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Rhetoric in England: The age of Aelfric, 970–1020Luke M. Reinsma aa Graduate student, Department of English Language and Literature , University of Michigan ,Published online: 02 Jun 2009.

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RHETORIC IN ENGLAND:THE AGE OF AELFRIC, 970-1020

LUKE M. REINSMA

STUDIES of the rhetorical traditionin Anglo-Saxon England remain in

a considerable state of uncertainty. Al-though Jackson J. Campbell has docu-mented the case for a thriving rhetoricaltradition in England of the seventh andeighth centuries, it remains unclear towhat extent this tradition survived inlater centuries. Campbell implies thatthe "Golden Age of Latin scholarship inEngland" left its heritage of manuscriptsand learning for future generations ofstudents to profit from. "It would be amistake," he writes,to believe that the English poets were hermeti-cally sealed off from this learning, when we seeso clearly that Cynewulf was not, nor were theAlfredian poets, nor were the tenth-centurypoets.i

But where are the manuscripts, the trea-tises which would support such an as-sumption? James J. Murphy, findingfew deserving of comment, concludesthat we have no evidence of a rhetoricaltradition in Anglo-Saxon England.2 The

Mr. Reinsma is a graduate student. Departmentof English Language and Literature, Universityof Michigan.

1 "Knowledge of Rhetorical Figures in Ang-lo-Saxon England," Journal of English and Ger-manic Philology, 66 (1967), 2. For furtherstudies of the use of rhetoric in Anglo-Saxonpoetry, see Adeline C. Bartlett, The LargerRhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry(Morningside Heights, New York: ColumbiaUniv. Press, 1935), esp. her bibliography forearlier Germanic studies (pp. 119-126); J. J.Campbell, "Learned Rhetoric in Old EnglishPoetry," Modern Philology, 63 (1966), 189-201;George J. Englehardt, "Beowulf: A Study inDilatation," PMLA, 70 (1955), 825-52; MargaretSchlauch, "The 'Dream of the Rood' as Pro-sopopoeia," Essays and Studies in Honor ofCarleton Brown (New York: New York Univ.Press, 1940), pp. 23-34.

2 Rhetoric in the Middle Ages (Berkeley:

scanty surveys with which both J. W. H.Atkins and Charles Sears Baldwin takeleave of these little-known and thuswidely ignored years support Murphy'sassumption.3

Obviously the state of rhetoric in Eng-land between the ninth and eleventhcenturies remains an uncertain matter.Thus it is more than a little curiousthat the apparent dominance of Augus-tine's De doctrina Christiana (396-426)between, let us say, the writing of Al-cuin's Disputatio de rhetorica (794) andJohn of Salisbury's Metalogicon (1159)continues to be insisted upon. Accord-ing to Murphy, during the twelve hun-dred years following Christ and Paul,De doctrina IV remained the "one majorpreceptive treatise on preaching."4 Byall accounts it was not only a significanttreatise but a popular one as well. Therather expansive comments of Murphy'sRhetoric in the Middle Ages, of DurantW. Robertson Jr.'s preface to his trans-lation of the De doctrina, and of JeanLeclercq's study of monastic learning at-test to its apparent success.5

What firm evidence do we have, how-

Univ. of California Press, 1974), p. 79.3 J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism:

The Medieval Phase (New York: Macmillan,1943), pp. 59-60. With brief nods to RabanusMaurus, Loup de Ferriêres, Abbo of Fleury,and a half-dozen grammars, Charles Sears Bald-win covers the same territory in five pages ofMedieval Rhetoric and Poetic (New York: Mac-millan, 1928), pp. 130, 141-44.

4 Murphy, Rhetoric, pp. 284-85.5 Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 47; Robertson, trans.,

On Christian, Doctrine, Library of Liberal Arts80 (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958), x;Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the De-sire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans.

COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS, Volume 44, November 1977

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ever, that Augustine's De doctrina IVactually played a significant role inChristian homiletics in England betweenthe ninth and eleventh centuries? Towhat extent had the English of thesecenturies inherited the rhetorical tra-dition of their ancestors? This study at-tempts to answer these questions. In thispaper we will attempt to specify whichmanuscripts, which treatises of what Ishall call the Augustinian, the encyclo-pedic, and the grammatical traditions ofrhetoric, were available in England dur-ing the most vital years of these centur-ies, the age of the Benedictine Revival(970-1020).6 The focus of this paper isupon these fifty years and particularlyupon sources and manuscripts availableto one of the leading prose writers ofhis age, the Benedictine monk Aelfric(955-1020?)J

Catherine Misrahi (New York: Fordham Univ.Press, 1974), p. 217. See also Charles HomerHaskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Cen-tury, Meridian Books (New York: World, 1963),p. 80.

6 See David Knowles, The Monastic Orderin England . . . 940-1216, 2nd ed. (Cambridge:Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 28-82.7 For the most up-to-date, comprehensiveaccount of the Aelfric manuscripts, his worksand sources 'see John C. Pope's excellent intro-duction to Homilies of Aelfric: A Supplementtary Collection. Early English Text Society[henceforth EETS] 259 and 260 (London: Ox-ford Univ. Press, 1967-68), I, pp. 1-190. Foreditions of AElfric's works, see fns. 11 and 12below; for sources of his homilies, fn. 27 below.

The following studies of Aelfric's style anduse of rhetoric are relevant to this inquiry:John Thomas Algeo, "Aelfric's 'The FortySoldiers': An Edition," Diss. Florida 1960; Doro-thy Bethurum, "The Form of AElfric's Livesof Saints," Studies in Philology, 29 (1932), 515-33; Gordon Hall Gerould, "Abbot Aelfric'sRhythmic Prose," Modern Philology, 22 (1925),353-66; Judith Jean Kollmann., "Aelfric's Stylein Four Saints' Lives," Diss. Colorado 1972;Sherman M. Kuhn, "Was AElfric a Poet?,"Philological Quarterly, 52 (1973), 643-62; Fran-ces Randall Lipp, "Aelfric's Old English ProseStyle," Studies in Philology, 66 (1969), 689-718;Bruce Richard McGrath, "Diverse HomileticModes and Styles in Aelfric," Diss. Illinois atUrbana-Champaign 1971; Ann Eljenholm Nich-ols, "Aelfric's Prefaces: Rhetoric and Genre,"English Studies, 49 (1968), 215-23; "Aelfric andthe Brief Style," Journal of English and Ger-manic Philology, 70 (1971), 1-12; Edna ReesWilliams, "Aelfric's Grammatical Terminology,"PMLA, 73 (1958), 453-62. Throughout the Anglo-

AELFRIC

Aelfric is an especially appropriate fig-ure for this study. As heir to both therevival of learning in the late tenth cen-tury and, in part, heir to the tradi-tion of vernacular prose of King Al-fred's court, he mirrors the intellectualachievements of his age.8 In his con-junction of expression and thought, inthe clarity and precision of his style,Aelfric sums' up the best of both thecontinental and native traditions oflearning. In short, Gordon Hall Gerouldconcludes, this is a man who "illumin-ates, by the gentle glow of his mindand heart, the turn of the millenniumin England."9

It is diffi.cu.lt to understand the sig-nificance of oAelfric's role as a pivotalfigure of his age unless we understand,first of all, the significance of the Bene-dictine Revival itself. Beginning withthe foundatipn of Cluny by Berno in910, this revival not only brought abouta greater measure of ecclesiastical rig-our to English monasticism, but it alsobegan the slow, painful process of re-trieving centuries of knowledge whichhad been-lost or forgotten. For our ownpurpose, Cluny's "daughter"—the mona-stery of Fleury on the Loire, reformedin 930—is of: central importance. It ex-erted considerable influence upon theliterary arts in England,10 and it seemsto have stimulated a revival, of studiesin the trivitim and quadrivium. Underthe watchful eye of Fleury, the chieffigures of this tenth-century renaissance

Saxon characters ash, eth, and thorn are silentlyemended to "ae," "th," and "th."

