Bede on prosodic licences

Bede gives us a further glimpse on his respective views on Christian and pre-Christian prosody in two successive chapters of his treatise. These chapters, numbered fifteen and sixteen, are placed towards the end of his presentation of the dactylic hexameter and have the respective titles Quod et auctoritas saepe et necessitas metricorum decreta violet and Ut prisci poetae quaedam aliter quam moderni posuerunt. Chapter fifteen (in Kendall’s translation, “Concerning the fact that the rules of the prosodists are often broken both by authority and from necessity”³⁵⁶) discusses the various deviations from strict prosody necessitated either by the structure of the dactylic metres or other stylistic considerations.

Although some of Bede’s examples of such liberties are taken from Vergil, the chapter deals primarily with the metrical liberties of Christian poets and can also be viewed as an attempt to justify some of their transgressions. The sixteenth chapter (in Kendall, “Prosodic

differences between ancient and modern poets”³⁵⁷), on the other hand, deals with the metrical practices of pre-Christian poets, most notably Vergil, and condemns a number of their

prosodic licences, most notably hiatuses and spondaic lines, which, as we have seen, were Bede’s bête noire. The ultimate purpose of the chapter seems to be to demonstrate the extent to which pre-Christian poets (whom Bede here, tellingly, calls prisci poetae) are outdated, contrasted with the prosodic regularity of the “modern”, or Christian, poets.

In chapter fifteen, Bede primarily discusses the alterations of syllable lengths, which, in hexameter poetry, are sometimes necessary to make the words prosodically usable.

Such devices are age-old and were well established already in the classical age; usually they involve the lengthening of one or more syllables to make a prosodically cumbersome word fit the metre. This practice, known as “epic lengthening”, occurs already in Greek epic poetry, and in Latin it was used primarily to alter the prosodic structure of words with a surfeit of short syllables. To mention but one example, the word religio, with three consecutive short syllables would be inapplicable in dactylic verse, but its poetic forms ligio and relligio (with a long first syllable) are not. Similarly difficult are words with cretic structures, or short syllables sandwiched between long ones, as in imperator (-u-x), for which already Ennius substituted the rather contrived induperator (-uu-x). The post-classical evolution of Latin prosody provided poets with other ways of circumventing metrically difficult word-forms:

the shortened final vowels of first-person verb forms and third-declension nouns proved

356 Kendall 1991, 133.

357 Kendall 1991, 141.

highly useful in providing poets with additional short syllables, and, as we have already stated, the short final es of numeral adverbs such as quinquies made previously useless cretic words employable in dactylic verse. For Bede, however, these were the regular forms of the words in question (we have his own word on the subject in his chapters on the final syllables of words), and therefore required no further explanation.

The lengthening and shortening of syllables belong to the features which in the earlier grammarians are, impractically enough, lumped together with other “metaplasms” and discussed together with “schemes and tropes”, or figures of speech. As in the case of elision, Bede has chosen a more practical course: he understands that this prosodic feature has a direct effect on the scansion of verse and discusses it accordingly. Remarkably, he has also abandoned the traditional terms for lengthened, shortened, eliminated or interpolated syllables³⁵⁸ as being simply confusing for the point he is trying to make.

The examples which Bede gives of such prosodic tinkering generally fall into the religio/ ligio category, and cannot be said to represent a radical departure from classical norm, although in some cases the analyses which Bede gives his examples are, yet again, idiosyncratic. Also noteworthy is Bede’s the inclusion of the Christian trinitas as a prosodically difficult cretic word:

At tamen intuendum est nobis quia et auctoritas nonnumquam et necessitas metricae disciplinae regulas licite contemnit. Necessitas quidem in his verbis quae non aliter in versu poni possunt, ut sunt ea quae quattuor syllabas breves habent, ita, ‘basilica’,

358 e.g. Donatus in his Ars maior:

