Leonine verse

Last updated

Leonine verse is a type of versification based on internal rhyme, and commonly used in Latin verse of the European Middle Ages. The invention of such conscious rhymes, foreign to Classical Latin poetry, is traditionally attributed to a probably apocryphal monk Leonius, who is supposed to be the author of a history of the Old Testament (Historia Sacra) preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. It is possible that this Leonius is the same person as Leoninus, a Benedictine musician of the twelfth century, in which case he would not have been the original inventor of the form. It is sometimes referred to disparagingly as "jangling verse" by classical purists, for example 19th century antiquaries, who consider it absurd and coarse and a corruption of and offensive to the high ideals of classical literature.

Contents

In English, the rhyme may be between a word within the line (often before a caesura) and the word at the end. Shakespeare used it to denote absurd characters, as in the speech of Caliban in The Tempest. [1]

Examples

A detail of a watercolor by Augustus Hare showing the Latin Leonine verse inscribed on Bede's tomb. Leonine Verse on Bede's Tomb, painted by Augustus Hare.jpg
A detail of a watercolor by Augustus Hare showing the Latin Leonine verse inscribed on Bede's tomb.

Latin

Leonine verses from the tomb of the Venerable Bede in the Gallee Chapel of Durham Cathedral, possibly from the 8th century

HAC SUNT IN FOSSA – BEDAE VENERABILIS OSSA

Leonine verses in the mosaic on top of the marble ciborio in the Chiesa di Santa Maria in Portico in Campitelli

Hic est illa PIAE – Genitricis Imago MarIAE
Quae discumbENTI – Gallae patuit metuENTI [2]

Leonine verses by Marbodius of Rennes, De Lapidibus, around 1040

Lingua nequit fARI - mens nulla valet meditARI
Quantus mente fUROR - mihi est, quibus ignibus UROR [3] |


Leonine verses in the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Torcello, around 1100

Formula virtutis – Maris astrum, Porta salutis
Prole Maria levat – quos conjuge subdidit Eva
Sum deus atq(ue) caro – patris et sum matris imago
non piger ad lapsum – set flentis p(ro)ximus adsum [4]

Leonine verses in mosaic in the apse of the Cathedral of Cefalù, around 1150

Factus homo Factor – hominis factique Redemptor
Iudico corporeus – corpora corda Deus [5]

Leonine verses in the Portale dell'abbazia di Leno dell'abate Gunterio, in the year 1200

HAEC NON LENENSIS – TELLUS FERTUR LEONENSIS
CUI NON LENONES – NOMEN POSUERE LEONES
FORMA LEONINA – SIGNANS BIS MARMORA BINA
DICITUR OFFERRE – LOCA VOCE NON AUTEM RE
FELIX EST NOMEN – FELIX EST NOMINIS OMEN
QUOD NON LENONES – POSUERUNT IMMO LEONES [6]

Another very famous poem in a tripart Leonine rhyme is the De Contemptu Mundi of Bernard of Cluny, whose first book begins:

Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus:
Ecce minaciter, imminet arbiter, ille supremus.
Imminet imminet, ut mala terminet, æqua coronet,
Recta remuneret, anxia liberet, æthera donet.
(These current days are the worst of times: let us keep watch.
Behold the menacing arrival of the Supreme Judge.
He is coming, He is coming to end evil, crown the just,
reward the right, set the worried free and grant eternal life.)

As this example of tripartiti dactylici caudati (dactylic hexameter rhyming couplets divided into three) shows, the internal rhymes of leonine verse may be based on tripartition of the line (as opposed to a caesura in the center of the verse) and do not necessarily involve the end of the line at all.

In 1893, the American composer Horatio Parker set the Hora novissima to music in his cantata of the same name.

The epitaph of Count Alan Rufus, dated by Richard Sharpe and others to 1093, is described by André Wilmart as being in Leonine hexameter:

Stella nuit regni : comitis caro marcet Alani :
Anglia turbatur : satraparum flos cineratur :
Iam Brito flos regum, modo marcor in ordine rerum
Praecepto legum, nitet ortus sanguine regum.
Dux viguit summus, rutilans a rege secundus.
Hunc cernens plora : ‘requies sibi sit, Deus’ ora.
Vixit nobilium : praefulgens stirpe Brittonum. [7]

English

A leonine rhyme is used by Edward Lear in his humorous poem "The Owl and the Pussy Cat":

They took some honey, and plenty of money

Related Research Articles

Dactylic hexameter is a form of meter or rhythmic scheme frequently used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry. The scheme of the hexameter is usually as follows :

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epic poetry</span> Lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily detailing extraordinary and heroic deeds

An epic poem, or simply an epic, is a lengthy narrative poem typically about the extraordinary deeds of extraordinary characters who, in dealings with gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Epigram</span> Brief memorable statement

An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek ἐπίγραμμα. This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia.

