But if the middle ages had no opportunity to apply rhetoric in its function of persuasion in communal affairs, they did have real need of an art of writing letters and of preparing lay or ecclesiastical documents, such as contracts, wills, and records, and of preaching sermons. Thus in the teaching of the schools, as well as in practice, the oration gave place to the epistle and dictamen. "Dictare" was to write letters or prepare documents. And the rhetorical treatise or "ars rhetorica" often yielded to the "ars prosandi," or the "ars dictandi."[[109]]
A characteristic treatise of this sort is the Poetria of the Englishman John of Garland (c. 1270). In his introductory chapter John explains that he has divided the subject into seven parts:
First is explained the theory of invention; then the manner of selecting material; third, the arrangement and the manner of ornamentation; next, the parts of a dictamen; fifth, the faults in all kinds of composition (dictandi); sixth is arranged a treatise concerning rhetorical ornament as necessary in meter as in prose, namely, the figures of speech and the abbreviation and amplification of the material; seventh and last are subjoined examples of courtly correspondence and scholastic dictamen, pleasantly composed in verse and rhythms, and in diverse meters.[[110]]
Under the head of invention John gives definitions, several examples of good letters, a long list of proverbs under appropriate captions so that the letter writer can quickly find the one to fit his context, and an "elegiac, bucolic, ethic love poem" in fifty leonine verses, accompanied by an inevitable allegorical interpretation.[[111]] Then he comes to selection. Tully, he admits, puts arrangement after invention, "but," he pleads, "in writing letters and documents poetically the art of selection after that of invention is useful."[[112]] For he thinks of selection only as the selection of words. A writer, he says, should select his words and images according to the persons addressed. The court should be addressed in the grand style; the city, in the middle style; and the country, in the mean style.[[113]] One should arrange in three columns in a note-book the words and comparisons appropriate to each style so that the material will be handy when he wishes to write a letter. These principles John illustrates with leonine verses and ecclesiastical epistles. Under arrangement he says that all material must be so arranged as to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then there are nine ways to begin a poem and nine ways to begin a dictamen or epistle. Next he states that there are six parts to an oration: "exordium, narracio, peticio, confirmacio, confutacio, conclusio."[[114]] As an example of this division of the oration into parts he quotes a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the cross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten ways of amplifying material. The tenth, "interpretacio," he illustrates by telling a joke, and then amplifying it into a little comedy. "Comedy," he says, "is a jocose poem beginning in sadness and ending in joy: a tragedy is a poem composed in the grand style beginning in joy and ending in grief."[[115]] Next follow the six metrical faults, the faults of salutations in letters, a classification of the different kinds of poems, and further talk on different styles in writing. His sixth chapter, on ornament in meter and prose, presents what he has up to this left unsaid about style. It includes a list of fifty-seven figures of speech (colores verborum) and eighteen figures of thought (colores sententiarum). This is logically followed by the ten attributes of man. The seventh and final chapter gives a long narrative poem of the horrific variety as an example of tragedy and several letters as examples of dictamen.
Such a digest shows better than any generalization a complete confusion of poetic and rhetoric. Poems were to be written according to the formulae of orations; allegory throve. Infinite pains were to be expended on the worthless niceties of conceited metrical structure and rhetorical figures. Garland has neither real poetic nor real rhetoric.
2. Rhetoric as Aureate Language
As to the late middle ages rhetoric had come to mean to all intents nothing more than style, it is frequently personified in picturesque mediaeval allegory, never as being engaged in any useful occupation, but as adding beauty, color, or charm to life. In the Anticlaudianus of Alanus de Insulis, Rhetoric is represented as painting and gilding the pole of the Chariot of Prudence.[[116]] In the rhymed compendium of universal knowledge which its author, Thomasin von Zirclaria, justly calls Der Wälsche Gast, for learning was indeed a foreign guest in thirteenth century Germany, rhetoric appears in a similar rôle. "Rhetoric," says Thomasin, "clothes our speech with beautiful colors,"[[117]] and he gives as his authority, "Tulljus, Quintiljan, Sidônjus," although Apollinaris Sidonius seems to be the only one of the trio he had ever read.[[118]] This theory lived to a vigorous old age. Palmieri, in his Della Vita Civile (1435), defines rhetoric as "the theory of speaking ornamentally."[[119]] And Lydgate traces all the beauty of rhetoric to Calliope, "that with thyn hony swete sugrest tongis of rethoricyens."[[120]]
The most complete example, however, of the mediaeval restriction of rhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded by Lydgate in his Court of Sapyence. The passages which refer to rhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only in the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510.[[121]]
Introductory verses.
O Clyo lady moost facundyous
O ravysshynge delyte of eloquence
O gylted goddes gaye and gloryous
Enspyred with the percynge influence
Of delycate hevenly complacence
Within my mouth let dystyll of thy shoures
And forge my tonge to gladde myn auditoures.