[323] Did the Sequence exert an influence upon Hrotsvitha, the tiresome but unquestionably immortal nun of Gandersheim, who flourished in the middle and latter part of the tenth century? She wrote narrative poems, like the Gesta Ottonis (Otto I.) in leonine hexameters. Her pentameter lines also commonly have a word in the middle rhyming with the last syllable of the line. But it is in those famous pious plays of hers, formed after the models of Terence, that we may look for a kind of writing corresponding to that which was to progress to clearer form in the Sequence. Without discussing to what extent the Latin of these plays may be called rhythmical, one or two things are clear. It is filled with assonances and rude rhymes, usually of one syllable. It has no clear verse-structure, and the utterances of the dramatis personae apparently observe no regularity in the number of syllables, such as lines of verse require.
[324] For these and other songs, written after the manner of Sequences, see Du Meril, Poésies pop. lat. i. p. 273 sqq. They are also printed by Piper in Nachträge zur älteren deutschen Lit. (Deutsche Nat. Lit.) p. 206 sqq. and p. 234 sqq. See also W. Meyer, Fragmenta Burana, p. 174 sqq. and Ebert, Allgemeine Gesch. etc. ii. 343 sqq.
[325] Du Meril, ibid. i. p. 285.
[326] Wil. Meyer, Fragmenta Burana, p. 180.
[327] The best text of the “Phillidis et Florae altercatio” is Hauréau’s in Notices et extraits, 32 (1), p. 259 sqq. The same article has some other disputes or causae, e.g. causa pauperis scholaris cum presbytero, p. 289.
[328] Du Meril, Poésies pop. lat. ii. p. 108 sqq. The piece is a cento, and its tone changes and becomes brutal further on. The poems, from which are taken the preceding citations, are to be found in Wright’s Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes (London, 1841, Camden Society); Carmina Burana, ed. J. A. Schmeller; “Gedichte auf K. Friedrich I. (archipoeta),” in vol. iii. of Grimm’s Kleinere Schriften. Cf. also Hubatsch, Die lateinischen Vagantenlieder (Gorlitz, 1870). The best texts of many of these and other “Carmina Burana,” and such like poems, are to be found in the contributions of Hauréau to the Notices et extraits, etc.; especially in tome 29 (2), pp. 231-368; tome 31 (1), p. 51 sqq.
[329] Ante, Vol. I., p. 145.
[330] Ante, Chapter IX., II. and III.
[331] For generous samples of it, see Geistliche Lit. des Mittelalters, ed. P. Piper (Deutsche National Literatur).
[332] For this novel, a Greek original is usually assumed; but the Middle Ages had it only in a sixth-century Latin version. It was copied in Jourdain de Blaie, a chanson de geste. See Hagen, Der Roman von König Apollonius in seinen verschiedenen Bearbeitungen (Berlin, 1878). The other Greek novels doubtless would have been as popular had the Middle Ages known them. In fact, the Ethiopica of Heliodorus, and others of these novels, did become popular enough through translations in the sixteenth century.