“Taedet animam meam vitae meae; vivere erubesco, mori pertimesco. Quid ergo restat tibi, o peccator, nisi ut in tota vita tua plores totam vitam tuam, ut ipsa tota se ploret totam? Sed est in hoc quoque anima mea miserabiliter mirabilis et mirabiliter miserabilis, quia non tantum dolet quantum se noscit; sed sic secura torpet, velut quid patiatur ignoret. O anima sterilis, quid agis? quid torpes, anima peccatrix? Dies judicii venit, juxta est dies Domini magnus, juxta et velox nimis, dies irae dies illa, dies tribulationis et angustiae, dies calamitatis et miseriae, dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulae et turbinis, dies tubae et clangoris. O vox diei Domini amara! Quid dormitas, anima tepida et digna evomi?”[251]
Damiani wrote in the middle of the eleventh century, Anselm in the latter part. The northern lands could as yet show no such characteristic styles,[252] although the classically educated German, Lambert of Hersfeld, wrote as correctly and perspicuously as either. His Annals have won admiration for their clear and correct Latinity, modelled upon the styles of Sallust and Livy. He died in 1077, the year of Canossa, his Annals covering the conflict between Henry IV. and Hildebrand up to that event. The narrative moves with spirit, as one may see by reading his description of King Henry and his consort struggling through Alpine ice and snow to reach that castle never to be forgotten, and gain absolution from the Pope before the ban should have completed Henry’s ruin.[253]
For the North, the best period of mediaeval Latin, prose as well as verse, opens with the twelfth century. It was indeed the great literary period of the Middle Ages. For the vernacular literatures flourished as well as the Latin. Provençal literature began as the eleventh century closed, and was stifled in the thirteenth by the Albigensian Crusade. So the twelfth was its great period. Likewise with the Old French literature: except the Roland which is earlier, the chief chansons de geste belong to the twelfth century; also the romances of antiquity, to be spoken of hereafter; also the romances of the Round Table, and a great mass of chansons and fabliaux. The Old German—or rather, Mittel Hochdeutsch—literature touches its height as the century closes and the next begins, in the works of Heinrich von Veldeke, Gottfried von Strassburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide.
The best Latin writers of the century lived, or sojourned, or were educated, for the most part in the France north of the Loire. Not that all of them were natives of that territory; for some were German born, some saw the light in England, and the birthplace of many is unknown. Yet they seem to belong to France. Nearly all were ecclesiastics, secular or regular. Many of them were notables in theology, like Hugo of St. Victor, Abaelard, Alanus de Insulis (Lille); many were poets as well, like Alanus and Hildebert and John of Salisbury too; one was a thunderer on the earth, and a most deft politician, Bernard of Clairvaux. Some again are known only as poets, sacred or profane, like Adam of St. Victor, and Walter of Chatillon—but of these hereafter. The best Latin prose writing of this, or any other, mediaeval period, had its definite purpose, metaphysical, theological, or pietistic; and the writers have been or will be spoken of in connection with their specific fields of intellectual achievement or religious fervour. Here, without discussing the men or their works, some favourable examples of their writing will be given.
In the last passage quoted from Anselm, the reader must have felt the working of cloister rhetoric, and have noticed the antitheses and rhymes, to which mediaeval Latin lent itself so readily. Yet it is a slight affair compared with the confounding sonorousness, the flaring pictures, and terrifying climaxes of St. Bernard when preaching upon the same topic—the Judgment Day. In one of his famous sermons on Canticles, the saint has been suggesting to his audience, the monks of Clara Vallis, that although the Father might ignore faults, not so the Dominus and Creator: “et qui parcit filio, non parcet figmento, non parcet servo nequam.” Listen to the carrying out and pointing of this thought:
“Pensa cujus sit formidinis et horroris tuum atque omnium contempsisse factorem, offendisse Dominum majestatis. Majestatis est timeri, Domini est timeri, et maxime hujus majestatis, hujusque Domini. Nam si reum regiae majestatis, quamvis humanae, humanis legibus plecti capite sancitum sit, quis finis contemnentium divinam omnipotentiam erit? Tangit montes, et fumigant; et tam tremendam majestatem audet irritare vilis pulvisculus, uno levi flatu mox dispergendus, et minime recolligendus? Ille, ille timendus est, qui postquam acciderit corpus, potestatem habet mittere et in gehennam. Paveo gehennam, paveo judicis vultum, ipsis quoque tremendum angelicis potestatibus. Contremisco ab ira potentis, a facie furoris ejus, a fragore ruentis mundi, a conflagratione elementorum, a tempestate valida, a voce archangeli, et a verbo aspero. [Feel the climax of this sentence, which tells the end of the sinner.] Contremisco a dentibus bestiae infernalis, a ventre inferi, a rugientibus praeparatis ad escam. Horreo vermem rodentem, et ignem torrentem, fumum, et vaporem, et sulphur, et spiritum procellarum; horreo tenebras exteriores. Quis dabit capiti meo aquam, et oculis meis fontem lacrymarum ut praeveniam fletibus fletum, et stridorem dentium, et manuum pedumque dura vincula, et pondus catenarum prementium, stringentium, urentium, nec consumentium? Heu me, mater mea! utquid me genuisti filium doloris, filium amaritudinis, indignationis et plorationis aeternae? Cur exceptus genibus, cur lactatus uberibus, natus in combustionem, et cibus ignis?”[254]
As one recovers from the sound and power of this high-wrought passage, he notices how readily it might be turned into the form of a Latin hymn; and also how very modern is its sequence of words. Bernard’s Latin could whisper intimate love, as well as thunder terror. He says, preaching on the medicina, the healing power, of Jesu’s name:
“Hoc tibi electuarium habes, o anima mea, reconditum in vasculo vocabuli hujus quod est Jesus, salutiferum, certe, quodque nulli unquam pesti tuae inveniatur inefficax.”[255]
With the music of this prose one may compare the sweet personal plaint of the following:
“Felices quos abscondit in tabernaculo suo in umbra alarum suarum sperantes, donec transeat iniquitas. Caeterum ego infelix, pauper et nudus, homo natus ad laborem, implumis avicula pene omni tempore nidulo exsulans, vento exposita et turbini, turbatus sum et motus sum sicut ebrius, et omnis conscientia mea devorata est.”[256]