Why is the career and writing of Alan of Lille a "problem"? Did he write a commentary on the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium? Does it matter? How? Why did he write the Anticlaudianus?

GLOSE SUPERETHO(RICAM) CICER(ONIS) De inventione. Cicero duplex e(ss)e honestu(m) p(er)(-) suadet. Unu(m) solu(m) atq(ue) puru(m) utpote cum aliquid alicui prestat(ur) nec gra(tia) reposcit(ur). Alteru(m) vo(cat) honestu(m) cum utili, q(ui)d est cum gra(tia) reposcit(ur) [Victorinus, ed. Halm, 162.15-17, 33-34]. ¶ Anima est ut vinu(m) p(ro) vase eni(m) in quo mittit(ur), id est corpore, aut servat aut amittit vinolentia(m) [Victorinus, 161.12-14, reading violentiam for vinolentiam]. § Sapientia q(ui)de(m) sed eloquentia opitulante p(er)ficit rethorica(m) [Victorinus, 163.41-2]. ¶ Quida(m) re ignorata, specie(m) sola(m) sequi ceper(unt) i(d est) preterita sapientia, sola(m) dicendi copia(m) consequuti sunt. Mel quippe habet rem ipsam i(d est) dulcedine(m) sui, habet et speciem i(d est) colore(m), quo quasi facile ita ut est dulce credat(ur) [Victorinus, 165.44 - 166.1; 165.35-36]. ¶ Ratio e(st) rei gerende ordo ne(-) cessarius, ut puta hoc primu(m) debet fieri deinde illud, tertio istud [Victorinus, 160.5-6, adapted]. ¶ Civitas est collec(-) ta multitudo hominu(m) ad iure vivendu(m) [Victorinus, 158.12, 162.12]. ...

[1] We have learned -- from Victorinus¹ -- that Varro² considered all arts to have a double teaching-method [doctrina³]. We have, therefore, applied this teaching-method to our own explanation of the art of rhetoric -- as far as we are able -- and accordingly wish that it be handed down to you in this double manner, that is, intrinsically and extrinsically.

[2] The teaching-method "extrinsically" considered, demonstrates to us what rhetoric is, what its genus is and each of the other things which are to be noticed in this particular teaching-method. When we have made all these clear, we can only be said to know about the art: we are unable to execute any action on the basis of the art, nor to effect anything in accordance with the art. For this reason this teaching-method hands down to us knowledge only. The matters that are taught extrinsically are called teachable matters [didascalica ], that is, to do with teaching-methods [doctrinalia ], because they pertain more to the teacher himself [doctorem ] than to the practice of the art.

[3] The teaching-method intrinsically considered, is that which imparts knowledge [scienciam] to us in such a way that it may show by what methods [rationibus ] we may practice [faciamus ] that itself of which it gives knowledge; it insinuates to us that the precepts of the art itself should be acted upon in accordance with the art [ex arte ], since it [the teaching-method intrinsically considered] itself is made up of the precepts of the art themselves. Victorinus, moreover, forbids⁴ any mention or teaching of an "extrinsic or intrinsic art", lest by such adjectival terminology it should seem that more than one art was being taught; use of the adverb --- "extrinsically, intrinsically" - implies that one and the same art is being taught, in several ways [modis ].

[4] In the first place, therefore, since we are going to base our lectures [ ] concerning oratorical precepts on the teaching-method intrinsically considered, it seems that we should speak concerning those matters which have relevance to the things which must be taught extrinsically, that is, what rhetoric is, what its genus may be, what its subject-matter [materia ] may be, what its role [function, officium ] is, what its goal [finis ] is, what its parts are, its species, its instrument, its artificer, why it happens to be called "rhetoric", in what order it must be taught and learned. To teach all this is to demonstrate the discipline of rhetoric extrinsically; to pass on, however, those matters which pertain to the role [officium ] of the orator, is to teach the art intrinsically, that is, to put the art into practice [exercere artem ].

[5] Let us carry out, therefore, what we have proposed, in such order that first we may see what rhetoric is. As Quintilian says on the first rhetoric,⁵ rhetoric is the art of speaking in a manner that is appropriate to persuading, that is, it is the art of speaking such things as may suffice for persuasion. For it happens that one may speak things which are well-suited [convenientia ] to the needs of persuasion in a case, yet which are not, in fact, adequate [sufficienter ] to achieve it. It may also happen that one speaks things which are adequate [sufficientia ] to the needs of persuasion, but in a manner not well-suited [inconvenienter ] to the case, and whoever so acts⁶ does not speak appropriately [apposite ] in judicial cases. For this reason the word "appropriately" is added to the definition of rhetoric. For the speaker who speaks "appropriately" in judicial cases is the one who speaks in a well-suited manner, and in such way that what he speaks may suffice for the persuasion of the hearers, as far as is possible for the one speaking [quantum in dicente ]. Another definition runs thus: rhetoric is the art or science of speaking well.⁷ The sense here is the same, for to speak well is to speak appropriately, which we have just commented on. We are not unaware of the other definitions that Quintilian enumerates, and anyone who desires to know them should read Quintilian's On Oratorical Institutions, where he will find the sense of them all.⁸

[6] Once we know what the art of rhetoric is, it seems that something should be said about its genus, in the order we have proposed, that is what its nature may be [qualis ipsa sit ]. It should, you see, be observed in every matter in question, that once we know what it is, we should proceed to its nature. Victorinus implies that this word genus has a triple meaning [significationem ]. For we have genus in the sense of "origin" or "bloodline" [sanguis ], as in the question "of what birth are you? [unde ducis genus ]", that is, "what is your origin?" We also have the meaning of genus as that which may be predicated of several different species, which is the meaning common among dialecticians. Genus may also, further, indicate the quality of any thing, as in the question "what is this piece of clothing made of?", that is, what is its quality [qualitas ⁹ ], that is, is it linen, or wool or silk? And it is this last meaning which we mean when we bring up the notion of genus at the present juncture: in what genus must rhetoric be placed? That is, it should be demonstrated of what nature and dimension rhetoric may be [qualis et quanta sit ].

Now since the genus of any art is its quality in accordance with its effect,¹⁰ that is, according to that which it effects in those who study and learn it, we place rhetoric in that genus [politics]; that is, we say that it has an effect of this nature and scope, because it is a very important part of the science of politics.¹¹ But, so that what it means to be a part of political science [civilis scientie ] may be clearer, we need to speak a little of the system of politics [de civili ratione ], since the genus of rhetoric is political science, and this is what it consists of [et qualiter hoc fit ].

System [ratio ], then, in the art of rhetoric, is called the order in which things must be dealt with [ordo gerendorum ]. Systematic politics [civilis ratio ], moreover, is called the order in which things pertaining to the utility of the state [ad utilitatem civitatis ] should be dealt with. Systematic politics [civilis ratio ], therefore, is administration in civil matters, or the science of administering in a manner appropriate to civil affairs [scientia administrandi civiliter ], [and this (description) is such that] the description [= definition] is by derivation appropriate to systematic politics [conveniens civili rationi ], in this that systematic politics [civilis ratio ] is whatever the state [civitas ] does or says with reason [rationabiliter ].

For whatever citizens do in states, the outcome is effected in one of two ways, either in speaking or in doing. Thus there are two parts of systematic politics, to wit administration in civil affairs and the science of administering in a manner appropriate to civil affairs. Thus systematic politics is two-fold, the first aspect having to do with words, the second with deeds. What is said and done are embodied in performance and directed activity [in actu et opere constituta sunt ]. It is thus that specified matters are enacted without confusion and in due process [solenni cursu ]. This is called administration in civil matters. Systematic politics is [of two kinds], one of which has to do with things done and spoken, but things done and spoken may have to do with lawsuit and court or inquiry [questione ], and this is an aspect that should be termed political science [civilis scientia ]. Both kinds of systematic politics have to do therefore with things spoken and carried out -- the things which are spoken and carried out by citizens -- in a reasoned manner, and in this they have a common element [in hoc conveniunt ]. They differ, however, since administration in civil affairs has to do with such spoken and enacted matters as have to do with performance and directed activity [in actu et opere ]. Enacted things are such as to lead out armies and to lead [them] back [and] to be on guard for the [army] lead out and retreating. This is the aspect of administration in civil affairs which is called "extrinsic", since it has to do with those things which are effected outside the state, and is the business of kings and dukes and other heads [principes ] of states.

