A not dissimilar kind of childlike Latin could attain to a remarkable symmetry and balance. The Legenda aurea is before us, written by the Dominican Jacobus à Voragine, by race a Genoese, and living toward the close of the thirteenth century. This book was the most popular compend of saints’ lives in use in the later Middle Ages. Its stories are told with fascinating naïveté. We cite the opening sentences from its chapter on the Annunciation, just to show the harmony and balance of its periods. The passage is exceptional and almost formal in these qualities:
“Annunciatio dominica dicitur, quia in tali die ab angelo adventus filii Dei in carnem fuit annuntiatus, congruum enim fuit, ut incarnationem praecederet angelica annuntiatio, triplici ratione. Primo ratione ordinis connotandi, ut scilicet ordo reparationis responderet ordini praevaricationis. Unde sicut dyabolus tentavit mulierem, ut eam pertraheret ad dubitationem et per dubitationem ad consensum et per consensum ad lapsum, sic angelus nuntiavit virgini, ut nuntiando excitaret ad fidem et per fidem ad consensum et per consensum ad concipiendum Dei filium. Secundo ratione ministerii angelici, quia enim angelus est Dei minister et servus et beata virgo electa erat, ut esset Dei mater, et congruum est ministrum dominae famulari, conveniens fuit, ut beatae virgini annuntiatio per angelum fieret. Tertio ratione lapsus angelici reparandi. Quia enim incarnatio non tantum faciebat ad reparationem humani lapsus, sed etiam ad reparationem ruinae angelicae, ideo angeli non debuerunt excludi. Unde sicut sexus mulieris non excluditur a cognitione mysterii incarnationis et resurrectionis, sic etiam nec angelicus nuntius. Imo Deus utrumque angelo mediante nuntiat mulieri, scilicet incarnationem virgini Mariae et resurrectionem Magdelenae.”[279]
These extracts bring us far into the thirteenth century. Two hundred years later, mediaeval Latin prose, if one may say so, sang its swan song in that little book which is a last, sweet, and composite echo of all mellifluous mediaeval piety. Yet perhaps this De imitatione Christi of Thomas à Kempis can scarcely be classed as prose, so full is it of assonances and rhythms fit for chanting.
CHAPTER XXXII
EVOLUTION OF MEDIAEVAL LATIN VERSE
I. Metrical Verse.
II. Substitution of Accent for Quantity.
III. Sequence-Hymn and Student-Song.
IV. Passage of Themes into the Vernacular.
In mediaeval Latin poetry the endeavour to preserve a classical style and the irresistible tendency to evolve new forms are more palpably distinguishable than in the prose. For there is a visible parting of the ways between the retention of the antique metres and their fruitful abandonment in verses built of accentual rhyme. Moreover, this formal divergence corresponds to a substantial difference, inasmuch as there was usually a larger survival of antique feeling and allusion in the mediaeval metrical attempts than in the rhyming poems.
As in the prose, so in the poetry, the lines of development may be followed from the Carolingian time. But a difference will be found between Italy and the North; for in Italy the course was quicker, but a less organic evolution resulted in verse less excellent and less distinctly mediaeval. By the end of the eleventh century Latin poetry in Italy, rhyming or metrical, seems to have drawn itself along as far as it was destined to progress; but in the North a richer growth culminates a century later. Indeed the most originative line of evolution of mediaeval Latin verse would seem to have been confined to the North, in the main if not exclusively.