruction of the context for MS 7530 has another res-onance. Gabriele Knappe has shown in a number of important arti-cles and a book that in Anglo-Saxon England rhetoric entered the

55 Ward (1995c) 96.56 Halm [1863] 84.27; see Cox [2003b] and Calboli Montefusco [2003b].57 Halm [1863] 371448; cf. the edition, translation, and commentary in Howell

[1941].

16 john o. ward

curriculum only by way of grammatical instruction.58 MS 7530 makesclear that this must have been the general pattern, and the only fea-ture that distinguished the Continent from England was that conti-nental masters were able to extend their researches directly into therhetorical materials that must have been better preserved and morefrequently encountered in Continental libraries. The greater famil-iarity with Latin as a normal language of communication on theContinent, and especially in Italy,59 must also account for the ratherhigh level of instruction that some of the MS 7530 pieces seem toindicate.

Outside MS Paris 7530, important texts wereor becameavail-able in Latin. We have already noted Alcuins Disputatio de Rhetoricaet Virtutibus; and, still available in manuscripts from the seventh cen-tury onwards, there were the rhetorical juvenilia of Cicero,60 CicerosTopica,61 the De oratore62a high point of Carolingian cultural inter-ests, far outreaching any evidence of its incorporation into the cul-tural language of the dayand other mature works of Cicero, suchas a selection of his orationes63 and his letters (epistulae).64 QuintiliansInstitutes also underwent some interesting shifts of usage emphasis.65

It is also worth noting that the Carolingian period reproduced anantique manuscript of Terences Comedies complete with the Roman

58 [1994], [1996], [1998], [1999]. According to Calboli [2003] 53, Spain andEngland shared the role of introducing the medieval west to the Ad Herennium, theformer by way of the mutili family, the latter by way of the integri family. Seech. 2 below.

59 Witt [1988] 53: . . . of all Europeans, the Italians were most like the ancientRomans in the rhetorical orientation of their thought processes. . . . Italians, there-fore, instinctively appreciated the ancient Roman mentality and, once absorbed inthe writings of the Romans, could go further than any other people in graspingthe particular formation of their phrases and thoughts. This uncanny circumstanceis paralleled in modern translations of Latin works. Time and again, for example,Graziella Ballanti, in her translation of Abelards Carmen to his son Astralabe, cutsthrough modern problems of equivalent phraseology by using the same word[s] asthe medieval text, though sometimes in its [their] slightly changed modern form(Ballanti [1991]).

60 Ch. 2 below; Ward [1972a] 1:14959. On Carolingian copying activity inregard to the Ad Herennium see now Calboli [2003] 53.

61 Reynolds [1983].62 Beeson [1930]; Ward [1995c] 90, 310.63 See Reynolds [1983] 54 and ch. 2 below.64 See Reynolds [1983] 135.65 Ward [1972a] 1:13349.

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 17

dramatic gestures, many of which were to be found also in the clas-sical rhetorical manuals (under pronuntiatio).66

Other available sources served as stylistic models for compositionin prose and verse, but consideration of these would take us awayfrom the core of the rhetorical preceptive tradition. By Carolingiantimes an elaborate glossing tradition to the Ciceronian rhetoricaljuvenilia had already developed.67 This tradition is now mostly lost,but some hint of it survives in our extant manuscripts. Ruth Taylor-Briggs research68 suggests a considerable revival of interest in thetext of the Ad Herennium by the late fourth century a.d., and at leastseven manuscripts of that text may have by that time been in cir-culation. From the same period may date the (cursive?) codexLaudensis, discovered in 1421 at the cathedral library at Lodi andsubsequently lost. Behind Carolingian rhetorical interests, then, laya long tradition of interest in the [Ciceronian] rhetorical preceptivetradition.

In a strict sense the Augustinian age of Ciceronian rhetoric lasteduntil Bede,69 Rabanus Maurus,70 and Johannis Scottus Eriugena.71

The De doctrina christiana was copied intensively in the Carolingianage.72 In the same period, however, the Victorinus commentary onCiceros De inventione played a key role.73 The Ciceronian and later

66 Vat. lat. 3868; Dodwell [2000] p. 4 and ch. 2. Note Dodwells comment ([2000]154) in connection with the ancient gestures found in this ninth-century Vaticanmanuscript of Terences Comedies: It is in England, and only in the England of theeleventh century, that we nd this repertory of gestures [for puzzlement, for griefor sadness, for acquiesence or approval, for supplication, for apprehension or fear,and for pondering] that we can trace back, however indirectly, to the Roman stage.It is worth observing, too, that gestures are stressed in Ottonian book illumination:Mayr-Harting [1991].