There is also another aspect of administration in civil matters, which is called "intrinsic", because it has to do with things spoken, such as the declamation of persuasive and dissuasive [speeches] in civil matters, to bring down laws in the state, to alter the granting [of judges, actions, exceptions], which used to be the duty of the pretor, for which reason he used to be called the "living voice of the law".¹² This aspect of administration in civil affairs, moreover, is called "intrinsic" because it has to do with those things which are effected in the body of the state. All these matters used to have regard, moreover, to performance [ad actum ]. It is also for this reason that this [aspect of] systematic politics has to do with such things as are spoken, which are concerned with performance, which are embodied in directed activity. That [aspect of] systematic politics which is termed political science [civilis scientia ], although it may also consist of things spoken and effected, yet it does not have to do with such things as are concerned with performance, which are embodied in directed activity, since it rather [has to do] with lawsuit and court judgement [in lite et disceptacione ]: in lawsuit because that is the province of [= propter] rhetoric, in court judgement because that is the province of expertise in civil law [iuris civilis peritiam ], which the politicians [politici ], that is the men involved in civil affairs [civiles viri ], also call wisdom,¹³ which has to do with knowledge of laws and customs. Thus there are two parts of political science, as also of the administration of civil affairs, that is eloquence [and] wisdom, [which is] expertise in the laws.

Eloquence has to do with the lawsuit, that is, [it is embodied] in things spoken, which means rhetoric, which is the art of litigation or of conducting cases [at law], which is the same thing. Wisdom has to do with things effected, that is, in laws and customs, by way of which citizens determine what is just, honest, useful, and thus what should be effected [in the state] and what they should take cognisance of without hesitation. These aspects of political science, indeed, do not have regard to enactment [ad agendum ], but rather [have to do only with] knowing how something should be spoken about or enacted [ad sciendum qualiter dicendum et qualiter agendum ]. Thus it is that systematic politics [civilis ratio ] which consists of these aspects, is called political science [civilis scientia ]. Although anyone is entitled to their own view of truth [etsi quis ad verum inspiciat ], he will, however you very well wish [optime quamvis ], find that it is a matter of expertise in political science, by which [ut ] [a man] may be worthily promoted to the administration of civil affairs.

It is, moreover, very clear indeed from the things that are said properly in regard to it [ex propriis dictis ], that rhetoric is an integral part of political science, which is very much a species of systematic politics, as has been already shown. For it is not possible for studied eloquence [artificiosa eloquentia ] -- which is called rhetoric -- to be a part of political science like a species, since it is possible to imagine rhetoric in action in a field other than that of political science. For political science is a matter of wisdom, by which we secure a grasp of all things, and studied eloquence [is that] by which we explain easily what we have grasped.¹⁴ If rhetoric were, in fact, a species of civil science, whoever secured a command of it would also have secured a command of political science, and so would end up being instructed in civil matters.¹⁵ Thus it is clear that rhetoric is not a species of political science, but [rather] an integral part of it, as has been said.

For this reason, since eloquence, when located in a republic, persuades more easily than it confronts [facilius quam fuerit aggressa persuadet ], for that reason it is said to be a part of political science, and an important one, since, joined to expertise in law, which is wisdom, it has a greater impact in civil affairs. For there are indeed many persons skilled in the laws who, since they do not possess studied eloquence, are of little use in civil affairs, because, if they possessed this latter skill, they would indeed be of much benefit. For studied eloquence, which we call rhetoric, sustains in conjunction [with wisdom] a greater impact in civil affairs. We therefore consider that the genus ¹⁶ of the faculty of rhetoric is that it is an integral part of [political] science, which is a species of systematic politics, and an important one, as has been expounded.¹⁷ Rhetoric is of this genus [= kind] in accordance with its impact, that is, in accordance with what it effects through those studying it. For those who study [rhetoric] itself acquire for themselves, by their attention to it, an important part of political science, and this is what we have to say concerning "genus ". Something must now be said concerning the subject-matter [materia ] of the art.

[7] The subject-matter of the art of rhetoric is that to which the orator lends form by dealing¹⁸ [with practical cases] in accordance with the [theoretical] art of rhetoric, just as the subject-matter of the [medical] doctor [are] diseases and wounds, since the medical practitioner [artifex ] deals with those in accordance with the [theoretical] art of medicine. However, what the orator deals with in accordance with the art of rhetoric is the "case" [causa ], which the Greeks call "hypothesis", and the word "case" takes its name from the word for "acting in a case" [causa a causando ]. "To plead a case" [causari ] is to attack some person concerning some matter according to the rules of the art [rationabiliter ], as it is also to defend a person. A "case" is a civil controversy concerning a specific statement or act of a specific person. The word "case" does not apply to every type of controversy, as for example a dialectical disputation. And since a duel [for example] is also a civil controversy, the words "concerning a specific statement or act of a specific person" are added.

Since the word "person" is spoken of in various senses [we should define it here]. In this art [of rhetoric] the "person" is he or she who is summoned to court on account of some statement or act. He or she will either have uttered that statement or committed that act, or will have simply been brought to court on account of it. For though your neighbour's horse --- or some other possession of his --- will have harmed you, the horse [or possession] will not be the "person" in the case, as the ancient used to say; no, rather will he [whose possession has caused the harm] be dragged into the case on account of the deed or statement of his possession. For it is often the case that someone is in court just as much because of the deed of some other, as because of some deed of his own.

The "business" [negotium ], moreover, in this art [of rhetoric] is said to be the deed or statement on account of which someone is summoned to court, and such is that controversy concerning Ulysses who was charged with the death of Ajax.¹⁹ If anyone should say that [this] controversy does not have to do with a specific deed or statement, because there was no agreement about the deed, since it was not even committed, we teach that "specific" should not be taken here as the contrary of "doubtful", but as "specified" [pro determinato ].²⁰ For in name and in definition [nominate et determinate ] Ulysses was being accused of the death of Ajax. This is enough for the present concerning the exposition of the definition of the case. In what follows, it will perhaps be explained better.

It should also be pointed out that the [term] "case" first gained currency from its usage in the judicial kind [of rhetoric], in which kind we speak simply of "pleading a case" [causari ], and from the action of the first advocate [agentis ] [in the judicial kind] where this kind of action first began, every "case" has been so called. For this reason it is that whenever a case has a just goal, it is then termed a judicial case, since it is determined before judges, in which situation the orator strives to show that something is just. As often, moreoever, as the orator strives to show that something is honourable, the case will be termed a "demonstrative" [= laudatory] one, from the goal of the "honourable", and will be resolved in the assembly before the people.²¹ When, moreover, [the orator strives to attain] the goal of the "expedient" [= useful], we speak of the "deliberative case" and this is resolved before the senators. So you see that cases have different goals [fines ]: the judicial case [seeks] the just, the demonstrative the honourable, the deliberative the expedient, and from these goals [finibus ], the case is called judicial, demonstrative and deliberative, and this threefold case is the subject-matter of rhetoric, in every kind of case [ita quod unaquaque causa ]. Nor yet may there be said to be infinite subject-matters, although the number of [possible] cases may be infinite, since they are [all] comprehended under the judicial, deliberative and demonstrative kinds. [Other positions have been adopted,] for to this [allegation] that [if] there are infinite subject-matters, [it is said that] it would be proper for them to be comprehended under an infinity of kinds of cases, or [else] it may be said that the simple [= "the very word"] "case" may be the subject-matter of the art. If anyone, though, should ask whether every case or no case or this very word "case" [is the subject-matter], the reply must be that the question is vain.

Nor should anyone be confused on account of what Boethius says in the fourth book of the On the different topics²² that certain cases are specifically rhetorical ones, that is "special", which does not fit with the above definition of case. For you can never refer to a "case" simply and absolutely, without the introduction of a specific person, as we will say in expounding our description of the "case" [below].

Nor should anyone be confused if he read in Victorinus that arguments are the subject-matter of rhetoric,²³ for this is said on account of the equivocal force of the noun [propter equivocationem nominis ], for this noun "subject-matter" [materia ] can be applied with equal force [equivoce ] to that in which the art has its effect, as the iron of the smith, which he strikes, may be said to be the "subject-matter" [= material] in which he works. "Subject-matter" [materia ] is also applied to that with which an art is effected, as the mallet with which the iron is struck. So also the subject-matter of the art of rhetoric is sometimes said to be the arguments with which the orator acts on the subject-matter submitted to him, in accordance with [his] applied [propositam ] art; this is what Victorinus means when he says that arguments form the subject-matter of rhetoric.

