Latin literature

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Latin literature

Latin literature, the body of written works

Literature

Literature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" . In Western culture the most basic written literary types include fiction and non-fiction....
in the Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
language, remains an enduring legacy of the culture

Culture of ancient Rome

Ancient Rome culture evolved throughout the almost 1200-year history of that civilization. The term refers to the culture of the Roman Republic, later the Roman Empire, which, at peak, covered an area from Cumbria and Morocco to the Euphrates....
of ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
. The Romans produced many works of poetry, comedy, tragedy, satire, history, and rhetoric, drawing heavily on the traditions of other cultures and particularly on the more matured literary tradition of Greece

Greek literature

Greek literature refers to those writings autochthonic to the areas of Greeks influence, typically though not necessarily in one of the Greek dialects, throughout the whole period in which the Greek language people have existed....
. Long after the Western Roman Empire had fallen, the Latin language continued to play a central role in western European civilization.

Latin literature is conventionally divided into distinct periods.

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Encyclopedia

Latin literature, the body of written works

Literature

Latin

Culture of ancient Rome

Ancient Rome

Greek literature

Old Latin

Old Latin refers to the Latin language in the period before the age of Classical Latin; that is, all Latin before 75 BC. The term prisca Latinitas distinguishes it in New Latin and Contemporary Latin from vetus Latina, in which "old" has another meaning....
; among these few surviving works, however, are the plays of Plautus

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as Plautus, was a Ancient Rome playwright. His comedy are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature....
and Terence

Terence

Publius Terentius Afer , better known as Terence, was a playwright of the Roman Republic. His comedies were performed for the first time around 170–160 BC, and he died young probably in Greece or on his way back to Rome....
, which have remained very popular in all eras down to the present, while many other Latin works, including many by the most prominent authors of the Classical period, have disappeared, sometimes being re-discovered after centuries, sometimes not. Such lost work

Lost work

A lost work is a document or literature work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work....
s sometimes survive as fragments in other works which have survived, but others are known from references in such works as Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
's Naturalis Historia

Naturalis Historia

Naturalis Historia is an encyclopedia written circa AD 77 by Pliny the Elder. It is one of the largest single works to have survived from the Roman empire to the modern day, and was one of the first reference works developed in the Classical period to examine natural and man-made objects, both organic and mineral, as well as many natura...
or the De Architectura

De architectura

File:De Architectura027.jpg is a treatise on architecture written by the Ancient Rome architect Vitruvius and dedicated to his patron, the emperor Caesar Augustus as a guide for Caesar Augustus#Building projects....
of Vitruvius

Vitruvius

File:Vitruvius.jpgMarcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Ancient Rome writer, architect and engineer , active in the 1st century BC. By his own description Vitruvius served as a Ballista , the third class of arms in the military offices....
.

Classical Latin

The period of Classical Latin

Classical Latin

Classical Latin is the form of the Latin used by the ancient Rome in what is usually regarded as "classical" Latin literature. Its use spanned the Golden Age of Latin literature—broadly the 1st century BC and the early 1st century AD—possibly extending to the Silver Age—broadly the 1st and 2nd centuries....
, when Latin literature is widely considered to have reached its peak, is divided into the Golden Age, which covers approximately the period from the start of the 1st century BCE up to the mid-1st century CE, and the Silver Age, which extends into the 2nd century CE. Literature written after the mid-2nd century has often been disparaged and ignored; in the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
, for example, when many Classical authors were re-discovered and their style consciously imitated. Above all, Cicero

Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
was imitated, and his style praised as the perfect pinnacle of Latin. Medieval Latin was often dismissed as "Dog-Latin"; but in fact, many great works of Latin literature were produced throughout Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, although they are no longer as widely known as those written in the Classical period. Three works survived to inspire architects and engineers in the Renaissance

Renaissance

Naturalis Historia

Pliny the Elder

Rome

Rome is the capital city of Italy and Lazio, and is Italy's largest and most populous city, with 2,724,347 residents in an urban area of some ....
and the De Architectura

