Medieval Latin was the form of
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
used in the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval
Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church. With more than a billion members, over half of all Christians and more than one-sixth of the world's population, the Catholic Church is a communion of the Western, or Latin Rite Church, and...
, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors, Medieval Latin should not be confused with
Ecclesiastical LatinEcclesiastical Latin is the Latin used by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in all periods for ecclesiastical purposes...
. There is no real consensus on the exact boundary where
Late LatinLate Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
ends and Medieval Latin begins. Some scholarly surveys begin with the rise of early Christian Latin in the middle of the 4th century, others around the year 500, and still others with the replacement of written
Late LatinLate Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
by written Romance languages starting around the year 900 (see under
Late LatinLate Latin is the scholarly name for the written Latin of Late Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. extending in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits between Classical Latin and Medieval Latin...
).
Influence of Christian Latin
Medieval Latin was characterized by an enlarged vocabulary, which freely borrowed from other sources. It was heavily influenced by the language of the
VulgateThe Vulgate is an early 5th-century Latin version of the Bible, largely the result of the labors of Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of old Latin translations...
, which contained many peculiarities alien to Classical Latin that were the consequence of more or less direct translation from
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
and Hebrew; these peculiarities were mirrored not only in its vocabulary, but also in its grammar and syntax.
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
provided much of the technical vocabulary of
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented by the revelations in the New Testament....
. The various
Germanic languagesThe Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe...
spoken by the Germanic tribes, who invaded western Europe, were also major sources of new words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of western Europe, and words from their languages were freely imported into the vocabulary of law. Other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin can be defined simply as colloquial Latin.-Origin of the term:...
or Germanic sources because the classical words had fallen into disuse.
Latin was also spread to areas such as
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
and
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
, where
Romance languagesThe Romance languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family comprising all the languages that descend from Latin, the language of ancient Rome...
were not spoken and which had never known
RomanThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
rule. Works written in these lands where Latin was a learned language with no relation to the local vernacular also influenced the vocabulary and syntax of medieval Latin.
Since abstract subjects like science and philosophy were communicated in Latin, the Latin vocabulary developed for them is the source of a great many technical words in modern languages. English words like
abstract,
subject,
communicate,
matter,
probable and their cognates in other European languages generally have the meanings given to them in medieval Latin.
Influence of Vulgar Latin
The influence of
Vulgar LatinVulgar Latin can be defined simply as colloquial Latin.-Origin of the term:...
was also apparent in the
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages...
of some Medieval Latin writers, although Classical Latin continued to be held in high esteem and studied as models for literary compositions. The high point of development of medieval Latin as a literary language came with the
Carolingian renaissanceThe Carolingian Renaissance was a period of intellectual and cultural revival occurring in the late eighth and ninth centuries, with the peak of the activities occurring during the reigns of the Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. During this period there was an increase of...
, a rebirth of learning kindled under the patronage of
CharlemagneCharlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe...
, king of the
FranksThe Franks or Frankish people were a West Germanic tribal confederation first attested in the 3rd century as living north and east of the Lower Rhine River. From the third to fifth centuries some Franks raided Roman territory while other Franks joined the Roman troops in Gaul...
.
AlcuinAlcuin of York or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus was a scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Ecgbert at York...
was Charlemagne's Latin secretary and an important writer in his own right; his influence led to a rebirth of Latin literature and learning after the depressed period following the final disintegration of Roman authority in Western Europe.