[8] The role [function, duty, duty-statement, officium ] of any art is the [sum total of the] act[s] of the artificer [when he acts] according to the proposed art, that is, what he ought to do in accordance with the art. The role of any particular person is an appropriate act according to the political customs [mores ] of the state. Different roles apply to different persons. The role of the praetor is one thing, of the quaestor another, of a father another, of a friend another, and, to return to our business, of the art [of rhetoric] or of the orator [yet] another. The role of the art of rhetoric or of the orator, therefore, is what the orator ought to do according to the rhetorical art; that indeed is to speak well, or to speak appropriately with a view to persuasion, which is the same thing, and this is to form discourse [dicere ] about such things as suffice and are appropriate to persuasion. It is not, indeed, the role of the orator to persuade, for if that were his role, the orator would on many occasions fail to perform it, for he does not always persuade, but if he always speaks well, that is [utters discourse about] such things as suffice and are appropriate to persuasion, [then] he always performs his role, whether he persuades or not. The role of the art is so called not because the art [= orator / artificer?] must perform in that way, but because such a role follows from the art [ex arte provenit ], and since the artificer should act according to it, as the species of case [genus cause ] dictates, since it is [after all said to be] the role of the art [as distinct from the role of the artificer?].

The subdivisions [partes ] of this role are: to locate [arguments], to arrange [them], to remember [them], to utter [them] forth, to utter [them] stylistically [invenire, disponere, memorare, pronuntiare et eloqui ], which are called the subdivisions of the art, because they are the subdivisions of the role. For we do not assign one set of subdivisions to the arts and another to the roles.²⁴ For they are called subdivisions from their similarity to the integral subdivisions of any complete whole, which is not a complete whole if it lacks any one of its subdivisions. If it has all its subdivisions, it is perfect and entire. In the same way, if any of the [above-specified subdivisions] are lacking in an orator, he cannot be said to possess the art wholly and perfectly; if indeed none of them are lacking, he [does so] have it.

We have spoken of the role, but because all roles have regard to [their] goal [ad finem ], the goal must also be brought into consideration [when one is talking about] roles, for the role cannot be properly defined without considering the goal, nor can the goal without an adjoining of the role. For this reason, since in assigning [a definition to] the role, persuasion is mentioned, there we find the introduction of the goal, that is, persuasion. For the role is most fully spelt out by mixing in the goal, and, since such is the case, we must speak concerning the goal.

[9] The goal then of rhetoric is that towards which the orator strives [tendit ] in [performing his] role. For the goal of any art is not defined as the point at which the art terminates, but as that which the artificer wishes to attain in the performance of his role. That which the artificer wishes to attain in the performance of his role is, according to Boethius,²⁵ to speak well, that is, to have formed discourse about such things as may suffice for and be appropriate to persuasion; or, according to Tully,²⁶ to persuade in discourse [dictione ] is the goal of the art of rhetoric, which is the same thing. For to persuade in discourse [is] to persuade as far as is possible for the person speaking, and this goal the orator always attains since he does not always persuade the hearer nor does his task [munus] always thence attain its goal, for, as Aristotle says,²⁷ the medico will not always cure nor the orator persuade, but if from the possible attendant circumstances he omits nothing that is relevant, we may say that he has sufficiently [attained] his proposed [goal].

It must also be noted that [attainment of the] the goal lies [both] in another [person] and in [the orator] himself. The goal [located] in another is, as Boethius says,²⁸ to have spoken well and to have persuaded, and the goal is said [to lie] in another because the orator persuades someone else, that is, the hearer. For whatever the orator may say, he will be unable to persuade the hearer unless the hearer assents to [his] persuasion. The goal [which is located] in [the orator] himself is the one assigned by Tully, concerning which we have already spoken enough, and that is the proper goal of the art; the other is not.

[10]²⁹ The subdivisions [partes ] of any art are the same as the subdivisions of the role and these are those which when possessed by someone wholly and perfectly, confer the art and its role, and if any of them is lacking, the art cannot be possessed in its entirety. For this reason they are also called the parts of the role since without any one of them the role of the art is not performed completely. The parts of the art of rhetoric are the finding [of arguments / things to say that are relevant to the case], the arrangement [of them], memory, delivery and style [inventio, dispositio, memoria, pronuntiatio et elocutio ], and they are so-called from their similarity,³⁰ which we have dealt with above.

But a question may be raised [queritur ] here [as to] why judgement and locating arguments [location, invention, inventio ] are not similarly said to be subdivisions of the art of rhetoric,³¹ and the ancients [antiqui ] indeed said that judgement is comprehended within location. Nevertheless, a more accurate reasoning holds that judgement is not part of location, for rhetoric does not teach how to render judgement, since it is entirely taken up with [admodum] teaching how to locate arguments. For the judgement of arguments does not pertain to rhetoric, but rather to legal skill.

[11] The [notion of the] species of the art is understood in several ways. Here it will be taken to imply form and quality, so that the species of the art may be [said to be] the forms or qualities which the artificer assigns to the subject-matter [materie ] by way of the art [itself]. The artificer, as it were, assigns these forms of this art [of rhetoric] to the subject-matter, that is, to the case [causa ], in order to make it judicial, deliberative or demonstrative. For since the subject-matter may [be said to be] the unformed case, the artificer approaches the subject-matter and informs it with various qualities by [actually] handling [the case in a rhetorical manner, tractando ], for by directing it towards the goal of the just, he makes it a judicial case, and so it is concerning the other types of case, and the species of the art are so-called not because they inform the art, but because through the art the artificer assigns those forms to the subject-matter in order that the accusation [in court] may be accepted because the case has thus been generated.³² For this reason Boethius in the fourth [book of] the Topics [says that] the species come from rhetoric into the case because through the forms the orator assigns the aforesaid [cases? i.e., judicial, deliberative. demonstrative?] to the subject-matter. So then, the species of this art, we may agree, are the three kinds of case, from which rhetoric takes different names. For it is one and the same rhetoric whether we call it judicial rhetoric, which is at stake in the judicial kind [of case], or demonstrative [rhetoric], which [is at stake in] the demonstrative [kind of case], or deliberative [rhetoric], which [is at stake in] the deliberative [kind[of case]. [You may] also say, as Isidore³³ puts it, that it is one and the same whether we speak of forensic [rhetoric], which is concluded in the forum, or assembly [rhetoric, concionatrix ] which is concluded in an assembly [in contione ] before the people, or counsel [rhetoric, consiliatrix ] which [is concluded] in the senate by counsellors.³⁴ For these are not several kinds of rhetoric but one and³⁵ the same art or science of rhetoric which is is employed in several kinds [of case-types] from which it takes its names, as has been said.

[12] The instrument of any art is that by means of which the artificer carries his activity into the subject-matter [agit in materiam ], for each art has its own instrument, its efficient, formal and material cause.³⁶ The artificer is the efficient cause. The art itself is the formal cause, according to which the artificer carries his activity into the subject-matter. The subject-matter itself is the material cause; the final cause is that on account of which the artificer works on the subject-matter. The instrument therefore of the art of rhetoric is that through which the orator carries his activity into the subject-matter, that is, into the case. This is the rhetorical speech of which the subdivisions [partes ] are the proemium, the narration, the division, the confirmation, the refutation, the peroration [prohemium, narratio, particio, confirmatio, reprehensio, peroratio ]. And [you should] note that each of those subdivisions of the speech is rhetoric and its instrument [or, reading rethorice for rethorica, "is the instrument of rhetoric"], since through it the orator carries his activity into the subject-matter, as any artificer [does] through his instrument.

[13] The artificer of any art is [the person] who mobilises [movet ] the subject-matter and works on it so that it might thence disentangle something [i.e., solve a legal issue]. The artificer of rhetoric therefore is the orator who deals with the case. To deal with the case is to mount an attack or mount a defence against an attack, in a systematic manner [rationabiliter intendere et depellere ³⁷ ] in any one of the aforesaid three [kinds of] causes. Moreover, the orator is a good man skilled in the art of discourse [vir bonus dicendi peritus ] who in public and private cases makes use of a full and perfect eloquence. He is not called good from his piety [a religione ], but from his knowledge of the laws and customs. But because wisdom can achieve very little without eloquence, he³⁸ adds "skilled in the art of discourse", that is, skilled in rhetoric; "full" moreover refers to the complete faculty of studied eloquence [eloquentia artifiosa cui scilicet nichil deest rethorice facultatis ]; the same [eloquence] is said [to be] "perfect" on account of [its] conjunction with wisdom. For eloqeunce is not perfect without wisdom. For this reason Sallust shows that Catiline was not an orator since he was not wise,³⁹ saying that there was much eloquence in him but little wisdom.

