Of a truer type was the rhetoric of Hilary of Arles. Honoratus is enthusiastic about the copious eloquence of his oratory, the gems of expression which he produced, the varied shades and shapes of his descriptions.[951] There was plenty of rhetorical colour, but there was also elasticity. ‘If the learned company was absent, he fed the hearts of the untutored with simple food’; and it was the opinion of contemporary critics, the savants of the day, that Hilary ‘had attained something that was neither eloquence nor learning, something superhuman’.[952] Famous for eloquence were also Salvian, the master of fiery denunciation, and Lupus, ‘scholis adhibitus et rhetorum studiis imbutus’.[953] In the very monasteries the artifices of the rhetor’s school lingered. Valerian, Bishop of Cemelium (near Nice), gives many examples of this in his Homilies. He frequently uses Parallelism and Repetition: ‘Disciplina igitur magistra est religionis, magistra verae pietatis; quae nec ideo increpat ut laedat, nec ideo castigat ut noceat’;[954] or Chiasmus and Assonance: ‘Alter de subscriptione patris disputat: alter de fratris persona desperat’;[955] ‘Vitare ista, dilectissimi, per singulos gradus forte difficile est, et laboriosum multis simul hostibus per diversos errores occurrere’; or Alliteration: ‘Ita est ergo, ut in te antiqui iuris districtio nihil habeat potestatis, si ea quae legis plenitudo postulat, obedienter observes’.[956] ‘Et nullus profecto adhuc poenae finis nisi Christus noster cruentis legibus oleum misericordiae miscuisset.’[957] ‘Sic erit ut homo de humiliore loco ad celsiora perveniat et remuneratus honore condigno, caelestis gratiam potestatis adquirat.’[958]
The rhetorical tradition, therefore, lived on; and it survived the more easily because of the controversial nature of Christianity at this time and the importance of preaching. The change from the rhetor’s ‘cathedra’ to the pulpit was often merely one of place and subject: the method was the same. And so the ideal of the orator persisted. In education it persisted for the further obvious reason that the monasteries had not yet organized themselves round the model of St. Benedict, and that very often Christian parents had to send their children to the pagan schools—in spite of Tertullian’s warnings.[959]
The triumph of rhetoric among the Christians, however, was only partial. When the Christian Fathers observed their congregations of simple and unlettered folk, and remembered the injunction of Christ[960] and the teaching of St. Paul,[961] they began to feel the need of a more direct style of speech. Largely, too, it was a natural reaction, springing from the opposition between Christian and pagan, and the ascetism which the monasteries preached.
This reaction is noticeable chiefly in the Church Fathers. In their prefaces it became the customary thing to proclaim their ‘rusticity’, and to hide (sometimes with false modesty) the traces of their rhetorical training.[962] So much was this the tendency, that Sidonius, with all his highly refined artificiality, must needs talk about his ‘countrified style’ (‘Si quid stilo rusticante peraravero’,[963] ‘in hoc stylo cui non urbanus lepos inest sed pagana rusticitas’[964]). Partly, of course, this was due to the over-courteous ways of high society at that time, as we may see from the correspondence of Symmachus or of Ausonius, and to an idea (never carried out by these gentlemen) that letter-writing ought to be careless and natural.[965] But the reaction against rhetoric was very strong. None of the Christian clergy dared to defend the rhetoricians openly. Lactantius, who did so,[966] was a layman.
The inscriptions reflect this tendency, or at any rate one of its causes—the simplicity and ignorance of the people. The Christian epitaphs, though influenced now and then by rhetorical floridness, as in the case of those composed by Sidonius,[967] are much shorter and simpler than the pagan ones. Sometimes they consist merely of a cross with the name of the person.[968] Sometimes the words ‘pax tecum’ are added. The increase in Christian education is indicated by the fact that there are only four inscriptions dating from the fourth century and fifty-four from the fifth.
