Re-classicizing Bede? : Hrabanus Maurus on Prosody and Meter

Hrabanus Maurus’s ninth-century Excerptio de arte grammatica Prisciani is a compendium of prosodic rules intended for classroom use as an aid to the scansion and composition of metrical poetry, a hard-learned skill in the Early Middle Ages, when syllable lengths had disappeared from spoken Latin. The work is best understood as a creative synthesis of several Late Antique and Early Medieval grammatical works, mainly those of Donatus and Priscian. In addition, Hrabanus’s presentation of common syllables (syllables that can be interpreted as either long or short) relies heavily on Bede’s eighth-century De arte metrica, and, in many places, quotes it verbatim. In his highly polemical De arte metrica, Bede sought to create a standard for purely Christian verse, replacing Vergil and the “pagan” classics with Christian epic poets as a normative model, even in questions of prosody. In Hrabanus’s paraphrase, however, Bede’s strongly pro-Christian sentiment has been moderated to a high degree. Bede’s condemnation of “pagan” prosodic license is presented in a considerable less severe form, and Hrabanus has re-introduced quotations from pre-Christian poets into his presentation, including the verse of Horace, which had enjoyed a renaissance in the Carolingian age. While Hrabanus does not directly challenge Bede’s dichotomy of pagan and Christian verse technique, he has sought to find a compromise between the Bedan norm and the Carolingians’ new-found interest in the classical tradition in order to meet the demands of his audience.Peer reviewe