It should also be noted that the words orator, rhetor and sophist refer to different things. The orator is [the person] who handles cases in accordance with art. The rhetor is [the person] who teaches the art, and there are many orators who are not rhetors, and vice versa, as Tullius says in connection with Hermagoras, that what is least, that is, art [= theory], he knew, whilst what is most important, that is, how to handle cases [= practice], he did not know, which is most shameful for a rhetor.⁴⁰ The sophist is [the person] who provides practice [exercitatio ] in [the art of constructing] discourse.⁴¹ Each art, moreover, among the ancients, used to have its sophist who would live from the table of the Emperor. The role of this [man] was to construct tests for those who wished to profess some art.

[14] We should next point out that rhetoric is named from the Greek "resis ", which in Latin means locutio [speech]; "rethoros " is translated as "abundance of speech" [copia locutionis ] in rhetoric, that is, "abundance in speaking" [copia loquendi ], and rhetoric is named [thus] from its [Greek] antecedent [agnomine ], in that it is such as renders [someone] abundant in speaking; or, according to others, "resis" is to be translated as "elegant discourse" [elocutio ] in rhetoric, that is eloquence [eloquentia ], since it is the art of rendering [someone / a speech] eloquent, as dialectic is the art of reasoning.

[15] The art must be taught and learned in this order: the earliest teaching should concern the art extrinsically considered, and there what the art may be, what its genus is and similar matters must be covered. Afterwards the teaching must consider the art from an intrinsic point of view, and here should be taught the location [of arguments, inventio ], and then should be taught the other subdivisions, in order, that is, arrangement, memory, delivery and style. Finally, it should be taught how these [particular] subdivisions should be used in any one of the subdivisions of the rhetorical speech, that is, in the proemium, or the narration, or in the confirmation, or in the refutation, or in epilogues.

[16] With this foretaste of the items which must be covered under the heading of the art extrinsically considered, it remains for us to speak about these things which must be considered in connection with this book of Tully's, which we are about to expound. These things, moreover, are the intention of the author, the usefulness [utility] of the book and the reason why the work was written [causa operis ]. The author intends in this work to teach the entire art of rhetoric, that is location, arrangement, delivery, memory and style, to teach which is to teach the whole art of rhetoric completely and perfectly. The science of the rhetorical discipline consists fully and perfectly in all these [in hiis et eis ]. In the Old Rhetoric;⁴² however, it was his [i.e., Cicero's] intention to teach only one of the subdivisions of rhetoric, that is, location [= invention], but in this work he teaches the whole art in order that he might instruct Herennius and, because of him,⁴³ anyone else, in the rhetorical art.

The usefulness of this work which we are following is that from a reading and an understanding of it, there develops [est ] a complete and perfect understanding of the art of rhetoric. The reason why the work was written was the request of Herennius, at whose request the work has been undertaken. The title of the work is thus:

The words "to Herennius" are added to distinguish it from the Rhetoric of Locations ,⁴⁴ which Tully wrote, and [it is] to [be] distinguish[ed] from that [other] book to which he gave the similar title of "On the orator" [De oratore ], which we do not have access to, and thus there come to a conclusion the matters which we proposed to be said [in this section of our commentary].

Further, whether rhetoric pertains to philosophy is a pointless question since it [rhetoric] does not concern philosophy nor does it have regard to any subdivision of philosophy. Philosophy, to be sure, is the study and love of wisdom, by means of which truth is inquired into, and it is encountered in connection with general issues [questiones ]. In rhetoric, however, no truth is inquired into at all, nor is it in grammar, since rhetoric arouses the spirit and renders the angry person calm, the sad happy and conversely, just as grammar makes inquiry into correct speech. For this reason it is clear that rhetoric has not to do with philosophy nor does it concern any subdivision of it.

It should also be noted that when one is dealing with the book, it seems to us that the topic of "subject-matter" should not be discussed, as we do not find it so discussed in [the] other books [on the arts; sicut nec in ceteris libris ]. The topic of "subject-matter", indeed, is not relevant to [the individual] words [that make up a discipline], but [is only of relevance in regard to] arts [considered as whole].⁴⁵].

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1..	The reference is to Victorinus' commentary on the De inventione of Cicero, a mid fourth-century (A.D.) work, printed in C.Halm, ed., Rhetores Latini minores (1863 and since reprinted)
2..	Marcus Terentius Varro (116-27 B.C.) wished to set down in writing the cultural history of Rome, using Greek research methods. His Antiquitates (41 books) and his Disciplinae (9 books, in which he worked out a system of the liberal arts) have survived only in later quoted fragments. His Res Rusticae (3 books, on agriculture) and his De lingua latina (parts of 5 out of 25 original books, important for our knowledge of archaic Latin and for Hellenistic theories of language) have survived.
3..	The word can also mean "knowledge, instruction".
4..	Full references to passages cited will be found in the Latin transcription.
5..	The term "First Rhetoric" was normally used to define the De inventione (as distinct from the Ad Herennium, the "Second Rhetoric"). Now Quintilian, in the passage cited (Institutes of Oratory, 2.15.5) is not, of course, lecturing on either of these "Rhetorics", but he is, in this and the next sentence, referring to Cicero's own definitions of the officium oratoris, as found, amongst other places, in De inventione, 1.5.6, and the medieval commentator may therefore have thought it best to refer to "Quintilian when dealing with the First Rhetoric". Alternatively, since Quintilian's definitions seem to have been cited in introductions to the De inventione (see for example Thierry of Chartres, as edited by K. M. Fredborg [Toronto 1988], p. 51.55), the lecturer here may really mean "As Quintilian says, when we are lecturing on the First Rhetoric [i.e. the De inventione]".
6..	Adopting the reading of MS Pa.
7..	See Quintilian, 2.15.34 and Thierry, ed. Fredborg, p. 51.50.
8..	Thierry says the same thing: Fredborg, p. 51.54-55.
9..	We should probably prefer to say "substance". Victorinus uses the word factura : of what is it manufactured? (Halm, RLM, 171.12).
10..	This is the teaching of Thierry: Fredborg, p. 50.28. The meaning is that the genus of any art is the subject area in which it is used, or what it is made up of, in terms of how it is made or put into use.
11..	The wording and concepts used are difficult here. Cicero himself says (De inv., 1.5.6) that "artificiosa eloquentia, quam rhetoricam vocant" ["studied eloquence, which they call rhetoric"] is a very important [magna et ampla ] part of "civilis quaedam ratio" ["a certain system to do with civil or political matters"]. He means that "eloquence" is a "part" of "politics". So the medieval commentator means that rhetoric, as a species, has "politics" as its genus, that rhetoric is "made up of political matters" the way a piece of clothing may be woollen: the "quality" of rhetoric (i.e. what it is, or is manufactured of) is "politics".
12..	Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory, 2.2.8. Cf. Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (1933), p. 604b (s.v. do IIB): "To grant, consent, permit. 1. Esp. in jurid. lang.: DO, DICO, ADDICO, the words employed by the praetor in the execution of his office; viz. DO in the granting of judges, actions, exceptions etc.; DICO in pronouncing sentence of judgement; ADDICO in adjudging the property in dispute to one or another party; cf. Varro [De lingua latina ] 6#30; hence called tria verba, Ovid, Fasti , 1,47". On the jus edicendi , or power of making edicts that belonged to the praetors in Roman law, see W. Smith , Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1869) 445a: "The object of the Edict, according to the Roman jurists,was the following (Papinianus, Dig., 1.tit.1.s.7): "adjuvandi vel supplendi vel corrigendi juris civilis gratia propter utilitatem publicam" ("the obligation of explaining, supplementing or correcting civil law for the public good"). It was, in effect, an indirect method of legislation, and it was the means by which numerous rules of law became established. It was found to be a more effectual, because an easier and more practical way of gradually enlarging and altering the existing law, and keeping the whole system in harmony, than the method of direct legislation; and it is undeniable that the most valuable part of the Roman law is derived from the edicts. If a praetor established any rule which was found to be inconvenient or injurious, it fell into disuse, if not adopted by his successor. The publicity of the Edict must also have been a great security against any arbitrary changes, for a magistratus [magistrate] would hardly venture to promulgate a rule to which an opinion had not by anticipation already given its sanction. Many of the rules promulgated by the Edict were merely in conformity to existing custom, more particularly in cases of contracts, and thus the Edict would have the effect of converting custom into law. This is what Cicero seems to mean (De Inv., ii.22), when he says that the Edict depends in a great degree on custom".
13..	Cf. the emphasis upon "sapientia" and "eloquentia" in Cicero, De inventione, 1.1.1.
14..	The phrase is that of Victorinus: Halm, RLM, 172.21-23.
15..	The commentator is pointing out the two senses of "being a part of": being a part as species (as a tiger is a species of animal, which has no existence outside its species), and being a part as a leg is part of a man (who can exist with or without a leg).
16..	Consider the definitions of genus offerred earlier in the present section.
17..	In accordance with Cicero, De inventione, 1.5.6: "civilis quaedam ratio est ... Eius quaedam magna et ampla pars est artificiosa eloquentia quam rhetoricam vocant.".
18..	MS. Harley, reading "tradendo" is clearly in error here, and I read "tractando" from MS. Perugia.
19..	Odyssey, 11.543ff.
20..	That is, the deed has been defined, but conviction has not been achieved.
21..	One wonders what this might have been taken to mean in late twelfth-century Paris!
22..	De differentiis topicis, trans. E. Stump (Ithaca,. 1978), p.81 and see her comments p. 144.
23..	Halm, RLM, 174.10,14.
24..	Reading here "alias" (MS 'C') instead of Harley's "aliis".
25..	P.L., 64, 1208D, trans. Stump, p. 83.
26..	De inventione, 1.5.
27..	Topics, 101b (I.3).
28..	P.L., 64, 1208D.
29..	The scribe of MS. Harley 6324 has no major paragraph break here, but one is required by the subject-matter.
30..	To the integral subdivisions of any complete whole -- §8 above.
31..	See Cicero, Topica, 2.6.
32..	Very obscure. MS. H: ut artis pro generativo accusatio accipiatur ; MS. Pe.: progeneratio causativo.
33..	Etymologiae, 2.4.
34..	In Classical Latin consiliatores is a rare and post-Augustan word.
35..	Added from MS Pe. and the Florentine MSS.
36..	On the four "Aristotelian" causes -- materialis, formalis, efficiens, finalis -- see Wertis in Viator, 10 (1979), p. 294ff.
37..	Technical terms. Cf. De inventione, 1.8.10: "constitutio est ...".
38..	The commentator has not told us "who". The definition is a common one, stemming ultimately from Papias, "an Italian author, perhaps fictitious, whose name comes attached to an alphabetical dictionary compiled towards the middle of the 11th century in Italy" (Buchwald, Hohlweg, Prinz, Dictionnaire ).
39..	Sall., Cat., 5.4.
40..	De inventione, 1.6.8.
41..	Victorinus, ed. Halm, RLM, 156.23-24.
42..	The De inventione -- the work presently to be commented on being the Rhetorica ad Herennium.
43..	I.e. because he had written the textbook for Herennius -- see Ad Her., 1.1.1.
44..	On invention, De inventione.
45..	That is, the discussion-heading materia is an accessus ["introductory"] topic only under the heading of the art extrinsically considered [cf.§7 above]; it is not relevant when the commentator is talking about the particular book which contains the details of the art in question intrinsically considered.

