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.

Latin After the Classics

I'm writing this post for very much the same reason I've written several earlier posts: because I encounter people who equate Latin with ancient Latin and seem unaware of how much Latin literature has survived which was written after the ancient era ended around AD 450, the date of the latest "pagan" Latin texts.

There are some other people, who seem to believe that ancient Latin is the only WORTHWHILE Latin ever written, the only Latin worth reading. On that subject, I would ask you to consider this: only a tiny fraction of what was written by pre-Christian Latin authors has survived to the present. What we have now, to a great extent, is what people considered to be most worth preserving. No doubt much was written in ancient Latin which was of much lower quality. Much more of the writing of lower quality has survived from the Medieval, Renaissance and more recent eras. If you compare ancient Latin to more recent Latin, it's only fair to compare the best to the best.

 

But --  must you compare? I doubt that I will be able to stop anyone who is so disposed from disparaging Latin from post-ancient eras. But perhaps I can encourage others to read what they like, without allowing snobs to ruin things for them.

So: I am not comparing the following Latin works to ancient Latin. Plenty of others do that full-time, and find the newer stuff wanting. Such comparisons don't interest me. 

Boethius wrote in the earliest post-"pagan" period. He lived from ca AD 480 to 524. His magnum opus de consolatione philosophiae is well-known. In addition to that, many of his writings on music and mathematics have survived.

Isidore of Seville, ca AD 560 to 636, is also known for one work above all, his Etymologiae. Many others of his work survive, some on physics, some theological, some historical.

Gregory of Tours, c538-594, wrote an Historia Francorum which is one of our few written sources of information about the Merovingian dynasty down to Gregory's time.

Alcuin of York, born around 735, died 804, was the chief architect of Charlemagne's massive program of educational reform. Like Charlemagne, Alcuin seems to have been very charismatic and persuasive. He would debate with Charlemagne over matters of policy, often daring to chide and contradict the Emperor. Many of his written works survive. His poems, while not always masterpieces, are very expressive and winning.

Matthew Paris, died 1259, an English Benedictine monk, besides being one of the very best of Medieval historians, was also a gifted drawers of pictures, as can be seen in some of the manuscripts of his works which he himself made, as well as in maps which are considered some of the finest of the Middle Ages. I would heartily recommend all of his historical writings, but above all the Chronica majora. 

The examples could be endless. Reading some Medieval or later Latin works will tend to lead you to others.

It seems that often, people these days read translations from the Latin without realizing that they are translations. Bacon and Hobbes wrote about as much in Latin as they did in English. As did John Milton. No, I'm not talking about Paradise Lost, that was written in English, but Milton's Defense of the English People, for example, was originally Defensio pro Populo Anglicano. Kant, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Romain Rolland all published works in Latin. Prefaces to works of classical Greek and Latin are routinely written in Latin to this day. And if you say you are studying Medieval history, and you don't read Latin, then I have to risk sounding like one of the snobs I began this essay by denouncing, and wonder exactly what you are studying.

Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris lived from c AD 1200-1259. Just now, Amazon delivered the 3rd volume of Matthew Paris' Historia Minor. I now have all 3 volumes. That is, I have all 3 volumes in the Rolls Series, published in the 19th century. I believe this 19th century edition is still the standard edition. Things sometimes move slowly in the world of publishing in Latin, and compared to ancient Latin, publishing in Medieval Latin is much slower still.

Matthew Paris is generally considered to be one of the best Medieval historians. In addition to the Historia Minor, he wrote the Chronica Maiora, which runs to 7 volumes in the Rolls Series. I have a few of those volumes.

A few years ago the Cartography Department of the U of M had an open house, and I went, and I learned that this same Matthew Paris is considered one of the best medieval cartographers. One of the Department's big displays was one of Matthew Paris' maps. I'm not sure whether the people in that department had ever given much thought to Matthew's historical writings. They were definitely much more interested in his maps.

Once, long ago, must have been in the 1990's, I was in a hotel room which had a small TV and either no cable or just basic cable, so I ended up watching some women's bowling. And one of the bowlers was Lisa Wagner. Turned out, Lisa Wagner is one of the greatest female bowlers of all time.

While she was kicking ass in this bowling competition, as she did in many competitions, the commentators were talking about her. And, besides mentioning how much ass she was kicking those days, they also mentioned her very long fingers. She had an exceptionally good grip on the ball for a woman.

And that was when they mentioned that Lisa Wagner was a direct descendant of the famous 19th-century pianist Franz Liszt.

And that was when I realized that she was probably also a direct descendant of Richard Wagner,  who composed operas and wrote books, and married Cosima Liszt, Franz Liszt' daughter, and had 2 children with her.

And that those bowling commentators probably didn't know who Richard Wagner was. And I wondered whether Lisa Wagner knew who Richard Wagner was. Among other things, he was, and is, much, much more famous than his friend and father-in-law, the star pianist Franz Liszt.

And I wondered what Richard Wagner would think about one of female descendants becoming a professional bowler.

Preserving Culture

"Let one noble man bring fourth one noble author, and an other emprinte an other, to the conservacion of Englandes antiquities. In lyke case lete one ryche merchaunte brynge one worthye worke of an auncyent writer to lyght, and an other put fourth an other. Besides the Bryttyshe authors, whome I oft named afore, lete one bryng fourth Bedas de Oeatia Anglorvm, an other Willyam of Malmesbery de Geatis Pontijicum et Regum. Lete an other brynge fourth Simeon of Durham, wyth Rycharde and Johan of Haiigustalde, an other Aldrede and Wyllyam of RieuaU, wyth Marianus the Scott. An other Oiraldus CambreTiaia, an other Henry of Hwrvtyngdony an other Alphred of Beverley, an other Florence of Worceatre, and an other Walter of Exceatre. An other Roger Hoveden, an other Mathew Parys, an other John Bever, an other RaduLphus Niger, an other Radvlphua de Diceto, an other William Newhurg of Bridlington, an other John of Oxforde, An other ScaUe Temporum, an other Flores Historiarum, Aeserius, Osbemue, Oervaaivi Stephanides, and Ricardua Divisiensia of Wynchestre, wyth a wonderfiill nombre besydes."

That's the remarkable John Bale, writing in the mid-16th century, one of the first to recognize the worth of the writings of the Medieval English historians, and to urge that their works be preserved, printed and published. The passage above is quoted by Frederic Madden in the Preface of his 1866 edition of Matthew Paris' Historia Anglorum, also known as the Historia Minor to distinguish it from Paris' Chronica Majora. I was paging through this Preface while watching Henry Rollins on YouTube, telling an audience at a German music festival about how he has loaded up a terabyte flash drive with music and taken the flash drive to places like Iran and Sri Lanka, where people have trouble sometimes accessing Western music, and spreading it, one young Iranian or Sri Lankan with a laptop at a time, meanwhile loading up on things like underground Sri Lankan death metal, which Rollins says is awesome, and bringing it back to the West.