Medieval Grammar

En este trabajo se estudia el modo en que se integran, en el contexto de las nuevas posiciones defendidas por los primeros humanistas, las distintas tradiciones autóctonas -la escolar y la literaria- desarrolladas en la Península. La lingüística española no empieza con Nebrija: para interpretarle rectamente y, precisamente, para calibrar su importancia, no queda más remedio que considerar los tramos de historia que le anteceden.

The volume gathers 15 among the most relevant papers about medieval grammar and rhetoric written by Gian Carlo Alessio,
formerly full Professor at Ca’ Foscari (chair: Medieval Latin Literature and Philology). In the field of grammatical and rhetorical studies he reached the most important goals of his
research and teaching career; and precisely the latter is summarized here by a wide choice of papers which were published between 1979 and 2006 and seem now especially exemplary of Prof. Alessio’s working methods and research outcomes. In the studies which are reprinted here the following subjects stand out: classical rhetoric in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (especially Cicero, De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium), medieval rhetoric, ars dictaminis and speculative grammar; in every paper a key role is always played by the attention to masters and/or specific cultural contexts (e.g. above all Bologna). The book is completed by 2 indexes (names; manuscripts).

With the aid of a series of representative examples, the objective of this article is to highlight the connections between the teaching of, and speculation about, disciplines including grammar, rhetoric and biblical exegesis, and the creation, transmission and assumption of new "extra-official" liturgical repertories at different moments and places during the Middle Ages. Using resources such as ornatus, and with a view to providing a better understanding, composition and proclamation of the truths of Christian faith shown during its celebration, liturgical song (text and/or music) was frequently understood and treated as a genuine liturgical commentary on the very evolution of the liturgy. Thus, the relationship between the old and the new, "sung liturgical commentary" and comments made outside the liturgy, and between the official Gregorian and "extra-official" repertories of tropes, sequences, prosulas, etc., will be examined from the point of view and in the context of liturgical action.

Resumen: Este trabajo profundiza en el estudio de la enseñanza universitaria durante la Edad Media a partir de la lectura atenta y detenida de los tratados empleados para la práctica docente. Estas obras pueden dividirse en dos grupos: textos de la Antigüedad (Aristóteles, Euclides, Catón, Cicerón, Nicómaco, Quintiliano, Donato, Prisciano…) y nuevas composiciones didácticas del Medievo (Alexandre de Villedieu, Uguccione da Pisa, Giovanni da Genova, Pedro Hispano, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Bradwardine, Guarino da Verona, Lorenzo Valla, Juan de Pastrana, Rodolfo Agricola, Fernando de Manzanares, Angelo Poliziano, Antonio de Nebrija…). De la comparación resultante se ofrece una descripción explicativa sobre los contenidos integrados en cada una de las siguientes disciplinas: Gramática, Lógica, Retórica, Aritmética y Geometría.
Abstract: In the present work we intendend to delve into the study of university education in the Middle Ages through a careful and detailed reading of the treatises used for the teaching. These works can be divided into two groups: texts from the Antiquity (Aristotle, Euclid, Caton, Cicero, Nicomachus, Quintilianus, Donato, Priscian…) and new didactic compositions of the Middle Ages (Alexandre de Villedieu, Uguccione da Pisa, Giovanni da Genova, Pedro Hispano, Robert Grosseteste, Thomas Bradwardine, Guarino da Verona, Lorenzo Valla, Juan de Pastrana, Rodolfo Agricola, Fernando de Manzanares, Angelo Poliziano, Antonio de Nebrija…). After comparing the treatises, we analyze their content about the following disciplines: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Arithmetic and Geometry.

The article discusses the cultures of authority during the long 12th century. The author defines the long 12th century as one that extends from after the Great Schism of 1054 to the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The author mentions "auctoritas," which means "authority" as a word that belongs to the lasting coinage of Latin language. The term is paired with other words such as "potestas" and "imperium" during the old times until the Middle Ages.

‘Haṭef, Dageš, Niṣav, Ḥazeq, and Rafe’: Notes on Early Grammatical Terminology

Diqduqe Hammiqra, one of the earliest grammatical treatises, contains a list of masoretic, grammatical, and literary terms that are intended as a guide for the reader or interpreter of the Bible. The antiquity of these terms and their notable difference from known terms in mainstream medieval (‘post-Ḥayyūj’) grammatical literature leaves many of them multivalent or obscure.

A sequence of five terms found in this work, previously thought to contain redundancies, is addressed in this paper: haṭef, dageš, niṣav, ḥazeq, and rafe. Based on a comparison to masoretic literature, meanings are suggested for these terms that rule out redundancy. In light of these suggested meanings, several Babylonian masoretic notes are thereby provided simpler explanations.

Based on the improved understanding of Tiberian Biblical Hebrew phonetics gained from work in the past decades, this talk identifies ten vocalic phonemes in this reading tradition, /i ɛ a ɔ u ī ē ɔ̄ ō ū/. This matches the description given by the medieval grammarians Joseph and David Qimḥī, suggesting that they were describing Hebrew phonology at a phonemic level, not a phonetic one.