Although it was simultaneously developing into the Romance languages, Latin itself remained very conservative, as it was no longer a native language and there were many ancient and medieval grammar books to give one standard form. On the other hand, strictly speaking there was no single form of "Medieval Latin". Every Latin author in the medieval period spoke Latin as a second language, to varying degrees of fluency, and syntax, grammar, and vocabulary were often influenced by an author's native language. This was especially true beginning around the 12th century, after which the language became increasingly adulterated: late-medieval Latin documents written by French speakers tend to show similarities to medieval French grammar and vocabulary; those written by Germans tend to show similarities to German, etc. For instance, rather than following the classical Latin practice of generally placing the verb at the end, medieval writers would often follow the conventions of their own native language instead. Whereas Latin had no definite or indefinite articles, medieval writers sometimes used forms of
unus as an indefinite article, and forms of
ille (reflecting usage in the Romance languages) or even
quidam (meaning "a certain one/thing" in Classical Latin) as something like a definite article. Unlike in classical Latin, where
esse ("to be") was used as the only auxiliary verb, Medieval Latin writers might use
habere ("to have"), as Germanic and Romance languages do. The accusative infinitive construction in classical Latin was often ignored, in favour of introducing a subordinate clause with the word
quod or
quia. This is almost identical, for example, to the use of
que in similar constructions in French.
In every age from the late eighth century onwards, there were learned writers (especially within the Church) who were familiar enough with classical
syntaxIn linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing sentences in natural languages...
to be aware that these forms and usages were 'wrong' and able to resist their use. Thus the Latin of a theologian like St.
Thomas AquinasSaint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. 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...
or an erudite clerical historian such as
William of TyreWilliam of Tyre was Archbishop of Tyre and a chronicler of the Crusades and the Middle Ages. He is also known as William II to distinguish him from William of Malines, the first Archbishop of Tyre by that name...
tends to avoid most of the characteristics described above, showing its period in vocabulary and spelling alone; the features listed are much more prominent in the language of lawyers (e.g. the 11th-century English
Domesday BookThe Domesday Book is the record of the great survey of England completed in 1086, executed for William I of England, or William the Conqueror...
), physicians, technical writers and secular chroniclers. However, the last-mentioned point — the indirect-statement construction with
quod — was especially pervasive and is found at all levels.
Orthography
The most striking differences between classical and medieval Latin are found in
orthographyThe orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example for Kurdish, there can be more than one orthography. Orthography is derived from Greek ὀρθός orthós and γράφειν...
. Some of the most frequently occurring differences are:
- The diphthong ae is usually collapsed and simply written as e (or e caudata, ę); for example, puellae might be written puelle (or puellę). The same happens with the diphthong oe, for example in pena, Edipus, from poena, Oedipus. This feature is already found on coin-inscriptions of the fourth century (e.g. reipublice for reipublicae). Conversely an original "e" in Classical Latin was often represented by "ae" or "oe" (e.g. "aecclesia" and "coena" )
- Because of a severe decline of the knowledge of Greek, in loanwords and foreign names from or transmitted through Greek, y and i might be used more or less interchangeably: Ysidorus, Egiptus, from Isidorus, Aegyptus. This is also found in pure Latin words: ocius ('more swiftly') appears as ocyus and silva as sylva, this last being a form which survived into the eighteenth century and so became embedded in modern botanical Latin.
- h might be lost, so that habere becomes abere, or mihi becomes mi (the latter also occurred in Classical Latin); or, mihi may be written michi, indicating the h came to be pronounced as k, which is its pronunciation even today in Ecclesiastical Latin
Ecclesiastical Latin is the Latin used by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in all periods for ecclesiastical purposes...
(this pronunciation is not found in Classical Latin).
- The loss of h in pronunciation also led to the addition of h in writing where it did not previously belong, especially in the vicinity of r, such as chorona for corona, a tendency also sometimes seen in Classical Latin.
- -ti- before a vowel is often written as -ci- [tsi], so that divitiae becomes diviciae (or divicie), tertius becomes tercius, vitium vicium.
- The combination mn might have another plosive inserted, so that alumnus becomes alumpnus, somnus sompnus.
- Single consonants were often doubled, or vice versa, so that tranquillitas becomes tranquilitas and Africa becomes Affrica.
- vi, especially in verbs in the perfect tense, might be lost, so that novisse becomes nosse (this occurred in Classical Latin as well but was more frequent in Medieval Latin).
These orthographical differences were often due to changes in pronunciation or, as in the previous example, morphology, which authors reflected in their writing. By the 16th century, Erasmus complained that speakers from different countries were unable to understand each other's form of Latin.
