On the Meanings of <i>Decor</i> and <i>Dignitas</i> in Bede’s Account of Cædmon

After his translation of Cædmon’s Hymn, Bede offers a summary statement on the difficulty of translating Old English verse into Latin: Hic est sensus, non autem ordo ipse uerborum, quae dormiens ille canebat; neque enim possunt carmina, quamuis optime conposita, ex alia in aliam linguam ad uerbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatis transferri.1 (This is the sense but not the order of the words which he sang while sleeping. For songs cannot be translated literally, however well composed, from one language to another without the loss of their decor and dignitas.) Bede’s brief discussion of translation and its limitations here clearly picks up some of the central tensions present in rendering verse into prose in a different language. The tension between sense and word order recalls Jerome’s worries about translating the Bible ‘where even the order of the words is a mystery’.2 Furthermore, Bede highlights the difficulty in preserving the decor and dignitas of the source-text in translation. Some comment is needed to understand the use of each of these words in this context. Colgrave originally translates the phrase as ‘without some loss of beauty and dignity’. André Crépin instead supposes, without argument, that decor refers to sound and dignitas to sense.3 R. A. B. Mynors repeats this opinion in his edition of the Historia and states that ‘Colgrave’s translation of “decoris ac dignitatis” misses the point’.4 Crépin’s supposition, while much closer than Colgrave’s ‘beauty and dignity’, also seems to miss the point. Some philological analysis of these terms is needed to bear this out. First it must be noted that, in this context, decor and dignitas are being used to describe the words of a poem and the speech of its author in Old English. In the case of decor there are at least three clear antecedents to Bede: Jerome, Diomedes, and Charisius.5 I will begin by considering two examples where Jerome uses the word with respect to translation.6 First, in his Ep. 57, he associates decor with the elegance and beauty of a translation.7 This beauty can be undermined, if a translator commits the fault of cacozelia, by which he attempts to translate with too much rhetorical flourish.8 This is a problem to which Jerome returns in his Ep. 106. In his discussion of Psalm 5:5, Jerome comments on its translation into Latin and how one should do away with the cacozelia (excessive rhetorical flourish) of the translator: ‘you will destroy the euphony and, when we follow the cacozelia of the translator, we do away with all beauty [decorem] of translation; and this is the rule of a good translator, that he express the idioms [ίδιώματα] of another language in the idiom [proprietate] of his own’.9 Evidently, the beauty (decor) of a translation and its excessive or restricted use can undermine the euphony of the text. Jerome immediately relates this to his notion of proprietas as using idiomatic language to ensure that both the words and the idiomata are translated into the target-language. Understood in light of this passage, decor does not only pertain to beautiful writing; it also has implications for the euphony of a text and the preservation of the sense (understood as idiom) of the source-language in translation. While Jerome serves as good evidence for where Bede could find this use of decor with respect to language, consideration of the grammarians offers a more nuanced picture of the word’s semantics in this context and another set of sources which Bede knew well. Bede’s use of decor has a relatively straightforward meaning to work out from his background in the Latin grammatical tradition.10 In his De orthographia (DO), Bede distinguishes between the use of decus and decor as follows: ‘decus is of honor, decor of form’.11 To understand exactly what Bede means here some consultation of the grammarians who at times counterpose decor with decus is necessary.12 Bede’s source may be the De differentiis liber (attributed to Cornelius Fronto in Keil), but there is little evidence beyond close verbal parallels to corroborate this.13 If Fronto is Bede’s source, he and Bede only show how decor is distinguished from decus; they do not quite provide a definition. It seems from Bede’s account in the DO that decor pertains to the form of language, which may include both sound and sense. The grammarians provide support for this reading and the relation of decor to rhetorical ornamentation in general. For example, Charisius uses it in his definition of tropes: ‘a trope is a word carried over from its proper signification to a likeness not its own for the sake of beauty [decoris] or necessity or ornament’.14 Diomedes employs a near identical use of the word for his definitions of metaplasm, scheme, trope, and metaphor where he reuses Charisius’ ‘decoris … causa’ in each instance.15 Diomedes also uses decor in his treatment of iterative verbs where he collocates it with figura: ‘these are iterated which can assume beauty and figure of speech’.16 But it is Diomede’s treatment of vices of speech (de vitiis orationis) that provides a plenary sense for how decor is used with respect to language. Diomedes defines vices of speech as follows: ‘the vices of speech are of three kinds: obscure, inornate, unrefined’.17 He further subdivides these three kinds of vices into specific categories. Obscure vices have eight kinds, inornate vices have five, and unrefined vices have two.18 In his brief