CURSUS

A system of Latin accentual prose rhythm widely employed in late antiquity and in the later Middle Ages. Greek rhetoricians of the classical and Hellenistic periods had developed a system of prose rhythm based on quantity that was adapted to Latin use by Cicero. Special attention was given to the rhythm before strong pauses. Since word combination played a significant role in metrical prose rhythm or clausulae, the word accent could not be ignored entirely. As this Latin stress accent became pronounced, word accent became more important, particularly in the last word in metrical clausulae. Thus from the late 2d century to cassiodorus and gregory the great, writers were shifting from a system of clausulae based on quantity to one based on accent called cursus, although better prose writers retained a feeling for quantity in their prose rhythm to the end of antiquity. In this period of transition, three favorite forms of the cursus emerged: cursus planus (e.g., in English, "All's well that ends well"), based on the cretic-spondee clausula; the cursus tardus (e.g., "happy and glorious"), based on the double cretic; and the cursus velox ("varsity education"), based on the cretic-dichoree. Word combinations found in the ancient accentual prose rhythm never conformed fully to the strict rules of the medieval cursus, which excluded monosyllables and any word of more than five syllables (according to Buoncompagno).

The ancient cursus was used by the Fathers of the Church in the ancient prayers of the Church and in the imperial and papal chanceries. The common name for the cursus, the cursus leoninus, took its name from Pope Leo the Great.

The cursus fell into disuse after Gregory but was revived by the dictatores of Monte Cassino. Its use was promoted by Pope Urban II in the papal chancery, where it become stereotyped as the Cursus Curiae Romanae, a rhythmical style utilizing only the three above-mentioned kinds of cursus, out of the many possible forms. With the spread of papal influence, the Cursus Curiae Romanae was adopted by all the chanceries of western Europe. It is to be noted that the School of Orléans differed from that of the Roman Curia only in matters of terminology, for the cursus (e.g., John of Garland and Peter of Blois) of Orléans preserved a classical terminology of dactyls and spondees.

The Cursus Curiae Romanae was also favored by writers outside the chanceries. Many chroniclers in England used it, though not Matthew Paris, whose rhythmical usages were markedly idiosyncratic. The best use of the Cursus Curiae Romanae in medieval literature was in the Philobiblon ascribed to richard of bury (d.1345), in which every clause was laced together in a concatenation of some 19,000 accented clausulae.

The Cursus Curiae Romanae dominated the writing of official Latin prose for many centuries and found an analogue in the Collects of the book of common prayer as translated by Cranmer, and, in another key, probably in the prose of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

In addition to the Cursus Curiae Romanae as used by the papal chancery and writers such as Richard of Bury, there is a much-used cursus that is named (seemingly only by modern scholars) the cursus trispondaicus. It is an ending consisting of a word of six syllables accented on the penultimate. Some think that there is also a singular rhythmic form of this, by extension, to include a word of eight syllables (or seven syllables followed by a monosyllable), i.e., four spondees (e.g., excommunicationis or a communicatione ), but this is questionable.

The earliest treatise on the use of the medieval cursus is said to be preserved in the work of Transmondus (late 12th century; in Paris Bibliothèque nationale, Lat. 2820, fol. 59^v and 13688, fol. 127).

Bibliography: n. denholm-young, "The Cursus in England," Oxford Essays in Medieval History Presented to H. E. Salter (Oxford 1934), for general history and bibliog. to 1930. k. polheim, Die lateinische Reimprosa (Berlin 1925). l. laurand, Études sur le style des discours de Cicéron, 3 v. in 1 (v.1, 3d ed.;v.2 and 3, 2d ed; Paris 1926–28). m. g. nicolau, L'Origine du "cursus" rhythmique et les débuts de l'accent d'intensité en Latin (Paris 1930). h. lausberg, Handbuch der literarischen Rhetorik (Munich 1960). g. lindholm, Studien zum mittellateinischen Prosarhythmus (Stockholm 1963), with excellent bibliog.; use of cursus as weapon of textual criticism is not developed here. For Matthew Paris, see r. a. browne, ed., British Latin Selections, A.D. 500–1400 (Oxford 1954). m. e. mann, The Clausulae of St. Hilary of Poitiers (Catholic University of America Patristic Studies 48; Washington 1936). m. j. suelzer, The Clausulae in Cassiodorus (Washington 1944).

[n. denholm-young]