De architectura

Vitruvius

The Medieval World

For most of the Medieval era, Latin was the dominant written language in use in western Europe. After the Roman Empire split into its Western and Eastern halves, Greek, which had been widely used all over the Empire, faded from use in the West, all the more so as the political and religious distance steadily grew between the Catholic West and the Orthodox, Greek East. The vernacular languages in the West, the languages of modern-day western Europe, developed for centuries as spoken languages only: most people did not write, and it seems that it very seldom occurred to those who wrote to write in any language other than Latin, even when they spoke French or Italian or English or another vernacular in their daily life. Very gradually, in the late Middle Ages

Middle Ages

File:Karl 1 mit papst gelasius gregor1 sacramentar v karl d kahlen.jpgThe Middle Ages of European history are a period in history which lasted for roughly a millennium, commonly dated from the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century to the beginning of the Early Modern Period in the 16th century, marked by the division of Western Christi...
and the early Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe....
, it became more and more common to write in the Western vernaculars.

It was probably only after the invention of printing, which made books and pamphlets cheap enough that a mass public could afford them, and which made possible modern phenomena such as the newspaper, that a large number of people in the West could read and write who were not fluent in Latin. Still, many people continued to write in Latin, although they were mostly from the upper classes and/or professional academics. As late as the 17th century, there was still a large audience for Latin poetry and drama; it was not unusual, for example, that Milton

John Milton

John Milton II was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his Epic poetry Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
wrote many poems in Latin, or that Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban King's Counsel , son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author....
or Baruch Spinoza

Baruch Spinoza

Baruch or Benedict de Spinoza was a Netherlands Philosophy of Iberian Jews origin. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death....
wrote mostly in Latin. The use of Latin as a lingua franca continued in smaller European lands until the 20th century.

Although the number of works of non-fiction and drama, history and philosophy written in Latin has continued to dwindle, the Latin language is still not dead. Well into the twentieth century, some knowledge of Latin was required for admission into many universities, and theses and dissertations written for graduate degrees were often required to be written in Latin. Treatises in chemistry and biology and other natural sciences were often written in Latin as late as the early 20th century. Up to the present day, the editors of Latin and Greek texts in such series as the Oxford Classical Texts

Oxford Classical Texts

Oxford Classical Texts , or Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, is a series of books published by Oxford University Press. It contains texts of ancient Greek and Latin literature, such as Homer's Odyssey and Virgil's Aeneid, in the original language with a critical apparatus....
, the Bibliotheca scriptorum Graecorum et Romanorum Teubneriana and some others still write the introductions to their editions in polished and vital Latin. Among these Latin scholars of the 20th and 21st centuries are R A B Mynors

Roger Mynors

Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors was a United Kingdom academic and classical scholar.Mynors was educated at Summer Fields School, Oxford and won a scholarship to Eton College....
, R J Tarrant, L D Reynolds and John Brisco.

Early Latin literature

Poetry (comedy)

Plautus

Titus Maccius Plautus , commonly known as Plautus, was a Ancient Rome playwright. His comedy are among the earliest surviving intact works in Latin literature....

Terence

Prose

Cato

Cato the Elder

Marcus Porcius Cato was a Ancient Rome statesman, surnamed the Censor , the Wise , the Ancient , or the Elder , to distinguish him from Cato the Younger ....
- agricultural writer

Golden Age of Latin literature

Poetry

Catullus

Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Roman poet of the 1st century BC. His work remains widely studied, and continues to influence poetry and other forms of art....
- lyric poet and elegist

Horace

This article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English language world as Horace, was the leading Roman Empire Lyric poetry during the time of Augustus....
- lyric poet and satirist

Lucretius

Titus Lucretius Carus was a Roman Republic poet and philosopher. His only known work is the epic philosophical poem on Epicureanism De rerum natura, translated into English as On the Nature of Things....
- philosopher

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
- elegist, didactic poet and mythological poet

Propertius - elegist

Tibullus

Albius Tibullus was a Latin poet and writer of elegy.Little is known about his life. His first and second books of poetry are extant; many other texts attributed to Tibullus are of questionable origins....
- elegist

Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works?the Bucolics , the Georgics and the Aeneid?although several Appendix Vergiliana are also attributed to him....
- epic, didactic and pastoral poet

Prose

Cicero

Marcus Terentius Varro

Marcus Terentius Varro , also known as Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus, was a Ancient Rome scholar and writer....
- agricultural writer and linguist

Publilius Syrus

Publilius Syrus, a Latin writer of Maxim_s, flourished in the 1st century Before Christ. He was an Assyrian people who was brought as a slave to Italy, but by his wit and talent he won the favor of his master, who freed and educated him....
- writer of maxims

Vitruvius

History

Livy

Titus Livius , known as Livy in English language, was a Ancient Rome historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, from its founding through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time....

Sallust

For the philosopher, see Sallustius; for other uses, see Sallust .Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust, , a Roman Republic historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines....

Julius Caesar

'Gaius Julius Caesar' , July 13, 100 BC ? March 15, 44 BC,) was a Roman Republic military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....

Biography

Cornelius Nepos

Cornelius Nepos was a Roman Empire biographer. Supposedly he was born at Hostilia, a village in Cisalpine Gaul not far from Verona. His Gallic origin is attested by Ausonius, and Pliny the Elder calls him Padi accola ....

Augustus - autobiographer

Silver Age of Latin literature

Poetry

Gaius Valerius Flaccus

Gaius Valerius Flaccus was a Roman Empire poet who flourished in the "Silver Age of Latin literature" under the emperors Vespasian and Titus and wrote a Latin Argonautica that owes a great deal to Apollonius of Rhodes' more famous epic....
- epic poet

Lucan - epic poet

Marcus Manilius

Marcus Manilius was a Roman poet, astrologer, and author of a poem in five books called Astronomica....
- astronomical poet

Silius Italicus

Silius Italicus, in full Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus , was a Latin epic poet....
- epic poet

Statius

Publius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the Silver Age of Latin literature, born in Naples, Italy. Besides his poetry, he is best known for his appearance as a major character in the Purgatorio section of Dante Alighieri epic poem The Divine Comedy....
- lyric and epic poet

Juvenal

The Satires are a collection of satire poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries A.D.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five scroll; all are in the Roman genre of Satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a wide-ranging discussion of society and soc...
- satirist

Martial

Marcus Valerius Martialis , was a Latin language poet from Hispania best known for his twelve books of Epigrams, published in Ancient Rome between AD 86 and 103, during the reigns of the Roman emperor Domitian, Nerva and Trajan....
- epigrammatist

Persius - satirist

Phaedrus

Phaedrus , Roman Empire fabulist, was probably a Thracian slave, born in Pydna of Macedonia and lived in the reigns of Augustus Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius....
- fabulist

Prose

:Aulus Cornelius Celsus

Aulus Cornelius Celsus

Aulus Cornelius Celsus was a Ancient Rome encyclopedist, known for his Extant literature medical work, De Medicina, which is believed to be the only surviving section of a much larger encyclopedia....
- physician

Aulus Gellius

Aulus Gellius , Latin author and grammarian, possibly of African origin, probably born and certainly brought up at Rome.He studied grammar and rhetoric at Rome and philosophy at Athens, after which he returned to Rome, where he held a judicial office....
- essayist

Apuleius

Lucius Apuleius Platonicus was a Roman Empire Berber people who described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian", remembered most for his ribaldry Picaresque novel Latin novel, the Metamorphoses, otherwise known as The Golden Ass or, in Latin, the Asinus Aureus ....
- novellist and philosopher

Columella

Lucius Iunius Moderatus Columella was a Roman Empire writer. After a career in the army , he took up farming. His De Re Rustica in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms our most important source on Roman agriculture, together with the works of Cato the Elder and Marcus Terentius Varro, both of which he occasionally cit...
- agricultural writer

Petronius

Gaius Petronius Arbiter was a Roman Empire courtier during the reign Nero. He is speculated to be the author of the Satyricon, a satire believed to have been written during the Neronian age....
- novellist