67 On the original meaning of glosa see Mehtonen [2003] 93 and, in general,Irvine [1994].

68 Cf. ch. 2 below.69 whose application of the Augustinian paradigm, according to Copeland (ch.

8 below), works to blur the boundaries between rhetorical and theological systemsthat, in Augustines usage, had been kept distinct. See Halm [1863] 60718 andKendall [1978]. For Cassiodorus anticipation of Bedes emphasis upon the rhetoric-ity of the Bible see Astell [1999]; for other links between the Bible and rhetoricsee Frassetto [2002] 51, 5758 etc. For recent essays on the De schematibus et tropissee Lanham [2002].

70 Entirely dependent upon Augustine, yet a pupil of Alcuin: see Ward [1972a]1:15961 and Murphy [1974] 8287.

71 Ward [1972a] 1:16162.72 Chazelle [1995]; Opelt [1974]; Forstner [1967]. The manuscripts on which

Joseph Martin based his edition are given in Martin and Daur [1962] xixxxxvii, xl.73 Ward [1972a] 1:8898, 10405 and [1995c] 9697.

18 john o. ward

imperial Latin technographical rhetoric was preservedfor fairlypragmatic reasons74in the early medieval encyclopedists and relatedtexts, such as the already mentioned MS Paris, Bibliothque Nationale,lat. 7530,75 or the rhetorical book (V) from Martianus Capellas Denuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae,76 with the consequence that Alcuin, review-ing the preceptive tradition, again for practical reasons relevant tohis own day and its needs, had ample occasion to draw cleverlyupon it and to link it with behaviour (de virtutibus).77 Althoughthere is plenty of evidence that the Ad Herennium was known in theCarolingian age, it was to the fuller tradition of the Rhetores latiniminores that Alcuin and his contemporaries looked to ll out thoseportions of the classical curriculum not covered in Ciceros much-favoured De inventione. Nevertheless, a celebrated manuscript of theCiceronian juvenilia78 reveals interesting trends, not least the beginningsof a gloss (in Tironian shorthand) on the Ad Herennium, which appears,unusually, as the rst text in the manuscript, accompanied by signsthat excerpts from the Victorinus De inventione commentary were serv-ing as a kind of bridge between the Graeco-Roman preceptive tra-dition and the Augustinian behavioural, exegetical revolution.79

From the evidence at our disposal, it seems that the above uti-lizations of the Graeco-Roman rhetorical tradition owed much tothe emerging need to write and think eectively; to mount defencesof episcopal action against encroaching monarchs;80 to persuade rulersof all sorts that justice and court procedures were a preferable optionto force and arbitrary action;81 to assist the upper clergy in decid-

74 Ward [1972a] 1:12124 and Final additions and corrections to 1 (after 555)iiiii.

75 Ward [1972a] I, 7688, 11921; Holtz [1975]; see above at nn. 3257.76 Which was to enjoy considerable commentation in the later Carolingian age:

Ward [1972a] 1:162170. The rhetorical section of the De nuptiis may be found intranslation in Stahl, Johnson, and Burge [1977] 155214.

77 The originality of Alcuin has been contested in Lucia Calboli Montefusco[2003c]. I am preparing a full reconsideration of the subject, and would like tothank Professor Calboli Montefusco here for sending me her papers and for herconstant interest and stimulation.

78 Marxs codex Corbeiensis vel Petropolitanus, now Leningrad (St. Petersburg)Publichnaja Biblioteka im Saltykova-Schedrina MS Class.Lat. F.v.8: Marx [1964]IXXI; Munk Olsen [1982] I, 205 # B.226; Ward [1995c] 98, 311.

79 The section of the Corbie MS of the Ad Herennium, between the Ad Herenniumand De inventione is devoted to extracts from Victorinus commentary on the De inven-tione: see Ward [1995c] 369 index s.v. Leningrad, esp. 98.