How constantly the Church Fathers strove to check the rhetorical tendency in themselves and in the clergy may be seen from their frequent protests. Jerome remarked reprovingly of Hilary of Poitiers that he was affected by the tragic and turgid vein in the Gallic character, and too much adorned with the ‘flowers of Greece’, so that his long periods were not understood by the simple friars.[969] And Vincent of Lérins had to warn that a priest’s language must be ‘disciplined and grave’.[970] ‘Docente te in ecclesia’, said Jerome elsewhere,[971] ‘non clamor populi sed gemitus suscitetur.’ Gallus, in Sulpicius Severus,[972] expresses his contempt for flowery language. ‘For if you call me a disciple of Martin (the stern saint of Tours) you must also allow me the right of following him in despising vain ornamental speech and verbal embellishment’ (sermonum faleras et verborum ornamenta). In a sermon on Rebecca, attributed to Caesarius,[973] the preacher proclaims the principle of adaptability: ‘The educated must accommodate themselves to the ignorance of the simple. If, in expounding holy Scripture we desired the arrangement and the eloquence of (certain) holy fathers, ... the food of doctrine could reach only a small band of scholars (there is a secret satisfaction in having had a superior training), while the remaining masses of the people would go unfed. And therefore I humbly ask that the ears of the learned bear patiently the words of simplicity (rustica verba) if only the whole flock of God may partake of spiritual food by means of speech unadorned and (if I may say so) pedestrian.’ Ruricius, Bishop of Limoges, and a contemporary of Sidonius,[974] speaks of his ‘ineptia rusticitatis’,[975] his ‘rusticus sermo’.[976] ‘Rusticitatem meam’, he says, ‘malo prodere quam perdere caritatem’.[977]
This prevalent cultivation of ‘rusticitas’ was, as has been said, partly a reaction, and like all reactions it had a tendency to go too far. It is not surprising to find men like Jerome protesting (though with self-condemnation) against the bald style of certain Christian writings.[978] Heyne, after describing the ‘verborum fucos, concinnos et calamistrum’ of the rhetoricians, remarks on the uncultured and disgusting lack of style into which the later writers fell. It was natural, he says, that, having thrown eloquence overboard, they should fall into ‘barbaries’ and subjects vulgar and essentially trivial (per se tenuia). The charge of ‘barbaries’ is admitted. But the subject-matter was not always ‘per se tenuia’; it was essentially the reverse: and the ‘horrida oratio’ into which the Christian writers fell had the compensation of sincerity and the capacity of rising into genuine eloquence.
We have, then, these two facts: the persistence in Christian thought of rhetoric, and the reaction in the direction of simplicity. But we must ask what the Christian attitude was towards pagan education as a whole, for on this attitude largely depended the nature of the Christian schools.
Sulpicius Severus is uncompromisingly harsh. All literature except the Bible and theological writings are utterly vain. ‘For what did the pagan writers themselves gain by a literary glory that was to perish with their generation? Or what profit was it to posterity to read of Hector’s battles or Socrates’ philosophy? Not only is it folly to imitate those writers, but not to attack them with the utmost fierceness is sheer madness....’[979] The pagan philosophy has been a mighty bane. ‘Qui quidem error humanus (pagan philosophy) litteris traditus in tantum valuit ut multos plane aemulos vel inanis philosophiae vel stultae illius virtutis invenerit.’[980] Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius on entering the Church abjured the heathen literature,[981] and Jerome conceived of the difference between the two groups of writers as that between light and darkness.[982] Philosophy was regarded as dangerous, and extensive secular reading deprecated.[983] Poetry was banned because it inflamed passion,[984] and Claudius Victor of Marseilles went so far as to trace the misfortunes of his day to the pagan schools and authors.
‘Is not ours the blame?’ he wails: ‘Paul and Solomon are neglected and the Vergil who wrote of Dido and the Ovid who described Corinna are recited, the verses of Horace are applauded and the scenes of Terence, and it is we, we who are at fault, we who basely feed those flames.’[985] Paulinus writes to his old master Ausonius who is much concerned because his pupil has deserted the Muses, and declares with pathetic firmness that the Christian heart must needs say ‘No’ to Apollo and the Muses. ‘New is the force and greater the god that now moves the soul, and he permits not leisure in work or play for the literature of fable.’[986] To him the education and the literature of the pagan world is nothing but ‘the clever influence of a sophist, the knack of a rhetor, the false imagination of a bard’, and its professors men who miss the truth,