Pliny the Elder

Pliny the Younger

Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo , better known as Pliny the Younger, was a lawyer, author, and natural philosopher of Ancient Rome....
- correspondent

Quintilian

Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman Empire rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in Middle ages schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing....
- rhetorician

Sextus Julius Frontinus

Sextus Julius Frontinus was one of the most distinguished Roman Empire aristocrats of the late first century AD, but is best known to the post-Classical world as an author of technical treatises, especially one dealing with the aqueducts of Rome....
- engineer

Valerius Maximus

Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He flourished in the reign of Tiberius....
- author of a collection of anecdotes

Seneca the Elder

Lucius, or Marcus, Annaeus Seneca, known as Seneca the Elder and Seneca the Rhetorician , was a Ancient Rome rhetorician and writer, born of a wealthy Equestrian family of C?rdoba, Spain, Hispania....
- orator

Marcus Cornelius Fronto

Marcus Cornelius Fronto , Roman grammarian, rhetorician and advocate, was born at Cirta in Numidia. He also was suffect consul of 142....
- correspondent

History

Florus

Florus, Roman Empire historian, lived in the time of Trajan and Hadrian.He compiled, chiefly from Livy, a brief sketch of the history of Rome from the foundation of the city to the closing of the temple of Janus by Augustus Caesar ....

Marcus Velleius Paterculus

Marcus Velleius Paterculus was a Roman Empire historian, also known simply as Velleius. Although his praenomen is given as Marcus by Priscian, some modern scholars identify him with Gaius Velleius Paterculus, whose name occurs in an inscription on a north African milestone ....

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman Senate and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories —examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those that reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors....

Biography

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was an equestrian and a historian during the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies on the battles of twelve successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar until Domitian, entitled On the Life of the Caesars....

Quintus Curtius Rufus

Quintus Curtius Rufus was a Ancient Rome historian. It is generally thought that he has written his works during the reign of the Emperor Claudius or Vespasian....

Multiple Genres

Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Ancient Rome Stoicism philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature....
- philosopher, correspondent, scientist, tragedian and satirist

Latin Literature in the Late Antique period

Christians

Augustine of Hippo - theologian, autobiographer and correspondent

Ausonius

Decimus Magnus Ausonius was a Latin literature poet and rhetorician, born at Burdigala ....
- elegist

Jerome

Saint Jerome was a Christian priest and Christian apologetics best known for translating the Vulgate. He is recognized by the Catholic Church as a canonized saint and Doctor of the Church, and his version of the Bible is still an important text in Catholicism....
- theologian and correspondent

Marcus Minucius Felix - theologian

Prudentius

Aurelius Prudentius Clemens was a Ancient Rome Christian poet, born in the Ancient Rome province of Tarraconensis in 348. He probably died in Spain, as well, some time after 405, possibly around 413....
- Christian poet

Sidonius Apollinaris

Gaius Sollius Apollinaris Sidonius or Saint Sidonius Apollinaris , a poet, diplomat, and bishop. Sidonius was "the single most important surviving author from fifth-century Gaul" according to Eric Goldberg....
- panegyricist and correspondent

Tertullian

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian, was a prolific and controversial early Christian author, and the first to write Christian Latin literature....
- theologian

Non-Christians

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus was a fourth-century Ancient Rome historian. His is the last major historical account of the late Roman empire which survives today....
- historian

Augustan History - history

Claudian

Claudian was a Roman poet, who worked for Emperor Flavius Augustus Honorius and the latter's general Stilicho.A Greek language citizen of Alexandria, Claudian arrived in Rome before 395, and made his mark with a eulogy of his two young patrons, Probinus and Olybrius, thereby becoming court poet....
- panegyricist

Herodian

Herodian or Herodianus of Syria was a minor Roman civil servant who wrote a colourful history titled History of the Empire from the Death of Marcus in eight books covering the years 180 to 238....
- historian

Pervigilium Veneris
Pervigilium Veneris

Pervigilium Veneris, the Vigil of Venus, is a Latin poem, probably written in the 4th century. It is generally thought to have been by one Tiberianus, due to strong similarities with the latter's poem "Amnis ibat"....
- lyric poetry

Medieval Latin literature

Theology and Philosophy

:Pierre Abélard

Aetheria

The name Aetheria may refer to*in Greek mythology, one of the Heliades, daughters of Helios, the solar deity.*a Egeria , also known as Egeria, Etheria, Eucheria, or Silvia....