The gradual change of Latin did not escape the notice of contemporaries.
PetrarchFrancesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
, writing in the 14th century, complained about this linguistic "decline", which helped fuel his general dissatisfaction with his own era.
Medieval Latin literature
The corpus of Medieval Latin literature encompasses a wide range of texts, including such diverse works as sermons, hymns,
hagiographicalHagiography is the study of saints. A hagiography, from the Greek and , refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of ecclesiastical and secular leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though...
texts,
travel literatureTravel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
, histories,
epicsAn epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
, and
lyric poetryLyric poetry usually refers nowadays to a short poem that expresses personal feelings. It need not be set to music. Aristotle, in Poetics 1447a, merely mentions lyric poetry along with drama, epic poetry, dancing, painting and other forms of mimesis...
.
Early period
The first half of the 5th century saw the literary activities of the great Christian authors
JeromeSaint Jerome was a Christian priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Strido, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
(c. 347–420) and
Augustine of HippoAugustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....
(354–430), whose texts had an enormous influence on theological thought of the Middle Ages, and of the latter's disciple
Prosper of AquitaineSaint Prosper of Aquitaine , a Christian writer and disciple of Saint Augustine of Hippo, was the first continuator of Jerome's Universal Chronicle.- Life :...
(c. 390-455). Of the later 400s and early 500s,
Sidonius ApollinarisGaius 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...
(c. 430 – after 489) and Ennodius (474–521), both from Gaul, are well-known for their poems, as is
Venantius FortunatusSaint Venantius Fortunatus or Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was a Latin poet and hymnodist, and a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.-Life:...
(c. 530–600). This was also a period of transmission: the
RomanAncient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea, it became one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
patrician Boethius (c. 480–524) translated part of
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
's logical corpus, thus preserving it for the Latin West, and wrote the influential literary and philosophical treatise
De consolatione PhilosophiaeConsolation of Philosophy is a philosophical work by Boethius, written around the year AD 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...
;
CassiodorusFlavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname not his rank....
(c. 485–585) founded an important library at the monastery of Vivarium near
SquillaceSquillace is an ancient seaside town and comune, in the Province of Catanzaro, part of Calabria, southern Italy, facing the Gulf of Squillace...
where many texts from Antiquity were to be preserved.
Isidore of SevilleSaint Isidore of Seville was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
(c. 560-636) collected all scientifical knowledge still available in his time into what might be called the first
encyclopediaAn encyclopedia is a comprehensive written compendium that holds information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge. Encyclopedias are divided into articles with one article on each subject covered...
, the
EtymologiaeEtymologiae 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,...
.
Gregory of ToursSaint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman historian and bishop 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...
(c. 538–594) wrote a lengthy history of the Frankish kings. Gregory came from a Gallo-Roman aristocratic family, and his Latin, which shows many aberrations from the classical forms, testifies to the declining significance of classical education in Gaul. At the same time, good knowledge of Latin and even of
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
was being preserved in monastic culture in
IrelandIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
and was brought to
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
and the European mainland by missionaries in the course of the 6th and 7th centuries, such as
ColumbanusSaint Columbanus was an Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries on the European continent from around 590 in the Frankish and Italian kingdoms, most notably Luxeuil and Bobbio , and stands as an exemplar of Irish missionary activity in early medieval Europe...
(543–615), who founded the monastery of
BobbioBobbio is a small town and commune in the province of Piacenza in Emilia-Romagna, northern Italy. It is located in the Trebbia River valley southwest of the town Piacenza. There were also an abbey and a diocese of the same name. Bobbio is the administrative center of the Comunità Montana Appennino...
in Northern Italy. Ireland was also the birthplace of a strange poetic style known as Hisperic Latin. Other important Insular authors include the historian
GildasSaint Gildas was a 6th-century British cleric. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during this period. His renowned learning and literary style earned him the designation Gildas Sapiens . He was ordained in the Church, and in his works favoured the...
(c. 500–570) and the poet Aldhelm (c. 640–709).
