Vertebrates are often marked and followed to determine their habitat requirements, and the locations of their encounters with other animals. Suppose we try this on a suburban family using radiotracking techniques. Miniature radio transmitters are worn as fancy belt buckles or earrings, and you have a high-tech antenna to locate family members at any time. You record the cluster of workplaces, food stores, roads, schools, local parks, night spots, and so forth visited. Each person's 'home range’ is then mapped using the spatial arrangement of locations and routes taken. The amazingly different mosaics would help planners design better suburbs, based on the cluster of locations that people use, and perhaps need (S. B. Warner, Jr., pers. commun.).

In previous chapters we considered patches, corridors, and matrix by themselves. Now we begin hooking these building blocks together to form mosaics. Mosaics are evident at all scales. Here, we focus on the neighborhood clusters of ecosystems or land uses, plus whole landscape and regional mosaics. On land there may be a limited number of common mosaics to understand.

In landscapes and regions context is usually more important than content. That is, the surrounding mosaic has a greater effect on patch functioning and change than do the present characteristics within the patch. Context here includes three components: adjacency, neighborhood, and location within a landscape. ‘Adjacencies are the spatial elements in contact with the patch or site of interest (chapter 2). ‘Neighborhood’ is the encompassing local mosaic linked by active interactions. Neighborhoods and locations within a landscape will be the emphasis here in understanding context.

The name of the book

Reading Medieval Latin is designed to follow on from Reading Latin (P. V. Jones and K. C. Sidwell, Cambridge University Press, 1986). But it can be used by any student who has learned the basic morphology and syntax of Classical Latin taught in Reading Latin sections 1–5.

How the book is arranged

The book is in four parts, each part being divided into five sections. Part one presents texts to illustrate the culture in which Medieval Latin (ML) developed and the sources on which its writers were nurtured. Part two presents selections of Latin written between c.500 and 1000. Parts three and four give fuller treatment of the Latin writing of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A list of sources can be found on pp. xi–xvi.

Each part, section and text has introductory material, with suggestions for further reading. Each text has a commentary with help on language and content. In most cases, reference to text is by line number. However, reference is sometimes by numbered paragraph (e.g. in section 3). The linguistic help is keyed in to two brief appendices on Orthography and Grammar, which are referred to by O.0 etc. and G.1 etc. respectively. Other grammar references are to Reading Latin: Grammar, Vocabulary and Exercises (RLGVE) or Reading Latin: Reference Grammar (RLRGr), found at RLGVE pp. 448–56.

It would be perfectly reasonable to characterize the twelfth century as an age of religious fervour and theological controversy. New monastic orders sprang up regularly, in response to the ideal of the truly simple Christian life of prayer and poverty as opposed to the wealth and worldliness of older foundations. Female visionaries were encouraged to let the world hear the voice of God directly from their lips. New crusades were preached and instituted. But ever present was the danger of straying beyond the bounds of orthodoxy. Sects such as the Cathars and the Waldensians were branded as heretics. Even within the Church, the zeal of reformers could corner a great teacher and force him to rewrite what he had thought out. The crusades brought home for almost the first time the relationship of Islam to Christianity, so that this too was now fought as a heresy. In both these tendencies we can see the seeds of important innovations of the next century, the inauguration of the mendicant orders on the one side and the Inquisition on the other.

On the practical side, the liturgy was invigorated by new musical advances and by the increasing use of drama. Church building received a boost from the more prosperous economic conditions and the self-aggrandizement of prelates. For the great dignitaries of the Church were also great landlords and, as such, men with considerable political power and often the will to use it.

Unlike Ireland, Britain had been incorporated into the Roman Empire (by Claudius in ad 43). From then until the effective detachment from Rome in the middle of the fifth century, Latin had been the official language of the province as of other provinces, and a certain amount of written evidence survives to confirm its use (graffiti, inscriptions and the Vindolanda writing tablets). However, the native population, the Britons (Brettones), spoke Celtic languages, the ancestors of Welsh and Cornish. As the Saxon pirate raids of the third century turned into permanent settlements in the fifth, the native populations were pushed to the peripheries and the Church and the remnants of Latin learning with them. There is still British Latin writing in the sixth century. Gildas' De excidio et conquaestu Britanniae (‘On the destruction and conquest of Britain’) contains a review of the province's history from the Roman invasion to his own day and a complaint against abandonment in the face of the Saxon invasions.

The Church in England, established after the time of Constantine, finally lost contact with the continent after 455, when it accepted (unlike the Celtic Church) the new calculation of the date of Easter. But it did not survive the pagan incursions. It was the Irish foundations – Malmesbury, Iona, Lindisfarne – which preserved the tradition of ecclesiastical Latin on the island. The work of conversion in the areas settled by the Germanic peoples had to be done again.

By the turn of the millennium, the boundaries of Western Christendom were largely established. There would still be some temporary expansion in the East, due to the Crusades: the Norman Conquest of Sicily and South Italy would reclaim the one from Islam and the other from the Eastern Church; and there would be modest expansions in Scandinavia, the Baltic and the Balkans, due to the movement eastwards of the Christian states Denmark, Poland/Lithuania and of the Teutonic Knights. Within Christendom three major themes dominate the history and the Latin writing of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. First is the expansion of the Normans, into South Italy and Sicily (1091) in one branch (Robert Guiscard) and from Normandy into England (1066) in another (William of Normandy). Second is the struggle for power between the German Emperor and the Papacy fuelled by the strengthened Church reform movement and usually called the ‘Investiture Contest’, which reached a temporary conclusion with the Concordat of Worms (1122). Third is the First Crusade, preached by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 and crowned by the capture of Jerusalem on 15 July 1099.

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.