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This volume deals with the medieval attitude towards, and use of, the Graeco-Roman art of rhetoric, one of the major foundations of education and practice in ancient times. It is based in part upon manuscripts I have assembled and studied in novel ways,¹ and in part upon my reading of the medieval sources. The reasons why this volume is being published now are many.² In the first place, the original dissertation upon which it is based, has been much used³ but is hard to locate,⁴ and it is not available on-line. Secondly, the material it covers has not been covered by any other major publication, though individual articles have been written on certain topics,⁵ and, most recently, relevant commentaries have begun to be published.⁶ Two earlier volumes published by myself, or with Virginia Cox,⁷ cover some part of the field, but, in the case of the volume with Virginia Cox, only briefly, and in the case of the volume published by myself, only in regard to a certain class of sources.⁸ Thirdly, the topic is an important one. It delineates exactly how dependent medieval culture was upon its classical past, in an area crucial to that classical past, but, as conventionally assumed, not so relevant to medieval Christian culture, and in this latter regard, the voluminous attention paid by medieval scholars to classical rhetorical theory should disprove to many any alleged neglect of this subject on their part. The material should also throw much light on the contrast between Renaissance humanist and medieval attitudes towards the classical past. The conventional assumption in this regard stresses the comprehensive accuracy of Renaissance humanist attitudes, and the sloppy neglect of the medieval attitudes.⁹ The present volume should allow a much truer assessment of these comparative attitudes. It should also be remembered that contrasting these with present attitudes to the classical past will throw much light on how and why medieval attitudes differ from our own, and reflection on this topic will, in turn throw much light on the nature of medieval cultural attitudes in general. A fourth reason is that the present volume includes reference to an extensive range of relevant materials that have appeared since the original volume was written but have not been used or acknowledged previously in the present context.

This last reason will provoke any reader to ask what has been updated and where. The answer here is that the main text of the volume is much as it was originally written (and in particular Ch5 Conclusion),¹⁰ though corrections have been made and some new material has been entered, for example, in connection with Alcuin’s attitude towards rhetoric,¹¹ in regard to new sources provided by Riesenweber,¹² in regard to the use of Cicero’s speeches among the rhetors,¹³ in regard to rhetoric as unstabling ‘word power’,¹⁴ in regard to Dante,¹⁵ and in regard to works published subsequent to the date of original composition and which completely outmode the items referred to in the original dissertation,¹⁶ and in the new, introductory chapters. The Overview of manuscripts in Ch4.1.2 is also new. I have also added a new conclusion to Ch4.1¹⁷ and rewritten both original appendices into my text at relevant points, adding new material as I went.¹⁸ Several other additions, rewrites of a similar nature have also been added. Material subsequent to the original date of composition will be found in the main text mostly in the two chapters marked as PrChA and PrChB. Readers of PrChA should not consider a topic exhausted until they have also read PrChB and Ch4.1.

The major ‘improvement’, however, has been that footnotes (alas, already extensive in the original dissertation) have been very substantially updated by reference to new materials. The reader can detect these by reference to the dates of the publications in question. While it was originally intended to mark all additions / changes in a different font, it was eventually decided that this would be pedantic and not of much interest to potential readers, who are encouraged to take the volume on the whole as a new, printed, addition to the literature on the subject. Anyone concerned to check exactly what is new or changed, is encouraged to secure a copy of the original dissertation, and to make suitable comparisons. It should be stressed here that preservation of the material in the original footnotes is valuable because scholars nowadays do not make much reference to such materials, however relevant they may be, and their inclusion should indicate how research was carried on in the field so many decades ago. It should be added here, however, that the ‘updating’ of the present volume has not been complete or exhaustive, largely owing to the limitations of my own knowledge. Nevertheless, any reader interested in pursuing a topic will find here a useful start on work published after 1972.

Additions / changes to the main text of the original dissertation on which the main text of the present volume has been based are substantial, but they do not upset the coherence of the original dissertation and have been governed by the need to include any really relevant subsequent material which it would be misleading not to include, or which renders any part of the original text as incorrect (there are few examples of this), and to make sure the whole text of the volume can be read as if it were written today.¹⁹ The footnotes are a different matter, and some may find that they are not as systematic or coherent as might be desired. Their situation, however, can be defended by observing that the nature of footnotes permits such a lack of system and coherence, and that I, as their author, view footnotes as deep quarries within which those who choose to follow them up at different points might find a genuine wealth of material, which should not disturb the coherence and flow of the main text. My intention in regard to the footnotes has been to include reference to any items that bear some relevance to what is already there, or in the main text. That I have interpreted ‘relevance’ rather widely should not indicate that there is any material included of absolutely no relevance to the subject of the volume. Reference to adjacent arts, such as dictamen, the artes predicandi, and poetriae, while not as complete as material relating to the classical art of rhetoric in general use in the medieval period, can be defended as these are major sites for the applied use of classical rhetorical theory, but they are dealt with satisfactorily in many other publications.²⁰ I have attempted to provide both Latin and English for quotations in the main body of the text below, except in a very few cases where I feel the reader should confront the text as it was written, but in the footnotes Latin alone is sometimes provided (and occasionally other European languages). My justification here is that those who follow up the footnotes will have the necessary language skills required.²¹ My translations are sometimes freer than strict students of the Latin provided might allow, but my intention here has been to convey to the English reader what I think the original Latin was getting at.

The order in which items are cited in the footnotes varies. In some cases a chronological arrangement has been observed, but in others the order of citation is the order of importance of the items cited in my view.

A final question that might perplex a reader, is why there are two prefatory chapters, rather than a single one. I supplied the following explanation in n. 1 to PrChB: ‘What follows is, basically, a worked up text of a paper which I delivered in February 2005 at Claremont, Los Angeles. It ranges perhaps more widely than might be required by the present volume, but sets many important aspects of the topic in context and supplies material and references considerably subsequent to the date at which the present volume was originally composed’. My justification here is that whilst PrChA was specially composed for the present volume, PrChB had an earlier and different origin. Presenting it as it was worked up from delivery provides a different and broader approach to the subject-matter of the present volume, and I thought this difference was worth preserving. To have combined the two preliminary chapters would have caused some approaches of interesting relevance to be lost.

A final note. In addition to other persons thanked or acknowledged in the course of this volume, I would like to express my gratitude here to the Brill copy-editor, Patrick Hogan, who saved me from many errors, and to Giulia Moriconi, Assistant Editor, Classical Studies, and (Ms) Gera van Bedaf, Production Editor, Central Editorial Dept. at Brill who enabled the volume to leap many obstacles and problems along its tortuous path to publication. I would also like to thank my life-long intellectual companion, (Dr) D.J. McRuvie, who suggested the title of this volume. I have dedicated the volume to my wife, who has stood by me for 54 years, in sickness and in health, who endured the original composition of the doctoral dissertation upon which the present volume is based, and who urged me to complete this revision when I was many times inclined not to do so. Gratias immensas illi ago.