treatments of these vices, Diomedes gives a definition and a few, chiefly poetic, examples. Sometimes he adds brief explanations about why these are vices and the effect each has on one’s speech. In such explanations, Diomedes uses the word decor three times to explain a vice’s effect. Notably, there is one such use of decor for each of the three main categories of vices.19 In each of these instances the beauty of speech is either done away with entirely or serves as a basis for producing excessively stylized speech. For example, in the definition of cacozelia Diomedes writes: ‘cacozelia is a statement spoiled by striving for beauty, when speech is disfigured by the very thing with which an author wished to adorn it’.20 Finally, Bede’s own use of decor in his De arte metrica (DAM) also accords with its relationship to the form of the line. In chapter 11 ‘the best kind of verse’, Bede notes that hexameters where the first word agrees with the penultimate or the last word with a word in the middle are the most beautiful kind of verse.21 After giving an example from Sedulius (Carmen paschale 1.132: ‘mitis in inmitem virga est animata draconem’), Bede writes ‘he places mitis before virga, inmitem before draconem … not because this must always be observed but because when they do occur it is beautiful [decori]’.22 Similarly, at the beginning of his De schematibus et tropis (DST), Bede straightforwardly states that the order of the words of scripture often differs from regular usage exactly for the sake of beauty ( causa decoris).23 This shows that Bede directly and unambiguously associates decor with the use of rhetorical schemes (he makes no mention of it with respect to tropes, though it is not inconceivable that the word is just as appropriate for that given the evidence from the grammarians) whether in verse as with Sedulius or prose as in the Scriptures. Judging from these examples from Charisius and Diomedes, both of whom Bede knew well,24 and from Bede himself, decor applies not only to the sound of beautiful language, as Crépin implies, but also to the beauty of its sense through employing schemes and tropes, which together include figures of thought, sense, sound, and arrangement. This shows that Bede in his use of decor includes both the notions of ‘sound and sense’ as Crépin asserts but it is restricted to formal constraints (metrical, verbal, etc.), and the use of rhetorical tropes and schemes. Thus, Crépin is correct to see that Bede asserts these features, as they appear in the Old English, are missing from his Latin translation, but he does not specify that for Bede the word decor would carry this specific formal and rhetorical sense. Furthermore, this leaves the problem of working out what is meant by dignitas in the above passage. Bede’s use of dignitas presents a more complicated picture. The use of dignitas with respect to language has a long history in the Latin grammarians and rhetoricians. According to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, dignitas is one of the four parts of speech (sermo).25 Its anonymous author writes, ‘dignitas is what renders speech ornate, adorning it with variety’.26 Following this, the author states that dignitas is divided into figures of diction and thought.27 In other words, dignitas refers to the rhetorical figures used in a speech. Similar uses of this term appear in several other classical authors.28 Though there is agreement on this use of dignitas when it refers to language among these authors, Bede likely did not know it from them. Furthermore, if Bede were employing this word to mean what these ancient authors meant, his comment on translating Cædmon would be an unnecessary pleonasm. Bede’s source for the use of dignitas in this context, like decor, likely comes from the grammarians. Diomedes uses this word in the same treatment of composition where, as discussed above, he uses decor. After quoting two passages from Cicero, Diomedes writes: ‘The composition of this period is decorated [decoratur] to such a degree that, if you should wish to remove or entirely change anything, both the dignity [dignitas] and power of all the material and words would perish.’29 In this passage Diomedes shows how dignitas relates to decor. Dignitas evidently pertains to the gravity or force of what is said. To alter any aspect of Cicero’s speech would cause the rhetorical force of his words to fail. This same anxiety about changing the order of the words is seen in Bede’s opening statement that Cædmon’s ‘ordo uerborum’ has not been preserved. If Bede is following Diomedes, or a similar notion from elsewhere, in his use of dignitas, the rearrangement of the Old English in the Latin translation would necessitate a diminishment in the translation’s dignitas (weight, rhetorical force, or charm). If we understand dignitas to mean ‘sense’ as Crépin suggests, then Bede flatly contradicts himself in the space of a single sentence. Bede’s opening claim is that his translation preserves Cædmon’s sense. It seems that rather than ‘sense’, Bede’s use of dignitas refers to the emotive force of Cædmon’s hymn. The claim Bede is making about his translation, in this light, becomes quite similar to what Jerome stated. Translation often fails to preserve the rhetorical charm and persuasive, or in Bede’s case rhetorical or affective, force of the words in the source-language. A good translator, in Jerome’s opinion, is one who takes care to preserve the meaning of the source-text and prioritizes euphonia over