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 following 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.
See complete article: http://venerabilisbeda.plgo.org/?p=287
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