The Anglo-Saxons were pioneers in the study of Latin as a foreign language, yet they learned Latin without the help of a systematic account of Latin syntax. In this study, I examine early medieval grammatical treatises for evidence of how Anglo-Saxon Latin learners might have acquired the tools necessary to understand the structure of Latin. In studying syntactical doctrine in the early medieval grammatical curriculum, I strive to redress the bias of recent scholarship that has focused largely on lexical and morphological aspects of the Anglo-Saxons’ teaching of Latin.
In my Introduction, I survey the accounts of grammar that were most widely available in early Anglo-Saxon England, Donatus’s Ars minor and Ars maior. Priscian’s Ars de nomine, pronomine, et verbo, and Book 1 of Isidore’s Etvmologiae. I consider what syntactical doctrine they do contain, and I suggest what the gaps are between the doctrine available in these works and the skills needed for mastery of Latin.
In Part I, “Evidence from the Metrical Treatises,” I focus on Aldhelm’s De metris and De pedum regulis and Bede’s De arte metrica. I argue that these accounts of Latin meter offer ways of understanding language as formally patterned, and also reveal that Anglo-Saxons had a working concept of semantic completeness.
In Part II, “Bede on Rhetoric and Usage,” I consider Bede’s handbook of rhetorical figures, De schematibus et tropis. and his handbook of Latin usage, De orthographia. I argue that the rhetorical figures gave early medieval students their most extensive arsenal of tools for negotiating continuous Latin text. The De orthographia itself conveys a significant amount of Latin syntax, and it demonstrates that even more syntactical doctrine must have been in common use in Anglo-Saxon schools.
In Part III, “Carolingian Developments and Later Anglo-Saxon England,” I suggest ways in which texts newly available in the Carolingian period would have given students additional tools for understanding the structures of Latin. I survey work currently under way on ninth- and tenth-century curricular developments, and suggest several avenues of further research into the Anglo-Saxon reception of those developments.