Benedict BiscopBenedict Biscop was an Anglo-Saxon abbot and founder of Monkwearmouth-Jarrow Priory.-Early career:He was born of a good Northumbrian family and was for a time a thegn of King Oswiu....
(c. 628–690) founded the monastery of
Wearmouth-JarrowWearmouth-Jarrow is a twin-foundation English monastery, located on the River Wear in Sunderland and the River Tyne at Jarrow respectively, in the Kingdom of Northumbria . Its formal name is The Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Wearmouth-Jarrow...
and furnished it with books which he had taken home from a journey to
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
and which were later used by
BedeBede , also Saint Bede, the Venerable Bede, or Beda , was a monk 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.He is well known as an author and...
(c. 672–735) to write his
Ecclesiastical History of the English PeopleThe Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum is a work in Latin by Bede on the history of the Church in England, and of England generally; its main focus is on the conflict between Roman and Celtic Christianity.It is considered to be one of the most important original references on Anglo-Saxon history...
.
Many medieval Latin works have been published in the series
Patrologia LatinaThe Patrologia Latina is an enormous collection of the writings of the Church Fathers and other ecclesiastical writers published by Jacques-Paul Migne between 1844 and 1855, with indices published between 1862 and 1865....
,
Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum LatinorumThe Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum is a series of critical editions of the Latin Church Fathers published by a committee of the Austrian Academy of Sciences....
and
Corpus ChristianorumThe Corpus Christianorum is a major publishing undertaking of the Belgian publisher Brepols devoted to patristic and medieval Latin texts. The principal series are the Series Graeca , Series Latina , and the Continuatio Mediaevalis...
.
4th–5th centuries
- Aetheria (fl. 385)
- Jerome
Saint Jerome was a Christian priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Strido, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
(c. 347–420)
- Augustine
Augustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....
(354-430)
6th–8th centuries
- Gildas
Saint Gildas was a 6th-century British cleric. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during this period. His renowned learning and literary style earned him the designation Gildas Sapiens . He was ordained in the Church, and in his works favoured the...
(d. c. 570)
- Venantius Fortunatus
Saint Venantius Fortunatus or Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was a Latin poet and hymnodist, and a Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church.-Life:...
(c. 530 – c. 600)
- Gregory of Tours
Saint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman historian and bishop 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...
(c. 538–594)
- Pope Gregory I
Pope St. Gregory I , better known in English as Gregory the Great, was pope from 3 September 590 until his death...
(c. 540 – 604)
- Isidore of Seville
Saint Isidore of Seville was Archbishop of Seville for more than three decades and is considered, as Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "le dernier savant du monde ancien"...
(c. 560–636)
- Bede
Bede , also Saint Bede, the Venerable Bede, or Beda , was a monk 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.He is well known as an author and...
(c. 672–735)
- St. Boniface (c. 672 - 754)
- Chrodegang of Metz
Saint Chrodegang was the Frankish Bishop of Metz from 742 or 748 until his death.-Biography:He was born in the early eighth century at Hesbaye of a noble Frankish family that via his mother Landrada was related to the Robertians, and died at Metz, March 6, 766.He was educated at the court of...
(d. 766)
- Paul the Deacon
Paul the Deacon , also known as Paulus Diaconus, Warnefred and Cassinensis, , was a Benedictine monk and historian of the Lombards.-Life:...
(720s - c.799)
- Peter of Pisa
Peter of Pisa was a grammarian of the Early middle ages. He originally taught at Pavia. In 776, after the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom, Charlemagne summoned him to his court to teach Latin. Peter was a friend of Alcuin. He returned about the year 790 to Italy where he died no later than 799...
(d. 799)
- Paulinus of Aquileia (730s - 802)
- Alcuin
Alcuin of York or Ealhwine, nicknamed Albinus or Flaccus was a scholar, ecclesiastic, poet and teacher from York, Northumbria. He was born around 735 and became the student of Ecgbert at York...