Proemium

The oeuvre of Alan of Lille is critical in any interpretation of twelfth century culture, and in some ways, of the evolution of European culture in general. It is a "constructed" oeuvre, that is an oeuvre put together by later generations for didactic or other reasons, and it is a unique oeuvre, in its range, in the number of uncertain attributions, in the enormous variation of popularity among the different works within it, and for other reasons the paper will suggest.

Narratio

Fundamental are:

(1) The priorities and implicit assumptions behind the preoccupation evident in traditional literary/historical scholarship with "discovering" ("creating"?) the "historical" Alanus.

(2) The challenge Alanus provides for us to take up the attempts by Barthes, Foucault and others to free western literary/historical thinking from a preoccupation with intentionality, the Cartesian "cogito", the myth of an objective, recoverable, historical past.

(3) The undoubted transition made in the 12th century from a pluralist, partially literate, partially oral learned cultural environment in which power, institutional validation and authority were in flux (ca. 1050-1175 A.D.) to a monolithic one in which institutional validation or authorisation of certain forms of knowledge by the dominant institutions of the day (universities, studia , etc.) caused a regularization of studies (the exclusion of some from the curriculum, the confirmation of others, bringing the curriculum closer to perceived vocational and intellectual markets, etc.), in which didactic needs lead to the growth of "author-labelling" (a fundamental but not necessary precondition for the modern western literary/historical project), and in which literate modes of thinking finally triumphed.

Propositio

The paper submits that the career and oeuvre of Alanus falls squarely in the middle of these varying themes and has been greatly influenced by them. What relationship this bears to the possibly irrelevant project of discovering "the real Alanus", or asigning his label to yet another ascribed work (the Ad Herennium commentary studied by Harry Caplan and in process of editing by Jan Ziolkowski) will be discussed in the course of the paper.

One is from time to time in the world of scholarship conscious that some topics have a ritual rather than a crucial claim to modern attention. Alan of Lille is perhaps not such a topic and may still earn his place in the affairs of modern scholars, for at least three reasons. In the first place, according to contemporaries, he knew everything that could be known - "totum scibile scivit "¹. Can we ignore this challenge to our attention, this medieval Leonardo da Vinci? How could such a statement be made, how true is it? Secondly, even on a minimal reading of Alan's career and oeuvre he seems to have been a writer of powerful intellect whose commitment to the passionate issues of the day was marked. Our current interest in the relationship between intellectuals and their society, in intelligentsias, suggests we may learn much from Alanus about a society in which learning was vitally and pragmatically essential rather than a questionable outcome of massive but vaguely directed private and public patronage. Thirdly, the medieval "construction" of Alanus's oeuvre displays such a marked lack of interest in the notion of a philologically and historically authenticated "author model" that our own cultural assumptions are jolted. We are brought up short before the deconstructionism of Barthes, Foucault, Derrida and a host of other cult names who have disoriented the comfortable studies of 19th-century philologists.

If I were to add a fourth reason, I would allege that any writer who could earn so stunning a dismissal from C. S. Lewis as Alanus did, must merit attention! Lewis, as is well known, in his The Allegory of Love,² described the Anticlaudianus as "nearly worthless", "monotonous", and deserving of a "contempt" which finally becomes "a rankling personal hatred of the author"!

To begin with the oeuvre of Alanus. At least 43 works have been attributed to Alanus on a cursory reading of recent relevant of secondary scholarship.³ The majority of these works are accepted -- on no very certain grounds -- as authentic by many scholars. These 43 works may be grouped thus:

The range of subjects and styles here is considerable, from Hermetic, platonic mystical philosophy to penitential rules, from the classical hexameter to the Goliardic form, from homosexuality and the beauty of women, to creeds and prayers.

The problems associated with such an oeuvre may be set out as follows.

In the first place, the bases of attribution are uncertain and problematic.

These bases seem to be:

1..	Direct statement by (near) contemporaries who for the most part reflect simply what was said in their day about certain curriculum textbooks traditionally grouped together;
2..	Internal references: the author mentions himself or a reference to Paris or to a contemporary;
3..	A consonance of vocubulary, style, doctrine, subject or theme between the work in question and other work(s) attributed with reasonable probability to the same author;
4..	Some manuscripts of the work in question carry an attribution to Alanus, or else a work occurs in a manuscript together with other works by Alanus.

It goes without saying that no reliable canon of attributions can be made on the basis of these categories of inference. The first category is conventionally the most reliable, and the picture that emerges is our traditional picture of Alan of Lille, based on:

(a)	A commentator on the Anticlaudianus who claims he was a student of "Alanus de Insulis", is writing up to nine years after the apparent death date of Alanus and says the memory of his magister still moves him to tears;
(b)	A German chronicler writing up to 20 years after the death of Alanus;
(c)	A Cistercian chronicler writing up to 38 years after the death of Alanus; [both nos.2 and 3 appear to have circulated in the central western regions of France, in Alsace and the Basel area];
(d)	A Paris grammarian writing up to 49 years after the death of Alanus.
(e)	A monk of Affligem (Brabant), writing up to 70 years after Alanus' death.

The portrait derived from these sources, most of them substantially removed in time and place from the areas and periods to be associated with Alanus, is a familiar one:

There was a famous Magister who taught at Paris around 1194, who was born in Flanders, at Lille (de Insulis ) and who died a Cistercian around 1203 A.D. and who wrote many "sane and catholic little works" as well as certain key works:

Anticlaudianus

Ars predicandi for use in theology. A book dedicated to Lord William of Montpellier written against the Albigensians, Waldensians, Jews, Saracens, and other heretics.

