Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/249

 vm] MEDLEVALIZmG OF PROSE 231 III. Medioevalmng of Latin Prose The death of Augustine closes the great constructive period of Latin Christian prose, which thereafter is rapidly mediaevalized. The diction falls away from what had been idiomatic and correct; it abandons the classic order of words and loses at the same time all feeling for the case endings of nouns and the conju- gation of verbs, for which it substitutes prepositions and auxiliaries ; many novel words are taken frdm the common speech.^ The substance also becomes some- what debased and barbarized. It frequently consists in a recasting of what the fourth or fifth century had produced, with the addition of whatever appealed to an insatiable credulity.^ As for literary form, as sig- nifying the unity and artistic ordering rather than the diction of a composition, this does more than decline ; judged by any antique standard, it ceases to exist. One cause was the unintelligent recasting of matter taken from the writings of a more intellectual period, Le r^t de la d^iverance de Joseph d'Arimathie par le Seigneur a 6t4 le point de depart des fictions relatives au ' saint-graal,' et la sc^ne qui nous repr^nte la d^iberation des princes de I'enfer parait aroir servl de module au conseil des diables par lequel s'ouvre le Merlin de Robert de Boron." Ghtston Paris, Troia ver* siojis rimieB, etc., Introduction, p. ii. » The HUtoria Francorum of Gregory of Tours (03&-^B94) is an illustration of all of this. Cf. Monceauz. "Le Latin Vulgaire," lievue des deux mondes, Tom. lOG (1891). " Mieux vaut 6tre le pre- mier des chroniqucurs romans que le dernier des cicdroniens/' ib. His Latin is becoming French. s Thus Gregory the Great makes over moch doctrinal material from Augustine, while his Dialogi de vita el nUraculie Patrum Jtalicorum are filled with monkish miracle.