cacozelia. Bede demonstrates this by preserving Cædmon’s sense while allowing for the rhetorical figures and force of the text to be lost in service to Latin idiom.30 To give one example of what this loss of decor and dignitas may look like in Bede’s translation consider the opening lines from the Old English version of Cædmon’s Hymn: Nu sculon herigean heofonrices weard, meotodes meahte and his modgeþanc, weorc wuldorfæder, swa he wundra gehwæs, ece drihten, or onstealde. (Cædmon’s Hymn, ll. 1a-4b) (Now we must praise the guardian of the kingdom of heaven, the maker’s might and his mind’s intention, the work of the father of glory, as he, the eternal Lord, established the origin of every wonder)31 These opening lines are replete with lexical variation and an enumeration of the works of God in his various roles as guardian (weard), creator (meotodes), father of glory (wuldorfæder), and Lord (drihten). There is also grammatical variation in the use of accusative (weard), genitive (meotodes), genitive (wuldorfæder), nominative (drihten). These variations each occur in one alliterating line. This facilitates a periodic structure that repeats without repeating—i.e. the same figure, God, is evoked through his different functions—on a lexical and grammatical level. This lexical variation in lines 2 and 3 is reinforced by alliteration with meahte and modgeþanc, and weorc and wundra, respectively. These alliterative links facilitate a connection between God’s role as creator with might and mind in the first place, and between God’s role as father of glory with his work and every wonder in the second place. These sonic connections both delight the listener and reinforce a mystagogic narrative of God’s role as author of creation. God facilitates material creation through his might and thought which are unambiguously interpreted through alliteration on work (the outcome of his might and thought) as wonders. In the final line alliteration between ece and or reinforce the wonderment of God’s creative powers and his creations. In establishing the origin of every wonder, God himself has also performed a wonder. The structure of this final line also reinforces the separation between God and His creation. The eternal Lord occupies one half line and is separated by the caesura from the temporal act of creating (onstealde) an origin—itself a thing that only exists as a fixed point in time. The metre of the poem and the verbal near-repetitions in the text all contribute to a formal arrangement that has exegetical significance. Cædmon through arranging the verses in this way is able to charm his listeners and instruct them on the basics of Christian doctrine. Bede’s Latin, while retaining the literal meaning of Cædmon’s verse, does not retain these formal and forceful features present in the Old English text: Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam Creatoris et consilium illius, facta Patris gloriae: quomodo ille, cum sit aeternus Deus, omnium miraculorum auctor extitit (HE, 4.24) (Now we must praise the author of the heavenly kingdom, the power of the Creator and His wisdom32, the works of the Father of glory: how He, since He is the eternal God, was the author of all miracles.) One thing is immediately clear from Bede’s translation: it lacks the periodic structure of the Old English original. The words arranged as they are in the Latin lack the rhythmic organization of Cædmon’s verses and his clausal structure. Bede introduces the ‘cum sit aeternus Deus’ as a way of explaining the meaning of God’s role as author of all miracles. In Cædmon no such explanatory clause is required because the metre and alliteration already signal the relationship between God’s eternity and the temporal origin of wonders. This change leads to a clunkier presentation of the same material in Bede. Furthermore, Bede interprets for his audience the meaning of Cædmon’s ‘wundra gehwæs … or onstealde’ by asserting the simple ‘omnium miraculorum auctor extitit’. This reinterpretation changes Cædmon’s active demonstration of God as creating subject through the use of the transitive verb ‘onsteallan’ to a copulative ‘extitit’ which takes away the mystagogic affective force of showing God creating. This is a subtle difference but the effect of ‘God was the author of all miracles’ cannot be considered as forceful as ‘God established the origin of all wonders’. And, again, the absence of the alliteration and metre in Bede’s Latin removes the effect of coupling God’s attributes with his works and the use of the caesura to separate him as an eternal being from the temporal origin of his creation. Finally, the repetitions seen in Cædmon are not entirely preserved and lose their forceful effect outside the context of Old English alliterative verse. Bede changes Cædmon’s guardian (weard) to author (auctor),33 and Lord (drihten) to God (Deus); he retains Cædmon’s creator (meotodes) and father of glory ( wuldorfæder) with ‘creatoris’ and ‘Patris gloriae’. What becomes lost in Bede’s translation is a full enumeration of the various functions God plays, and, importantly, the naming of God as God with ‘Deus’ (the Old English requires the listener to intuit that God is meant) effectively erases Cædmon’s method of using only metonymies. Bede’s Latin translation, as seen from this short example, lacks the formal—both metrical and grammatical—and rhetorical decor, and the affective force, via mystagogy, of the dignitas of the Old English original.

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