8 Peter Clemoes, "Aelfric," Continuations andBeginnings: Studies in. Old English Literature,ed. Eric G. Stanley (London: Nelson, 1966), p.179.

9 Gerould; "Aelfric's Lives of St. Martin ofTours," Journal of English and GermanidPhilology, 24 (1925), 206.

10 Mary Bateson, "Rules for Monks and Sec-ular Canons after the Revival under KingEdgar," English Historical Review, 19 (1894),690-91. See Knowles, p. 493.

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were raised: Dunstan at Glastonbury,Oswald at Worcester, and Aethelwold atWinchester.

Aelfric spent his youth at the mona-stery of Winchester under the tutelageof Aethelwold. As a priest he was sentto Cerne Abbey in Dorsetshire about987 by Aethelwold's successor, Aelfheah.For the next ten years he spent his timewriting three series of homilies, mostlyparaphrases of patristic sources for theedification of his unlearned English au-dience, the first two his Catholic Hom-ilies (989-992), the latter a collection ofLives of Saints (992-1002). It was at thistime as well that Aelfric wrote theGrammatica (995), the first grammarwritten in the English language.11 Some-time after the year 1000 Aelfric beganto speak of himself no longer as fraterbut as abbas, and five years later he wasappointed abbot of the monastery atEynesham. Aelfric's many other works,including translations of books of theOld Testament, additional homilies, aversion of Bede's De Temporibus, and adelightful Colloquy designed to initiatehis students into the subtleties of Latin,occupied his attention until his death,sometime between 1010 and 1020.la Wehave every right to expect, then, thatAelfric—not only "the best educatedman of his time" but also "the lead-ing prose writer of the period"13—should

11 Benjamin Thorpe, ed.. The Homilies ofthe Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part Con-taining the Sermones Catholici or Homilies ofAelfric (London: Aelfric Society, 1844-46; rpt.St. Clair Shores, Michigan: Scholarly Press,1976); 2 vols.; Walter W. Skeat, ed., Aelfric'sLives of Saints, EETS, o.s. 76, 82 and 94, 114(London: Trübner, 1881-1900; rpt. London:Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), 2 vols.; Julius Zupit-za, ed., Aelfrics Grammatik und Glossar (Ber-lin: Weidmann, 1880).

12 For a complete record of the Aelfric canonsee the complementary studies of Peter Clemoes,"The Chronology of Aelfric's Works," TheAnglo-Saxons: Studies . . . presented to BruceDickins, ed. P. Clemoes (London: Bowes &Bowes, 1959), pp. 212-47, and that of Pope, I,pp. 136-45. For editions of these further works,see Pope, I, pp. xiii-xvii.

13 Clemoes, "The Chronology," p. 246; Kemp

provide us with the key to a clearer un-derstanding of rhetorical studies in Eng-land during the Benedictine Revival.

It should not be entirely surprisingthat the same inconclusive argumentsforwarded on behalf of rhetoric in lateAnglo-Saxon England have been for-warded on Aelfric's behalf as well. Thisis yet another reason for our choice ofAelfric as a focus for this study. Earlierstudents of Aelfric's language took it ascommonplace that he had studied thetrivium and quadrivium "with a keeninterest,"14 and recent dissertations haveenergetically argued that the subtle, per-suasive style of Aelfric's homilies is aclear reflection of the influence of Augus-tine's De doctrina.15 Ann EljenholmNichols concludes too that the prefacesof Aelfric's Catholic Homilies and Livesof Saints "epitomize central features ofa well-established Christian rhetoric"16

Yet Peter Clemoes suggests that Aelfric'spreference for simple speech rather thanartificial discourse quite simply resultedfrom a practical need for "direct com-munication with a not highly educatedaudience."17 These arguments again re-flect a significant measure of doubt. Asa student Aelfric had certainly studieda smattering of Bede, of Donatus andof Priscian. But what other treatiseswere available for his use? And evenmore importantly, to what extent did

Malone, The Old English Period (to 1100), inThe Middle Ages, vol. 1, A Literary History ofEngland, ed. Albert C. Baugh (New York: Ap-pleton-Century-Crofts, 1948), p. 101.

14 Caroline L. White, Aelfric: A New Studyof his Life and Writings (New York: Lamson,Wolffe, 1898), p. 71. White simply follows Skeat,II, p. xliv, who in turn quotes Edward Diet-rich's similar statement in his classic study,"Abt Aelfrik: Zur Literatur-Geschichte derangelsächsischen Kirche," Zeitschrift für his-torische Theologie, 26 (1856), p. 163.

15 See especially the dissertations of Algeoand McGrath. McGrath, for example, prefaceshis study with a quotation from Augustine'sDe doctrina IV.xiii.29.

16 Nichols, "Aelfric and the Brief Style," p.2.

17 Clemoes, "Aelfric," p. 193.

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Aelfric and his Benedictine brethren en-dorse the contents of the rhetorical textsthey knew? Unfortunately, it is impos-sible to answer the latter question with-out a more specific notion of whichworks of the tradition were available.

The rhetorical traditions of eloquenceand persuasion which Aelfric could haveknown can most conveniently be dividedinto three broad fields: the Augustinian,the encyclopedic, and the grammatical.These are the traditions by which me-dieval man could have known, respec-tively, a theory of Christian eloquence,a science which applied the Ciceronianarts to political affairs, and, finally, ascience which taught the parts of speech,the rules for their use, and the ßguraefor their embellishment.

The evidence for or against Aelfric'sknowledge of these three traditions is,of course, not as clear-cut as one wouldlike. The seemingly concerted efforts ofDanes, fires, and Protestants alike to de-stroy the manuscripts of early Englishlibraries make any conclusions we mayarrive at tentative at best;18 This studydoes make it apparent, however, thatwhat notion of eloquence Aelfric's agemay have possessed was only that pre-served by such encyclopedic compendiaas those of Isidore and Alcuin and, sec-ondly, by the grammatical treatises ofDonatus, Priscian, and Bede.

