The term ‘Christian Latin’ has no linguistic validity. There was no ‘special language’ which only Christians used, distinguished clearly from that employed by pagans. The various registers of Latin, from ‘vulgar’ at the lowest end to the sophisticated and complex language of high literary products at the other, were always clearly distinguished from each other as far as their function was concerned, whether used by pagans or Christians. The only linguistic feature which united the registers as employed specifically by Christians was the specialized Christian vocabulary (e.g. baptizo ‘I baptize’; sinaxis ‘Divine Office’). This was also the only feature which distinguished pagan writings in the various registers from Christian. The possibility of making such a distinction soon vanishes anyway, since the decree of the emperor Theodosius in 394 which made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire also led inexorably to the Christianization of all Latin writing.

The usefulness of the term lies in its definition of a cultural phenomenon. After the final dissolution of its centralized secular power structure in the fifth century, the Western Roman Empire was supplanted as the ‘universal empire’ by the Catholic Church. As an expression of this continuing universality, the Church adopted and retained Latin. This, then, was the language of its sacred texts, its liturgy, its ecclesiastical administration, and therefore of its education system.

The schools are at the centre of the intellectual life of the period. There was as yet no fully formal organization of institutions of higher education, such as would come about with the organization of universitates (‘guilds of students/masters’) in the thirteenth century. But by the later part of the century, Paris at least, with its three schools, the cathedral school of Notre-Dame, those of the canons regular at St Victor and on the Montagne Ste-Geneviève, was moving towards faculties and the grouping of students by nationes (countries of origin). Even at this date, Paris is of European importance, drawing students from far afield and producing an old-boy network as well as an intellectual diaspora. Magistri (‘masters’) seem to have been free to set up schools, set their own fees, and to move on when they encountered problems or were not earning enough. Students would attach themselves to magistri according to their reputation and what they wished to study. The teaching method was the lecture, by which was meant lectura, reading a text with the magister supplying a commentary. Around 1200, Alexander of Neckam lists some of the texts so studied: for grammar and rhetoric, Priscian and Donatus; for dialectic, the Logica nova of Aristotle (Prior and Posterior Analytics, Topics and Elenchi, which began to be known from about 1128 onwards); for arithmetic and music, Boethius; for geometry, Euclid (known from the early twelfth century); for astronomy, Ptolemy's Almagest (known from around 1160); for law, the Corpus iuris civilis of Justinian (rediscovered in the eleventh century) and Gratian's Decretum (see section 16.3 below); for Medicine, Galen and Hippocrates (recovered by Spanish translators); for theology, the Vulgate and Peter Lombard's Sententiae.

Education was in the first instance a by-product of the Church's central purpose, to celebrate the Eucharist and to keep up a constant stream of prayer to God. These two functions were fulfilled by the Mass and the Divine Office respectively. In the Western Church from the latter part of the fourth century, these were conducted in Latin. In the early period, two distinct types of liturgy were used in different areas, the Roman, which ultimately became standard, and the Gallican, which probably originated in the East.

The chants used in the Ordinary of the Mass consisted of Kyrie eleison, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, and those of the Proper of Introit, Gradual, Alleluia (or Tract), Offertory and Communion. From the tenth century onwards, various items appear in mss. with additional texts plus music. Two important types are the ‘sequence’ (prosa; see section 10.2 Intro.) and the ‘trope’ (tropus), a composition of new music and text used as an introduction to or insert into an introit, offertory or communion chant. One of these (the Quem quaeritis in sepulchro dialogue), which was performed before the introit for the Mass on Easter morning, probably led eventually to the development of the liturgical drama.

The ancient education system survived to different dates in different regions, and was replaced to varying degrees in various places. The strength of the ancient tradition of schooling in North Africa, even in the second half of the seventh century, can be seen from the example of Hadrian, sent to England in 669 with Theodore of Tarsus to take care of education there. The thread was broken by the Arab invasions, which had reached Carthage by 698. The refugee scholars fled in some numbers to Spain, where they organized monastic centres of importance for Visigothic culture. In Spain, the Visigoths encouraged education after their conversion to Catholicism in 589. The centres at Seville, Saragossa and Toledo produced important scholars, of whom Isidore of Seville (c.560–636) is the most celebrated, and the study of grammar and rhetoric flourished. Even the study of ancient poetry continued. Things became more difficult after the Arab invasion of 711. But the tradition was not immediately broken, since it was the Church which organized learning.