Prosthesis est appositio quaedam ad principium dictionis litterae aut syllabae, ut gnato pro nato et tetulit pro tulit. Epenthesis est appositio ad mediam dictionem litterae aut syllabae, ut relliquias pro reliquias, induperator pro imperator. Hanc alii epenthesin, alii parenthesin dicunt. Paragoge est appositio ad finem dictionis litterae aut syllabae, ut magis pro mage et potestur pro potest. Hanc alii prosparalempsin appellant. Aphaeresis est ablatio de principio dictionis contraria prosthesi, ut mitte pro omitte et temno pro contemno. Syncope est ablatio de media dictione contraria epenthesi, ut audacter pro audaciter, commorat pro commoverat. Apocope est ablatio de fine dictionis paragoge contraria, ut Achilli pro Achillis et pote pro potest. Ectasis est extensio syllabae contra naturam verbi, ut “Italiam fato profugus”, cum Italia correpte dici debeat. Systole est correptio contraria ectasi, ut

“aquosus Orion” cum Orion producte dici debeat. – Holtz 1981, 660, 7 – 662, 2.

[Prosthesis is the placement of a letter or a syllable in the beginning of a word, as in gnato for nato and tetulit for tulit. Epenthesis is the placement of a letter or a syllable in the middle of a word, as in relliquias for reliquias or induperator for imperator. This is called epenthesis by some and

parenthesis by others. Paragoge is the placement of a letter or a syllable in the end of a word, as in magis for mage and potestur for potest. Some call this prospalalempsis. Aphaeresis is the removal (of a letter or a syllable) from the beginning of a word, contrary to prosthesis, as in mitte for omitte and temno for contemno. Syncope is the removal (of a letter or a syllable) from the middle of the word, contrary to epenthesis, as in audacter for audaciter or commorat for commoverat. Apocope is the removal (of a letter or a syllable) from the end of the word, contrary to paragoge, as in Achilli for Achillis and pote for potest. Ectasis is the extension of a syllable against the nature of the word, as in

taliam fato profugus”, since Italia should be pronounced short (i.e. with a short initial i). Systole is the correption of a syllable, contrary to ectasis, as in “aquosus rion” (Verg. Aen. 4, 52), since Orion should be pronounced long (i.e. with a long initial o).]

‘Italia’, ‘religio’, vel tres primas syllabas breves, ut reliquiae, vel unam in medio brevem, ut ‘veritas’, ‘trinitas’, quae neque dactylum consuetum neque spondeum facere possunt, quod propriis nominibus maxime solet evenire.³⁵⁹

[Nevertheless we should keep in mind that the rules of prosody are sometimes properly disregarded both by those poets whom we consider authoritative and from necessity. They must be disregarded from necessity in those words which otherwise have four short syllables, like Italia, basilica, and religio, or those which have three initial short syllables, like reliquiae, or those which have one short syllable between two long ones, like veritas and trinitas. Words like these can make neither an ordinary dactyl nor a spondee. This problem is especially common with certain specific nouns.]³⁶⁰

Bede, for once, cites an example from Vergil (Aen. 5, 629) with the name Italia, where lengthening takes place in the initial i. Strangely enough, he does not take it for granted that this is what the poet intended but suggests an alternative scansion where the first foot of the line is a tribrach (uuu) rather than a dactyl:

Huius exemplum:

Italiam sequimur fugientem et mergimur undis.

I contra naturam pro longa posuit, quia non aliter Italiam, quam saepius erat

nominaturus, appellare valebat, nisi aut syllabam quae natura brevis erat produceret aut tribrachum loco dactyli poneret.³⁶¹

[For example:

Italiam sequimur fugientem et mergimur undis

(We seek Italy which keeps receding and we are overwhelmed in the seas).

Here the poet has put the i, contrary to its nature, in the position of a long syllable, because he could not otherwise have referred to Italy, which he was going to have to name rather frequently, unless he were either to lengthen a syllable that was short by nature or put a tribrach in place of a dactyl.]³⁶²

Bede’s quotation from Vergil is not the usual reading (volvimur rather than mergimur), but this has no bearing on its scansion. Bede’s suggestion that a short syllable could, at least theoretically, be used in the place of a long one is, however, a misconception possibly influenced by earlier grammar, such as Aldhelm’s discussion of the pathe or passiones (prosodic liberties) of hexameter verse.³⁶³ That Bede thought such tampering with the basic fabric of the hexameter possible is demonstrated by other examples where poets have altered