THE AUGUSTINIAN TRADITION

In this consideration of the use of Dedoctrina during the Benedictine Revivalit is necessary to begin by skirting a

18 See J. D. A. Ogilvy's "Index Calamitatum"sub-titled "A Brief History of Human Stupid-ity," in Books Known to the English, 597-1066(Cambridge, Mass.: Mediaeval Academy ofAmerica, 1967), pp. 22-36; R. W. Chambers,"The Lost Literature of Medieval England,"The Library, 4th s., 5 (1925), 293-321, rpt. inEssential Articles for the Study of Old EnglishPoetry, eds. Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. and Stanley J.Kahrl (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1968), pp. 3-26;R. M. Wilson, The Lost Literature of MedievalEngland, 2nd edn. (London: Methuen, 1970).

couple of traditional obstacles. The firstof these is the assumption that it is some-how possible to neatly arrange the atti-tude of the English toward rhetoric onan imaginary line of the De doctrina'sinfluence—a line which stretches, asboth Murphy and Robertson suggest,.between the i De clericorum institutioneof Rabanus Maurus in the early ninthcentury and the works of Alain de Lilleand Hugh of St. Victor in the twelfth.19

I would suggest that this is a hazardousmethodology. It is well worth notingthat neither Murphy nor Robertsonspeaks of the use of the De doctrina inEngland during the intervening years.This curious hiatus may be the result ofAlcuin's transfer, as Atkins suggests, ofthe liberal arts from England to the con-tinent where they seem to have remainedfor some three centuries.20 It may alsobe possible, as we will see, that studentsof rhetoric in England have tradition-ally chosen a starting point for theirstudies which is perhaps more conve-nient than, accurate.

Furthermore, it is important that weobserve Augustine's own distinction be-tween the first three books of the De doc-trina, which present "a way of discover-ing those things [in Scripture] whichare to be understood," and the fourth,written some twenty-five years later,which demonstrates "a way of teachingwhat we have learned" (DDC I.i.l). Thisquite necessary distinction may appearobvious, but it has often been over-looked. Murphy, for instance, finds it

perhaps inevitable that Augustine's opinionwould have a strong influence on the future de-velopment of rhetoric—if for no other reasonthan his general influence in a number offields.2i

1 9 Murphy, Rhetoric, p . 47; Robertson, p .xii.

2 0 Atkins, p . 61. Murphy, Rhetoric, p . 81,and Dorothy Bethurum, ed., The Homilies ofWulfstan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), p.88, fn. 1, reach a similar conclusion.

2 1 Murphy, Rhetoric, pp. 56-57.

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This confusion is well worth avoidingfor several reasons. In the first place, theEnglish monks of the Benedictine Re-vival seem to have had quite a talent,as we will observe, both for separatingthe concerns of Scripture from those ofthe liberal arts and for copying theformer into their commonplace bookswhile ignoring the latter almost entire-ly. Secondly, De doctrina I-III presents,on the one hand a content so traditional,and on the other an exegetical meth-odology so pervasive throughout theMiddle Ages, that we cannot argue forAelfric having known the treatise onthe basis of his exegesis alone. The ex-egetical method demonstrated in Augus-tine's treatise was the methodology ofsacred writings for centuries. Few es-caped its influence; no one would havehad to study the De doctrina to dis-cover its principles.

What is important for our purposeis not Augustine's description of exegesisbut rather his enthusiastic conversionof Ciceronian rhetoric to ä theory ofChristian eloquence in De doctrina IV.This book successfully combats whatMurphy calls the "Platonic rhetoricalheresy," the notion that truth ratherthan language, content rather than form,can persuade of itself. Thus it is a cru-cial step in the formulation of a Chris-tian rhetoric.22 The argument that it isnot the use of an object that matters,but the end to which it is used—whetherGod or mammon—is De doctrina's cen-tral thesis (DDC I.iv.4-v.5). It follows,then, Augustine begins in the fourthbook, that if eloquence is at the disposalof both good and evil, its only properuse lies in the service of God (DDCIV.ii.3). Thus the Christian preachermust engage the Ciceronian officia inpursuit of the plain teaching of truth(docere, DDC IV.viii.22-xii.28); in pur-

2 2 Ibid., p. 60.

suit of delighting the hearts of men(delectare, DDC IV. xiii.29-xvii.34); and,most importantly, in pursuit of persuad-ing man to serve God (movere, DDCIV.xviii.35-xix.38). The form must re-flect the content, an obvious reaction toboth sophistic excess and Platonic mis-trust of language. Illustrations fromPaul's epistles (DDC IV.xx.39-xxi.50)argue, finally, that sacred language isfully as capable of achieving the cor-responding plain, moderate, and grandstyles as was that of the pagan orators.

Others merely quoted the perfunctorycommonplaces associated with thesegoals. It was Rabanus Maurus (776-856),Alcuin's student, whose De institutioneclericorum (819) provided the medievalworld with a second account of Augus-tine's theory of a Christian eloquence.23

Following two books which describepriestly duties, Rabanus finds himselfundecided as to whether a good life orlearned skills are more useful for thesuccess of the clergy. He chooses both.Thus De institutione III, following asummary of Gregory's Regula Pastoralisand a rather cursory review of the sevenliberal arts, devotes most of its atten-tion to another summary—in some cases,almost a verbatim copy—of large sec-tions of De doctrina IV. Of the firstseventeen capitula of De institutione IIIbetween seventy and eighty percent ofthe,text is that of Augustine.24

Although Augustine's treatise exerteda considerable influence in the exegeti-cal arts, if Aelfric was to have known atheory of Christian eloquence, he wouldhave had to turn to De doctrina IV orto De institutione III. But there is noevidence that he turned to either. Inthe light of the extravagant assumptions

2 3 See James J. Murphy, "Saint Augustineand Rabanus Maurus: The Genesis of Medi-eval Rhetoric," Western Speech, 31 (1967), pp .88-96.

2 4 Murphy, Rhetoric, p . 83, fn. 141.

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of De doctrina's popularity and in lightof our own ignorance of the state ofrhetoric during the Benedictine Revival,this is a situation worth studying care-fully. We will accomplish this examina-tion by reference, first of all, to sourcestudies of Aelfric's works; secondly, tothe manuscripts which have survivedfrom England of the ninth througheleventh centuries; and finally, to thelibrary catalogues of the same period.This will be the methodology as wellin our subsequent study of the encyclo-pedic and grammatical traditions ofrhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England duringthese three centuries.

Of course Aelfric made use of Augus-tine. He gives us a partial indicationof Augustine's prominence in the Latinpreface to his first volume of CatholicHomilies, which attests to his use ofpatristic sources, "videlicet AugustinumHipponensem, Hieronium, Bedam, Gre-gorium, Smaragdum, et aliquando Hay-monem."26 Augustine stands at the headof these sources. He has written "anthusend boca," Aelfric later writes inamazement in a letter to Wulfgeat, butit must be noted that he immediatelyadds, of these only "sume becomon tous."26 Source studies for Aelfric's Cath-olic Homilies and further works indicatethat it was not Augustine's doctrinalstudies which Aelfric prized, but espe-cially his sermons and biblical commen-taries.27 Max forster's source studies for

25 Thorpe, I, p. 1.26 Bruno Assmann, ed., "Aelfric's Sendschrei-

ben an Wulfret zu Ylmandun," AngelsächsischeHomilien und Heiligenleben, Bibliothek derAngelsächsischen Prosa 3 (Kassel: Georg H. Wig-and, 1889), p. 5.