80 Kennedy [1984]; Ward [1972a] 1:11618; Pizarro [1989].81 Note in general the role of the upper clergy in Carolingian government and

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 19

ing issues of state, coming to judicial decisions, and taking part inpolitical deliberations in those areas of medieval Europesuch asVisigothic Spainwhere literate clergy had important roles to play.The clergy also used rhetorical ploys and categories, it seems, intheir own internal trials and squabbles.82 It is simplistic to suppose,for example, that a gure such as Cassiodorus, who spent a lifetimein the service of the state and compiled a correspondence dossier toassist with his and others state epistolography,83 should not have hadthe real world in mind when he retired to a monastery and deviseda program of learning that covered the known subjects of the day.84

No more should we nowadays join in Grisars denunciation of therhetoric of Magnus Felix Ennodius, or condemn Venantius HonoriusClementianus Fortunatus for being under the inuence of the debasedtaste of his time [his works not being free of ] exaggeration andaectation.85 Both were leading rhetors and bishops who, like Gregoryof Tours, brought the communication theory and practice of theirday (late fth and sixth centuries) into close contact with the reallanguage and persuasive needs of the time. Such close links remaineda feature of medieval rhetorical studies, episodic though these mayhave been, and the view that Rhetoric diminished in importancewith the end of the Roman world because there was no longer thesame need for speech-making, either political or forensic, shouldnow be revised.86

The Post-Augustinian age of Ciceronian rhetoric reached matu-rity in the twelfth century a.d.87 Augustines De doctrina christiana wasconned in the main to schools of biblical exegesis, and ultimately

justice and, in particular, Wallachs interpretation of Alcuins Disputatio de rhetorica etde virtutibus sapientissimi regis Karoli et Albini magistri: Ward [1972a] 1:12133; Ward[1995c] 8182, 310; Wallach [1959]; Houwen and MacDonald [1998]; McKitterick[1989], [1992], and [1994]; Ullmann [1969].

82 Haye [1999] esp. 17; Ward [1972a] 1:17786 and [1978] 4445.83 See Barnish [1992].84 Grisar [191112] 2:31217; Jones [1946], 36, 14858.85 Grisar [191112] 3:19298. For Fortunatus see Godman [1986] and George

[1995] xxxxi: his writing bears witness to his rhetorical training [at Ravenna], tohis thorough grounding in the classical authors as well as in the bible and thechurch fathers, and to the taste of the age for elaborate verbal virtuosity.

86 Ward [1995c] 31112; Haye [1999]; Cawsey [1999]. On Gregory the Greatsacquaintance with rhetoric, especially in the context of law, see now Martyn [2004b]1: 23, 1317, 3940, 10516; 2: 38084; 3: 827, etc.

87 Copeland [1991] 158: Augustines transformation of rhetorical invention hadno bearing on the academic study of rhetoric from the Carolingian period onwards.

20 john o. ward

gured in the mendicant and feminine mystic re-invention of theAugustinian devotional reader, with its own non-Ciceronian rhetoric.88

As opportunities for persuasive communication multiplied, however,we witness the continuous increase in the number of surviving copiesof texts of Ciceros rhetorical juvenilia89 and of the volume of gloss-ing, culminating in the large-scale and complicated arts handbooknow preserved in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud lat. 49,90

together with the earliest genuinely medieval catena gloss on eitherof the Ciceronian rhetorical juvenilia, in this case, the De inventione,a text which, because of its extensive treatment and marshalling ofthe topical resources of argument, and the existence of an extensivepre-Christian commentary on it (that by Victorinus), had an earlyascendancy in the medieval schools. We refer here to the short glosswhich seems to reect the schoolroom of Lawrence of Amal. Bycatena gloss we mean a set of remarks supplementary to a classi-cal text but keyed to the rst few words of the sentence or para-graph being commented on.91 Such words from the original textform a kind of chain [catena], with the spaces between the linkscontaining subsequent-era commentation. A catena-gloss is an ecientway of transcribing and transmitting the supplementary informationrelating to a classical text, and which is necessary for subsequentgenerations to fully grasp the meaning of that text, but to fully com-prehend the signicance of the supplementary material, a copy ofthe original text must be at hand. The catena-gloss therefore accen-tuates the autonomy and signicance of the classical text and at thesame time makes for ease of copying. Transmitting an original textwith the supplementary material added in the form of marginal andinterlinear glosses is much slower and more complicatedas anyonewho might try to reproduce the annotated copy of the De inventionein MS Laud lat. 49 will nd out.92

The volume in which this early catena-gloss or mini-commentaryon the De inventione is found is a transcription of an archetype from

88 Newman [1995]; Beer [1992]. Note, however, the Augustinian emphasis ofpassages such as lines 82124, 898, 937 (yet note line 956) of Abelards Carmento his son Astralabe (see the edition by Rubingh-Bosscher [1987]).

