Book 4 — CHAPTER VIII DICTAMEN

References and Abbreviations

Bornecque Bornecque (H.), Les clausules métriques latines, Lille, 1907, Travaux et mémoires de l’Université de Lille (for the ancient tradition, but including late Latin).

Butow Butow (A.), Die Entwicklung der mittelalt. Briefsteller, Greifswald (dissertation), 1908.

Clark Clark (A. C.), The cursus in medieval and vulgar Latin, Oxford, 1910. See also his Fontes prosæ numerosæ, Oxford, 1909.

Clerval (as in headnote to Chapter VI).

Croll Croll (M. W.), The cadence of English oratorical prose, Studies in philology, 16 (1919): 1-55.

Fierville Fierville (C.), Une grammaire latine inédite du xiiie siècle, Paris, 1886.

Gaudenzi Gaudenzi (A.), Sulla cronologia delle opere dei dettatori bolognesi da Buoncompagno a Bene di Lucca, Bulletino dell’ istituto storico italiano, 14 (1895): 85. See also in Bibliotheca iuridica medii ævi, vol. II, Bologna, 1892, his Rainerii de Perusia ars notaria (page 25) and Boncompagni rhetorica novissima (page 240).

Hahn Hahn (S. F.), Collectio monumentorum ..., Braunschweig, 1724.

Harmon Harmon (A. M.), The clausula in Ammianus Marcellinus, New Haven, 1910, Conn. Acad. of Arts and Sciences.

Havet Havet (L.), La prose métrique de Symmache ... Paris, 1892.

Langlois Langlois (C. V.), Formulaires de lettres ..., six articles in NE, 34 (parts 1 and 2), 35 (part 2).

Manacorda (as in headnote to Chapter VI).

MGH Monumenta Germaniæ Historica.

NE Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale....

Paetow Paetow (L. J.), The arts course at medieval universities with special reference to grammar and rhetoric, University of Illinois Studies, vol. 3, No. 7, Jan., 1910. See also the bibliography in his Guide to the study of medieval history, University of California Press, 1917.

PL Patrologia latina (Migne) cited by volume and column.

Polheim Polheim (K.), Die lateinische Reimprosa, Berlin, 1925.

Poole Poole (R. L.), Lectures on the history of the Papal chancery ..., Cambridge (University Press), 1915.

Rockinger Rockinger (L.), Briefsteller und Formelbücher ..., 2 vols., Munich, 1863-1804, Quellen zur bayerisch. u. deutsch. gesch.

Thurot Thurot (C.), Notices et extraits ... pour servir à l’histoire des doctrines grammaticales au moyen âge, Paris, 1868, in NE 22, part 2 (entire).

Toynbee Toynbee (P.), Dantis Alagherii epistolæ ... with introduction, translation, notes, and indices, and appendix on the cursus, Oxford, 1920.

Vacandard Vacandard (E.), Le cursus, son origine, son histoire, son emploi dans la liturgie, Revue des questions historiques, n. s., 34 (1905): 59-102.

Valois Valois (N.), De arte scribendi epistolas apud gallicos medii ævi scriptores rhetoresve, Paris, 1880, in Bibl. de l’École des Chartes, 22: 161, 257.

The art of letter-writing, especially the composition of official and other ceremonious letters, was of cardinal importance in the middle age. Even to-day, when letters of affairs are facilitated and multiplied by devices for dictation and despatch, it has a field smaller than the medieval in proportion to the other means of communication. Since these conditions lasted into modern times, letter-writing kept its importance throughout the Renaissance; but its art, developed in Latin antiquity and keeping for all affairs of moment the Latin language, became in the middle age a necessary ally alike to law and to diplomacy. Dictamen was a recognized profession and an habitual means of education. The model for the official correspondence of the western world was the Papal Chancery. The chief center of teaching was Bologna.[1] Though there was rivalry at Orléans, there was a recognized primacy of stilus Romanus.

No medieval form of writing has come down to us more abundantly in manuscripts; and none is more abundantly available in print. In addition to the collections of letters by famous men, or included with them, are many form-letters preserved as models.[2] Medieval epistolary habits are thus amply exemplified as the most widespread applications of the study of style. As a fine art medieval diplomatic correspondence is seen at its finest in the letters of John of Salisbury. The expertness that illuminated even routine affairs and determined the direction of great ones was recognized in his own day. The Archbishop of Rheims, writing to the Pope concerning the exile of the Archbishop of Canterbury, leaves the form of his letter to John.[3] At an earlier crisis of that exile, when Becket cried out against Henry’s influence at Rome, the indignation of the great prelate was submitted to the great secretary; and he was too faithful a friend to forget his art.