A partire da un celebre saggio di Fiorenzo Forti, la transumptio si è introdotta negli studi danteschi, senza però essere stata oggetto di un’indagine completa né aver ricevuto una chiara definizione. Come mostrano i lavori di Gilbert Dahan e Benoît Grévin, il dossier su questa importante nozione medievale deve essere riaperto, così da portare anche a una migliore comprensione del suo impiego nell’opera dantesca, sia sul versante teorico che su quello pratico. In questo intervento mi propongo di ripercorrere le fasi principali della densa riflessione medievale sulla transumptio, che appartengono a diverse discipline in costante dialogo tra loro: sviluppato dapprima nell’ambito dell’esegesi e del discorso teologico sulla possibilità di dire Dio, il concetto è stato recepito dai trattati di ars poetriae e, sulla scia di questi ultimi, da quelli di dictamen. Dall’analisi di queste diverse tradizioni emergono alcune questioni fondamentali per il pensiero linguistico di Dante, che sembra averle formulate, ancorché in maniera per lo più implicita, in diversi passaggi delle sue opere: a partire dal più semplice livello della proprietas grammaticale, passando per la dottrina degli stili del De vulgari eloquentia e per la teoria dei quattro sensi delle Scritture nel Convivio e nell’Epistola a Cangrande, per arrivare infine alla giustificazione del linguaggio figurato nel IV canto del Paradiso.

A central prosodic feature of nearly all Latin verse, classical and medieval alike, is the avoidance of hiatus, where a word with a final vowel, or in classical verse, a final m, is followed by a word with an initial vowel, (or, in classical verse, an initial h). In classical Latin, hiatus is eliminated by a process known as elision, or synaloephe, where the final vowel of the preceding word is fused with the following one or left unpronounced. The avoidance of hiatus is a feature of most medieval verse, as well, but early insular verse forms a notable exception: hiatus is abundant in many rhythmical Irish and Anglo-Latin hymns, and even in much of Anglo-Latin hexameter poetry elision is not systematically observed. This is a noticeable feature, above all, in the verse of Aldhelm and his followers, although Aldhelm himself gives a detailed description of elision in his treatise on metrics (De metris). Bede took an opposite line in his strenuous avoidance of hiatus in his own verse. In his metrical treatise De arte metrica he went so far as to condemn hiatus as a ‘pagan’ feature, a view which he attempted to corroborate with examples of Vergil’s artful deviations from the rules of elision. Bede’s reluctance to recognise hiatus for a contemporary rather than a pre-Christian feature reflects his attempts to show Christian verse in as favourable light as possible, although, in a roundabout way, he probably also tried to regularise the prosodic practices of Anglo-Latin verse. The present paper studies this discrepancy between Anglo-Saxon prosodists’ views on hiatus and the prevailing verse technique of the same period and suggests that some seeming idiosyncrasies in Aldhelm’s use of elision are, in fact, probably based on certain less-known practices of Late Latin hexameter verse.

CATHEDRAL SCHOOLS IN MEDIEVAL GERMANY. THE CASE OF HALBERSTADT:
IDEAS, OBJECTIVES AND RESOURCES
C. SQUIRES
The change from convent school to cathedral school was a decisive step in bringing education closer to the lay urban communities in Carolingian Germany. The role of the Halberstadt diocese as an important missionary center accounts for its rich collections of books and manuscript documents and for the broad links to prominent representatives of Christian academics and educational authorities.
Relations to Hrabanus Maurus, the Venerable Bede, Alcuin of York — either through direct personal links or via their pupils in the Abbeys Werden, Fulda and others — could be traced by connecting historic facts but especially by analyzing the scope and trends of book collection in the churches and convents of Halberstadt. These are being reconstructed on the basis of the surviving manuscript materials (today housed in a number of libraries and archives both in Germany and Russia, including Moscow). They are viewed as an indication to the kind of teaching material and method used for the education of boys in Halberstadt in the 9th–11th centuries. A specific choice of reading sources for philological and theological study was thus shown and the central role of music stressed. The success in spreading education among the clerics and in the lay community of the city finds evidence in the subsequent prominence of Halberstadt as the cradle of great churchmen and scholars in various academic fields.

There has been a tendency in Gower scholarship to emphasize what Genius is not doing in the Confessio Amantis: the stories he does not tell, the sins he fails to discuss, and the interpretations he does not pursue. Some critics view Genius's supposed deficiencies as intentional failings designed by Gower to challenge his readers; still, these readings are centered on absence rather than presence. This paper offers a new interpretation of Genius's role in the Confessio, and, in particular, of Genius's use of classical exempla, by arguing that the absence of allegorized versions of these tales is, in fact, the result of a conscious decision to use an alternate method of reading ---ethical reading- rather than allegorical interpretation. Instead of merely appropriating or desecularizing "old bokes," the process of ethical reading preserves the status of secular texts while reframing them to make them morally useful for new generations of readers.