Regulae Celestis Iuris

Librum de vitiis et virtutibus

Librum Sermonum Suorum

This Alanus, as the Magister was called, inspired love and affection among his pupils and was greater than Vergil. He was also more reliable (certior ) than Homer.

Beyond this, there is no certainty at all and often not even probability. What is most desirably probable is often the most improbable. For example, in a celebrated commentary on the twelfth century Prophecies of Merlin (first appearing in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain ), the author writes:

"When I was still a little boy in Flanders I saw at Lille, where I was born, a certain woman who had been captured in the act of witchcraft and sentenced to death".

This episode, known to us also from the Chronicle of Galbert of Bruges, is a factual one and occurred in 1127 A.D. In date and place the statement fits Alan of Lille perfectly, but it is only in the 1603 A.D. printed edition of the work that the ascription to Alanus occurs, and the weight of evidence is strong enough to rule our Alan out as its author, despite the fascinating enrichment that would result for his oeuvre from such an ascription.⁴

In other respects the bases of ascription reflect more the expectations of modern readers, than contemporary practices. For example, the consonances referred to in no. 3) above are seldom very striking and do not take into account contemporary conditions of anonymity, adaptation and even plagiarism of works by different authors, or choice of style to suit subject-matter, audience or mood, and the like, according to the widespread precepts of rhetorical theory. For these reasons, too, the second basis mentioned above is of little use, and the fourth is notoriously unreliable as most manuscript attributions by name post date the year 1300.

How can an author so esteemed and so widely "published" -- some of his better known works survive in more than 100 manuscripts--- have been so uncertainly known? Alanus was -- latest evidence suggests -- a more or less exact contemporary of John of Salisbury, yet what an extraordinary contrast there is between what we know of each.

The extreme diversity of works assembled in Alanus's oeuvre puts before us conflicting emphases within the same career. An excellent example here is the thorough-going, professional and very influential commentary ascribed to Alanus, on the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, the major rhetorical curriculum text in medieval culture from the late twelfth century AD onwards.

Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny [1965] feels that there are 'strong presumptions' in favour of Alan of Lille's authorship, but Harry Caplan who knew the work better considered [1964]⁶ that there was not much to support the "presumption". It is true that some of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts of the work ascribe it to "Alanus", but we know from other evidence that there was considerable confusion, as early as the time of Dante, over exactly what "the rhetor Alanus" actually wrote.⁷ The fact that one Italian fourteenth-century manuscript quotes the couplet found as an epitaph on the tomb erected to Alanus at Cîteaux in 1492 indicates merely a conventional identification between the "rhetor Alanus" and the figure referred to by the chroniclers mentioned above.

Problems face us when we try to construct a career profile to incorporate this commentary. In the first place, the work implies a real and ongoing commitment to lecturing on the Ad Herennium in a strongly institutionalized didactic context. However, nowhere else in Alanus's career or oeuvre can we locate or sense such a professional commitment to the ars rhetorica . Not even in the Anticlaudianus, for, although it reveals much familiarity with the stylistic rules in Ad Herennium IV and a routine familiarity with dispositio, memoria and pronuntiatio, its section on rhetoric⁸ is based mainly on the De inventione, and indeed, when Ralph of Longchamps came to gloss this portion of the Anticlaudianus he used not an Ad Herennium gloss, but the De inventione gloss of Thierry of Chartres.⁹ Again, Alanus seems to have eschewed rule-based treatises in his works on the ars poetria, allowing creative exemplar-models -- the Anticlaudianus and the De Planctu Nature -- to do what others preferred to do via preceptive, rule-based treatises, the well-known "artes poetriae " manuals.¹⁰ Even the ars praedicandi of Alanus is topical and exemplary rather than schematic and rule-based. Alanus thus displays in his attention to the artes what Lotman has called a "textually or expression oriented culture" rather than a "grammatically or content oriented one".¹¹

Elsewhere in his oeuvre Alanus certainly knows about rhetoric but displays either a negative attitude towards it, or, at best, a "propaedeutic" rather than a professional one. In one sermon attributed to him, for example,¹² Alanus takes up a strongly anti-artes position, with special reference to "legiste et phisici ... grammatici et dialectici " who are accused of seeking "vana gloria ". God condemns, says Alan: "any protracted devotion to the natural sciences. There are greybeards still studying the liberal sciences, old men who are babes in theology, who offer the flower of their youth to natural science, and the faeces of their old age to theology. This is wrong. As Avianus says the liberal arts are to be greeted at the threshold. After they have lead us to the threshold of theology, to the doorway of the heavenly Queen, they should be left in peace! They are not such as we should fix our foot fast in them. They are, as it were, a bridge ...".

Even though -- curiously -- Alan does not include rhetorici in the list of idlers after vain glory just quoted, it would be a reasonable assumption that if he had been a professional lecturer on the Ad Herennium at any stage in his career, it would have to have been at an early stage of that career, in --- at the latest --- the 1150s, if we accept conventional and even medical wisdom on the subject of Alanus' life-span.¹³ This is the decade during which -- I have argued elsewhere¹⁴ -- the celebrated goliardic poem the Metamorphosis Goliae was written. We are thus directed towards the period of composition of the De planctu nature which "a été rédigé par un professeur d'Arts libéraux, que ses jeux d'esprit et ses jeux de mots rattachent aux théoriciéns de la rhétorique et du dictamen ", a professor "avant tout un rhétoriqueur, heureux de faire montre de son savoir et de sa dextérité à manier la prose d'art et les mètres classiques".¹⁵

From this same period also, dates the "sermon on the sphere" in which Alanus, as a young master, addresses his students ("attendite, commilitiones ...").¹⁶ The sermon is a rich mixture of rhetoric and Hermeticism. It begins with a reference to the spoliation of the Egyptians which St. Augustine in his "magna carta" of medieval rhetoric, the De doctrina Christiana (II.40), used as an allegorical justification for Christian exploitation of the pagan liberal disciplines, and considers the sentence "God is an intelligible sphere of which the centre is everywhere, the circumference nowhere" to be an enriching treasure of Egyptian wisdom, "altiloqua philosophi tuba, que. ... altioris theologie causa est secreta intonare ". The sentence is attributed to Cicero rhetor ; "for here is the great rhetor Tullius, who, as he shone forth with the flower of human eloquence, so he thundered forth with the loftier words of theology saying 'God is an intelligible sphere ... ' ". Now the sentence cannot, of course, be ascribed in fact to Cicero,¹⁷ but the sermon makes use of the De inventione reference to time and eternity (1.26.39) and is replete with allegorical neoplatonic conceits enabling the mind to approach some understanding of the nature of things that recall strongly the emphasis upon such conceits in the Metamorphosis Goliae, where language and sexual reproduction are emblems of reality.¹⁸ I am not submitting that Alanus wrote the Metamorphosis Goliae. There is insufficient evidence to do so and since he could have, and the sermon expresses similar ideas in prose, there is little point in pursuing the matter further. Both works reflect the kinds of perspectives that fascinated writers of Alan's type in the 1140s and 1150s. Rhetoric played an important role for such writers: it was commonly believed that the "noster doctor" of Ad Herennium, 1.11.18 was Hermes or Hermestres;¹⁹ i.e., that Hermes or Hermestres (or Hermes Trismegistus?) was the teacher of Cicero and the Metamorphosis Goliae suggests the links between fruitful language, cosmological conceits, the structure of the universe and "knowledge". It makes use of pagan mythology for its allegory of polemic and protest and uses the imagery of Martianus Capella as figura, involucrum ²⁰ with which to clothe mystic insights concerning the principle of generation, growth, reproduction, fecundity, productivity which underlies creation and for which the figure of Mercury [Hermes, Cyllenius] with his pubescent five-o'clock shadow embodies the notion of the copulatory power of eloquence²¹ expanded from the proemium of the De inventione. This "Hermetic" complex of ideas has language function both as a metaphor for the generative mechanism of the universe, and as a modus tractandi, a means of creating an understanding in man, of communicating knowledge about something that cannot be known except through metaphor. This creative synthesis of poetry, rhetoric and mystic insight is a veritable ornatus elementorum, and exornatio mundi.²²

This atmosphere of creative undercoding²³ -- from which the Alanus of the Anticlaudianus has to some extent emerged -- is, I submit, the only period of Alanus' life for which we could posit a professional preoccupation with lecturing on the ars rhetorica . However, the idea is unlikely for these reasons:

(a) The Ad Herennium cannot have been lectured on at this stage in the manner that we find in our extant manuscripts of the Alanus commentary. At this period, the De inventione was the dominant text and if the Ad Herennium had been lectured on, the result would have been something closer to Thierry's extant gloss on that text.²⁴ The "Alanus" gloss is a much later development.²⁵

(b) The world of the sermo ad sphaeram is liminal rather than structural in the sense developed by Victor Turner,²⁶ whereas the Ad Herennium commentary reflects a patently structured world of authorised or validated or institutionalised discourse from which Alanus was almost certainly excluded at this stage. Had he been, in fact, a beneficed lecturer at Paris in the period, he would surely have secured a mention in the Metamorphosis Goliae. He is more likely to have been the author of the latter poem than a magister referred to in it.

