Article. Seppo Heikkinen. The Resurrection and Afterlife of an Archaic Metre: Bede, The Carolingians and the Trochaic Septenarius. 2014.
The Resurrection and Afterlife of an Archaic Metre:
Bede, The Carolingians and the Trochaic Septenarius
Seppo Heikkinen, C&M 65
The trochaic septenarius, the vernacular or Plautine form of the trochaic tetrameter catalectic, is the sole representative of the archaic forms of iambotrochaic verse discussed in Bede’s De arte metrica, and of all the quantitative metres covered by Bede, it underwent the most dramatic overhaul in the author’s hands. This metre owes its particular fate largely to its long and varied history, its deficient analysis in the works of the late antique grammarians as well as its still persistent popularity in the Christian literature of late antiquity. Bede’s description of the metre is based on the structure of the hymn Hymnum dicat turba fratrum, which he chose as its illustration,(1) but in this particular case, Bede’s inductive approach was further necessitated by the fact that, in the works of previous grammarians, the discussion of the trochaic tetrameter catalectic, and its archaic form in particular, is generally off-hand and frequently misleading: as, in the classical and postclassical periods, the trochaic septenarius was regarded primarily as either an outdated or a colloquial form of verse, the grammarians, steeped in the Greek metrical tradition, did not consider its distinct nature worthy of serious academic study, and lacked a theoretical framework for its analytical presentation.
As both the classical trochaic tetrameter and the archaic septenarius were embraced by the hymnodists of late antiquity, Bede observably saw this as something that needed to be remedied, and his attempt to codify the trochaic septenarius must be regarded as ambitious, deficient though it may be. Bede had to rely, rather uncomfortably, on the descriptions of the trochaic tetrameter in the grammarians and the metrical structure of a poem that obviously did not correspond with them. In his eagerness to harmonise the poetic form he described, Bede either over-generalised or allowed his account to be contaminated by the grammarians, who essentially discussed a different poetic metre. Despite its partial inaccuracy, Bede’s description of the trochaic septenarius won a surprisingly wide popularity among the Carolingian poets who, for better or worse, deferred to Bede’s authority, and it is in their use of this very metre that Bede’s influence is the most palpable and easily recognised.
The originality of Bede’s definition of the trochaic septenarius has been recognised by several authors,(2) and its impact on early medieval verse has been discussed, to some extent, in the works of Wilhelm Meyer and Dag Norberg. The purpose of this paper is to shed some more light on the historical background of Bede’s analysis of the metre, as well as to revisit a number of early medieval hymns which show a clear indebtedness to his description. A number of these poems have been analysed in the works of Meyer and Norberg, especially those which correspond most closely with Bede’s partly mistaken presentation, but I will also undertake to observe a number of hymns where Bede’s influence is less evident to point out his elemental role in the survival of the trochaic septenarius into the Carolingian period as a kind of living fossil. My particular focus will be on the discrepancies between Bede and the earlier grammarians and the ways in which they left their mark on the composition of early medieval poetry in the absence of a comprehensive theory of the archaic and classical iambo-trochaic systems. It will be evident that not only the survival of the trochaic septenarius but also its metrical form in the Early Middle Ages are, ultimately, Bede’s achievement.
(1) Ed. Kendall 1975, CCSL 123A: 137.
(2) Meyer 1905: 348-49; Norberg 1958: 76-77; Klopsch 1972: 97; Luiselli 1976: 173-75; Coronati 1981-82: 53-62; Norberg 1988: 88-89.
Seppo Heikkinen ‘The Resurrection and Afterlife of an Archaic Metre’ C&M 65 (2014) 241-81. © 2014 Museum Tusculanum Press · www.mtp.dk · www.au.dk/classica
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