In poetry, metre or meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study and the actual use of metres and forms of versification are both known as prosody.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poetry</span> Form of literature

Poetry, also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, a prosaic ostensible meaning. A poem is a literary composition, written by a poet, using this principle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giovanni Gabrieli</span> Italian composer (c1554/1557-1612)

Giovanni Gabrieli was an Italian composer and organist. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance to Baroque idioms.

The Johannine Comma is an interpolated phrase (comma) in verses 5:7–8 of the First Epistle of John.

Iambic pentameter is a type of metric line used in traditional English poetry and verse drama. The term describes the rhythm, or meter, established by the words in each line. Rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables called "feet". "Iambic" indicates that the type of foot used is the iamb, which in English is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. "Pentameter" indicates that each line has five "feet".

De contemptu mundi is the most well-known work of Bernard of Cluny. It is a 3,000 verse poem of stinging satire directed against the secular and religious failings he observed in the world around him. He spares no one; priests, nuns, bishops, monks, and even Rome itself are mercilessly scourged for their shortcomings. For this reason it was first printed by Matthias Flacius in Varia poemata de corrupto ecclesiae statu as one of his testes veritatis, or witnesses of the deep-seated corruption of medieval society and of the Church, and was often reprinted by Protestants in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriello Chiabrera</span> Italian poet and playwright, 1552–1638

Gabriello Chiabrera was an Italian poet, sometimes called the Italian Pindar. His "new metres and a Hellenic style enlarged the range of lyric forms available to later Italian poets."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of literary terms</span>

This glossary of literary terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts used in the discussion, classification, analysis, and criticism of all types of literature, such as poetry, novels, and picture books, as well as of grammar, syntax, and language techniques. For a more complete glossary of terms relating to poetry in particular, see Glossary of poetry terms.

This is a glossary of poetry terms.

The golden line is a type of Latin dactylic hexameter frequently mentioned in Latin classrooms and in contemporary scholarship about Latin poetry, but which apparently began as a verse-composition exercise in schools in early modern Britain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Latin biographies of Muhammad</span>

A number of biographies of Muhammad were written in Latin during the 9th to 13th centuries.

Latin prosody is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following article provides an overview of those laws as practised by Latin poets in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, with verses by Catullus, Horace, Virgil and Ovid as models. Except for the early Saturnian poetry, which may have been accentual, Latin poets borrowed all their verse forms from the Greeks, despite significant differences between the two languages.

Su patriotu sardu a sos feudatarios, widely known also by its incipit as Procurade 'e moderare, is a protest and antifeudal folk song in the culture of Sardinia.

The Latin rhythmic hexameter or accentual hexameter is a kind of Latin dactylic hexameter which arose in the Middle Ages alongside the metrical kind. The rhythmic hexameter did not scan correctly according to the rules of classical prosody; instead it imitated the approximate sound of a typical metrical hexameter by having roughly the same number of syllables and putting word accents in approximately the same places in the line.

References

  1. ↑ Racism and Early Blackface Comic Traditions: From the Old World to the New By Robert Hornback, p.195
  2. ↑ Pietro Zani, Enciclopedia metodica critico-ragionata delle belle arti: dell' abate D. Piero Zani, Fidentino. Parma: Tipografia ducale, 1817, pt. 1, vol. 8, p. 161 (on-line)
  3. ↑ Poesia latina medievale, introduzione, testi, traduzione, note, trascrizioni musicali a cura di Giuseppe Vecchi. Parma 1959, p. 522
  4. ↑ Renato Polacco, La cattedrale di Torcello, Venezia 1984, p. 52
  5. ↑ Demus O., The Mosaics of Norman Sicily, London, 1945, pp. 4-5
  6. ↑ Francesco Antonio Zaccaria, Dell'antichissima badia di Leno, Venezia 1767, p. 35
  7. ↑ Epitaph of Alan Rufus as recorded in the Chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds, Bodleian Library MS. Bodl. 297, published in Thomas Arnold, 1890, Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, London: Printed for H.M. Stationery Office by Eyre and Spottiswoode, p. 350.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.