Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/314

 396 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. It utters the mediaeval feeling for the Cross, so differ- ent from that of the early Chui-ch in the Roman Em- pire. From the fourth century the Cross was becoming an object of deep devotion. No longer connected with shame, it was the emblem of the Saviour's glory. For- tunatus approaches it with reverence and adoration, also with a new spirit of love for the sacred wood : — Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis (Nulla talem silva profert Jlore fronde germine) Dulce lignum, dulce clavo dulce pondus sustinens. This hymn has caught the mediaeval spirit. Fortunatus' poems are representative of the modes in which the antique survived in mediaeval Latin poetry as well as of the ways in which it was super- seded: antique phrases and the references to pagan tradition and mythology never cease; they are of course more common in some writers than in others.* 1 We find abundant classic phrase and reminiscence in the poets ■who lived in the midst of the Carolingian revival, when learned men turned to antiquity for their guidance. For example, the hexameters of Hibernicus Exul reflect Virgilian phrase (Diimmler, Poetae Lat. Aev. Car., I, 395, etc.). Likewise the Vita Aegili, by " Candidus " (Brunn), in its versified portions is full of Virgil and Ovid (Diimmler, op. cit., II, 94-117). The phrases of the great classics do not flow as copiously in the later Middle Ages, and yet never entirely fall from the memory of scholars. For example, in a long rhyming poem on St. Thomas a Becket occurs this line, almost out of Horace : — Caelum non animum mutat transmarinua. (E. du M^ril, Poisies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age, II, p. 76.) Only the last word varies from Horace's line. So the popular Goli- ardic Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes (ed. by Wright) have quantities of classical allusions, which is also true of the drinking and love songs in the collection of Carmina Burana. Others of the Carmina Burana have the Tale of Troy as their subject.