359 DAM 15, 2-11.

360 Trans. Kendall 1991, 133.

361 DAM 15, 11-16.

362 Trans. Kendall 1991, 133.

363 Aldhelm, citing Aen. 1, 2 (“Italiam fato profugus”) suggests that Vergil “permitted the barbarism of the substitution of a tribrach for a dactyl” (“Etenim barbarismo tribrachum pro dactylo admisit”) –Ehwald 1919, 94;

trans. Wright 1985, 209. It is telling that both Aldhelm and Bede use Italia as an example, even if the actual quotations are different.

syllable lengths but Bede suspects them of substituting other metrical feet for dactyls and spondees. A telling example is another quotation from Vergil (Georg. 4, 34), where,

apparently baffled by the word alvearia, Bede suggests that the poet used an antibacchius (--u) in the place of a spondee:

Sic cum de apibus loquens alvearia nominare uellet, necessitate posuit antibachium in versu dactylico:

Seu lento fuerint alvearia vimine texta.³⁶⁴

[So, when speaking of bees, he wanted to refer to beehives by name, he had to substitute an antibacchius for a dactyl out of necessity:

Seu lento fuerint alvearia vimine texta

(Or let the beehives be woven of pliant twigs).]³⁶⁵

Apparently Bede suggests a reading where the third foot of the line is rint alve (--u); in reality, the line is not quite as exotic as all that: more plausibly, vea-ri-a could be scanned as a dactyl, with synizesis of e and a.³⁶⁶ That this solution had not entered Bede’s mind is probably attributable to the same mulishness that we encounter in his chapter on common syllables, where he steadfastly refuses to recognise the eu in Mnestheus for a diphthong.³⁶⁷ It is nevertheless surprising that although Bede devotes one extensive chapter (number

fourteen) to the subject of synizesis, he has serious difficulties recognising it in his own reading.

The other examples of prosodic licence in Bede’s presentation or, rather, their analyses are similarly bizarre. Bede cites the examples religio and basilica (with lengthened first syllable),³⁶⁸ quoting from Paulinus and Venantius Fortunatus, and gives them an

364 DAM 15, 16-19.

365 Trans. Kendall 1991, 133-135.

366 E in hiatus may have been pronounced as something resembling a semivowel. See Grandgent 1907, 94; Allen 1978², 51. The authenticity of alvearia in Vergil’s Georgics has been debated, and most modern editions have the synonymous (and prosodically more plausible) alvaria. See Johnston 1897, 15.

367 DAM 3, 42-51.

368 DAM 15, 22-28:

Et Paulinus:

Qui simul huc sancta pro religione coistis (Paulin. carm. 27, 637);

re contra naturam pro longa posuit, quia non aliter hoc nomen versus exameter recipere valebat. Tale est et illud eiusdem:

Basilicis haec iuncta tribus patet area cunctis (Paulin. carm. 27, 637).

Namque alibi quia potuit pro brevi ponitur eadem syllaba, dicente Fortunato:

Hic Paulina, Agnes, Basilissa, Eugenia regnant (Ven. Fort. carm. 8, 3, 35).

[And in:

Qui simul ac sancta pro religione coistis

(You who assemble together for the sake of holy religion),

Paulinus has put re, contrary to its nature, in the position of a long syllable, because this noun could not otherwise go into a hexameter verse. Of such nature is also this line of the same poet:

adequate explanation but then goes on to cite further examples of poets introducing, as it seems to him, unusual feet into the hexameter line. The remaining examples fall, in Bede’s terms, into the category of liberties sanctioned by the auctoritates without actual prosodic necessity, and Bede’s presentation of these licences amounts to little less than a carte blanche for Christian poets. The substance of Bede’s presentation is simply this: at times, if the

content of a verse is of sufficient consequence, prosodic rules can be broken so as to emphasise the superiority of the divine truth over human learning. All the examples which Bede uses are from Sedulius, Bede’s champion, and all of them consist in the manipulation of syllable lengths in ways not entirely consistent with usual prosody. Awkward as these lines may seem, the prosodic analyses Bede gives them are stranger still, as he persistently

proposes the insertion of unusual feet (trochees and antibacchii) into the metrical framework of the hexameter line. His main motives seem to be the defence of Sedulius’s prosody, even in its irregularities, and the unwillingness to accept such metrical features as hiatus or spondaic lines in Christian poetry, which in turn has resulted in some very elaborate alternative interpretations for the lines in question. His first example of Christian content overriding grammatical rules is a line from Sedulius’s Hymns (1, 110), where Sedulius has scanned the ablative form spiritu with a short first syllable:

Auctoritate autem contemnitur regula grammaticorum, ut Sedulius in clausula carminis, cuius supra memini, cum dixisset:

Gloria magna Patri, semper tibi gloria, Nate (Sedul. hymn. 1, 109), subdidit:

Cum sancto Spiritu gloria magna Patri (Sedul. hymn. 1, 110).

Spiritus enim primam syllabam habet longam; unde vera scansio versus istius haec est: cumsanc spondeus, tospiri antibachius, non dactylus. Sed poeta, ut gloriam sanctae et individuae trinitatis clara voce decantaret, neglexit regulam grammaticae dispositionis.³⁶⁹

[The rules of the grammarians, moreover, are sometimes disregarded by poets whom we consider authoritative. So, for example, at the end of the poem which I mentioned above, Sedulius, after saying:

Gloria magna Patri, semper tibi gloria, Nate

(Great glory be to the Father , glory be always to you, Son), added:

Basilicis haec iuncta tribus patet area cunctis

(The courtyard adjoining the three churches is accessible to all).

For elsewhere, because of its natural quantity, ba is found in the position of a short syllable, as when Fortunatus says:

Hic Paulina, Agnes, Basilissa, Eugenia regnant (Here Paulina, Agnes, Basilissa and Eugenia reign).]

-Trans. Kendall 1991, 135.

369 DAM 15, 35-45.

Cum sancto Spiritu gloria magna Patri

(Great glory be to the Father with the holy Spirit).

The first syllable of spiritus is long, and therefore the correct scansion of this last line is: cumsanc (spondee), tospiri (antibacchius, instead of dactyl). But the poet, in order to celebrate clearly the glory of the holy and undivided Trinity, has neglected the rule forbidding the placement of an antibacchius in elegiac verse.]³⁷⁰

The genitive and ablative forms of spiritus (sp rit s and sp rit ) are prosodically impossible in dactylic verse, being, as they are, cretic in form. What is apparent here is that Sedulius has solved the problem by shortening the first syllable of spiritu. This, however, is not how Bede sees it; rather, he supposes that the poet has used an antibacchius (--u) in the place of a dactyl.

The importance of the passage, of course, is obvious, as “cum sancto Spiritu” is a direct quotation from the Latin Gloria, and, as Dag Norberg has demonstrated, direct quotations from the Bible and liturgical texts often have prosodically unorthodox syllable

combinations.³⁷¹ Bede himself took some licences regarding the prosody of spiritus: in his Vita metrica Sancti Cuthberti, the genitive singular of spiritus appears twice, both times with an unclassical short u, which, as Neil Wright has suggested, may have been inspired by Sedulius’s usage, although, of course, the unshortened form would inevitably be useless in dactylic poetry.³⁷²

The next quotation from Sedulius receives a similarly idiosyncratic treatment from Bede. The line (carm. pasch. 1, 321) presumably has a hiatus, something of a rarity in Sedulius’s verse and apparently something that Bede refused to stomach, as in Bede’s nomenclature of “ancient” and “modern” verse techniques hiatus was something that he considered typical of pre-Christian poets. Here the hiatus appears in the phrase “ego in patre”, which is a direct quotation from the Gospel of John (10:38),³⁷³ but instead of allowing

Sedulius his hiatus, Bede assumes that the o of ego is elided and the line has a trochee in place of a spondee:

Idem ipse in carmine paschali:

Sic ait ipse docens, ego in patre et pater in me.

