Poet, Scholar, Trickster: Israel the Grammarian and his “Versus de arte metrica”

Abstract

Israel the Grammarian was a tenth-century scholar and poet of presumably Breton origin, who played an influential role in King Æthelstan’s court before becoming tutor to Bruno, the future archbishop of Cologne. This article focuses on his hexameter poem “Versus Israhelis de arte metrica super nomen et uerbum,” a discussion of the prosody of final syllables, addressed to Bishop Robert of Trier, Israel’s patron. While on the surface the “Versus de arte metrica” appear to be a didactic poem, it has, in reality, probably been intended as an academic parlour game that tests the reader’s command of Latin grammar and grammatical literature. At the same time, it reflects the central role of inflectional paradigms and the emergence of inflection tables in medieval Latin instruction.