2 7 For Thorpe see Max Förster, "Über dieQuellen von Aelfric's Homiliae Catholicae: I.Legenden," Diss. Berlin 1892; "Über die Quel-len von Aelfrics exegetischen Homiliae Cath-olicae," Anglia, 16 (1894), 1-61; Cyril L. Smetana,"Aelfric and the Early Medieval Homiliary,"Traditio, 15 (1959), 163-204; and "Aelfric andthe Homiliary of Haymo of Halberstadt," Tra-ditio, 17 (1961), 457-69. Sources for Skeat areexamined by J. H. Ott, "Über die Quellen der

the two volumes of the Catholic Homi-lies give us a good indication of therange of Aelfric's interests. Of the nine-ty-five homilies in these two volumes,Augustine, Aelfric's third most popularsource after Gregory and Bede, providesprimary material for fourteen homilies.Various sermons of Augustine were usedsix times, his Commentary on Johnthree times, De sermone domini inmonte and De civitate dei twice each,De trinitate once.28 In none of the sourcestudies for Aelfric's works, however, haveI found any evidence that he made useof the De doctrinal

It may, of course, be argued that onewould no more expect such a basic textas Augustine's De doctrina to appear in

Heiligenleben in Aelfrics Lives of Saints I,"Diss. Halle 1892; Grant Loomis, "FurtherSources of Aelfric's Saints' Lives," HarvardStudies and Notes in Philology and Literature,13 (1931), 1-8. Pope reviews the sources for theworks in his edition in Pope, I, p p . 150-177.T h e valuable supplementary studies of J . E.Cross are too numerous to cite (see GeorgeWatson, ed., The New Cambridge Bibliographyof English Literature [Cambridge: Univ. Press,1974], I, col. 320).

2 8 Förster, "Quellen," 1892, nos. 18, 19, and27; "Quellen," (1894), nos. 98-108.

2 9 One of the two suggestions that Aelfricmay have made use of the De doctrina is JohnS. Westlake's, in his review of Aelfric's De veteriet de novo testamento ("From Alfred to theConquest," From the Beginnings to the Cyclesof Romance, vol. 1, The Cambridge History ofEnglish Literature, eds. A. W. Ward and A. R.Waller [Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1907], p. 126).Westlake's conclusion appears to have taken onthe role of a commonplace; it is repeated inKnowles (p. 63) and in Ogilvy (p. 84). But asidefrom a brief reference to orators, the us thing-iath to Gode [who gain us unto God] (S. J.Crawford, ed.. The Old English Version of theHeptateuch, Aelfric's Treatise on the Old andNew Testament and Ms Preface to Genesis,EETS, o.s. 160 [London: Oxford Univ. Press,1922; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1969],p. 71), Aelfric's survey bears little witness to Dedoctrina's influence. White suggests that it wasnot Augustine, but Isidore who served as "themost important source" for this introductionto the Old and New Testament (p. 58).

Pope, II, p. 713, notes the resemblance ofDe falsis diis, 11. 4-5, to a passage from De Doc-trina but also notes this passage in Augustine'sDe vera religione. Pope suggests that the firstfive lines of this homily paraphrase an as-yet-undiscovered Latin source contemporaneouswith Augustine, and he does not list De doctrinaas one of Aelfric's sources (I, pp. 165-66).

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the writings of Aelfric than one wouldexpect Harper's Handbook of Englishto receive explicit attention in twen-tieth-century oratory. We would, how-ever, expect to find dog-eared copies ofthe Handbook in the libraries of ourpublic schools, and it is just as reason-able that we should expect to find thata ninth-, tenth-, or eleventh-century copyof the De doctrina once rested upon theshelf of an English monastic library. YetI have been unable to discover either asingle copy of such a De doctrina or asingle reference to such a manuscriptthat would provide concrete evidencethat the treatise was known to the Eng-lish between the ninth and eleventh cen-turies.

Although Ogilvy's Books Known tothe English lists some seventy occasionsin which Augustine is used as a sourceduring the years 597-1066, the latest rec-ords of the English having known theDe doctrina are of the eighth century.Bede makes use of the treatise once inthe prefatory epistle to his ExplanatioApocalypsis; Alcuin has left us two ad-ditional citations.30

Of the 6000-odd manuscripts listed inNeil R. Ker's Medieval Libraries inGreat 2?ntam—these are manuscriptswhose scriptoria are known—twenty-nine, dated on or before 1100, are Au-gustinian.31 But catalogues of British li-braries indicate that none of these arecopies of the De doctrina. Two manu-scripts used in recent editions of Augus-tine's treatise, MS. Laud misc. 121, writ-ten in the ninth century, and MS. BM.Add. 11873, written in the tenth, would

3 0 Ogilvy, pp. 80-95. As we have seen, how-ever, Ogilvy should be referred to with a mea-sure of caution (see fn. 29 above and HelmutGneuss' review of Books Known in Anglia, 89(1971), 129-34).

3 1 Ker,' ed., Medieval Libraries of Great Bri-tain: A List of Surviving Books, Royal Histor-ical Society Guides and Handbooks 3, 2nd edn.(London: Royal Historical Society, 1964).

appear to be relevant to this study.32

Neither of these manuscripts, however,appears to be of British origin. The LaudMS. was written in Wurzburg and bearsthe twelfth-century signature of conradusde enkerbero33 a signature which atteststo its having remained on the continent,probably until it was seized by the Eng-lish as part of the booty of the ThirtyYears War. The British Museum's Addi-tional MS. was written at Cluny duringthe tenth century. It apparently did notreach England during Aelfric's lifetime,for in 1040 one Almannus signed outthe volume at the beginning of Lent ashis reading matter for the followingyear.34

By far the most revealing insight intothe state of rhetoric in England comesto us by way of the library catalogues ofthis period. Appendix C, "List of Medi-eval Collections of Books," in Ernst A.Savage's Old English Libraries notes thir-teen of these catalogues dated twelfthcentury or earlier.35 We find no refer-ence to a De doctrina in any of thesecatalogues. Typical of these is the recordof the donation of King Athelstan toSt. Augustine's library at Canterbury, in-cluding a donatum minorem, a donatummaiorem, z de arte metrica, an Alchuin-um, and a glossa super donatum.36 The

3 2 Joseph Martin, ed., "Praefatio," De Doc-trina Christiana, Corpus Christianorum SeriesLatina 32 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Edi-tores Pontifiai, 1962); p . xx; Guilelmus M.Green, ed., "Praefatio," De doctrina Christianalibri quattor, Corpus Scriptorum EcclesiasticorumLatinum 80 (Vindobonae: Hoelder-Pichler-Temp-sky, 1963), p . xx. Only the Laud MS. in Martin'sedition and the BM. Add. in. Green's are inBritish libraries.

3 3 Bernhard Bischoff and Josef Hofmann,"Libri Sancti Kyliani: Die Würzburger Schreib-schule und die Dombibliothek im VIII. und IX.Jahrhundert," Quellen, und Forschungen zurGeschichte des Bistums und Hochstifts Würz-burg, 6 (1952), p . 131, no. 122.

3 4 André Wilmart, "Le Convent et la Bib-liothèque de Cluny vers le Milieu du XIeSiècle," Revue Mabillon, 11 (1921), pp. 93, 107.

3 5 Old English Libraries (London: Methuen,1912; rpt. Detroit: Gale Research, 1968), pp.263-64.

3 6 M. R. James The Ancient Libraries of

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record speaks more for the popularityof the grammatical than the Augustiniantradition of rhetoric in tenth-centuryEngland.

