Article. Palmer. Bede as Textbook Writer: A Study of His de Arte Metrica. 1959.
Bede as Textbook Writer: A Study of His De Arte Metrica
Robert B. Palmer
Speculum, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Oct., 1959), pp. 573-584.
THAT the Venerable Bede was a man of many attainments is a truism which hardly bears repeating. Certainly his genius as a writer of impartial and accurate history has long been recognized, while in more recent years the brilliant and painstaking studies of Professors M. L. W. Laistner and C. W. Jones have done much to re-establish the reputation and ability Bede had as a writer of exegetical and scientific treatises.
Yet, strange to say, modern scholarship has said little about one other extremely important aspect of Bede’s genius which the Middle Ages had long recognized in silence – his lucidity and precision as a textbook writer. What has been written in recent years has not always been in his favor. At least, this is true of what is generally said about his De arte metrica and its companion piece, De schematibus et tropis, Bede’s earliest works, it would seem. F. J. E. Raby, for example, in his 1953 edition of A History of Christian Latin Poetry, has not revised his earlier opinion that DAM is an “uncritical study of the old grammarians and the poets, Christian and profane.” Lucian Müller, long before this, had treated Bede with a certain degree of contempt by pointing out his many errors of commission.
Still, if we follow Professor Laistner’s advice and “patiently accumulate data,” trying hard to avoid “the striking generalities” which immediately come to mind after a rapid reading of the DAM, we find ourselves obliged to arrive at a conclusion far different from that implied in the statements of Bede’s detractors. Given the time (eighth century), the place (England), the milieu (Christian), and the emphasis this milieu places on auctoritas patrum (an attitude which, in grammatical studies, extends almost into what may be called auctoritas grammaticorum veterum), we must admit that Bede’s early treatise, DAM, exhibits the same clarity of expression, the same sanity of selection which distinguished his later works on chronology and Biblical exegesis.
In the nineteenth century, Heinrich Keil listed in some detail the grammatical sources Bede had used as pieces for the mosaic he had assembled in DAM. The list was impressively long. According to Keil, the following grammarians were used: Donatus and his commentators Pompeius and Sergius; Audax, Maximus Victorinus, Mallius Theodorus, Charisius, Servius, and Diomedes.
If we inquire more closely into the specific works Bede used in DAM, the follow- ing list emerges: Donatus, Maiores partes (GL, IV, 367-402); Pompeius, Commentum artis Donati (GL, V, 95-312); Sergius, De littera, de syllaba, de pedibus, de accentibus, de distinctione (GL, IV, 475-485); Audax, De Scauri et Palladii libris excerpta per interrogationem et responsionem (GL, VII, 320-362); Ars Victorini grammatici (GL, VI, 187-205); Ars Palaemonis de metrica institutione (GL, VI, 206- 215); De finalibus metrorum (GL, VI, 229-242); De ratione metrorum (GL, VI 216-228); Mallius Theodorus, De metris (GL, VI, 585-601); Charisius, Ars grammatica (GL, I, 1-296); Servius, De centum metris (GL, IV, 456-467); Servius, De finalibus (GL, IV, 449-455); Diomedes, Ars grammatica (GL, I, 300-529). Whether Julianus of Toledo’s Ars grammatica should be added to this list remains a moot point.
While the lists of Keil and the later ones of Laistner, Manitius, et al. give us a vivid picture of the library Bede must have had at his disposal in eighth-century England, they tell us nothing about Bede’s ability to select, adapt, digest, and re- work his sources – his excellence, in short, as a textbook writer. This can only be demonstrated by a minute analysis of DAM and the authorities excerpted – an examination which considers the order of selection followed, the accuracy and precision of the selector, and finally the general tenor achieved by the completed work.
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