Classical and Medieval Latin

I've read a lot of disparaging comments about Medieval Latin lately -- "the average Dark Age scribe" this and "the average Dark Age scribe" that -- and instead of replying directly to one of these stern Ciceronians in some such snarky manner as: "Jeepers, you sure know a lot about Dark Age scribes! Could you cut and paste some especially bad examples of their bad Latin so that we may all together jeer at their ineptitude and utter disregard of vowel quantity?" I thought it might be better to express myself here, to my, hopefully somewhat better-disposed usual readership, and just to mention a few very basic things. 

 

First of all, although it's hard to imagine that any Latinists do not already know this, it may be helpful to remind ourselves that almost every single bit of the Classical Latin corpus which has survived to our time, survived because Medieval monks copied it. Medieval students were taught Latin, not just with the Vulgate (not that that would have been so terrible. Jerome could write), but also with Cicero and Caesar and Vergil, and with all of the other Classical authors. As hard as it seems to be for some to grasp, the Classical authors were copied in order to be taught. Classical Latin rotting on Medieval shelves was the exception, not the rule.

Secondly, something which seems quite obvious to me, but perhaps only because I've brooded upon the subject unusually long: the corpus of Classical Latin is very small. A few million words written by a few hundred authors. The amount of Medieval Latin preserved today is many times greater. The mediocre Classical authors have disappeared, the everyday Medieval schlubs have not. If we're going to compare Classical Latin with Medieval, we should compare like with like: the best Classical authors with the best Medieval authors. Livy with Matthew Paris. Ovid with Alcuin. Cicero with Abelard. But Paris, Alcuin and Abelard, of course, tend not to be read by those who insist that only ancient Latin is Latin at all, let along being the only Latin worth knowing about with the possible exception of a few Renaissance  Italian Ciceronians.

As far the average Medieval scribe is concerned, there is very little average ancient Latin left with which he could be compared: some scraps of papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, some graffiti on the walls of Vesuvius, some of the humbler of the ancient Latin inscriptions. Nothing which is conventionally counted in the Classical corpus.

I do hesitate to point this out, I feel I'm being a bit rude, but I feel I have little choice: those who disparage Medieval typically have not just read very little of it, and what little they have read, they have treated very unfairly by condemning it because it is different in style than Cicero. Very few people judge contemporary English, I believe, by firmly insisting that if it doesn't sound just exactly like Shakespeare, it's crap. It's also quite rare, I believe, to insist that that which is called 17th-, 18th-, 19th-, 20th or 21st-century English is not English at all, if it does not very closely resemble Shakespeare, and nevermind that Pope, Fielding, Wordsworth, Joyce and I had all read Shakespeare.

That would be to ignore the fact, if one had ever learned it all, that languages change.

I don't delude myself that I'm going to change the mind of a single Ciceronian, anti-Medievalist Latinist. And I certainly don't dispute that Classical Latin is wonderful and offers more than an entire career's worth of scope for study -- any more than any of those Medieval scribes would have disputed it, who copied it, and are the only reason we still have it. 

But perhaps I've given a smile to a Medieval Latinist or two, who, like me, grows a bit weary now and then of the way their field is denigrated by some.

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris (ca 1200-1259), a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of St Albans from 1217 until his death, was an historian whose writings constitute one of the major sources of information of mid-13th century Europe. Although he never rose above the rank of monk, he apparently was treated as a person of great distinction, making frequent visits to the English royal court, for example, and making a journey to Norway to oversee reform of the Abbey of St Benet Holm. He had personal friendships with King Haakon IV of Norway, and, most significant for his historical writings, with King Henry III of England and the King 's brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall. 

Paris' greatest work as an historian is the Chronica Maijora. This work was, up until the year 1235, a re-working of the Flores Historiarum, the chronicle of Roger of Wendover. At that point, Matthew himself, with his personal access to royalty and thus his remarkable nearness to great events of his time, is the primary source. 

A condensation of the Chronica for the period from 1067 to 1235, with some revisions, forms Paris' other famous historical work, the Historia Minor. 

