gaining an opportunity for immoderate self-praise. At the very outset of this scientific movement its representatives are filled with a high opinion of their own worth, together with a keen desire for fame and applause. This is nothing but the easily conceivable pride of men who have been the first, after a long period of intellectual darkness, to amass laboriously a treasure of knowledge, and who, in the general ignorance, look on the rest as far beneath themselves; and so it became the natural feeling at the time of the Renaissance, as it appeared later on in such pronounced form among the humanists. How grandiloquent are the words with which the monk Alberic bids us pay attention to his treatise on rhetoric, which now appears to us such a slight thing, and which in those days was such a great performance : "May the new nectar flow nowhere in vain; touched by Phoebus's ray, may the spirit let flowers blossom forth. Here Alberic soars aloft, here he hopes for the palm; here may his adversary be silent and dumb, wonder, and be confounded." Anselm the Peripatician boasts that the whole of Italy is resounding with his name; that France and Germany rejoice at his approach. On his journey to the Emperor's court he presented his work in the towns with a commendatory letter of his master Drogo, amidst triumphs and applause. In a vision which he describes at the beginning of the second book, he lets the saints of Paradise and the three muses of Dialectic, Rhetoric, and Grammar struggle for the possession of him. He is in the Elysian fields, in the company of the blessed, but the muses endeavour to induce him to return to earth: for he is their only shield, their only support among men, and when he shall be no more, none will rise again to equal him in these arts. Having wakened from his dream, he considers which he would have preferred, had he had the choice-the company of the muses or that of the blessed he decides that he would have liked best to enjoy them both simultaneously: but, in the meantime, as eternal bliss on earth is impossible, he selects the muses. So we have here also a trait which puts us in mind of the later Renaissance the knowledge of the Pagans is already brought 1 It is true that Anselm himself tries to make out in the letter to Drogo (p. 21) that these boasts are merely a joke; but nobody will believe this. into comparison with the Paradise of the Christians, and no decision is come to. Yet another characteristic peculiarity that recurs among the later humanists, is found already in the literary life of those days, namely the pleasure taken in polemic, the jealousy among the writers, who wrangle round the little knowledge they have just acquired, and struggle for precedence. In a letter to Drogo, Anselm replies in detail to his detractors and to those who are jealous of him, of whom some said that he was not capable of composing such a work, and that he had been helped in it, while others declared it to be superfluous, and others again suspected him of heresy and of having intercourse with demons, because he sought solitude during his studies. We find similar complaints concerning jealousy and emnity in Alberic also, and later on in Petrus Diaconus, and they are constantly repeated by the compilers of epistolary guides. And these latter then attack Alberic, too, although he is the real founder of their art, reproaching him with superfluous accessories, or maintaining that they adhere more closely to the classical models than he does. Medieval Latin poetry was also for the greater part an exercise in grammar and rhetoric, an imitation of the authors that had been read, a repetition of formulas that had been learnt by heart; and it is only rarely that any original inspiration can be found. Of this the religious lyrical poetry shows most traces, as in the poets of Monte Cassino that have been mentioned, or in the hymns of Damian. To Northern Italy belongs a love poem in one hundred and fifty leonine distichs, doubtless composed by a priest, since it is entered on some empty pages of a Latin Psalter, and probably written about the year 1075, as Henry IV.'s defeat at the hands of the Saxons is alluded to: Cum secus ora vadi placeat mihi ludere Padi, The poet converses with a girl on the banks of the Po: he extols her beauty, and promises her, in an endless enumeration, all the comforts, valuables and enjoyments she can wish for, as also the immortality that the old poets conferred 1 Dümmler, "Anselm," p. 94 ff. on heroes and women, if she will only love him. Here everything is full of exaggerations; the author's imagination conjures up visions of untold wealth, which he lays at the feet of the loved one, and raises him above poets and gods, while he has still to struggle laboriously with the form. To the end of the eleventh and beginning of the twelfth centuries belong a number of more lengthy Latin poems on historical themes, dealing with contemporary subjects, poems in praise of princes and communes, and narratives of their military achievements. The most perfect work of this kind, distinguished by the simplicity and clearness of the narrative and by the excellence of the hexameters, is the "Gesta Roberti Wiscardi" of Guilelmus Appulus; but it is probable that just this man was not an Italian but a Frenchman, and that the surname of Appulus referred only to the place at which he subsequently lived." Far less polished is the "Vita Mathildis" of the monk Donizo of Canossa, a panegyric on the Countess