Sic enim scanditur, sicait dactylus, ipsedo dactylus, cense trocheus, ginpa spondeus, ablata o per synalipham, aut si candere vis censego et facere dactylum, contra morem

370 Trans. Kendall 1991, 135-137.

371 Norberg 1988, 17-18.

372 Wright 2005, 158-159.

373 One alternative scansion, suggested in Heiric of Auxerre’s gloss (Kendall 1975, 129), but not by Bede himself, is to scan the e in ego as long and elide the final o (“ gin patre”).

ipsius Sedulii, quem per omnia seruauit, agis ut inmunis stet vocalis altera superveniente vocali de foris.³⁷⁴

[Likewise the same poet in the Paschale carmen writes:

Sic ait ipse docens, ego in patre et pater in me.

(Thus he himself teaches when he says: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me”).

The verse is scanned in this way: sicait (dactyl), ipsedo (dactyl), cense (trochee), ginpa (spondee, with elision of the o). Or, if you prefer to scan censego, making a dactyl, you block the elision of a vowel, which is followed by another vowel at the beginning of a word, contrary to Sedulius’ own custom, which he always

observed.]³⁷⁵

Bede’s hostility towards hiatus is evident, and in this case it has probably warped his

judgement. This peculiar approach to Sedulius’s prosodic liberties shows that Bede’s starting point in poetry was prosody, and the composition of poetry consisted in uniting appropriate syllable combinations to create larger metrical structures (rather than filling a metrical structure with the appropriate syllables, as Aldhelm seems to have viewed it). Undeniably, Bede’s approach to prosody seems too unyielding: he seems more willing to tamper with the metre itself rather than with syllable lengths or the rules of elision.

Yet another quotation from Sedulius has been given a similar treatment in Bede’s exposition: in this case, Sedulius, quoting from John 12:28, uses the phrase “clarifica nomen tuum” (“illuminate your name”), which presents difficulties similar to the previous examples: unless the final syllable is elided, the phrase would normally end in a cretic construction. Sedulius’s probable intention is to scan tuum as a monosyllable (by way of synizesis), a possibly inelegant but nevertheless plausible course. This time, Bede is not clear about what he assumes the intended scansion to be, but by analogy to the previous examples, we must suppose that, in his opinion, Sedulius has used a long syllable in the place of a short one. Bede’s defence of this licence is, in all but wording, identical with the previous ones:

Idem in eodem opere:

Clarifica, dixit, nomen tuum. Magnaque caelo (Sedul. carm. pasch. 5, 8).

In quo, ut veritatem Dominici sermonis apertius commendaret, postposuit ordinem disclipinae saecularis.³⁷⁶

[In the same work, Sedulius says:

Clarifica, dixit, nomen tuum. Magnaque caelo

(Glorify your name, he said. And a great voice resounding from Heaven...).

In this verse, in order to commend more clearly the truth of the Lord’s Word, he set aside the order of worldly learning.]³⁷⁷

374 DAM 15, 45-51.

375 Trans. Kendall 1991, 137.

376 DAM 15, 51-55.

Bede’s final example of prosodic licence in Sedulius’s verse is an awkward attempt to recast a spondaic verse from his Paschale carmen 5, 196 (“Scribitur et titulus: Hic est rex

Iudaeorum”) as an ordinary hexameter line. We already discussed this in conjunction with Bede’s incredulity at, and condemnation of, spondaic verses (p. 68). Here Bede’s approach seems the very opposite of the previous examples: rather than admitting that Sedulius could have used a spondee in the fifth foot of a hexameter line, he suggests that the final word Iudaeorum be scanned as a dactyl and a spondee (possibly -da-e- -rum, although Kendall suggests -u-de- -rum³⁷⁸). It is worthy of note that here, too, the reason for Sedulius’s licence is that the phrase “hic est rex Iudaeorum” is quoted verbatim from the Bible (Luke 23:28).

The middle of Bede’s chapter on prosodic licences further contains a curious allusion to Jerome’s preface to the book of Job, where he alludes to the metrical practices of

The middle of Bede’s chapter on prosodic licences further contains a curious allusion to Jerome’s preface to the book of Job, where he alludes to the metrical practices of

In document The Christianisation of Latin Metre : A Study of Bede's De arte metrica (sivua 123-131)