Paris' reputation as an historian has always been controversial. Some call him England's greatest Medieval historian and one of the best historians of Medieval Europe. Others opine that patriotism blinds him and that prejudice and enthusiasm greatly mar his work.

On the one hand, almost no-one would dispute that his writing style is engaging and lively. And his friendships with Henry and Richard gave him access to a range of documents relevant to the history of his own time such as no other historian of the time could match. Some have said that his prejudices greatly detract from the historical value of his writing. And it has been pointed out that Paris sometimes alters the important historical documents he quotes so voluminously in his work. Then again, whether such alterations constitute lying on Paris' part, or an honest attempt to correct mistakes in the documents, is controversial. The conventions of precise citation which are so essential to history-writing today were still unknown in the 13th century. And what looks like prejudicial blindness to some in Paris' writing, has struck others as refreshing directness and sincerity and a direct record of Paris' own convictions.

Whatever one thinks of him as an historian, Paris was more than an historian. He was also one of the most celebrated visual artists of his day. One of the greatest of the mappamundi, those Medieval world-maps with Jerusalem in the center, crammed with illustrations of the local sights and wonders of the parts of the world known to the artists, and those imagined in those parts unknown to him, was made by Matthew Paris. 

Also, many, or perhaps all, of the illuminations in the earliest manuscripts of his work were drawn and colored by him. It is not certain whether Paris singlehandedly wrote out the clean copies of his works, or whether copyists and artists aided him in this process. In any case, these manuscripts made under his care are magnificent, and we are fortunate enough that some examples have survived.

Henry Richards Luard made a highly-regarded edition of the Chronica Maijora for the Rolls Edition, in 7 volumes published from 1872 to 1880. The principal points of what was known of Paris' life is gathered in the prefaces and notes of those 7 volumes.

An Open Letter to Bono

So you've published an autobiography. That's great! The world needs more memoirs by rock stars the way it needs more self-help books by movie stars and crime thrillers by politicians. No, I haven't read your book, I'm not going to, and this isn't even about your book, it's about Achtung Baby. And about the fact, which I and the world learned during all the publicity for your book, without even trying to learn anything about you, because that's how outsized the publicity has been, filling every nook and cranny, that you've been married for 40 years. To a woman you've been with since you joined U2. Hey congratulations.

You're very old -- you're actually a year older than I am! Wow! That's old! -- so I  may have to remind you: in 1991, U2 released an album called Achtung Baby, in which you wailed and screamed about your broken heart. Out here in the general public, millions of us thought we could relate, because we've all been dumped at least once. We listened to you agonizing through songs like "The Fly," "One" and "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," and from the way you carried on, we all thought: Wow, that guy has been dumped like a bag of dirty laundry! Like a dump truck's worth of garbage! Like a very large block of BST, late in the movie Wall Street!

 

But, apparently, no. Since you've been married since 1982, to a woman you've been with since several years before that -- hey, congratulations again, well done -- that means that what sounded, to any normal person listening in 1991, like you getting dumped, was you having a rough patch! Sleeping on the sofa for a night -- maybe for two nights in a row!

You let all of us out here in the real world believe that you understood. We heard you sing lines like "Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief/ All kill their inspiration and sing about the grief," and, especially if we were artistic types, we staggered around in agony, clutching out heads and screaming, "No! No! What have I done?!" when what we had done was destroy a beautiful relationship and then attempt to write a novel about it. Maybe with a happy ending unlike real life. But we never finished it. Because all we were doing was trying to hang on to the most wonderful thing that had happened to us, although it was gone. That was why we could never finish that novel. Because finishing would mean letting go That was why why had to stop trying to finish it, and let go.

And we thought you had done something similar. Now it's not at all clear what you did. Got your wife to stop speaking to you for an entire afternoon, something like that, apparently. 

I got the one word "ONE" tattooed onto my freaking forearm, you humongous jerk!

All the best. I'm glad you're so happily married. Really.

Yr pal,

The Wrong Monkey