in consternation as they listened to the dreadful tornado pass by with a sound like thunder. The horde of Huns swept over Europe, threw itself on Gaul and was only halted on the plains of Châlons, where Aetius smashed it in a fearful encounter. The earth, gorged with blood, looked like a sea of crimson froth; two hundred thousand corpses barred the way and broke the impetus of the invading avalanche which, turned from its path, fell like a thunderbolt on Italy, whose ruined cities burned like blazing hay-ricks.
The Western Empire crumbled under the shock; the doomed life it had been dragging out in imbecility and corruption was extinguished. It even looked as if the end of the universe were also at hand, for the cities Attila had overlooked were decimated by famine and plague. And the Latin language, like everything else, seemed to vanish from sight beneath the ruins of the old world.
Years went by, and eventually the barbarian idioms began to acquire a definite shape, to emerge from their rude gangues, to grow into true languages. Meanwhile Latin, saved by the monasteries from death in the universal debacle, was confinedto the cloister and the presbytery. Even so, a few poets appeared here and there to keep the flame burning, albeit slowly and dully â the African Dracontius with his
Hexameron
, Claudius Mamert with his liturgical poems and Avitus of Vienne. Then there were biographers such as Ennodius, who recounts the miracles of St Epiphanius, that shrewd and revered diplomatist, that upright and vigilant pastor, or Eugippius, who has recorded for us the incomparable life of St Severinus, that mysterious anchorite and humble ascetic who appeared like an angel of mercy to the peoples of his time, frantic with fear and suffering; writers such as Veranius of the Gévaudan, who composed a little treatise on the subject of continence, or Aurelian and Ferreolus, who compiled ecclesiastical canons; and finally historians such as Rotherius of Agde, famed for a history of the Huns which is now lost.
There were far fewer works from the following centuries in Des Esseintesâs library. Still, the sixth century was represented by Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, whose hymns and
Vexilla Regis
, carved out of the ancient carcase of the Latin language and spiced with the aromatics of the Church, haunted his thoughts on certain days; also by Boethius, Gregory of Tours and Jornandes. As for the seventh and eighth centuries, apart from the Low Latin of such chroniclers as Fredegarius and Paul the Deacon, or of the poems contained in the Bangor Antiphonary, one of which â an alphabetical, monorhymed hymn in honour of St Comgall â he sometimes glanced at, literary output was restricted almost exclusively to Lives of the Saints, notably the legend of St Columban by the cenobite Jonas and that of Blessed Cuthbert compiled by the Venerable Bede from the notes of an anonymous monk of Lindisfarne. The result was that he confined himself to dipping at odd moments into the works of these hagiographers and rereading passages from the Lives of St Rusticula and St Radegonde, the former related by Defensorius, a Ligugé synodist, the latter by the naive and modest Baudonivia, a Poitiers nun.
However, he found certain remarkable Latin works of Anglo-Saxon origin more to his taste: to wit, the whole series of enigmas by Aldhelm, Tatwin and Eusebius, those literary descendants ofSymphosius, and above all the enigmas composed by St Boniface in acrostics where the answer was provided by the initial letters of each stanza.
His predilection for Latin literature grew feebler as he neared the end of these two centuries, and he could summon up little enthusiasm for the turgid prose of the Carolingian Latinists, the Alcuins and the Eginhards. As specimens of the language of the ninth century, he contented himself with the chronicles by Freculf, Reginon and the anonymous writer of Saint-Gall; with the poem on the Siege of Paris contrived
The Western Empire crumbled under the shock; the doomed life it had been dragging out in imbecility and corruption was extinguished. It even looked as if the end of the universe were also at hand, for the cities Attila had overlooked were decimated by famine and plague. And the Latin language, like everything else, seemed to vanish from sight beneath the ruins of the old world.
Years went by, and eventually the barbarian idioms began to acquire a definite shape, to emerge from their rude gangues, to grow into true languages. Meanwhile Latin, saved by the monasteries from death in the universal debacle, was confinedto the cloister and the presbytery. Even so, a few poets appeared here and there to keep the flame burning, albeit slowly and dully â the African Dracontius with his
Hexameron
, Claudius Mamert with his liturgical poems and Avitus of Vienne. Then there were biographers such as Ennodius, who recounts the miracles of St Epiphanius, that shrewd and revered diplomatist, that upright and vigilant pastor, or Eugippius, who has recorded for us the incomparable life of St Severinus, that mysterious anchorite and humble ascetic who appeared like an angel of mercy to the peoples of his time, frantic with fear and suffering; writers such as Veranius of the Gévaudan, who composed a little treatise on the subject of continence, or Aurelian and Ferreolus, who compiled ecclesiastical canons; and finally historians such as Rotherius of Agde, famed for a history of the Huns which is now lost.
There were far fewer works from the following centuries in Des Esseintesâs library. Still, the sixth century was represented by Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, whose hymns and
Vexilla Regis
, carved out of the ancient carcase of the Latin language and spiced with the aromatics of the Church, haunted his thoughts on certain days; also by Boethius, Gregory of Tours and Jornandes. As for the seventh and eighth centuries, apart from the Low Latin of such chroniclers as Fredegarius and Paul the Deacon, or of the poems contained in the Bangor Antiphonary, one of which â an alphabetical, monorhymed hymn in honour of St Comgall â he sometimes glanced at, literary output was restricted almost exclusively to Lives of the Saints, notably the legend of St Columban by the cenobite Jonas and that of Blessed Cuthbert compiled by the Venerable Bede from the notes of an anonymous monk of Lindisfarne. The result was that he confined himself to dipping at odd moments into the works of these hagiographers and rereading passages from the Lives of St Rusticula and St Radegonde, the former related by Defensorius, a Ligugé synodist, the latter by the naive and modest Baudonivia, a Poitiers nun.
However, he found certain remarkable Latin works of Anglo-Saxon origin more to his taste: to wit, the whole series of enigmas by Aldhelm, Tatwin and Eusebius, those literary descendants ofSymphosius, and above all the enigmas composed by St Boniface in acrostics where the answer was provided by the initial letters of each stanza.
His predilection for Latin literature grew feebler as he neared the end of these two centuries, and he could summon up little enthusiasm for the turgid prose of the Carolingian Latinists, the Alcuins and the Eginhards. As specimens of the language of the ninth century, he contented himself with the chronicles by Freculf, Reginon and the anonymous writer of Saint-Gall; with the poem on the Siege of Paris contrived
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