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_. FOOTNOTES: [1] Thurot, 91, 114 (note 2), 483 (note 1). Thurot finds Orléans more in touch with Italy than with its own part of France. [2] Several of the collection by Pierre de Blois in PL 207 seem to be form-letters; and this is the main intention in the tenth-century _Collectio Sangallensis_, MHG, Legum Sectio V, Formulæ, pages 390-433. See Clerval, 114, on the letters of Fulbert in Bibl. Nat. MS 14167; 311-313, on Pierre de Blois, Étienne de Tournay, and John of Salisbury. [3] Scribit Remensis archiepiscopus pro causa nostra domino Papæ, præcipiens litteras suas ad meum formari arbitrium. _Ep._ 286; PL, 199: 326. [4] _Ep._ 223, page 389, in the collection of the letters of Gerbert, John of Salisbury, and Stephen of Tournay printed by Ruette, Paris, 1611. Both texts, omitting the _salutatio_, have the simple heading _Guillelmo Papiensi_. PL dates the letter 1167. [5] Rockinger, I. 405-482. [6] See Gaudenzi, who also edits it in _Bibliotheca iuridica_, I. It is printed in part by Rockinger, I. 121-174. [7] Edited by Gaudenzi in _Bibliotheca iuridica_, II. [8] Hahn, I. 279-385; composed mainly of specimens. For Guido Fava and Bene di Lucca, see Gaudenzi. [9] Described from MS Bibl. Nat. fonds St. Victor, 906, and several times quoted, by Thurot, 414, 415, 483, 484, 485; mentioned by Clark. Manacorda, II. 266, citing Gaudenzi, says it is by Bene of Florence. The _Candelabrum_ is digested below, section B. 1.