(c. 735–804)
9th century
- Einhard
Einhard was a Frankish courtier, a dedicated servant of Charlemagne, of whom he wrote his famous biography, Vita Karoli Magni, and Louis the Pious....
(775-840)
- Rabanus Maurus
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius , also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus, was a Frankish Benedictine monk, the archbishop of Mainz in Germany and a theologian. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis . He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible...
(780-856)
- Paschasius Radbertus (790-865)
- Rudolf of Fulda
Rudolf of Fulda was a monk of the Benedictine monastery of Fulda, writer, theologian and teacher. He was a pupil of Rhabanus Maurus and befriended Louis the Pious, king of the Franks...
(d. 865)
- Dhuoda
Dhuoda was the wife of Bernard of Septimania and the author of the Liber Manualis.-Life:Dhuoda's parentage is unknown, but her education and her connections indicate that her family was wealthy. She married Bernard, Duke of Septimania, at Aachen on the 24th of June, 824...
- Lupus of Ferrieres (805-862)
- Andreas Agnellus
Andreas Agnellus of Ravenna was a historian of the bishops in his city. The date of his death is not recorded, although his history mentions the death of archbishop George of Ravenna in 846; Oswald Holder-Egger cites a papyrus charter dated to either 854 or 869 that contains the name of a priest...
(Agnellus of Ravenna) (c. 805-846?)
- Hincmar (806-882)
- Walafrid Strabo
Walafrid, alternatively spelt Walahfrid, surnamed Strabo , was a Frankish monk and theological writer.Walafrid Strabo's works are theological, historical and poetical...
(808-849)
- Florus of Lyon (d. 860?)
- Gottschalk (theologian)
Gottschalk of Orbais was a Saxon theologian, monk and poet who is best known for being an early advocate of the doctrine of two-fold predestination.-Early career:...
(808-867)
- Sedulius Scottus
Sedulius Scottus was Irish teacher, grammarian and Scriptural commentator, who lived in the ninth century.Sedulius is sometimes called Sedulius the Younger, to distinguish him from Coelius Sedulius also, probably, an Irishman, the author of the Carmen Paschale, and other sacred poems. The Irish...
(fl. 840-860)
- Anastasius Bibliothecarius
Anastasius Bibliothecarius was a librarian and supposed antipope of the Roman Catholic Church.- Family and education :He was a nephew of Bishop Arsenius of Orte, who executed important commissions as Papal legate....
(810-878)
- Johannes Scotus Eriugena
Johannes Scotus Eriugena , was an Irish theologian, Neoplatonist philosopher, and poet...
(815-877)
- Notker Balbulus (840-912)
11th century
- Marianus Scotus
Marianus Scotus , was an Irish monk and chronicler , was an Irishman by birth, and called Máel Brigte, or Devotee of St...
(1028–1082)
- Adam of Bremen
Adam of Bremen was a German medieval chronicler. He lived and worked in the second half of the eleventh century. He is most famous for his chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum .-Background:Little is known of his life other than hints from his own chronicles...
(fl. 1060–1080)
- Marbodius of Rennes
Marbodus , archdeacon and schoolmaster at Angers, France, then Bishop of Rennes in Brittany. He was a respected poet, hagiographer, and hymnologist.-Biography:...
(c. 1035-1123)
12th century
- Pierre Abélard (1079–1142)
- Suger of St Denis
Suger was one of the last French abbot-statesmen, a historian, and the influential first patron of Gothic architecture....
(c. 1081 – 1151)
- Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth was a British clergyman and one of the major figures in the development of British history and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...
(c. 1100 – c. 1155)
- Ailred of Rievaulx
Ailred was an English Christian saint and writer. He served as Abbot of Rievaulx from 1147 until his death. His name is also translated as Aelred and, in some traditions, Eilred.-Life:...
(1110-1167)
- Otto of Freising
Otto von Freising was a German bishop and chronicler.-Life:He was the fifth son of Leopold III, margrave of Austria, by his wife Agnes, daughter of the emperor Henry IV...