Albertus Magnus

Saint Albertus Magnus, Ordo Praedicatorum , also known as Saint Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, was a Dominican Order Dominican friar and bishop who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful Relationship between religion and science....

Thomas Aquinas

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Dominican Order was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order from Italy, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis....
: Pange Lingua
Pange Lingua

Pange Lingua Gloriosi Corporis Mysterium is a hymn written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Feast of Corpus Christi . It is also sung on Holy Thursday, during the procession from the church to the place where the Blessed Sacrament is kept until Good Friday....
: Summa Theologica
Summa Theologica

The Summa Theologica is the most famous work of Thomas Aquinas although it was never finished. It was intended as a manual for beginners as a compilation of all of the main theology teachings of that time....

Roger Bacon

For the Nova Scotia premier see Roger Bacon .Roger Bacon, Order of Friars Minor , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an England philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism....

Duns Scotus

The Beatification John Duns Scotus, Order of Friars Minor was one of the most important theology and philosopher of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought....

Gildas

Saint Gildas was a 6th century Britons cleric. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christianity church in the British Isles during the 6th century....

Gregory of Tours

Saint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman History and Bishops of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of Gaul. He was born Georgius Florentius, later adding the name Gregorius in honour of his maternal great-grandfather....

Siger of Brabant

Siger of Brabant was a 13th century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism. He was considered a radical by the conservative members of the Roman Catholic Church, but it is suggested that he played as important a role as his contemporary Thomas Aquinas in the shaping of Western attitudes toward...

Tommaso da Celano : Dies Iræ
Dies Irae

Dies Irae is a famous thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Tommaso da Celano. It is a medieval Latin poem, differing from classical Latin by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines....

Venantius Fortunatus

Saint Venantius Fortunatus or Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was a Latin poetry and hymnodist, and a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church....

Walter of Châtillon

Walter of Chatillon

Walter of Ch?tillon was a 12th-century France writer and theology who wrote in the Latin. He studied under Stephen of Beauvais and at the University of Paris....

William of Occam

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

Anicius Manlius Severinus Bo?thius was a Christian or pagan philosopher of the 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many Roman consul....
- Consolation of Philosophy
Consolation of Philosophy

Consolation of Philosophy is a philosophy work by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, written in about the year 524. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and is also the last great Western work that can be called Classical....

Drama and poetry

The Archpoet

Archpoet

The Archpoet, or Archipoeta, is a name given to the bibulous and boastful Anonymous work author of ten poems from medieval Latin literature....

Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana

Carmina Burana , also known as the Burana Codex, is a manuscript collection found in 1803 in the Bavarian monastery of Benediktbeuern and now housed in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich....

Goliard

The Goliards were a group of clergy who wrote wikt:bibulous, satire Latin poetry in the twelfth century and thirteenth century. They were mainly clerical students at the university of France, Germany, Italy, and England who protested the growing contradictions within the Church, such as the failure of the Crusades and financial abuses, expre...
s

Peter of Blois

Peter of Blois or Petrus Blesensis was a France poet and diplomat who wrote in Latin. Peter studied law in Bologna and theology in Paris....

Hildegard of Bingen

Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Blessed Hildegard and Saint Hildegard, was a German people abbess, author, counselor, Linguistics, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, physician, herbalist, poet, visionary and composer....

Hrotsvitha

History

Albert of Aix

Albert of Aix-la-Chapelle or Albert of Aachen , historian of the First Crusade, was born during the later part of the 11th century, and afterwards became Canon and custos of the church of Aachen....