To Savage's list must be added thelate eleventh-century account of fifteenmanuscripts in the possession of a Can-terbury clerk, Athelstan, an accountwhich includes one, perhaps two, copiesof Bede's De arte metrica, the apparent-ly usual assortment of Donatus, butnone of Augustine's works.37 And in1068 Abbot Seiwold of Bath—a bit moresophisticated than the Canterbury clerk—carried with him on his way to Fland-ers thirty-three manuscripts, includingtwo works of Augustine, neither of themthe De doctrinal* In short, none of themost thorough source studies, none ofthe examinations of manuscripts avail-able to the English, and none of thelibrary catalogues of this period providefirm evidence of the existence of a singlecopy of this text which exerted such an"enormous influence" throughout theMiddle Ages.39

Similarly, we have no indication thatAelfric either knew or used Rabanus'De institutione clericorum. Except forAelfric's use of a few lines from one ofRabanus' commentaries and a few morefrom a homily, he does not seem to have

Canterbury and Dover (Cambridge: Univ. Press,1903), p . lxix. A. F. Leach suggests, however,that these texts are the donation of a school-master named Athestan rather than of a king(The Schools of Medieval England [New York:Benjamin Blom, 1915; rpt. 1968], p . 95).

3 7 Agnes J. Robertson, ed., Anglo-Saxon Char-ters (Cambridge: Univ. Press, 1939), p . 250.

3 8 Ph. Grierson, "Les Livres de L'Abbé Sei-wold de Bath," Revue Bénédictine, 52 (1940),107-11.

3 9 Note, however, that Bethurum places acopy of Augustine's De doctrina at Wulfstan'sdisposal (Homilies, pp . 87-88, fn. 1). Later sheis a bit more cautious, stating that Wulfstanknew only the rhetorics of Alcuin, Isidore, andRabanus (p. 88). Except for the rather vaguesimilarities found between the De doctrina andWulfstan's homilies (pp. 89, fn. 3; 96-97, fn. 2;286), Bethurum provides evidence only for Wulf-stan's knowledge of Etymologiae and Rabanus'De institutione (see fn. 41 below).

used Rabanus' works at all.40 And al-though Ogilvy's Books Known to theEnglish records evidence of some half-dozen works of Rabanus having beenused by the Anglo-Saxons, it likewisemakes no mention of the English havingknown the De institutione.

Ogilvy has overlooked, however,- acopy of passages from the second bookof De institutione, a description of DeOfficiis Diurnalium siue Nocturrialiumwhich appears in Archbishop Wulfstan'scommonplace book, MS. CCCC 190. Al-though it is likely that Wulfstan's wassimply a copy of an earlier transcrip-tion of Rabanus,41 the fact remains thata copy of De institutione was in tenth-century England. In her source studiesof Wulfstan's homilies, Dorothy Bethur-um demonstrates the archbishop's use ofpassages from De institutione I as well,42

suggesting that the English may havehad the entire text. At any rate, it iswell worth noting that one of the most

40 Pope, I, p. 170. Similarly Max Manitiusfinds that "das Werk scheint nicht sehr oftabgeschrieben worden zu sein" (Geschichte derLateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters. ErsterTeil: Von Justinian bis zur Mitte des ZehntenJahrhunderts, vol. 9.II. ii, Handbuch der Alter-tumswissenschaft, ed. Walter Otto [München:C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1911], p.297). Loomis disputes Aelfric's direct knowledgeof any of Rabanus' works ("Further Sources,"pp. 3-4, fn. 7).

41 Dorothy Bethurum discusses the relation-ship between the later translation of Rabanusin MS. CCCC 201 and Wulfstan's commonplacebook ("Archbishop Wulfstan's CommonplaceBook," PMLA, 57 [1942], part 2, p . 920). See alsoDorothy Whitelock's study of MS. CCCC 190 in"Archbishop Wulfstan, Homilist and States-man," Transactions of the Royal HistoricalSociety, 4th s., 24 (1942), especially pp. 32-34;Peter Clemoes, "The Old English BenedictineOffice, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS190, and the Relations between Aelfric andWulfstan: A Reconsideration," Anglia, 78 (1960),especially pp. 266-68. Bethurum, Whitelock, andClemoes together agree that CCCC 190 is notAelfric's commonplace book, as previously ar-gued by Bernhard Fehr ("Das Benediktiner-Offizium und die Beziehungen zwischen Aelfricund Wulfstan," Englische Studien, 46 [1912-13],338, 344-45) and J. M. Ure (The BenedictineOffice: An Old English Text [Edinburgh: Univ.Press, 1957], p. 42), but rather Wulfstan's.

4 2 Bethurum, Homilies, pp . 304, fn. 3, and316.

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impassioned homilists of Aelfric's dayfound Rabanus' description of canonicalduties more intriguing than the ration-ale of De institutione III for a Christianeloquence. As I have suggested earlier,in his choice Wulfstan appears to reflectthe typical desire of the Benedictinebrothers for ecclesiastical and religiousrather than secular studies.

Thus, despite the commonplace as-sumption that Aelfric, like everyone elseof his age, must have known the De doc-trina—either directly or via Rabanus—there is no concrete evidence that hedid. So much of the contents of Englishlibraries has been destroyed, lost, or mis-placed, however, that it is of course im-possible to state categorically that Ael-fric did not know the text. Nevertheless,the thesis that the English of the ninththrough eleventh centuries were as fa-miliar with De doctrina as were RabanusMaurus and Alain de Lille must be re-duced to the status of hypothesis—anda questionable one at that. The natureof its use, the extent of its influence inEngland during these centuries remainsa subject open to debate.

T H E ENCYCLOPEDIC TRADITION

Aelfric's quite evident familiarity withIsidore of Seville's Origines, popularlyknown as the Etymologiae (c. 610), sug-gests that it is not to Augustine but tothe encyclopedic surveys of rhetoric thatwe must turn if we are to discover theroots of the English attitude toward elo-quence during the Benedictine Revival.

Nichols has suggested that some ofthe earliest of these surveys, the fourth-century treatises of Fortunatianus andJulius Victor, may have provided Aelfricwith a technical vocabulary of rhetoric.43

We have no clear evidence, however,that he made use of these or any other

43 Nichols, "Aelfric and the Brief Style," pp.3-4.

fourth- or fifth-century studies. No man-uscripts of English provenance of eitherSulpidous Victor's Institutiones oratorio(c. 330?) or of Julius Victor's Ars rhet-orica (c. .330) are extant for this period.For Marius Victorinus' commentary onCicero's De inventione (c. 300) a singleeleventh-century manuscript of doubtfulprovenance has survived; for Fortuna-tianus' Artis rhetoricae libri III (325)we have only Alcuin's own use of thetext as evidence that it was known atall in Anglo-Saxon England.44

Aelfric's age may have had someknowledge, however, of Martianus Ca-pella's De nuptiis Phîlologiae et Merc-urii (c. 430), an encyclopedic compen-dium better known to us for its intro-duction of the seven liberal arts to Cassi-odorus and Isidore—and thus to theMiddle Ages—than for its treatment ofrhetoric. Its fantastic introduction ofLady Rhetoric must have seemed as ex-travagant to Aelfric's countrymen as itsreview of inventio and the figurae inBook V must have seemed common-place. Only a single possible use of thetext, that of Byrhtferth in his Manual'sdescription of the phases of the moon,has been discovered.45 Nevertheless, four

44 Ogilvy, pp. 256 and 140 respectively. Camp-bell similarly finds no firm evidence of Anglo-Saxon England having known either thesemanuscripts or any of the works of Cicero orQuintilian ("Knowledge of Rhetorical Figures,"p. 10). Note however that according to Aimoin,Abbo of Fleury, who taught at Ramsey c. 986-988, studied Victorinus as a student (J. P.Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina 139, col. 390).

