Book V. Summary Review of the Preceding Books
Reading edition
The fifth book, reviewing all these items in the same order, constitutes a summary manual, a summa dictaminis.
“Since I know that some will find the multiplicity of the preceding burdensome, let the multiplicity be reduced in this book to paucity in consideration for the unlettered (rudium). Thus, as for those who rejoice in abundance I have displayed letters both various and adequate, so for the many of weaker stomach who wish to be fed on light diet I ought to set forth food at once moderate and proper (honestum).” The author then proceeds seriatim with a digest.
This book by itself provides about the same quantity of precept as suffices in other manuals to introduce collections of specimens; but it is exceptionally systematic.[33]
C. Cursus
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the practise of cursus became more technical, and the use of the term more special. The Chancellor appointed by Pope Urban II was John of Gaetà (Giovanni Gaetano), who had learned dictamen from Alberic of Monte Cassino,[34] and who was specifically commissioned to “reform the style of ancient grace and elegance in the Apostolic See” and to “restore the Leonine rhythm with its lucid rapidity.”[35] The dominant chancery style, thus reformed, embodied the principle of rhythmical close in three types of prose cadence:
(1) cursus planus, víncla perfrégit; (2) cursus tardus, víncla perfrégerat; (3) cursus velox, vínculum frègerámus.[36]
The first sentence of a mandate of Innocent III shows all three.
Inter omnes munitiónes et cástra (planus) quæ Romana ténet ecclésia (tardus) munitionem et castrum Montis Fiasconis non solum inténdit sed cúpit (planus) et providéntius gùbernári (velox) et studiósius cùstodíri (velox).[37]
The indignant closing paragraph of Dante’s letter to the Florentines begins:
O miserrima Fæsulanórum propágo (planus), et iterum iam puníta barbáries (tardus)! An parum timoris prælibáta incútiunt (tardus)? Omnino vos tremere árbitror vìgilántes (velox), Quamquam spem simuletis in facie verbóque mendáci (planus), atque in somniis expergísci plerúmque (planus), sive pavescentes infúsa præságia (tardus), sive diurna consília rècoléntes (velox).[38]
The fixing of these three cadences in Roman use would of itself have given them a vogue beyond letter-writing. Moreover they were chosen not at random, but as typical fulfilments of rhythmical expectation. For they appear also, though not exclusively, in the collects of the liturgy and in the daily offices.[39] The collect for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany has all three.
Deus qui nos in tantis perículis cònstitútos (vel.) pro humana scis fragilitate non pósse subsístere (tard.) da nóbis salútem (plan.) méntis et córporis (tard.) ut ea quæ pro peccatis nostris patimur (not conformed) te adjuvánte vincámus (plan.).[40]
The longer measures of the collect composed in 1264 by St. Thomas Aquinas for Corpus Christi fall upon velox.
Deus, qui nobis sub sacramento mirabili passionis tuæ memóriam rèliquísti, tribue, quæsumus, ita nos corporis et sanguinis tui sacra mystéria vènerári ut redemptionis tuæ fructum in nobis júgiter sèntiámus.
The English translation, following this cadence in the first measure and the third, departs in the second.
O God, who in this wonderful sacrament hast left us a memórial of thy pássion, grant us, we beseech thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy body and blood [not conformed] that we may ever perceive within ourselves the frúit of thy redémption.[41]
Hearing these cadences over and over, preachers of course used them often in Latin sermons. Thus the cadences that were obligatory in ceremonious letters, and habitual in other use, confirmed the conception and practise of Latin prose as rhythmical.
The rhythmical conception of prose, as the middle age knew well, had been dominant in classical antiquity. But medieval Latin prose, though its tradition came through the schools of Gaul, had had its own development. As in verse,[42] so in prose, the shift of rhythmical control to stress opened, not a breach, but a new artistic life. Medieval Latin ran as a living language with the movement of living speech. This was recognized even by the grammarians.[43] So the thirteenth-century manuals of dictamen kept the terminology of ancient metric to describe accentual rhythms[44] because Latin to them was present as well as past, and seemed to reach indefinitely into the future. The future, by the time of the Renaissance, was seen to be with the vernacular for poetry. More slowly it was seen to be there also for prose. Meantime Latin poetic and rhetoric came to be studied by revival of antiquity. Revival translates Renaissance exactly. Italian scholars, and after them French and English, sought to turn Latin prose back to Cicero. Though they thus accomplished some most worthy ends, their theory and their practise interrupted Latin prose composition. Their contemptuous rejection of medieval rhythms hastened the processes by which Latin became a “dead” language. In the middle age it was living. A conspicuous evidence of its vitality, not merely a legal technic, but the formulation of a rhythmical habit, was the cursus.