had the task been carried out in the fourth century: yet it has endured in spite of the attacks, pseudo-attacks indeed, of the _cinquecento_; and the mediaeval treatment of Latin syntax is the basis of the modern treatment. One may add that syntax or _constructio_ was taken broadly as embracing not only the agreements of number and gender, and the governing[181] of cases, but also the order of words in a sentence, which had changed so utterly between the time of Cicero and Thomas Aquinas. These general statements find illustration in the famous _Doctrinale_ of Alexander de Villa-Dei, whose author was born in Normandy in the latter half of the twelfth century. He studied at Paris, and in course of time was summoned by the Bishop of Dol to instruct his _nepotes_ in grammar. While acting as their tutor, he appears to have helped their memory by setting his rules in rhyme; and the bishop asked him to write a _Summa_ of grammar in some such fashion. Complying, he composed the _Doctrinale_ in the year 1199, putting his work into leonine or rhyming hexameter, to make it easier to memorize. Rarely has a school-book met with such success. It soon came into use in Paris and elsewhere, and for some three hundred years was the common manual of grammatical teaching throughout western Europe. It was then attacked and apparently driven from the field by the so-called Humanists, who, however, failed to offer anything better in its place, and plagiarized from the work which they professed to execrate.[182] The etymological portions of the _Doctrinale_ follow the teachings of the _Priscianus major_; the part devoted to syntax, or _constructio_, shows traces of the influence of the _Priscianus minor_. But Alexander’s treatment of syntax is more systematic and elaborate than Priscian’s; and he did not hesitate to defer to the Vulgate and other Christian Latin writings. Thus he made his work conform to contemporary usage, which its purpose was to set forth. He did the same in the section on Prosody, in which he says that the ancient metricians distinguished a number of feet no longer used, and he will confine himself to six--the dactyl, spondee, trochee, anapaest, iambus, and tribrach.[183] In contradiction to classical usage he condemns elision;[184] and in his chapter on accent he throws over the ancient rules: “Accentus normas legitur posuisse vetustas; Non tamen has credo servandas tempore nostro.”[185]