4 5 S. J. Crawford, ed., Byrhtferth's Manual,Early English Text Society, O.S. 177 (London:Oxford Univ. Press, 1929; rpt. London: OxfordUniv. Press, 1966), I, 163, fn. In her list of 181libri manuales written between the seventh andeleventh centuries in both England and thecontinent Eva M. Sanford notes use of passagesfrom De nuptiis in 14 MSS.: 3 of these excerpthis De dialectica (nos. 80, 97, 117); 6 more hisDe astronomia (nos. 85, 87, 107, 123, 130, 136).MS. no. 130, the tenth-century CanterburyTrinity R. 15. 32, is the only one of thesetextbooks written in England. Apparently thiswork aided an ecclesiastic in determining thedates of the church year; following Capella wefind the astronomicon of Hyginus, a computus

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manuscripts of the text for our periodare extant, one a ninth-century MS. withWelsh glosses, which may have arrivedin England by the tenth century; twoeleventh-century MSS. of doubtful prov-enance; and a late eleventh- or earlytwelfth-century MS. of British origin.46

Although none of the source studiesfor Aelfric's works indicate his use ofCassiodorus' Institutiones divinarum etsaecularium litterarum (c. 545), at leastthree British manuscripts of the workexist, two of the Institutiones divinarum—one of these apparently taken fromBath by Abbot Seiwold—and one of theInstitutiones saecularium. These factsagree, first of all, with Leclercq's conclu-sion that Cassiodorus did not becomepart of the monastic tradition; secondly,with the curious lack of manuscriptswhich contain the entire text; and third-ly, with the relative lack of interest withwhich the Middle Ages regarded the In-stitutiones saecularium.^ It appears that

and a kalendarium (see Sanford, "The Use ofClassical Latin Authors in the Libri Manuales,"Transactions and Proceedings of the AmericanPhilological Association, 55 [1924], 190-248).Baldwin similarly notes that of John of Salis-bury's dozen citations of De nuptiis in Meta-logicon none refer to Capella's review of arsrhetorica (p. 95, fn. 58). The Norse seem tohave had the same interests as Byrhtferth. SeeH. Falk's demonstration of Capella's influenceupon Eddic cosmology ("Maritanus Capella ogden nordisk Mythologi," Aarbøger for nordiskOldkyndighed og Historie [1891], 266-300). Fora useful summary of the influence of and ninth-century commentaries on De nuptiis, see CoraE. Lutz, "Remigius' Ideas on the Origin, andthe Classification of the Seven Liberal Arts,"Medievalia el Humanistica, 10 (1956), 32-36.

4 6 Ogilvy, pp. 199-200. See Whitley Stokes,"Old-Welsh Glosses on Martianus Capella,"Archaeologia Cambrcnsis, 4 (1873), 1-21.

47 For these conclusions see respectively Lec-lercq, p. 28; R. W. Southern, The Making ofthe Middle Ages (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ.Press, 1975), p. 173; Max L. W. Laistner,Thought and tetters in Western Europe: AD.500 to 900 (New York: Dial, 1931), pp. 73-74.For a useful summary of the largely continentalinfluence of Cassiodorus' Institutiones see Les-lie W. Jones, An Introduction to Divine andHuman Readings by Cassiodorus Senator, Co-lumbia Records of Civilization (New York:W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1969), pp. 48-63. Jones is unable to improve on Paul Leh-

Cassiodorus' attempt to convert the lib-eral arts to Christian purposes had large-ly failed, for only six extant manu-scripts contain both books joined to-gether. Abbot Seiwold chose a fragmen-tary text of Cassiodorus, and, as Wulf-stan had chosen to transcribe Rabanus'survey of clerical duties, so it was thatthe abbot chose the first volume, Institu-tiones divinarum, rather than the secondto accompany him on his journey toFlanders.

Clearly, if one must insist upon Ael-fric's familiarity with rhetorical theory,it is neither to Augustine nor to Raban-us, nor to Cassiodorus that he must turn,but first of all to the Etymologiae ofIsidore. It was an enormously popularwork, "the standard encyclopedic workof the early Middle Ages" Ogilvy con-cludes.48 Not only was the Etymologiaeused by Bede, Alcuin, and Byrhtferth ofRamsey, but it was also used ratherextensively by Aelfric himself. GrantLoomis notes its use in Aelfric's homilyPassio Sanctorum Machabeorum. InAelfric's commonplace book, MS. Boul-ogne-sur-Mer 63, Enid M. Raynes findsAelfric having taken extracts from Isi-dore's compendium concerning the sevengrades of ecclesiastical rank. In addition,Robert T. Meyer has argued for Aelfric'suse of this encyclopedia in the prepara-tion of his own glossary.49

mann's earlier inability to establish the familiar-ity of the Irish and Anglo-Saxons with theentire corpus (p. 48 and fn. 4). Sanford findsonly Cassidorus' De orthographia in 181 librimanuales (nos. 10, 13, 91).

4 8 Ogilvy, p . 167. See also Baldwin (p. 95) andLaistner (p. 94) on the same point. Campbellnotes a ninth-century manuscript of Etymologiaewritten in Anglo-Saxon minuscule. Trinity Col-lege Cambridge 368, dated 833 ("Knowledge ofRhetorical Figures," p . 10).

4 9 Loomis, "Further Sources," p . 3, fn. 1;Raynes, "MS. Boulogne-sur-Mer 63 and Ael-fric," Medium Aevum, 26 (1957), pp . 68-69.Meyer, "Isidorian 'Glossae Collectae' in Aelfric'sVocabulary," Traditio, 12 (1956), 398-405; Pope,I, p . 170. On Aelfric's extracts in Boulogne-sur-Mer 63, see also Clemoes, "The Old EnglishBenedictine Office," pp . 273-75. For further evi-dence of Aelfric's use of the Etymologiae see

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We cannot complete this examinationof the encyclopedic tradition withoutacknowledging the considerably morelimited evidence for Aelfric's country-men having known Alcuin's Disputatiode rhetorica et de virtutibus (794). Al-though its dissemination and influencewere quite clearly continental,50 and al-though no evidence indicates that Ael-fric knew the treatise, manuscripts ofthe work were in England during theBenedictine Revival. Wilbur SamuelHowell makes use of one such manu-script in his edition of the treatise, MS.Bodl. Jun. 25. Of four further manu-scripts of the work relevant to this in-quiry, two—the tenth-century MS. BM.Cotton Vesp. D. 6 with Anglo-Saxonglosses and the eleventh-century MS.BM. Cotton Tib. A. 3, a partial Eng-lish translation—confirm the interest ofAelfric's age in the Disputation

We have, then, excellent evidence forAelfric's knowledge of Isidore's Etymol-ogiae and more limited evidence thathe may have known either Capella's Denuptiis or Alcuin's Disputatio. But ifIsidore's encyclopedia were representa-tive of the sort of rhetoric Aelfric wasfamiliar with, it is probable that hewould have ignored the entire traditionas more or less irrelevant to his needs.In the first place, Isidore's encyclopedianot only preserved but codified the defi-nition of rhetoric as a science "which onaccount of its luster and wealth of elo-quence is deemed most useful and nec-essary in civil questions" (Etym I.ii.l).52

This is a definition of rhetoric which

G. E. MacLean, "Aelfric's Version of AlcuiniInterrogationes Sigeuulfi in Genesin," Anglia,6 (1883), p. 461, fn. 5; and "Aelfric's Version ofAlcuini Interrogationes Sigeuulfi in Genesin,"Anglia, 7 (1884), pp.. 54-57.