Isidore of Seville (c. 560 – 636) was a prolific writer, who authored works of theology and science, historiography and monastic life. He is remembered chiefly as an author of the most important medieval encyclopedia, the Etymologies. Yet, a handbook of grammar, an ars grammatica, is not among his oeuvre. Nevertheless, a number of Carolingian manuscripts from the ninth century contain a grammatical treatise bearing the title Ars Isidori or Liber Isidori de grammatica. When compared with the works of the Sevillan bishop, it becomes evident that this text corresponds to the first of the twenty books into which the Etymologies were divided, transmitted separately from the rest of Isidore’s massive encyclopedia. The separate transmission of the first book of the Etymologies is but one of several indications that Carolingian masters regarded Isidore as a grammarian placing him into a company of great ancient figures of this discipline, such as Donatus, Priscian or Servius. How is it possible that a part of Isidore’s encyclopedia, a text which was clearly not intended for teaching, became absorbed into Carolingian grammatical curriculum? What transformations in the realm of grammatica are revealed by this appropriation of the work of the Sevillan bishop? And what changes might have the adoption of such a text for teaching enacted in the early medieval classroom?

In A-S England any person striving for a good degree of literacy needed grammatical knowledge to read and master Latin. The whole schooling process was mostly dedicated to attain and improve Latin literacy, which, in turn, was necessary to interpret literary texts, first of all the Bible.
Like in other countries in the Middle Ages, grammar occupied a central position and was a most necessary discipline concerned, not only with literacy (ratio recte scribendi et loquendi), but also with all the aspects of a literary text (scientia interpretandi). In both England and Ireland, which were non-Romance speaking areas, proficiency in Latin could have been acquired not just by means of one of the grammars devised for Latin-speaking countries, but by combining the study of grammatical tracts and lists of exempla (such as the Declinationes nominum and the Coniugationes verborum, which often circulated separately), with the reading of set texts, likely accompanied by glosses. This new and wider sense given to grammar was responsible for the creation of a specific type of manuscripts where artes and auctores formed a coherent collection. It also influenced the lay-out of manuscripts in which the auctores were usually accompanied by interpretational frames in the form of glosses.

Contrary to what was stated by Maur Cochéril (1963: 245), the Latin grammar by Ælius Donatus (fl. mid-4th century) did exist in Portugal in the Middle Ages. The grammar is included in a codex that belonged to the Cistercian monastery library of Alcobaça, which can now be found in Lisbon, in the National Library of Portugal. The Portuguese version of Donatus' Ars minor or De partibus orationis is located between the folios 252v and 258r of the codex Alc. 426, whose main body is occupied by the third part of the Vocabularium latinum or the Elementarium doctrinae rudimentum (from the letter “Q” to “Z”) by Papias Vocabulista (fl. 1050). The codex Alc. 426 was written most probably in the 13th century in early gothic script, known as carolino-gothica and pregothic or protogothic. The content of the Portuguese codex is very similar to the one established by the editions of Keil & Mommsen (1864) and Holtz (1981), who did not show any evidence of knowing the manuscript of Portuguese origin. Thus, in this paper, I undertake a description of the most significant linguistic and textual innovations, mainly the additions, omissions, and textual variations the Codex Alc 426 presents in comparison with the most recent critical edition by Louis Holtz.

A historical and philological state-of-the-art report on Old Icelandic grammatical literature from the beginnings to 1982. [Continued in F. D. Raschellà, 2007, "Old Icelandic Grammatical Literature: The Last Two Decades of Research (1983-2005)"]

"Ovid, in his 'Ars amatoria,' adopts the didactic framework in order to elevate the tradition of Latin love elegy and make a name for himself as a poet. In contrast, three of his most famous medieval successors--Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower--invert the balance, exploiting the subject of love to instruct their readers in other topics, such as religion, philosophy, and morality. This shift in balance is related to the practice of 'ethical reading,' which emerged in medieval 'grammatica' as a way of approaching classical authors by emphasizing the ethical (and thus educational) potential of their texts. Previous scholarship has established the ethical focus of medieval grammar education and the ways in which that ethical focus influenced medieval readings of classical texts, but this scholarship has rarely continued on to discuss the influence of grammar education on medieval authors. Andreas, Jean, and Gower first encountered imaginative literature in the medieval curriculum, where the texts of classical authors were used to teach students the Latin language. In the grammar classroom, they would have been taught interpretive methods that trained them to identify the utility of what they were reading, whether that utility was conceived of in philological, ethical, philosophical, or even theological terms. Conditioned to read imaginative literature for these didactic purposes, Andreas, Jean, and Gower discovered, in Ovid's 'Ars amatoria,' a text that used love as a platform for didacticism, and a model around which to build their own literary inventions. The literary works that they created--Andreas's 'De amore' (late 12th c.), Jean's continuation of 'Roman de la Rose' (late 13th c.), and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (late 14th c.)--are dense, challenging, and multilayered texts that illustrate the process of learning through reading and dialogue, and use the literary discourse of love to teach their students the art of reading." [JGN 33.2.]

This article is a continuation of F. D. Raschellà 1983 = Die altisländische grammatische Literatur. Forschungsstand und Perspektiven zukünftiger Untersuchungen ['Old Icelandic Grammatical Literature: State of the Art and Prospects of Further Research']