Aldhelm uses them in the collection of riddles which he embodied in a grammatical tract addressed to "Acircius"[1] (Aldfrid of Northumbria) before the end of the seventh century. Eugenius died in 657.
A pupil of his, who ultimately succeeded to his see (680-690), Julian of Toledo, left works upon theology, history, and grammar. In the first category the book called Prognosticon futuri saeculi was by far the most celebrated. The three divisions of which it consists – on death, on the intermediate state of souls and on the final judgment – are made up to a very large extent of "testimonies" from Scripture and from standard writers. Cyprian and Origen are the earliest of these, and Gregory the latest. Augustine is naturally the principal source; Jerome, Cassian, and Julianus Pomerius complete the list. It was to be expected that in a country in which Priscillianism had had great currency, and roused great opposition to the apocryphal literature, Julian should shun all reference to these writings. As his interesting prefatory letter tells us, his main object was to present in a collected form the opinions of Catholic doctors upon the subject he was treating.
The three books De comprobatione sextae aetatis, directed against his own countrymen (he was of Jewish extraction), are interesting as proving his acquaintance with Greek patristic literature. He translates passages from the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius and from the tract of Epiphanius on Weights and Measures; and, besides these, he makes considerable quotations from Tertullian. The two books of ἀντικείμενα (a noteworthy title) consist of attempts to reconcile contradictory texts of Scripture: they contain no very remarkable citations.
Of more direct interest to us is his history of the rebellion of Duke Paul against King Wamba (673), written in a less conventional style at no great length of time after the events it records. The fashion of writing in rhymed or assonant clauses which is conspicuous in the later chronicles, e.g. that called of "Isidorus Pacensis," appears here possibly for the first time to a marked extent.
The fame of this book was naturally confined to Spain. Not so that of the Ars grammatica. Both in form and in contents it is remarkable. The form is that of a dialogue between master and pupil; but, as in many later grammars, it is the pupil who puts the questions, the master who answers them. Traube's explanation of this fashion is interesting: he attributes it to a misapprehension. The dialogue form was borrowed from the Greeks, and with it the initials Μ and Δ, which stood for μαθητής and διδάσκαλος. The accident that the Latin words Magister and Discipulus have the same initials rendered the inversion of questioner and answerer an easy one.
In respect of its contents, the Ars Juliani transmits much matter from older grammarians, Victorinus and Audax, for example. The
- ↑ The a circio of the dedication, says Mazzoni (in Didascaleion 1914), probably means "(to the ruler of) north-western (Northumbria)."
