Medieval rhetoric and poetic to 1400 : $b Interpreted from representative worksBaldwin, Charles Sears
History
Medieval rhetoric and poetic to 1400 : $b Interpreted from representative works
Baldwin, Charles Sears
Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism; Poetics -- History -- To 1500; Rhetoric, Medieval
Human weakness must realize its limitation.... The counsel of
preaching, rather the counsel of the truth itself and of the
divine reason, calls on man to yield his own reason. Let him
fear not to yield himself entirely, following God entirely,
and boasting in the Lord entirely, knowing him in whom he
believes as able to keep the deposit of oneself and to give
it increase (2 Tim. i. 12). He will restore thyself to thee,
and with interest. He takes it as earthly, to restore it in
heaven. He takes it in humility, to restore it exalted. He
takes it as diminished, to restore it perfected. He takes it as
empty, to restore it face to face with God in contemplation.
He takes it corrupted, to render it incorruptible. He takes it
in wretchedness, to render it happy, transferring a creature
of time to the eternal, man unto the godlike. Achard of St.
Victor, _De septem desertis_[43] (peroration).
Such balance often leads, through mere inflectional correspondence, to
rime. That rime of clause with clause was avoided as a vice even in
classical Latin is an exaggeration of Renaissance scrupulosity.[44] The
middle age, following rather Augustine and the tradition of the schools
of Gaul,[45] found rime desirable, and often sought it to mark parallel
or contrast. Simple, ordinary use of it is heard again and again in a
sermon by Hilduin.[46]
Porro bruttis animalibus paleam littere relinquamus, et de
medulla tritici panem vite confestim filiis porrigamus.
Elinand uses it to point an epigram.[47]
Quæsivit me diabolus, et invenit, et circumvenit; quæsivit me
Christus, invenit et subvenit.
Richard of St. Victor’s rime often marks insistently exact balances.
Hic flos factus est nobis medicina, ex illo mel et cera, in
ipso potus et esca; medicina in redemptione, potus et esca in
justificatione, mel et cera in glorificatione.
Ex hac medicina sanitas sempiternæ incorruptibilitatis;
ex ejus esca refectio internæ satietatis;
ex ejusmodi potu ebrietas æternæ securitatis;
de illius cera splendor summæ claritatis;
in ejus melle dulcor indeficientis felicitatis.
PL 196: 1032.
It may mark a progressive iteration. Repeating _florida_ and _transeamus_
from what he has just said, he goes on:
Sternamus itaque viam nostram floribus talibus, et per
florida virtutum transeamus, munde et honeste procedamus, ut
processionem nostram pulchram et gratam faciamus, et pascha
floridum digna celebritate perficiamus. _In Ramis Palmarum_, PL
196: 1059.
Even such insistence remains within the limits of rimed prose; it is only
extreme use of a widespread habit. Exceptional, on the other hand, since
it repeatedly verges toward verse, is St. Anselm’s Lament of the Magdalen
at the tomb.[48]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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