Even if we cast aside worries about when the classical period began and ended, and even if we exclude from consideration most Greek literature, what remains is not a static hierarchy but instead a canon of authors that shifts from time to time and place to place (Glauche 1970). Although many of the same texts would have been rated as classics by any medieval author, whether a late eighth-century or early ninth-century intellectual affiliated with Charlemagne or a twelfth-century master or student in Paris, others grew or diminished in fame. Thus Lucretius was copied amply in the Carolingian period, but afterward ceased to be copied and read. Quintilian became more familiar later in the Middle Ages. Last but not least, certain authors who have become familiar today, if not household words, were unknown or nearly so, such as Catullus and Apuleius.
To gauge the fluctuations in the relative importance of classical authors during the Middle Ages, one may consult tabulations of manuscripts with their works from the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries (Munk Olsen 1991). Statistics may not lie, but they can and do mislead, since sometimes a drop in copying indicates that a text was read less often, whereas in other instances it means only that enough manuscripts from preceding centuries still circulated to meet demand; parchment is durable, and codices did not demand replacement at the pace we would expect from our experiences of printed books, especially paperbacks.
The resultant century-by-century listing lends loose support to the well-worn division of the Middle Ages into three stages, a Vergilian age ( aetas Vergiliana) in the eighth and ninth centuries that yielded first to a Horatian age ( aetas Horatiana) in the tenth and eleventh and subsequently to an Ovidian age (aetas Ovidiana) in the twelfth and thirteenth. (We owe this tripartite formulation, which continues to hold value so long as it is not exaggerated, to Ludwig Traube [1861-1907], often honored as the founder of medieval Latin philology [Hexter 1986].) In literary history, these stages would match three cultural renewals in the Middle Ages that have been singled out, not without debate and dissent, as renaissances; namely, the Carolingian, Ottonian, and Twelfth-Century Renaissances. The last-mentioned was named first and remains the most widely mentioned and studied (Haskins 1927; Benson and Constable 1982).
One of the starkest differences between printed books and manuscript codices is that whereas the former may achieve much of their power through being very similar or even identical across print runs, the latter are each individual objects, suigeneris. A token of the prestige that medieval culture attached to manuscripts may be found in numbers. More codices are extant from the Middle Ages than are cathedrals, rose windows, suits of armor, or almost any of the other tokens that we might think would survive in particular abundance. Not all of these manuscripts are deluxe objects - far from it! Many received heavy use, which can be detected not only in the wear and tear but even more significantly (for our purposes) in the encrustation that the folios promoted or endured, as schoolmasters, students, and other readers inserted interlinear and marginal glosses (in Latin or vernacular languages) to explain words and phrases, continuous or excerpted commentary to interpret the text (for representations of such techniques transposed into modern type, see Coulson 1991), scansion marks to make evident the workings of the meter, construe marks to elucidate the sequence in which words would be ordered in the spoken language (Draak 1957), and even neumes (a form of musical notation).
To expand upon the last observation, a fascinating feature of classical manuscripts from the early Middle Ages that has been recognized only recently is how many contain neumes (Ziolkowski forthcoming b). Neumes have been located for nearly two dozen of Horace’s Odes as well as for one section of the Carmen saeculare (Song of the ages or Secular hymn) and for parts of two Epodes; for more than a dozen passages in six books of Lucan’s Civil War (alternatively, and less properly, known as the Pharsalia); for eight in seven books of Statius’ Thebaid and one in his Achilleid; for four in two of Terence’s comedies; and for two in two of Vergil’s Eclogues, two in the Georgics, and more than two dozen in ten books of the Aeneid. To shift from mere numbers to statistics, it has been calculated that approximately 21 percent of all Statius manuscripts from the tenth through the twelfth century contain neumes, 15 percent of all Horace manuscripts, and between 7 and 11 percent of Lucan, Terence, and Vergil manuscripts (Riou 1991: 103). The authors whose texts are neumed, such as Statius, Vergil, Lucan, and Horace, are precisely those poets whose texts were copied most energetically in the tenth and eleventh centuries. By the twelfth century, the balance of interest tipped heavily to the advantage of Ovid, for whom no neuming has been discovered in the classical manuscripts.
Many of the passages that received neumation were direct address and especially laments. The most arresting of these scenes soon became the topics of newly composed medieval Latin poems, as well as of adaptations in the vernacular languages.
The twelfth century saw in Old French the three ‘‘romances of antiquity,’’ all linked to the court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine and all accommodating ancient pagan matter to the cultural values and social structures of their times. The anonymous Romance of Thebes, anonymous Romance of Eneas, and Romance of Troy by Benoit de Sainte-Maure were based on Statius’ Thebaid, Vergil’s Aeneid, and the late-antique prose of Dares and Dictys, respectively. They paved the way for the later Arthurian romances of Chretien de Troyes, as well as for the equivalents to the ‘‘romances of antiquity’’ in other literary traditions, such as the German (or Dutch) Eneit by the author generally known as Heinrich von Veldeke (before 1150 - ca. 1190). Heinrich and later vernacular poets could draw upon both their Old French predecessors and Latin texts; Jacob von Maerlant (ca. 1230 - ca. 1300), a prolific Middle Dutch poet, provides avatars of such fusion in his Deeds of Alexander and History of Troy; and in English, Chaucer was only one of several poets who were also inspired by the romances as well as their Latin progenitors (Nolan 1992).
Whenever classicism has held sway for long enough, a reaction sets in. This pattern of dominance and resistance, which can be seen in the querelle des anciens et des modernes (quarrel of the ancients and moderns) or in Classicism and Romanticism, had at least one memorable expression in the Middle Ages, in the twelfth century (Martin 1982). The classicizers among Medieval Latin authors showed their colors most clearly in their handling of the dactylic hexameter, which in the medieval period was the classical meter par excellence (Norberg 2004). They practiced elision, a fusion of syllables required under carefully defined circumstances; avoided a break (after the first syllable of the penultimate foot in hexameters, unless it was a monosyllable); and refrained from internal and end rhyming. The opposing camp of ‘‘modern’’ Latin poets shunned elision, allowed a caesura to fall after the first syllable in the fifth foot, and evidenced a predilection for rhyme.
World History