In Italy, after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the Ostrogoth Theodoric protected the schools and took an interest in literary activities. During the sixth century, the wars between Ostrogoths and Byzantines exhausted the region. The Lombard invasion followed in 568. Continual wars then undermined the structure inherited from the Romans.

It will be clear from the texts presented in sections 11–14 that during the period under scrutiny literature, including verse, was at the service of politics, both ecclesiastical and secular, as well as of theology. Poetic composition is used to celebrate the deeds of the great (for example William of Apulia's long account of the Norman Robert Guiscard's conquest of Sicily, commissioned by Pope Urban, whom Guiscard supported). The papal position on investiture is argued for in verse, as for example in Rangerius' poem De anulo et baculo (see section 12.7). Poetry continues to eulogize kings, as for instance do Baudri of Bourgeuil's verses to William the Conqueror's daughter Adela. But during this period we see also the emergence of a more hedonistic poetry, which appears to have functioned rather as entertainment, albeit for the same Latinate élite and not without didactic elements. In Germany the Ruodlieb and the Cambridge Songs (so called from their survival in a Cambridge University Library ms.) give us almost our first taste of Latin in contact with vernacular culture. In Normandy and Norman England the institution of the rotulus mortuorum, a roll sent round the Benedictine foundations in the care of a messenger (the rolliger) to gather prayers and commemorative verses upon the death of a notable individual, gives us many glimpses of the poetic activity in the monastic schools and provides yet another context in which the writing of verse had a religious, eulogistic or otherwise political function.

The earliest non-Roman area to be converted was Ireland. In 431, Pope Celestine I sent Palladius as the first bishop ‘to the Irish believing in Christ’. But Irish tradition credited the British St Patrick with the introduction of Christianity to Ireland. His missionary work also took place during the fifth century. The Church rapidly changed its form from diocesan – run by bishops – to monastic – run by abbots (hence parochia, which elsewhere means ‘parish’, in Ireland means ‘a group of monasteries’).

The supreme sacrifice for an Irish monk was peregrinatio pro Christo ‘travelling abroad for Christ’ and this activity by men who had studied in Irish monasteries was of profound importance for Latin learning in Britain and on the continent. Irish missionaries travelled abroad in the sixth and seventh centuries and established many important monastic centres (see map 4). For example, in Britain Iona was founded c.563 by St Columba (who had already set up the community at Durrow in Ireland and is credited with many more, e.g. at Derry, Swords and Kells: see map 3). Lindisfarne was founded from Iona in 643 by Aidan as a base for the conversion of Northumbria. St Columbanus went to Gaul in 590 or 591, was given land by King Guntram of Burgundy in the Vosges, and founded Annegray, Luxeuil and Fontaines before he was exiled by King Theodoric in 610 (see section 8.5).

By the tenth and eleventh centuries benefices such as bishoprics and abbacies were associated everywhere with landed wealth and so also with political power. It was commonplace to find such positions bought and sold by the lay rulers who thus effectively controlled the political make-up of their kingdoms. As the Church gradually became an arm of the secular ruler, other abuses within it also increased. Clerical marriage, for example, was commonplace. The need for a return to good order and Christian teaching was felt by many and underlay the reform movement which grew in strength at monasteries such as Cluny and Monte Cassino and eventually spilled over into the Church at large. Selling and buying benefices was condemned as simony. Clerical marriage was branded ‘concubinage’.

By the early eleventh century the Papacy itself had become the battleground for secular interests. The major influence in election of the pontiff was that of the German Emperor. Henry II, for example, by giving military support to Cardinal Theophylact against Gregory in 1013 was instrumental in his succession as Benedict VIII. Under Henry III (1039–56) the German Church pressed reform onwards. But it was the same Henry who, it seems, removed Pope Gregory VI from his throne in 1046.

From the moment of its official triumph at the end of the fourth century, Christianity began to dictate the types of writing which were done. Roughly speaking, there were three main areas of impetus, which of course interacted. First of all, the Christian life itself, both monastic and secular, necessitated many new forms of literary expression. There was the liturgy itself, with its constant developments (see section 2). There was the sermon (see further on 5.1 below). There was the pilgrimage (see section 2.4 and section 7.4) and with it the handbook describing the routes and the mirabilia to which one was headed. There was the need to record the calendar of the sacred year, which eventually brought annotations which grew into chronicles and annals (see sections 10.5, 12.1). There was the constant work of biblical commentary (see section 7.2(b)), education (see sections 1 Intro, and 16) and theological enquiry (see sections 9.5, 14, 18). Secondly, the sacred texts themselves acted as models for literary genres. For example, the saint's life grew out of the account given in the Gospels of Christ's life and martyrdom (see sections 6.3 and 19.1). The Acts of the Apostles provided models for accounts of conversion and collections of miracles (see section 7.3). The Epistles were the basis of the pastoral letter (see section 4.2).