of Tuscany, written during her lifetime, at the end of 1114,3 a vapid chronicle, lacking all art and ornament, written in rough verses and a careless style, with a special predilection for the affected use of Greek words. Equally defective is the form of an anonymous poem on the subjugation of Como by the Milanese (1118-1127), written by an inhabitant of the former city. The barbarisms, the bad grammatical mistakes and the great lack of clearness, which renders constant explanation necessary, testify to the low state of the writer's culture: still, there are touches of patriotic warmth here and there, especially towards the end of the poem, where the author bewails the misfortunes of his native town. The song in praise of Bergamo, composed between 1112 and 1129 in dull rhymed hexameters, by a certain Magister Moses (a grammarian, therefore), is of some interest owing to the fabulous account, that occurs at the end, of the origin of the city-one of those legends that all the more important of the Italian cities invented concerning their foundation. 5 1 "Mon. Germ. Script.", ix. 241. 2 Cf. Amari, "Storia dei Musulmani,” iii. 22. 3 "Mon. Germ. Script.," xii. 348. 4 "De Bello Mediolanensium adversus Comenses" Muratori, "Rer. It. Script.," v. 413. 5 "De Laudibus Bergomi," Muratori, ib., 529. According to this narrative, Brennus the Gaul was said to have fortified Bergamo as the the chief citadel of his power. But when the Romans had driven out this "Gallic pest," the senate, in order to insure security for the future, set up a presidency in the town, at the head of which was one of the Fabii, one of that glorious race which fell for their country at the Cremera, to the number of three hundred; and then the grammarian goes on to sing the praises of this noble Fabius, the first protector of his city, and extols him above Æneas, Cato and Cicero. These new communes, not satisfied with the protection of their patron saints, desired to derive their nobility from the name of some famous Roman, Greek, or Trojan. Two poems dealing with events of Pisan history contain more numerous classical elements than the works hitherto mentioned. In these the powerful and flourishing condition of the republic invited comparison, to a special degree, with ancient times. One of the two poems celebrates the victorious expedition of the Pisans to Africa in the year 1087, in the popular measure of rhythmical and rhymed long verses with a sharp cæsura, which were derived from the catalectic trochaic tetrameter, and which we already found in the song on the Emperor Louis II. Several exaggerations which garnish the narrative, in the main historically correct, tend to show that the author wrote some time after the events described. The expedition is represented as a crusade against the infidels, and brings about the liberation of a hundred thousand Christian prisoners; Christ protects and leads the pious warriors, performs miracles for them, sends an angel to their aid, and causes the lions that have been let loose on them to turn against the Saracens themselves. But at the same time the poet thinks of the war of Rome against Carthage, a war which Pisa had now taken up again with no less glory to herself. He begins his work with the words: Inclytorum Pisanorum scripturus historiam, 1 Du Méril, "Poés. pop. du moyen-âge." Paris, 1847, p. 239. Cf. also Amari, 1. c., p. 171. Immediately afterwards God's miracle on behalf of Gideon is cited by way of comparison, and, farther on, those Romans who took part in the expedition as allies of Pisa are said to revive the memory of Scipio. Ugo Visconti, the noble youth who falls in battle, is compared first with Codrus, and immediately afterwards with Christ, because he sacrificed himself for the good of the people, as they had done. This ingenuous and artless mingling of things classical and Christian, of Biblical images with those taken from the history and fable of Pagan antiquity, which we already had occasion to remark in the poets of the Gothic period, such Ennodius, is characteristic of the Latin poetry of the Middle Ages in general.1 as We find the same thing again in the long poem, in seven books, on the conquest of the Balearic Isles, written by a certain Laurentius Vernensis, that is, probably, of Vern in Tuscany, who was deacon of the Archbishop Peter II. of Pisa, and himself present at the battles in company with the archbishop, as appears from several passages of the narrative. He begins his work in the style of the ancient epic poems, by announcing the argument: Arma, rates, populum, vindictam cœlitus actam Maurorum stragem, spoliata subactaque regna, In describing the sea-voyage to the Balearic Isles, comparisons with the Trojan war continually suggest themselves to him. The relatives that remain behind lament the departure of the ships, as did formerly the Achæan women when the heroes left for Pergamum. In Sardinia the Pisans are received by King Constantine in the same way as the Danai at Aulis, and when the fearful tempest is depicted, against which the vessels have to struggle, the poet says that even the son of Laertes would have been terrified at it. In other passages we find comparisons with Cæsar, with the Sabines robbed of their wives and lamenting, and the like. Everywhere in this narrative, which, though monotonous and 1 Cf. Pannenborg, in "Forschungen zur dtschen. Gesch.," xi. 225; and Kuno Francke, "Zur Geschichte der lat. Schulpoesie des 12. und 13. Jahrh.", p. 37. München, 1879. |