(c. 1114–1158)
- William of Tyre
William of Tyre was Archbishop of Tyre and a chronicler of the Crusades and the Middle Ages. He is also known as William II to distinguish him from William of Malines, the first Archbishop of Tyre by that name...
(c. 1130-1185)
- Peter of Blois
Peter of Blois or Petrus Blesensis was a French poet and diplomat who wrote in Latin. Peter studied law in Bologna and theology in Paris...
(c. 1135 – c. 1203)
- Walter of Châtillon
Walter of Châtillon was a 12th-century French writer and theologian who wrote in the Latin language. He studied under Stephen of Beauvais and at the University of Paris. It was probably during his student years that he wrote a number of Latin poems in the Goliardic manner that found their way...
(fl. c. 1200)
- The Archpoet
The Archpoet, or Archipoeta, is a name given to the bibulous and boastful anonymous author of ten poems from medieval Latin literature. The tenth and most famous of these poems is his Goliardic confession, found within the Carmina Burana manuscript...
(fl. 1159–1167)
13th century
- Giraldus Cambrensis
Gerald of Wales , also known as Gerallt Gymro in Welsh or Giraldus Cambrensis in Latin, archdeacon of Brecon, was a medieval clergyman and chronicler of his times...
(c. 1146 – c. 1223)
- Saxo Grammaticus
Saxo Grammaticus also known as Saxo cognomine Longus was a Danish historian, thought to have been a secular clerk or secretary to Absalon, Archbishop of Lund. He is the author of the first full history of Denmark.- Life :...
(c. 1150 – c. 1220)
- Thomas of Celano
Thomas of Celano was an Italian friar of the Franciscans , a poet, and the author of three hagiographies about Saint Francis of Assisi.Thomas was from Celano in Abruzzo...
(c. 1200 – c. 1265)
- Albertus Magnus
Saint Albertus Magnus, O.P. , also known as Saint Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne, was a Dominican friar and bishop who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge of and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. He is considered to be the greatest German philosopher...
(c. 1200–1280)
- Roger Bacon
Roger Bacon, O.F.M. , also known as Doctor Mirabilis , was an English philosopher and Franciscan friar who placed considerable emphasis on empiricism...
(c. 1214–1294)
- St Thomas Aquinas
Saint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. 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...
(c. 1225–1274)
- Siger of Brabant
Siger of Brabant was a 13th century philosopher from the southern Low Countries who was an important proponent of Averroism...
(c. 1240–1280s)
- Duns Scotus
Blessed John Duns Scotus, O.F.M. was one of the more important theologians and philosophers of the High Middle Ages. He was nicknamed Doctor Subtilis for his penetrating and subtle manner of thought.Scotus has had considerable influence on Roman Catholic thought...
(c. 1266–1308)
Important medieval Latin works
- Carmina Burana
Carmina Burana , Latin for "Songs from Beuern" , is the name given to a manuscript of 254 poems and dramatic texts from the 11th or 12th century, although some are from the 13th century. The pieces were written almost entirely in Medieval Latin; a few in Middle High German, and some with traces of...
- 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 Theologiae
The title Summa Theologiae refers to several different theological works:#Summa Theologica by Antoninus of Florence#Summa Theologica by Thomas Aquinas#Summa Theologiae by Albertus Magnus...
- 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,...
- Dies Irae
Dies Irae is a famous thirteenth century Latin hymn thought to be written by Thomas of Celano. It is a medieval Latin poem, differing from classical Latin by its accentual stress and its rhymed lines. The meter is trochaic...
- Decretum Gratiani
Decretum may refer to:*The Decretum Gratiani is a collection of Canon law compiled in the twelfth century by a jurist named Gratian.*Decretum Gelasianum, traditionally attributed to Pope Gelasius I, contains a list of works adjudged apocryphal....
- De Ortu Waluuanii Nepotis Arturi
The Rise of Gawain, Nephew of Arthur is an anonymous Medieval Latin romance dating to the 12th or 13th century. An Arthurian tale, it describes the birth, boyhood deeds, and early adventures of King Arthur's nephew Gawain...
External links