Dear Mr Bragg, I'm a big fan of "In Our Time." Lately I've been listening to many episodes, often having to do with subjects in the Middle Ages. I'm writing because I have repeatedly gotten the impression that you, and consequently many of your listeners, are laboring under the impression that the "pagan," pre-Christian Latin Classics were shunned by Christian scholars in the Middle Ages, except in anomalous periods such as the Carolingian Renaissance or the 12th-century Renaissance. I keep waiting for one of your expert guests to clarify this point. And maybe one of them has in the meantime, which would make this open letter superfluous as far as you personally are concerned. But even in that case, perhaps someone else will learn something. And in any case, it's always good when something spurs me to write.
The fact is that the Latin Classics were always read and discussed during the Middle Ages. The 9th and 12th centuries are referred to as Renaissances in reference to the Latin Classics, because a greater emphasis was put upon studying them than in other periods. Or to be more precise: education in general advanced greatly in 9th-century and again in 12th-century Catholic Europe, and, although this education was clearly Christian in its overall emphasis, Classical Latin was an essential part of the whole, and grew naturally as the whole of education grew.
Now, when it comes to the Greek Classics, it is true that knowledge of them was almost completely lost in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. A great part of the population of the ancient city of Rome, and of the ancient Western, Latin-speaking provinces, could read and write Greek. But in the Middle Ages, this familiarity with the Greek language dwindled to just a very few individuals in the West. Plato continued to be studied, but in Latin translation, and little else. Even Latin translations of Homer, apart from a few rather wretched abridgments, had to wait for the 15th century. When it comes to knowledge of the Greek language and the study of a broad array of the Greek Classics, "Renaissance" describes 15th-century Western Europe well.
When it comes to the Latin classics in the West, however, I am reminded of a wonderful remark made by Professor Eugen Weber in his television series from the 1980's, The Western Tradition. Debunking the notion that people were afraid that Columbus would sail off of the edge of the Earth, Weber said, "Some people in Columbus' time believed that the Earth was flat. Some people still do."
Similarly, some Medieval Christians were opposed to any study of the non-Christian Latin Classics, and some Christians still are. Some Medieval Christians were convinced that the Latin classics were evil, and some Christians still are. But at no point in time were such viewpoints prevalent enough to actually prevent the study of those Classics.
One demonstration of this is the number of manuscripts of the classics which survive today from each of the Medieval centuries. The number swells in the 9th century, and again in the 12th, and especially in the 15th, until printing took over. Even in the 7th century, in the middle of the Dark Ages between the fall of the Western Empire and Charlemagne's new Empire, a few Classical manuscripts were made which still survive today. It's easy to find pronouncements by zealous and/or prudish Medieval Christians condemning this or that ancient Latin author, or condemning everything written in ancient Latin. Nevertheless, Cicero never ceased to be the model of Latin prose followed in the schools, or Vergil the model of Latin verse. Schoolboys have read Caesar from Caesar's time to the present, the only change being the growing number of schoolgirls who have joined them. Horace, Terence, Plautus, Ovid -- yes, Ovid -- and many others were read the whole time. A wide knowledge of the Latin Classics belonged to the well-rounded education a Pope or bishop was expected to possess. Pope Gregory the Great, in office for a long period in the late 6th and early 7th century, was no enthusiastic friend of the Classics, and may have been directly or indirectly responsible for their above-mentioned decline, but if so, he knew what it was which he opposed. And his distaste for the Classics was very unusual among Popes.
There are some Classical manuscripts which were abridged by pious and/or prudish Medieval Christians, but these are very few, very much the exception. Marginal disapproving notes in the margins of the manuscripts are only slightly more common. As with the widely-held notion that people -- a lot of people -- thought Columbus was going to sail off the edge of a flat Earth, the notion that vast areas of Medieval Europe went for long periods of time completely unlettered in the Latin Classics is simply mistaken.
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