The pattern set by Anselm of the use of dialectic in the elucidation of the problems of faith continued through the twelfth century with Abelard's theological writings. But the century is more diverse philosophically than the eleventh. The study of dialectic was based primarily on Aristotle. But there was a group centred on Bernard of Chartres which addressed rather the connections between the existence of the world and that of God. Their inspiration was drawn from Plato, through the Timaeus (at this time his only known work) and Chalcidius' commentary, Augustine and the Neoplatonic Plotinus, known from Macrobius and Pseudo-Dionysius. They were important in the development of an interest in natural phenomena per se, which would eventually be bolstered by the thorough analysis of the structure and elements of being provided by the Logica nova of Aristotle (see section 16 Intro.) and the Arabian philosophers, whose works began to be known later in the century. This combination produced the natural theology of the thirteenth century. A third group of theologians, whose inspiration was biblical and inward, were the mystics. For them the inner experience of God, which transcends all human understanding, is central and they are, not surprisingly, utterly at odds with the rational approach of Abelard. Political philosophy, which hitherto had hidden under the guise of partisan ideology (for example during the investiture contest – see section 12), emerges isolatedly in John of Salisbury's Policraticus.

A distinction between the realms of philosophy and theology, of reason and faith, was as foreign to the eleventh century as it had been to St Augustine in the fourth. During the period covered in this section there is, however, a debate about the place of dialectic in theology. Some writers supported the view that theology should be conducted by textual commentary and paraphrase of Scripture. Others saw the need for analysis of what God had revealed. Peter Damiani (see above section 12.5) argues on the antidialectical side: ‘Conclusions drawn from the arguments of dialecticians or rhetoricians ought not to be lightly applied to the mysteries of divine power; and as for the rules which perfect the use of the syllogism and the art of speech, let them cease to be obstinately opposed to the laws of God and to claim to impose the so-called necessities of their inferences on the divine power’ (M. J. Charlesworth, St Anselm's Proslogion, Notre Dame and London, 1979, p. 24). The opposing school of thought, exemplified by Anselm of Besate, inclined towards the view that all truth was approachable through dialectic. Berengar of Tours was to show the force of this in his examination of the Eucharist (see below, 14.1). St Anselm of Canterbury leads the discussion onto a middle path: ‘since it is by the rational mind that man is most like God, it is by the mind that man knows God’ (Monologion 66) shows his acceptance of dialectic.

The Roman education system was geared to producing speakers. In both its practical and theoretical aspects, it reflected a world where the word and its presentation were central to civic life. Even under the imperial system, where real power was effectively removed from the aristocratic élite which had frequented the oratorical schools, the basis remained the same. In the late first century ad, Quintilian (Institutiones) attempted to argue for an oratorical education which was essentially encyclopaedic and general. But rhetoric was losing its practical usefulness. It was not until the fifth century that educators tried to push things in a different direction. For the first time the seven liberal arts are set as the basis for the new school curriculum: Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric (later known as the Trivium), Music, Geometry, Arithmetic and Philosophy (or Astronomy – the later Quadrivium). The first treatise of this type was Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae ‘On the marriage of Mercury and Philology’, revised a century later by the Christian rhetorician Manor Felix. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus wrote the Institutiones, to provide a safe equivalent of traditional education – both Christian and pagan – for his monks. Both treatises were immensely influential during the Middle Ages, along with the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (602–36).

The death of Charles the Bald in 877 signalled the final break-up of the Carolingian Empire, which had been fragmented in 843 by division among Charlemagne's grandsons and temporarily reunited in 875. The main heirs were the kingdoms of France, Italy and Germany. But it was to Saxon Germany that the major political and missionary developments of the tenth century were due. Under Otto I (‘The Great’: reigned 936–73) Italy was annexed (951–61), the Empire re-established (Otto was crowned Emperor in 962), and Poland and Hungary prepared for integration into Western Christendom. Under Otto III (980–1002) and his teacher Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II, 999–1003), the latter task was completed. In 1000 the see of Gniezno in Poland was established, and that of Esztergom in Hungary in 1001 Otto III undertook in 998 a renovatio imperii Romanorum, ‘renewal of the Roman Empire’, an attempt to set up a permanent imperial government in Rome.