89 Ward [1972a] I, 13359 and [1995c] 88104; also ch. 2 below.90 From the early eleventh century. See Hunt et al. [1975] #108, 5758.91 Ward [1996b] and [1998].92 Some idea of the conceptual and mental changes that may have accompanied

the shift from the annotated text to the catena gloss are discussed in Parkes [1976],Hamesse [1999], and Saenger [1999].

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 21

the hand of Lawrence of Amal, juxtaposing excerpts from gram-marians, rhetors, philosophers, poets, prose-writers classical andChristian, according to a scholastic programme geared to the studyof the trivium and quadrivium.93 The manuscript, compiled, it seems,around the middle of the eleventh century (ca. 10451063) by stu-dents of Lawrence, or possibly even by Lawrence himself in the lastyears of his life, reects his teaching and/or that of his teacher. Itis probably, at least in origin, a handbook to the arts assembled byLawrence. The immediate context of the gloss in question here isAlcuins Disputatio de rhetorica (preceding) and a table displaying argu-mentum dialecticae artis: substantia with Porphyrys Isagoge (follow-ing). Alcuins work is preceded by grammatical treatises.

Lawrence was a monk of Monte Cassino before 1030, after whichhe became bishop of Amal until his exile in 1039, when he edto Florence, and after that Rome, where, so far as we know, hespent the rest of his days and, among other things, instructed Hilde-brand, the future Pope Gregory VII, recently described by RonaldWitt as the most eloquent writer of ocial correspondence [sincelate antiquity].94 He died just before mid-century. Lawrence maywell have been a pupil of Gerbert of Rheims, from whom, no doubt,he inherited his interest in rhetoric. At Monte Cassino, too, lay thefamous Carolingian rhetorical manual, now MS Paris, BibliothqueNationale, lat. 7530, which we have discussed above. In his briefand suggestive comment on the signicance of the rhetorical teach-ing of Lawrence of Amal, Gian Carlo Alessio claims that MonteCassino in Lawrences time was heir to the late antique philologicaltradition of direct study of the classical rhetorical authors, a tradi-tion which was to ourish in the northern schools of the twelfth cen-tury, at a time when the Italian rhetorical example was progressivelystressing acquisition of linguistic and stylistic skills, rather than thegeneral educational formation favoured in the north.95 Certainly thetexts contained within the manuscript presently under consideration

93 The manuscript is MS Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, lat. Z.L. 497fols 105vb106vb. I have prepared a complete annotated transcription of this rhetor-ical portion of the MS, which I hope to publish elsewhere. This transcription formsthe basis for some of the observations presented below.

94 Witt [1988] 41: Witt in the same place describes Peter Damian as the great-est preacher since late antiquity: clearly practical excellence preceded the manualsin both dictamen and preaching!

95 Alessio [1987] 32127 [and plate 129].

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underline the acquisition of trivial (and quadrivial) skills, pointing theway, in regard to the former, to the slightly later but highly signicantdictaminal writings of Alberic of Monte Cassino.96 The signicanceof this area, with its strong papal and imperial connections, for thedeveloping study of the two primary classical rhetorical texts, the Deinventione and the Ad Herennium, has been underlined by Ruth Taylor-Briggs97 and Maddalena Spallone.98 Lawrences other works seemuneventful and perhaps characteristic for a monk: passio SanctiWenzeslai Regis; versiculi in Augustini Casinensis margine adscripti;sermo in vigilia Sancti Benedicti; vita Sancti Zenobii episcopi;epistulae exegeticae; and a somewhat out of place De divisione.

The use to which the De inventione seems to have been put, ifLawrences teaching is any guide, is interesting. Mined as a sourceof moral guidelines and generalised educational axioms, the classi-cal text also provided a number of detailed illustrative judicial casesand tips as to the handling of these cases, all of which seems tohave formed the basis for discussions that must have come to resem-ble ancient schoolroom debates occasioned by particular controversiaeand suasoriae. This kind of training must have seemed opportune forthe clerical class, with its potentially expanding commitment to var-ious forms of litigation, involving complicated questions at canonlaw, church administration, jurisdictional and diocesan disputes,conicts of jurisdiction between church and state or between monas-tic and episcopal orders, the emergence of new orders, changingideas about clerical life, questions of hierarchical order and pre-emi-nence, and similar issues. Those clergy, such as Anselm of Besate,99

who took service with secular courts would have found their exper-tise in these areas stretched to new limits. Anselms Rhetorimachia100

is testimony to the topicality and currency of the Ciceronian rhetor-ical juvenilia and the oral training in pleading that they provided.There is some evidence that classroom discussion in this periodremained largely oral, with the result that our surviving manuscriptsdo not attest to what went on there, as we would today expect.101