Bede

Bede , , was a monasticism at the Northumbrian monastery of Saint Peter at Monkwearmouth, today part of Sunderland, England, and of its companion monastery, Saint Paul's, in modern Jarrow , both in the Kingdom of Northumbria....

Einhard

Einhard was a Franks courtier, a dedicated servant of Charlemagne, of whom he wrote his famous biography, Vita Karoli Magni, and Louis the Pious....

Fulcher of Chartres

Fulcher of Chartres was a chronicler of the First Crusade. He wrote in Latin language....

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk, English historians in the Middle Ages, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire....

Orderic Vitalis

Orderic Vitalis was an English historians in the Middle Ages who wrote one of the great contemporary chronicles of 11th and 12th century Normandy and England....

Otto of Freising

Otto von Freising was a Germany bishop and chronicler....

William of Malmesbury

William of Malmesbury , English historians in the Middle Ages, was born about the year 1080/1095, in Wiltshire. His father was Normans and his mother English....

William of Tyre

William of Tyre was archbishop of Tyre and a chronicler of the Crusades and the Middle Ages....

Pseudo-History

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Geoffrey of Monmouth was a clergyman and one of the major figures in the English historians in the Middle Ages and the popularity of tales of King Arthur....

Encyclopedia

Isidore of Seville

Saint Isidore of Seville was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and has the reputation of being one of the greatest scholars of the early Middle Ages....
: Etymologiæ
Etymologiae

Etymologiae is an encyclopedia compiled byIsidore of Seville towards the end of his life, at the urging of his friend Braulio, Bishop of Saragossa, to whom Isidore, at the end of his life, sent his codex inemendatus , which seems to have begun circulating before Braulio was able to revise it, and issue it, with a dedication to t...

Multiple Genres

Alcuin

Alcuin of York or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus was a scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria....

Renaissance Latin

:Dante Alighieri

Dante Alighieri

Durante degli Alighieri , commonly known as Dante Alighieri, was a Florence poet of the Middle Ages. His Magnum opus, the Divine Comedy , is often considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature....

Giovanni Boccaccio

Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italy author and poet, a friend and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanism and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular....

Erasmus

Jean Buridan

Jean Buridan was a French priest who sowed the seeds of the Copernican revolution in Europe. Although he was one of the most famous and influential philosophers of the late Middle Ages, he is today among the least well known....

Thomas More

Saint Thomas More was an English lawyer, author, and statesman who in his lifetime gained a reputation as a leading Renaissance humanist scholar, and occupied many public offices, including Lord Chancellor ....
: Utopia
Utopia (book)

Utopia, with the subtitle On the best state of a republic and on the new island of Utopia , is a 1516 book by Sir Saint Thomas More....

Petrarch

Francesco Petrarca , known in English language as Petrarch, was an Italy scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanism. Petrarch is often popularly called the "Father of Humanism"....

William of Ockham

William of Ockham was an England Franciscan friar and Scholasticism philosopher, from Ockham, Surrey, a small village in Surrey, near East Horsley....

Neo-Latin

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban King's Counsel , son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author....

Jacob Bidermann

Jacob Bidermann was born in the village of Ehingen, about 30 miles southwest of Ulm. He was a Jesuit priest and professor of theology, but is remembered mostly for his plays....

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes was an English philosophy, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory....

John Milton

Baruch Spinoza

Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski

Maciej Kazimierz Sarbiewski was Europe's most prominent Latin poet of the 17th century, and a renowned theoretician of poetics. He was the first Poland poet to become widely celebrated abroad, and the most popular Polish author before Henryk Sienkiewicz....

Elizabeth Jane Weston

Elizabeth Jane Weston , also known as Westonia, was born to Jane Cooper in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, England. Nothing is known about her father, but her stepfather, Edward Kelley, was a notorious alchemist....

Recent Latin

Arrius Nurus

Geneviève Immè

Alanus Divutius

Anna Elissa Radke

Ianus Novak

Tuomo Pekkanen

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