Thus, to conclude this digression we have a paradox within the oeuvre of Alanus: this oeuvre produces both a professional teaching text on a subject and in a mode that the rest of the oeuvre excludes.

A related difficulty is the sheer disproportion between the above oeuvre and that of any of the masters normally associated with Alanus, such as Peter the Chanter, Master Prepositinus, or Peter of Poitiers. No other Paris scholastic of the last quarter of the 12th century produced so diverse an oeuvre .²⁷ It is also difficult to find clear examples of the standard curriculum writings that one would normally expect to be associated with masters of the sacred page and theology in the period. All of Alan's contemporary masters of the Bible and Theology produce a dreary run of Biblical commentaries, collections of distinctions, questions, summe, sententie, disputationes, and sermons. While some small or irregular examples of some of these genres can be found in Alanus' collection, they do not dominate.

To underline this point we may recall the known figure of Thierry of Chartres.²⁸ Like Alanus, Thierry was interested in theology and the arts as a propaedeutic access to it. He was also interested in the Bible, especially the creation story. He was interested in rhetoric and in the notion that eloquence without wisdom (or vice versa) was a half baked recipe for civilization. If he is, in fact, the "doctor ... Carnotensis " of the Metamorphosis Goliae,²⁹ then he was a powerful speaker, or at least an incisive one, whose "tongue cut like a sword". Yet he has left no problematical oeuvre. It is true that the exact canon of his surviving works has not yet been established, whether, for example, he glossed this text or that, or wrote this or that commentary, but the pattern of his oeuvre is clear -- commentaries on theological works and texts in the artes, and collections of primary texts with an introduction. His surviving texts breath structure, validation, the institution, authorisation; he seems not to have displayed any prolonged interest in the problematising nature of poetry, which expresses liminality, disturbs structure or at least coats structure with sugar.³⁰

The efforts of modern scholars since at least the time of Carolus de Visch, who wrote a "Dissertatio de vita et morte Alani Magni de Insulis, Doctoris Universalis"³¹ and edited the latter's works in 1654 at Antwerp, represent a remarkable effort of philological expertise based on the primary notion of an author who lived at a particular time, wrote a number of works in a certain order, presumably meant what he wrote and would not normally have written anything that was the opposite of anything else he had written. Attempts to set up the figure of Alanus on the basis of such a model have not solved many of the real problems involved with his oeuvre , whether, for example, he did or did not write this or that, what he intended his Anticlaudianus to be, in what order he wrote, prayed, preached or taught, in what order he was impressed by various topics, Hermeticism, homosexuality, preaching, heresy, theology, rhetoric, grammar and so on. Nor has it told us why we know so little about him, or why he wrote so little about himself. John of Salisbury, for example, waxed eloquent on the subject of himself, and even so preliminary a figure as Thierry of Chartres left some strange but perhaps authentic interpolations of a personal kind in the unlikely pages of his De inventione commentary.³² These are all problems only too familiar to medievalists, but seldom are they so patently evident as in the career of Alan of Lille.

It is thus with some relief that we recall medieval indifference to the problems of accurate establishment of authorship. Alan of Lille was a growth industry in the later middle ages and his name served clearly as a useful label so that scholars and their students could find certain works in the primitive libraries and reference systems of the day; at best his name served to establish a text as worthy of study, as the basis of a lecture series, as "authoritative". Who he really was mattered little. Perhaps it should matter little to us also. The idea of an "author" of the sort we inevitably look for may be misguided; it inevitably expresses something latent in the mind of the reader or thinker contemplating the selected (anonymous or "authored") text; it is not necessarily a real, recoverable entity, unless a society has so constructed it in the first place, as ours has done.

Michel Foucault, as is well known, proposes that the notion of an author functions "to characterize the existence, circulation and operation of certain discourses within a society",³³ "to separate texts ... one from the other, defining their form and characterizing their mode of existence, (pointing) to the existence of certain groups of discourse and (referring) to the status of this discourse within a society and culture".³⁴ The proposition is peculiarly appropriate when we come to consider the Middle Ages, "a culture where discourse (circulated) without any need for an author".³⁵ It is true that the post-twelfth century period discovered increasing uses for the category of author -- witness the importance for that culture of authoritative, canonical "labels" such as "Aristotle", "Quintilian" (both referred to in late medieval texts simply as "Authority"), Cicero, the Bible, Justinian, etc. -- but, generally speaking, texts circulated frequently in the period without an author-label.

We are, therefore, entitled nowadays to pursue a somethat more diversified line of thought in regard to the "writers" of the past. Scholars will continue, with justification, to write books and articles about important "thinkers" whose works they see conveniently enough identified,³⁶ but there will be occasion also to look a little more broadly at the process of creation of author-labels and the possible utility such a perspective may have for the oeuvre of a writer such as Alan of Lille. The remainder of this paper has such an aim.

The editors of a recent monumental publication on the "Twelfth Century Renaissance", have, without realising it, alerted us to a useful starting point. They refer to the apparent waning of what are traditionally dubbed "Renaissance phenomena" during the third quarter of the (twelfth) century,³⁷ as one of the hardest problems for modern scholars to explain. This apparent "waning" may, however, be our clue to a development of considerable importance for western cultural history. May we not see here some sort of parallel to the contrast Michel Foucault draws in our day between the disappearing "left" intellectual who spoke and was acknowledged to have the right of speaking in the capacity of master of truth and justice, who was heard or purported to make himself heard as the representative of the universal, and the "specific" intellectual, the specialist, the "expert"? "The specific intellectual is the specialist in the fields of science and technology that have come to constitute the post-Darwinian world. The intellectual par excellence had hitherto been the writer ... the universal intellectual finds his fullest expression in the writer, the bearer of values and signification in which all can recognise themselves. The age of the specific intellectual, however, is one in which the intellectual is no longer the singer of eternity, but the strategist of life and death. We are living through (says Foucault) right now, the disappearance of the 'great writer' ".³⁸

In fact, the first three quarters of the twelfth century formed a crucial transitional period in which such "institutions of truth" as there were, were inchoate, in process of relocation and transformation. "For a short time (writes Southern)³⁹ broadly corresponding to the first half of the twelfth century, there was a wide opportunity for individual enterprise and for ruthless competition which was never again so uncontrolled ... quite suddenly there were many individuals who wanted new skills and new knowledge, which few masters could supply and which traditional institutional schools were by their nature and functions not well adapted to provide". It is the very unsuitability of the existing educational institutions that created a good part of the sense of dislocation and alienation that affected the "losers" in this competitive enterprise: the cathedral schools "by the mid-twelfth century ... were accepting pupils who had no intention of progressing beyond minor orders into the priesthood".⁴⁰ Their unsuitability was based on the following factors:

(a) their parent institutions (the Cathedrals) were not primarily educational institutions, and, as a consequence, control of learning and education proved initially difficult;

(b) the education they offered was frequently, being geared initially for a career in major orders, too theoretical or drawn-out or broadly-based for the emerging bureaucratic/administrative theatres of employment for literacy, with the result that cathedral school alumni (though some certainly continued to find employment in major orders)⁴¹ found themselves over-educated in lay employment, or were beaten to employment by persons less elaborately and more appropriately trained for the administrative jobs (less than 10% of the total force of justices under Henry II, it seems, were products of the cathedral schools).⁴²

(c) As Southern has shown,⁴³ the very curriculum of study within the cathedral schools was already, during the first half of the twelfth century, warping the emphasis of teaching and study in the direction of specialised, theoretical research in the artes and theology. Thus, the emergence of institutions of education better geared to the different, specialised needs of the time was inevitable.⁴⁴