96 See Murphy [1974] 20310 and Newton and Radding [2003].97 See Taylor [1993a] 131 and ch. 2 below.98 Spallone [1980] 18790. See now also Calboli [2003] 4445.99 Active ca. a.d. 102050; see Haye [1999] 42; Ward [1995c] index, p. 351

s.vv. Anselm of Besate; Bennett [1987] and [1991].100 Written 104648 in Parma.101 See Jaeger [1994].

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Whether in the eleventh century we have a learning situation thatmight conform to the innovative modes and practices recently attrib-uted to the Lollards is a subject we cannot pursue here,102 but whichmight well repay investigation: at all moments of educational/peda-gogic change and re-direction, educative ideas and practices mayreinforce or seek to radicalise the logic of educational discourses103

inherited from the past. A zeal to partake of educational experienceon the part of individuals not previously exposed to it must haveaccompanied the relatively rapid expansion of the literate classes ofthe day,104 but the degree of radicalisation of the curriculum thatresulted in the eleventh century may have been conned to a closerattention to the ancient sources for the art of persuasion: Graeco-Roman rhetoric would thus have entered the curriculum as a poten-tial challenge to the xity of truth and underlined a re-engagementbetween education and the complexities of daily life.105

From Lawrence of Amalfi to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)

As the eleventh century wore on, the rhetorical juvenilia of Cicerofound further practical user-contexts in the area of contemporarycanon law cases,106 and the polemical exchanges of the combatantsinvolved in what has come to be known as the investiture contro-versy (over the question of who had the power and duty to selectthe bishop and hand him his symbols of oce)107 provided an impor-tant stimulus for this development. The controversy not only ush-ered in an era of heightened intellectual activity embracing law,

102 See Copeland [2001].103 See Copeland [2001] 7.104 See Copeland [2001] 1315; Stock [1983] and [198485]; and Ward [1990b].105 The same may be said for the (re-)emergence of elaborate poetic theory in

the second half of the twelfth century: Mehtonen [2003] 103 and ch. 10 below.See also Copeland on the artes poetriae in her ch. below (8 between nn 35 and 36);she comments interestingly on the academically conservative nature of the Ciceronianrhetorical juvenilia commentaries.

106 See later in the present section (and Haye [1999] ch. 4, Dickey [1953] 15991).107 Max Manitius began the third and nal volume of his enormous History of

Latin Literature in the Middle Ages (1056 pages!) with this sentence: The whole epochwhich we have now to describe, takes its origin from the greatest event in the wholehistory of the Middle Ages: the struggle of the Church against the State (Manitius[1931] 3). On the investiture controversy see now Tellenbach [1966] and Blumenthal[1988].

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politics, and all aspects of education108 but also provided a keenjustication for any advance in persuasive techniques, whether oral109

or in writing.110 Such an intellectual and political climate not onlystimulated the renewed study of Ciceros rhetorical juvenilia but alsogave birth to systematised instruction in the use of the rhythmicalprose cursus, letter-writing, and document composition.111 Witt andBlack have in fact pointed to the divergent paths classical rhetorictook in this connection:

. . . there were in fact two competing tendencies in education: one ema-nating from traditional grammar schools based on the classical authorsand still linked to ecclesiastical institutions, and the other stemmingfrom nascent lay higher education, focused on notarial and legal stud-ies, which led to the emergence of universities in Bologna in the twelfthcentury and then in Arezzo and Padua in the early thirteenth. . . .These two approaches to education were diametrically opposed: theformer privileged classical authors, while the latter emphasised practi-cal and rapid latinity aimed at entry into the professions. . . . The sec-ond, more practical and less classical approach, is rst noticeable inthe ars dictaminis of Alberic of Montecassino (ca. 1075); it had spreadto Bologna by the middle of the twelfth century and is associated witha manual by Adalberto da San Marino,112 Bernardo da Bologna andanother anonymous Bolognese dictator.113

108 Brooke [1958]. For links with the Twelfth-Century Renaissance see 45, fortheology and law, 67.

109 Haye [1999].110 Robinson [1978]; Hartmann [1997]; on the Regensburg letters see Ward

[1995c] 144 and Van Engen [1997] 119. On the Codex Udalrici Babenbergensis seeJa [1869], Pivec [193134] and Southern [1995] 20203.