On reading the letter that you have decided to send to the lord William of Pavia, though I dare not judge its intention, I cannot approve its literary conception.... If the items of your letter are thus brought up one by one, your reply will seem to have proceeded rather from bitterness and rancor than from the singleness of charity. Ep. 220; PL 199: 246.

Having shown a list of grievances to be ineffective as composition, he adds immediately that accusations are dangerous as style. But not stopping with criticism, he took the great hazard upon himself in the following letter to the same Cardinal.

Popular rumor reports to us that you and the lord Otto, Cardinal Deacon of the Holy Roman Church, invited by our illustrious lord the King of the English, and commissioned by Papal mandate, are come down to the Aquitanian country, with the help of God by your best endeavor to restore to the English Church its inalienable freedom, and to renew peace and concord between the king and the archbishop. By princes, yea, and even by prelates, it has been heard that our aforesaid lord the king so trusts your devotion that his acceptance of your advice in every particular is a foregone conclusion: in my exceeding joy whereat, I have decided that I too should ask advice of you and assistance, ready in all things to obey you, saving my freedom of conscience and my personal honor. For I trust in the Lord that with you consideration of personages and of rewards will not be so influential that by any of your actions the Church shall be injured, scandal be engendered in lay folk, or your bright reputation be darkened. These, indeed, are the works of men by whom either the law is unknown or its Author is disregarded. Not such are you, whose good faith and whose prudence the Lord has so honored with his approval that you are set before the world upon the golden candlestick of seven lamps as a lantern and as a beacon, that yours may be the light for all men that enter. On you, therefore, all men are fixing their observation; and many fear lest the temptation of Lucifer should end in extinction and in ruin, lest the intimacy with the king, which they say you have lately been cementing, be to you beginning of dereliction. And indeed,

But in the meantime I am hopeful that this intimacy between you and the king, which to many is so suspect, will be fruitful to the Church, necessary to us, salutary to him, to you a further glory. For if he gives you obedience where even legal necessity binds him, and where any evasion would be at the risk of his salvation, without doubt he will be repentant, will confess his transgression, and humbly giving the Church satisfaction, will restore to us all peace and freedom with our stolen integrity, and will tear quite out of his heart the hate of his brethren. Otherwise what power is able to save him from the snare of the devil?

I am most certain, since it is indubitably true and even most obvious, that not even Peter himself received of the Lord such plenitude of commission that he could absolve the impenitent; and it no less certainly follows that if stolen goods can be restored and are not restored, the move is not penitence, but stratagem. Where, therefore, the prince of the apostles has restricted authority, no argument will convince me that power can be validly exercised by any man whatsoever. I admit, for it is true, that our lord the king, as a prince among the most glorious, is most highly to be considered, but with the condition that God be never offended. Otherwise arises a form of idolatry, when on whatsoever pretext of expediency the creature is put above the Creator, as we are taught by Paul the apostle. Wrongs are not to be done that good things may issue; nor may any right of dispensation counter the Lord’s commandment, which in law or in gospel has always the final ruling.

As for me, that you may the more conveniently advise me, that the cry of the poor man may be admitted to have its hearing, exile for me has now passed its fourth year; notwithstanding my lord the king, by me and through others, has often been notified that, though at the bar of my conscience I have not deserved his anger, yet to regain his favor I would gladly perform whatever might please him, saving my conscience and the integrity of my honor. Certain intermediaries, indeed, have approached me, suggesting that I withdraw my fidelity and devotion from the lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and swear fidelity to the king and observance of the laws of the kingdom. Because I cannot do this, and will not, for it is against my conscience and my honor, proscribed as an exile, I shall be gladly an exile till God shall deliver me. Am I to break my obligation of obedience when the Church is in danger, and God in the trial? Father and suzerain deserted, am I to swear to laws disapproved by the canons, when our lord the Pope in council at Sens with the brethren, with yourselves, I imagine, in audience, has denounced them? Nay, I would not swear that I had kept all the canons, or even all the gospel, since, as the apostle sadly reminds us, in much we have all been offenders. A lesser wickedness is simple prevarication than prevarication that is loaded with perjury. Well I know that perjury, disobedience, or any other baseness whatsoever, no one dare impute to your Lordships.