50 Of the-twenty-six MSS. of the text studiedby Wilbur Samuel Howell only one was copiedin Britain (The Rhetoric of Alcuin & Charle-magne [New York: Russell & Russell, 1965], p.9).

51 Ogilvy, p. 56.52 Murphy, Rhetoric, p. 74.

Aelfric must have been familiar with,53

but not one which this monk, who ex-hibits no interest in political affairs,would have found particularly attractiveor useful.

Nor would he have found Isidore'streatment of rhetoric especially inspir-ing. Not only had he successfully evan-gelized rhetoric for the use of scripturalstudies, but in the process he also suc-ceeded in enclosing the ars rhetorica innarrow rules and definitions. As a result,the encyclopedic reviews of Cassiodorusand Isidore, Atkins concludes, "concern-ed solely with a lifeless analysis of thetechnique of style and the processes ofargument," preserved little but "the dryhusks of earlier classical doctrine."34

Finally, the Etymologiae's review ofrhetoric is placed in a clearly subservientrole to that of sacred learning. It is apreliminary step—by Alcuin's analogy,not the columns of the house o£ wisdom,but only those of its portico. As a re-sult we do not find in Isidore's Etymol-ogiae and in much of the encyclopedictradition a rhetoric which is, as Augus-tine would have wished, central to thenotion of a Christian eloquence. We donot find an art, but rather a dry, life-less science quite clearly subservient tothe goals of both the politician and thestudent of sacred writing. In short, ifAelfric knew rhetoric only from Isidore,he might as well not have known it atall.

THE GRAMMATICAL TRADITION

By all accounts these centuries werenot ari age of rhetoric, but an age of

5 3 It is a definition of rhetoric borrowed fromCassiodorus (Inst II.ii.1) and passed on in vir-tually identical wording by Alcuin (Disp 3) andby Rabanus (De inst. III.19). Southern describesthe return of Gerbert, teacher of rhetoric atRheims and Bobbio, to the same definition inthe late tenth century (p. 176).

5 4 Atkins, pp. 24-25. Cora E. Lutz' evaluationis similar ("Remigius' Ideas on the Classifica-tion of the Seven Liberal Arts," Traditio, 12[1956], p . 69).

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grammar.55 Fittingly, Aelfric, commonlydistinguished from several contemporaryAelfrics of his day by the title "Gram-marian", provides us the focal point ofthis tradition in England. There is noquestion that Aelfric and his contem-poraries knew the grammars of AeliusDonatus (fl. 350), popularly referred toas the Ars minor and Ars maior, andthe more advanced Institutiones gram-maticae of Priscian (fl. 510), a work sofundamental to the needs of the MiddleAges that it survives in over 1000 manu-scripts.

Successive adaptations of these gram-mars met the needs of changing timesthroughout the medieval period. Wereone to trace the history of these adapta-tions, his studies would take him to theworks of the leading scholars of thesecenturies. He would examine the Ety-mologiae's description of the parts ofspeech and figurae; the Ars Grammaticaof Julian, Archbishop of Toledo;56 theDe arte rnetrica and Liber de schemati-bus et tropis of Bede;57 the grammars ofBoniface and of Alcuin. He would findfurther adaptations among the works ofPaul the Deacon, a teacher at Charle-magne's court, and of Loup, Remigius,and Gerbert. His studies would take himback to England, where Abbo of Fleurywrote his Questiones Grammaticae whileteaching at Ramsey between 986 and988. The Manual of Abbo's studentByrhtferth, with the first description ofthe figures in the English language,58

5 5 See Murphy, Rhetoric, p . 79; Baldwin, p .151.

5 6 See Charles H . Beeson, " T h e Ars Gram-matica of Julian of Toledo," Miscellanea Fran-cesco Ehrle, 1 (1924), 50-65.

57 Murphy's demonstration of Bede's indebt-edness to Donatus places these two treatisessquarely in the grammatical tradition of rhet-oric ("The Rhetorical Lore of the Boceras inByrhtferth's Manual," Philological Essays . . .in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, ed. James L.Rosier [The Hague: Mouton, 1970], pp . 118-119; Rhetoric, pp . 77-78). Atkins concurs (p. 49).

5 8 Murphy, " T h e Rhetorical Lore," p . 120.

would attract his attention as well.Byrhtferth's adaptation of portions ofBede's treatises on figures and on meterwould strengthen his belief that Aelfricand his countrymen were familiar withboth the Liber de schematibus and Dearte metrical Finally, the student ofthese grammars would note in passing,as we have, the dozens of grammars—mostly those of Donatus—recorded inthe library catalogues of this period.60

Eventually his search would take himto Aelfric's Old English Grammatica, awork which assumes a knowledge ofDonatus and which goes on to adaptthe greater and lesser Priscian for theuse of his students. This is, as I havenoted earlier, the first English ars gram-matica, and it was apparently quite pop-ular. Fifteen manuscripts survive, atleast one of which is referred to ina twelfth-century catalogue of ChristChurch, Canterbury, as a Donatus An-glice.ei It is scarcely possible to find abetter indication of Aelfric's indebted-ness to the grammatical tradition.

These grammars are significant forthis study of the state of rhetoric in Eng-land for a number of reasons. First ofall, since Donatus' appropriation of theschemes and tropes from the ars rhe-torica, the figures of speech became theacknowledged property of grammaticaltexts for hundreds of years. Thus Ael-fric's use of these figures in his homiliesneed not imply that he had been anavid student of the encyclopedic tradi-tion of rhetoric.

Secondly, Aelfric inherited an atti-

5 9 Note, for example, MS. Worcester Cath. Q.5, containing two Old English glosses to thetext of a late tenth-century De arte metrica(Neil R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Con-taining Anglo-Saxon [Oxford: Clarendon Press,1957], no. 399.

6 0 For further Latin grammars apparentlyknown to Anglo-Saxon England, see Ker, Cata-logue, nos. 107B, art . 2; 154A, art. 4; 158, art.2; 227, art. 2; 239, arts. 1, 2, and 14; 295, art.c.

61 Ogilvy, p . 132.

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tude toward grammar much like the at-titude of his Benedictine brethren to-ward rhetoric. Rabanus' use of the terminterpretandi poetas (De inst III. 18) in-stead of the commonplace ennarratiopoetarum in his definition of grammaris indicative of this monastic regard ofthe ars grammatica. For Rabanus this"first of the liberal arts" is neither ascience of writing well nor of the read-ing of poetry. It is rather a science ofinterpreting poetry, of finding the"meaning"—the kernel, as Augustinewould have it—beneath the surface ofthings.62 This is precisely Aelfric's ra-tionale. This grammar is the key, hewrites in preface to his own text, whichwill unlock the sense of the homilies hehas written.63

That Aelfric regarded Donatus andPriscian as tools rather than as meanstoward a Christian eloquence is suggest-ed most readily, however, by his ownrefusal to describe the schemes andtropes. He is content to provide an OldEnglish gloss for each of the terms, hiwor "figures" for scemata, getacnunga or"signs" for tropic To an extent Aelfric'streatment of the figures reminds us ofByrhtferth's similar refusal to incorpor-ate the complexities of Bede's tropi intohis Manual. He is satisfied with his smallcompendium of seventeen of Bede'sschemata; the tropi are ignored.

