. Though Charlemagne reigned from 768 to 814, Carolingian Latin poetry spans the period from 747 (the advent of Pepin the Short and the Carmina of Boniface) to 877 (the death of Charles the Bald and the Eclogues of Radbod of Utrecht). A capitulary from Charlemagne, the Epistola de litteris colendis, issued in 787 for the education of the clergy, characterizes the poetry of the period. Practice in the classic litterarum studia was to perfect the composition of poems in praise of the Trinity, Jesus, the Virgin, the saints, holy cities, holy rivers, or ancient Germanic legends. School exercises, called dictamina, practiced and perfected according to the rules of the Trivium and Quadrivium, were to serve the study and preaching of Scripture.
Poets of the Roman Empire were models for those of the Holy Roman Empire. A script, Carolingian minuscule, was developed for copying the texts of the classical authors. Charles imported palace preceptors to teach the rules of classical prosody in the palace school at Aix-la-Chapelle. From England came Alcuin and Moduin, named respectively “Flaccus” (Horace) and “Naso” (Ovid) at the imperial court. Charles invited “Pindar” (Theodulf of Orléans) from Spain, and “Homer” (Angilbert) from the old Frankish territories. Paul the Deacon, Peter of Pisa, Paulinus of Aquileia—all three from Lombardy—and a small group from Ireland, including Clement and Dougal, round out the first generation of Carolingian poets.
The dictamina of Alcuin and Theodulf incorporate Virgilian, Horatian, or Ovidian quantitative half-lines; but the lines are often stamped with an accentual metric, and scansion is impeded by Carolingian pronunciation of Latin (e.g., periclum for periculum). For example, Aeneid 1.531, resounds in Alcuin’s Verses on the Saints in the Church of York:
Est antiqua, potens bellis et corpore praestans, Germaniae populos gens inter et extera regna, Duritiam propter dicti cognomine Saxi
(“Among the peoples of Germania and the foreign powers, there is an ancient race, strong in war and sturdy in body, called Saxons on account of their hardness”); but the -iae in Germaniae must be scanned as one syllable to make the hexameters work. Theodulf’s verses on Palm Sunday,
Gloria, laus et honor tibi sit, rex Christe redemptor, Cui puerile decus prompsit osanna pium….
(“Let glory, praise, and honor be to You, O Christ, King and Redeemer. Children utter a loyal and well-turned ‘Hosanna’ to You…”), are still chanted in the liturgy of Palm Sunday; but the music does not indicate whether cui is pronounced as one syllable or two. It is not important that classical Latin was a “foreign language” to the Carolingian poets; they developed a latinity of their own. Poems composed in acrostics, carmina figurata, abecedaria, and aenigmata show the skill and pleasure that Charlemagne’s court and the monastic schools took in intricate combinations of letters and in Teutonic-Latin semantics.
Some exquisite pieces came out of this period. In liturgical use today are the anonymous Veni, creator spiritus and Ave, maris stella, and Paulinus of Aquileia’s Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Something close to Germanic alliteration permeates the anonymous Debate Between Winter and Spring over the proper time for the cuckoo to sing:
Ver quoque florigero succinctus stemmate venit, frigida venit Hiems, rigidis hirsuta capillis. his certamen erat cuculi de carmine grande
(“Spring comes, girdled even in a garland of flowers. Winter comes, completely covered by frozen, frosted hair. Both were to debate a great debate over the song of the cuckoo.”)
Walafrid Strabo has some magnificent lines on the cultivation and care of roses: Iam nisi me fessum via longior indupediret. An epic, the Waltharius, evidences the power and compression of Carolingian poetry:
At vir Waltharius missa cum cuspide currens evaginato regem importunior ense impetit et scuto dextra de parte revulso ictum praevalidum ac mirandum fecit eique crus cum poblite adusque femur decerpserat omne….
(“Having thrown his spear, the manly Walter ran at the king more savagely with a drawn sword, and attacked. The [king’s] shield was ripped away from his right side, and [Walter] struck a huge and awful blow. The [king’s] thigh with the hough all the way to the foot, he [Walter] cut off completely….”)
Guido d’Arezzo, the 11th-century Benedictine, used the following verses of Paul the Deacon’s Hymn to John the Baptist to derive the notes of the “great scale”:
UT queant laxis REsonare fibris MIra gestorum FAmuli tuorum, SOlve polluti LAbii reatum sancte Johannes.
When compared with the dearth of Latin poetry in the Merovingian period (ca. 482-ca. 751), the poetry of this period deserves the name “Carolingian renaissance.” When compared with the brilliance of 12th-century Latin poetry, however, this same poetry may appear unengaging.
Poetae latini aevi carolini, ed. E.Duemmler (Vols. 1–2), Ludwig Traube (Vol. 3), Karl Strecker (Vol. 4). Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Berlin: Weidman, 1881–1923.
Strecker, Karl, ed. Die Lateinischen Dichter des deutschen Mittelalters: Poetarum latinorum medii aevi. Vol. 6, fasc. 1. Munich: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 1978.
Raby, Frederic James Edward, ed. The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959, pp. 87–132.
Ghellinck, Joseph de. Littérature latine au moyen âge. Brussels: Bloud et Gay, 1939, pp. 84–130.
McGuire, Martin R.P., and Hermigild Dressler. Introduction to Medieval Latin Studies. 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1977, pp. 89–99.
Norberg, Dag L. La poésie latine rythmique du haut moyen âge. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1954.
Raby, Frederic James Edward. A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1957, Vol.1, pp. 178–269.
——. A Histoty of Christian-Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 1953, pp. 155–210.
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