In the later ninth and early tenth centuries, the Viking depredations caused havoc in West Francia (Paris was besieged in 885–6) and the British Isles. But by the end of the tenth century, the Norsemen had been pushed to the periphery in Britain and temporarily contained in Francia by the concession of Normandy (911). Moreover, Scandinavia began to accept Catholic Christianity (and Latin) from around 960 onwards. The efforts of King Alfred (848–903) in England were not just military, but intellectual also.

The circumstances described in the introduction to section 8, obtaining in the Frankish kingdom in particular, led to orthographic reforms. These were already in train in the reign of Pippin the Short (750–68). His son, Charlemagne (768–814) extended the scope of these changes. In his capitulary De litteris colendis (‘On the pursuit of learning’), written sometime between 780 and 800, he tells of his receipt of letters from his clergy, in which he noted sensus rectos et sermones incultos ‘correct views and uncouth words’. He feared that this lack of skill in expression might be symptomatic of an inability correctly to understand the sacred texts. He consequently enjoined that in his kingdoms schools should be set up in every see and at every abbey. The effect of these changes was to ensure the continuity of more or less classical standards of spelling and grammar. More or less, since, for instance, ae never fully replaced e as the spelling of the diphthong and quod/quia for acc. + inf. remained standard until the Renaissance. On the organizational level, Charlemagne had here sown the seeds of the universities of the thirteenth century.

The most important group of early Christian Latin writers is that known as the Fathers of the Church. Some, notably St Hilary of Poitiers, St Jerome and St Ambrose, absorbed and transmitted the theology of Eastern Christianity to the West. St Augustine carried the arguments forward in his challenges to schisms and heresies (Donatists, Manichees and Pelagians) and his defence of the faith against the charge that it was responsible for the decline of the Roman Empire (De civitate Dei ‘The City of God’: see section 4.1(b)). Writers such as Pope Leo the Great and Pope Gregory the Great (d. 604) laid the foundations of the central and unifying power of the papacy as well as setting out firm principles for Christian behaviour. The last Latin Father, St Isidore of Seville, epitomized and sanitized for Christian consumption the learning of the ancients. This period and these men had effectively created the Western Church, its theology, its political institutions and its intellectual structure. They had also determined its language – Latin. In the later Middle Ages, they were regarded as authorities (though not on the same level as the biblical writers – see section 16.2) from whom flowed theological insight about the nature of Christ's divinity or of the Trinity, practical wisdom about the nature of man and his duties to the world and to God, knowledge of the world and arguments for what a Christian should know.

This volume fulfils a promise made to users of Reading Latin as long ago as 1986 (Text, p. vii). Those who care to look up that passage and compare what is offered here will see that in the years which have elapsed since the pledge was made, the author has changed his mind about the plan. Nonetheless, the idea of a Latin course which would take beginners from Classical Latin through to the Middle Ages is now a reality. The need for such a course to serve the English-speaking world is certainly greater even than it was when Reading Latin was published.

During the period from the fifth to the tenth century, Western Christianity spread as far as Ireland in the West, Scandinavia in the North and Poland and Hungary in the East. As a mark of the continuing universality of the Church which replaced the ‘universal empire’, the new creed brought with it the universal language, Latin. A map showing the Church in 1001, with the boundary of the Roman Empire marked reveals at a glance the extent of this linguistic incursion (see map 2). The native tongues of these areas were non-Latin. It can be imagined by any non-Romance speaking modern learner of Latin what additional toil was required for the clergy of such areas to attain the grasp of that language needed for their work.

During most of the period, the central institution for the propagation of Latin learning was the monastery (see section 1 Intro.). Towards the last third of this period, the Carolingian reforms begin the process of establishing schools attached to cathedrals (see section 9 Intro.).

The Latin writing of the period is highly diverse. In some senses, though, some unity can be perceived when works are seen in relation to the local traditions of learning which fostered them. In practice, this is how the Latin of the pre-Carolingian period tends to be studied. The organization of this part reflects this, by setting together the pre-Carolingian writing of Ireland, England and the Romance-speaking lands of Europe separately.