An important aspect of this phenomenon is the so-called "rise of the universities"⁴⁵ as machines or engines of truth. In the struggle to develop and shelter behind these machines, those with established social connections and power did best, creating a generation of marginal intellectuals, whose only claim to privilege was their intellectual capacity. As their poetry makes clear, such claims were hard to bring to the attention of the wielders of power and privilege in society.⁴⁶ Morris speaks of the "satirists who write as outsiders" in the twelfth century, "as men who have lost hope in the cause of reform and confidence in their own prospects", of "a failure of nerve among the men of letters, as they realized that they were losing at once the power to influence policy in church and state, and the hope of promotion for themselves".⁴⁷ For Morris "the problem of alienation and order was central in the literature of the twelfth century".⁴⁸

If we were to reconstruct the identity of such intellectuals, we might have them saying, with Foucault, "that truth isn't outside power, or deprived of power ... the child of prolonged solitudes, or the privilege of those who have been able to liberate themselves".⁴⁹ We could portray them as seeing that "truth is of the world: it is produced there by virtue of multiple constraints ... each society has its own regime of truth, its 'general politics' of truth: that is, the types of discourse it harbours and causes to function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true from false statements, the way in which each is sanctioned: the techniques and procedures which are valorised for obtaining truth: the status of those who are charged wtih saying what counts as true.".⁵⁰

In the twelfth century each of these phrases can be exemplified. The scholastic commentary, sententia and quaestio ,⁵¹ representing discourse validated by the licentia docendi and the emergent machinery of the cathedral school cum universitas, manifest the valorised techniques and procedures for obtaining truth: Abelard's Sic et Non elaborated the mechanisms and instances which enabled one to distinguish true from false statements, and the progressive incorporation of the new logic into the twelfth century schools confirmed such techniques and explained them more thoroughly. The status of those who were charged with saying what counted as true was a vital issue: witness the struggles over the licentia docendi in the first half of the twelfth century, the Papacy's determined attempt to dominate the schools and nascent universities, the progressive tendency to let the special fields of law and theology determine the nature of truth.

We are dealing here with the invention of truth, the invention of rules of exclusion: "in every society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a certain number of procedures, whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers.".⁵² The "will to truth" manifested in the twelfth century,⁵³ "relies on institutional support: it is both reinforced and accompanied by whole strata of practices such as pedagogy ... the book-system, publishing, libraries, ... learned societies ... laboratories ...", "it tends to exercise a sort of pressure, a power of constraint upon other forms of discourse".⁵⁴ This "will to truth" invented competing techniques for control of discourse: the commentary,⁵⁵ the idea of the author,⁵⁶ disciplines.⁵⁷ Later manifestations of the will to truth were to alter the medieval emphases among these techniques.

Yet, there was no certainty about any of this at the time; in fact, there were many competing mechanisms and statuses; there was much awareness of the relativity of truth and truth mechanisms, much tension between the "universal intellectual" outside the established institutions of power, and the "specific intellectuals" of the incipient departments of truth in the nascent universities. In this context, writing functioned as both discourse and as anti-discourse. As a discourse it functioned in the sense sanctioned by the nascent institutions of truth -- commentum, sententia, quaestio, summa, glosa . As an anti-discourse it functioned as a web designed to problematise⁵⁸ and obscure scholastic meaning; it imported ambivalences from the humanist literary rhetoric of Graeco-Roman antiquity, it made use of a rich inheritance of Latin poetic style, rhythm and metre, it delved into the marvellous resource of late antique hermetic lore, it hid "truth" behind the involucrum, the integumentum of discourse.

It meant, in some contexts, a shift analogous to that from "medieval Gothic (or vertical) structure" (the feudal, religious, macrocosmic epistemology) to "carefully motivated naturalistic narrative" structure (the capitalist, materialist, microcosmic epistemology) in the fourteenth century.⁵⁹

"Anti-discourse" kept alive what were progressively to be seen as "discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body of theory (as proposed in 'discourse', vis-à-vis 'anti-discourse')" which would filter, hierarchise and order them in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects.⁶⁰ This "anti-discourse" is implicitly opposed "to the effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organized scientific discourse within a society ... embodied in a university, or, more generally, in an educational apparatus ... .".⁶¹

I would propose that the anti-discourse of the non-establishment intellectuals of the twelfth century, situated outside or on the margins of the developing nodes, centres, institutions of truth and authority, is what we have come to know as "humanism", as the so-called "Renaissance" feature of twelfth-century society. This is not the humanism of R. W. Southern,⁶² but a proto-humanism evincing patterns characteristic of the later Italian Renaissance, a mixture of Latin classicism, polemic, linguistic and stylistic experiment, intellectual precocity and the beginnings -- if accidental -- of philological acumen. The key to this "humanism", however, is not so much a shift in the content of intellectual life, not so much a shift of consciousness on the part of "an age as a whole", not a swing of the pendulum of fashion or whim, but the collapse of what Foucault calls the "political economy" of truth, the breaching of the monopolistic domination of literacy by the established institutions of truth -- episcopacy and monastery, together with their schools and traditional aristocratic recruitment fields.

How did this collapse occur? It occurred amidst the obscure and controversial social, textual and religious circumstances of the first half of the eleventh century and gained momentum as a result of the relatively sudden expansion of courts and bureaucracies and by consequent upward social mobility on the part of non-literate groups into literacy and membership of the new aristocracy of the literate. Monarchs and Popes were equally to blame.⁶³ One suspects also a social reaction against the hardening lines of feudal, bureaucratic and familial power in the period: Georges Duby has explained how patriarchs were drawing the line of property transmission harder and harder against females and sons other than the first-born.⁶⁴ At the same time the institutions of the Church were drawing the lines harder and harder against what we might call traditional or unqualified entry into the ranks of the Church: the effect of the Investiture Controversy was to make it harder to shove spare children into important ecclesiastical positions (though not as hard as the intellectuals of the day would have liked). For all persons "excluded" by hardening "class" lines the schools were "regarded as a vehicle of upward social mobility to improve one's standing in society".⁶⁵

Cohn, Nelson and others,⁶⁶ have stressed the marginality inherent in the eleventh and twelfth century economy, as economic change in sensitive areas promoted new urban groups and disrupted the tranquillity of the countryside. Amongst the new types of fraternity that developed to supply a need for community in these disturbed conditions, were the unlicensed school and the heretical following. Both were penetrated by the new intellectuals, and both caused the very activity of the schools to acquire a left-wing taint, which must have increased the sense of marginality felt by those whose family connections were too remote or low born to provide much security. I am referring, in fact, to a power struggle, but not one seen in the traditional sense of a struggle between those who hold power as a commodity and those who lack it as such. It is a more subtle process, in which the very potential of the mechanisms associated with literacy sorted people into place and determined the nature of intellectual discourse. The key idea is provided, perhaps, by Foucault's recent analysis of power as evident only in a continuous relationship in act, rather than as a commodity in the abstract: "between every point of a social body, between a man and a woman, between the members of a family, between a master and his pupil, between every one who knows and every one who does not, there exist relations of power".⁶⁷ Power is "not that which makes the difference between those who exclusively possess and retain it and those who do not have it and submit to it (as over the earth and its products in 'feudal' power)" but is "something which circulates ... functions in the form of a chain ... is employed and exercised through a net-like organization",⁶⁸ is based on "the production of effective instruments for the formation and accumulation of knowledge -- methods of observation, techniques of registration, procedures for investigation and research, apparatuses of control ... power, when it is exercised through these subtle mechanisms cannot but evolve, organize and put into circulation a knowledge, or rather apparatuses of knowledge which are not ideological constructs".⁶⁹ This kind of power, which Foucault distinguishes from sovereignty, can be traced to the fact that "from a particular point in time and for reasons which need to be studied" the mechanisms of power "began ... to reveal their political usefulness and to lend themselves to economic profit, and ... as a natural consequence, all of a sudden, they came to be colonised and maintained by global mechanisms and the entire state system".⁷⁰

Foucault is dealing with "mechanisms of the exclusion of madness, and of the surveillance of infantile sexuality", but, by analogy, it is possible to view the mechanisms of intellectual control of the twelfth century as the crucial model for the kind of disciplinary power ("this non-sovereign power, which lies outside the form of sovereignty, is disciplinary power") that underlies "the powers of modern society".⁷¹ To study this kind of power "we should direct our researches ... towards domination and the material operators of power, towards forms of subjection and the inflections and utilisations of their localised systems and towards strategic apparatuses". The "material forms" of this power are "institutions such as prisons, clinics, schools and universities",⁷³ and "medicine, jurisprudence, psychology, philosophy and literary criticism are examples of its "authorized knowledge and forms of research".⁷⁴