But since I fear you may weary of my wordiness, my words shall reach their conclusion, a fervent prayer that you may be zealous to end the misery of a Church too long in danger of foundering, and to defend us from the assaults of unremitting injustices.

May my lord fare well, and upon the proscripts of Christ may he have mercy. For I am interceding in the name of all my fellows in exile; and if I fail of my consolation, none the less I shall hold myself paid by whatever I know the other proscripts of Christ to have through your offices. Ep. 221; PL 199: 247.[4]

Medieval letters, long studied for history, should be better known as literature.

Less available, though for our purposes more directly important, are the manuals. Called generically ars dictaminis (or dictandi), or summa dictaminis, they are sometimes brief introductions to the formularies, sometimes substantial and detailed separate works. The latter have much less often than the formularies been printed. The ampler manuals apply to letter-writing a review of both grammar and rhetoric. This is instructive in Conrad’s Summa de arte prosandi.[5] The Boncompagnus,[6] so widely used that Boncompagno’s name, like Donatus, became a common noun, is amplified rather by diffuseness and by abundance of specimens. The Rhetorica novissima[7] of the same author is at once over-divided and ill-digested. Equally diffuse and equally relying on specimens, it appeals to students of law by deliberate and often inept variations from the traditional lore of rhetoric. The vogue of Thomas of Capua is hardly explained by the meager printed text of his Dictator.[8] None of these is at once so ample and so specific as a work by a Florentine of the Bolognese school, perhaps Bene of Florence, entitled Candelabrum.[9]

A. The Rhetoric of Dictamen

The international affairs of the Roman Curia demanded and developed professional notarii.[10] Their first and abiding concern was precision. Legal correctness of language, exactitude, systematic verification and record, precaution against tampering and forgery, all demanded an elaborate technical skill. This was ars notaria in the stricter sense, an important branch of the practise of law, especially of canon law.[11] Beyond legal correctness and dignity it developed style befitting Rome. Privileges,[12] decrees, mandates, dispensations, commissions, and other forms observed exact appropriateness and rhythms that were at once marks of authenticity and models. The same care extended to diplomatic correspondence. The documents in both fields, a mine for students of medieval history, amply attest the importance of dictamen as a profession.[13]

So wide a demand would of itself have maintained schools of professional technic. But since the technic demanded preliminary general training, it became a development of rhetorica. Not only so; it divided with preaching the whole field of daily prose composition. In current application oral composition was preaching, written composition was dictamen. The two were the typical medieval fields for the ancient lore of persuasion. The manuals of dictamen often begin by defining it in the general sense of writing.[14] Dividing all writing into (1) metricum, the ancient quantitative verse still taught as a branch of grammatica, (2) rithmicum, the accentual rimed verse of the hymns, and (3) prosaicum, they confine themselves to the third, and make it equivalent to letter-writing (prosaicum vel epistolare). To this they apply the current ancient authorities, De inventione and Ad Herennium, adding for its maxims of aptness Ars poetica. The ampler manuals include the sacred list of figures obligatory in the poetriæ.[15] Otherwise the application of the ancient rhetoric is practical and pointed.

For in fact the ancient lore was immediately and practically applicable. It did not, as in the poetriæ, have to be perverted. Of the traditional five parts of ancient rhetoric, inventio, dispositio, and elocutio, though not pronuntiatio and memoria, bear directly on letters, whereas the first two have nothing properly to do with verse-writing. Elocutio is applied practically by being focused on the cardinal ancient virtue of appropriateness; artistically, by elaborating compositio as prose rhythm. Immediately adaptable were the five parts of a speech. The exordium is always cardinal in a letter as benevolentiæ captatio. Narratio applies exactly in its proper sense of statement of the facts. Petitio, though it has less scope, is quite pertinent. Conclusio, though varying most from its ancient function, has some general correspondence. In a word, the classical doctrine for the parts of a speech applied to a letter by mere reduction of scale.

Dictamen was equally practical in actual teaching. Besides giving exercises in correctness, it compelled attention to elegance. Its study of appropriateness was readily extended by such imaginary adaptations as were inculcated in the ancient prosopopœia, and thus provided in writing the kind of practise sought orally in the ancient controversiæ.[16] John of Garlandia’s confused combination of verse and prose in a single manual[17] is insufficient to prove that the two were often taught concurrently; and the higher tone of the artes dictandi suggests that they were addressed to older pupils.

B. Digest of Candelabrum I-V[18]