62 Murphy; Rhetoric, pp . 83-84.6 3 Zupitza, p . 2.6 4 Ibid., p . 295. Hiw is not a translation of

the Latin color, as Murphy suggests, but ratherof figura ("The Rhetorical Lore," p . 124). WhenAelfric, for example, notes that the serpentcame to Eve on naeddran. hiwe (Thorpe, I, p.16), he does not mean that the serpent camein a serpent's "color", but in a serpent's "form".See Williams, p . 459 and fn. 18, on this point.There is no reason to assume, as Murphy does,that Byrhtferth's hiw attests to his familiaritywith a missing late tenth-or early eleventh-cen-tury continental rhetoric which uses the Latincolor well before its first documented use byOtto of Speyer, c. 1050. Milton McC. Gatch sim-ilarly concludes that Murphy's argument is "un-acceptable" ("Beginnings continued: A decadeof studies of Old English prose," Anglo-SaxonEngland, 5 [1976], p . 236 and fn. 4).

CONCLUSION

The fact that both Aelfric and Byrht-ferth refuse to describe fully the rhe-torical figures is in itself simply a situa-tion curious enough to arouse Murphy'sattention.65 But when we recall Wulf-stan, transcribing Rabanus' descriptionof canonical duties; Byrhtferth, turningto Capella's study of mathematics; Ab-bot Seiwold, on his way to Flanders withCassiodorus' Institutiones divinarumtucked under his arm; and Aelfric, him-self, copying Isidore's delineation of ec-clesiastical offices— when we recall thesescenes, a pattern emerges. This is anage which was uncomfortable with muchthe liberal arts could offer. In their at-titude toward rhetoric, Aelfric and hiscountrymen exhibit an uncertainty, evena mistrust of the nature and goals ofrhetoric itself.

This was not a mistrust resulting en-tirely from ignorance or from a fear ofwhat was only vaguely understood. Atthe height of the Benedictine RevivalEnglish prose writers not only knew butalso studied Isidore's Etymologiae andthe grammars of Donatus and Priscian.They seem to have been somewhat fa-miliar with Capella's De nuptiis, Bede'sLiber de schematibus and De arte me-trica, and Alcuin's Disputatio as well.Perhaps they knew of Cassiodorus' Insti-tutiones and Rabanus' De institutionsclericorum, but we have little indicationthat they enthusiastically endorsed thecontents of either. We have no evidencethat the De doctrina had returned toEngland from its apparently lengthy stayin the continent.

Although the texts which Aelfric pos-sessed would have provided him withsome elementary notion of the figures ofspeech, it must be emphasized that they

6 5 Murphy, "The Rhetorical Lore," pp. 119,fn. 37, and p. 124.

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would have also introduced him to arhetoric subservient to the more im-mediate goals of political science andsacred studies. Aelfric's refusal to con-cern himself with the principles of rhet-oric in his works or with the figures ofspeech in his grammar may be taken as

indicative of his age's mistrust of thears rhetorica. Like Augustine's fellowChristians some six centuries earlier,Aelfric and his contemporaries seem tohave distrusted the study of rhetoricand misunderstood its potential use fora Christian homiletic.

COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHSINDEX TO VOLUME 44

Adams, W. Clifton and Michael J. Beatty. Dog-matism, Need for Social Approval and theResistance to Persuasion. Pp. 321-325.

Bantz, Charles R. and David H. Smith. A Criti-que and Experimental Test of Weick's Modelof Organizing. Pp. 171-184.

Beatty, Michael J. See Adams, W. Clifton.Boster, Frank. See Miller, Gerald.Bradac, James J., Roger J. Desmond and Johnny

I. Murdock. Diversity and Density: LexicallyDetermined Evaluative and InformationalConsequences of Linguistic Complexity. Pp.273-283.

Burgoon, Michael. See Montgomery, Charles L.

Clark, Ruth Anne. See Delia, Jesse G.

Delia, Jesse G. and Daniel J. O'Keefe. The Rela-tion of Theory and Analysis in Explanationsof Belief Salience: Conditioning, Displacement,and Constructivist Accounts. Pp. 166-169.

Delia, Jesse G. and Ruth Anne Clark. CognitiveComplexity, Social Perception and the Deve-lopment of Listener-Adapted Communicationin Six-, Eight-, Ten-, and Twelve-Year-OldBoys. Pp. 326-345.

Desmond, Roger J. See Bradac, James J.Downs, Cal W. and Terry Pickett. An Analysis

of the Effects of Nine Leadership-GroupCompatibility Contingencies upon Productivityand Member Satisfaction. Pp. 220-230.

Ellis, Donald G. See Fisher, B. Aubrey.

Fine, Elizabeth C. and Jean Haskell Speer. ANew Look at Performance. Pp. 374-389.

Fisher, B. Aubrey, Thomas W. Glover andDonald G. Ellis. The Nature of Complex Com-munication Systems. Pp. 231-240.

Glover, Thomas W. See Fisher, B. Aubrey.Gourd, William. Cognitive Complexity and

Theatrical Information Processing: AudienceResponses to Plays and Characters. Pp. 136-151.

Hample, Dale. Testing A Model of Value Argu-ment and Evidence. Pp. 106-120.

HopKins, Mary Frances. Structuralism: Its Impli-cations for the Performance of Prose Fiction.Pp. 93-105.

Hopper, Robert. Language Attitudes in the Em-ployment Interview. Pp. 346-351.

Lamb, Douglas. See Weissberg, Michael.Lashbrook, William B., William B. Snavely and

Daniel L. Sullivan. The Effects of Source Cre-dibility and Message Information Quantity onthe Attitude Change of Apathetics. Pp. 252-262.

Logue, Cal M. The Rhetorical Appeals of Whitesto Blacks During Reconstruction. Pp. 241-251.

Lumsden, Donald L. An Experimental Study ofSource-Message Interaction in a PersonalityImpression Task. Pp. 121-129.

McCroskey, James C. See Sorensen, Gail.McGuire, Michael D. and John H. Patton.

Preaching in the Mystic Mode: The RhetoricalArt of Meister Eckhart. Pp. 263-272.

Michlin, Michael. See Piché, Gene L.Miller, Gerald, Frank Boster, Michael Roloff and

David Seibold. Compliance-Gaining MessageStrategies: A Typology and Some FindingsConcerning Effects of Situational Differences.Pp. 37-51.

Montgomery, Charles L. and Michael Burgoon.An Experimental Study of the InteractiveEffects of Sex and Androgyny on AttitudeChange. Pp. 130-135.

Mulac, Anthony and Mary Jo Rudd. Effects ofSelected American Regional Dialects UponRegional Audience Members. Pp. 185-195.

Murdock, Johnny I. See Bradac, James J.

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