111 Ward [2001a], Camargo [2001a].112 Adalbertus da San Marino here appears to be confused with Adalbertus of

Samaria (e-mail communication from Gian Carlo Alessio 2003). On Alberic seenow Bognini [2004].

113 Black [2002] 278. Black claims that the scholastic grammar of the northernschools was an essential accompaniment to the ars dictaminis and rising legal stud-ies of Italy during the twelfth century (282). Compare Van Engen [1997] 10405:By the early twelfth century, demand for expertise in the art of writing prose let-ters seems to have outdistanced access to the requisite schooling. Hence, three ofthe main purposes served by learning to compose in Latin became separated ofrom the passive mastery of school rhetoric to establish themselves as distinct arts,the skills, that is, of composing verse, documents, or letters. . . . Put in terms ofsocial exigencies, as soon as letter-writing and document-preparation assumed any-thing like a routine function practiced outside a few select courts, separate manu-als appeared. From the beginning those manuals oered a practical alternative tothe full rhetorical training of the schools . . . aimed especially at the rudes or sim-plices . . .. The same thing, it should, however, be noted, did not occur under theRoman empire, despite the fact that, as in the medieval period, letters remained

ciceros DE INVENTIONE and the RHETORICA AD HERENNIUM 25

The second approach noted here was to gather momentum in thir-teenth-century Italy and led (paradoxically) in the time of Dante toa recovery of classical rhetorical theory by way of extensive com-mentaries on the Ad Herennium.114 Prior to that recovery, Victorinuscontinued to play a key mediating role between the hard core oflate Roman republican rhetorical theory and medieval emphasesupon knowledge-theory and a neoplatonic view of res et nomina, hiswork even displacing the De inventione itself at times.115 The generalfailure to remedy the truncation/assimilation of rival-gloss sources116

that had occurred in late antique times was reversed from the sec-ond half of the eleventh century onwards, when ambitious scholarsbegan to devise their own accompaniment of glosses for the rhetor-ical juvenilia of Cicero, even though in those glosses technographi-cal instruction in rhetoric came to outbalance the moral emphasisevident in the very early catena-gloss of Lawrence of Amal.

The mature age of Graeco-Roman rhetorical theory (and inven-tively adaptive practice), therefore, spans the period between Lawrenceof Amal and the Fourth Lateran Council (a.d. 1215). It is in thisperiod that we nd our only extant copy of Julius Victors Ars rhetorica(written in France in the second quarter of the twelfth century)117

and it is in the same period, as we have already noted, that wecome face-to-face with the (re)invention of the (non-Victorine) catenacommentary. From the time of the later eleventh-century MagisterMenegaldus to that of the twelfth-century Magister Alanus (thenames of the two great shadowy masters of the art known largelyfrom their occurrence in manuscripts of otherwise anonymous glosseson the Ciceronian rhetorical juvenilia), via the lesser but in theirown way highly original Magistri Guillelmus [William of Champeaux],Theodoricus Carnotensis [Thierry of Chartres], and Petrus Helias

virtually the only means of holding together the activities and representations of thesocially and intellectually privileged (Van Engen [1997] 113). For recent light onthis phenomenon see Bowman [1994]. Van Engens explanations for the decline ofelegant, model letter-writing after ca. a.d. 1200, in favour of, among other things,a training in law, are interesting: [1997] 13032.

114 Giansante [1998]; Ward [2001a]; Calboli [2003]; Skinner [2002] 2: chs. 14.For Witt, see Black [2002].

115 See for example Ward [1995c] 9697.116 Marcomannus, Grillius (representing the grammatical tradition of late antique

rhetorical studyWard [1972a] 1:98104) and whatever commentary the much-copied fragment De adtributis (Halm [1863] 30510) derived from, etc.

117 Alessio [2003] 12; Halm [1863] 371448.

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[Peter Helias] together with their discipuli/anonymi,118 the revival ofGraeco-Roman rhetorical theory reaches its apogee. With Thierryof Chartres, writes Gualtiero Calboli,119 the movement towards amore and more attentive and correct philology [as far as rhetoricalscholarship was concerned] had begun.