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.

The eleventh century marks the rise of the Normans. From their involvement with the anti-Byzantine ‘resistance movement’ of Melo of Bari (1016) to the final acquisition by Robert Guiscard of the Kingdom of Sicily (1091) they played an increasingly important part in the power-politics centred on the Italian peninsula. More than once during the struggle with the German Emperor the Pope was forced to rely on their aid (only to regret it). The energy, forcefulness and ruthlessness of the conquerors of South Italy and Sicily was seen also in the bastard son of Robert I of Normandy, who succeeded as a minor when his father died on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1035. William survived attempts to oust him when, with the help of the French king he defeated the rebel barons at Val-des-Dunes in 1047 and took a firm grip on his duchy. In 1051 he visited England, and returned with what he later claimed was a promise from his kinsman King Edward that he would be named to succeed him. He defied a papal ban to marry Matilda of Flanders (1053) and strengthened his position in the ensuing attacks by Henry I of France by defeating the aggressors in 1054 and 1058. By 1062 he was in a position to lay claim to the French county of Maine.

The extraordinary explosion of Latin literary activity in the later twelfth century was a consequence of many factors, chief among them perhaps being the more settled political conditions, which allowed population growth, the rise of the towns and sustained economic development. This was a period of new movements, especially in religious life, which is marked by a proliferation of new monastic orders such as the Cistercians. Heresies, such as that of the Cathars, also abound. The advance in the status of the cathedral schools already noticeable in the eleventh century, continues, and is especially marked in France at Chartres, Orléans, Rheims, Laon and Paris. The growing idea of nationhood brought with it the desire for centralization and hence an expansion in the courts of monarchs. A steady supply of clerics educated to the highest level in Latin learning became essential to the sustaining of this new system. Such men formed with their peers in religious houses an intellectual élite which could take and give pleasure by the production of sophisticated works in the traditional language. Production of such material could in this climate be valuable in attaining positions of considerable emolument, so that literary patronage became important once more, as it had been in Charlemagne's day (see section 9), except that now it was far more widely spread.

On 27 November 1095 at Clermont Pope Urban II delivered his call for Christians to take up the crusade against the Muslims. The immediate reason for the announcement was an appeal in 1094 by the hard-pressed Byzantine emperor Alexius (1081–1118). He asked the Pope as head of Western Christendom for help against the advance of the Turks. The defeat at Manzikert (1071) had left Asia Minor open to the enemy, and they duly overran the territory. They were now established not far from Constantinople itself. But the emotive issue for Christians was rather the grip of the infidel upon the holy places of Palestine, which were established in the tradition as objects of veneration and in practice by the institution of pilgrimage (see above sections 2.4 and 7.4). There was a third factor. The northern Italian trading cities (Genoa, Pisa and Venice) and the Normans under Robert Guiscard had by the early 1090s pushed back substantially the sphere of Muslim influence in the Mediterranean. It was certainly in their interests to push it back further. Moreover, the possibility of carving out Latin kingdoms in the East, despite the ostensible purpose of aiding the Byzantines, was a very real inducement to impoverished nobles. This coincidence of religious zeal, economic interest and political opportunity accounts for the success of Urban's call.

The Jewish idea of sacred texts was carried over into Christianity, which set the ‘New Covenant’ between God and his people alongside the ‘Old Covenant’. The ‘New Covenant’ was embodied by Jesus and expressed in the – at first fluctuating – body of writings which we call the ‘New Testament’. The ‘Old Covenant’ was expressed in the law of Moses and the other books which make up what we call the ‘Old Testament’ (not excluding what some parts of the Christian Church now set aside as the ‘Apocrypha’). This body of writings was translated into Latin by the second century. Then the factors mentioned in the general introduction to this part (above, pp. 5–6) led to the retention of this form of the text, despite the spread of the gospel message well outside the area of the Roman Empire. Here we will focus on two important aspects of the Bible, its language and its interpretation.

The earliest Latin translations were those known as the Vetus Latina (‘Old Latin’). Their renditions of the Old Testament were made directly from the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures made in the third century bc at Alexandria. St Jerome (d. 420) produced a new, partially revised, text, the so-called Vulgate, which eventually became the standard text. Some of the books he left unrevised (Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Baruch).

It is difficult to produce for the twelfth century a meaningful categorization of what we might today call literary works. Poetry served a number of purposes, including as well as entertainment the presentation of historical narrative, theological controversy and philosophical reflection (see section 18.4). Prose also crossed the boundary between the utilitarian and the amusing (e.g. Walter Map's De nugis curialium ‘Courtier's trifles’). The best that can be said is that the more vigorous intellectual atmosphere provided space for the production and consumption of literary material which aimed to divert rather than primarily to instruct (though this object was never far away). It was in the regal and the episcopal courts that writers found their talents welcome and a society which would reward the effort of composition of lighter as well as more profound works in the traditional language. The lyric poetry of the period, composed to be sung, contains much of real value. The satirical verse is often pungent and at the same time unspecific. Epic poetry of classical depth is produced. However, the primary impression one gets is of a highly sophisticated society which understands very well how and when to make jokes about subjects (such as the sin of lust) which everyone knew were circumscribed by very clear theological laws.

The main types of historical work already evident in earlier periods, that is the chronicle, the annal and the saint's life, all continued to be composed during the twelfth century. But the increasing importance of education is manifest in the strong development of deliberate ideological manipulation of personalities and events. More and more in the wake of the investiture contest, rulers and churchmen alike needed to win battles with the word and so to have writers in their circle who could perform the task persuasively. The large number of biographies of Thomas Becket shows what a golden opportunity for the proponents of the Church was his murder. Secular rulers were also interested in how images of themselves and the past of their nation could help them in the task of retaining and increasing power. Otto of Freising's Gesta Friderici (completed by Rahewin) is a good example of the selective use of data to produce such an effect. The growing activity and diversity of life in Europe is reflected in the greatly increased numbers of narratives dealing with brief episodes or particular events. Often, as for example with Giraldus Cambrensis' account of the conquest of Ireland, an ideological purpose is also clearly visible. Increasingly, especially in the Italian communes, the Norman kingdoms and the papal Curia, records began to be kept. From this point on, then, we are less at the mercy than in earlier periods of the particular circumstances, interests and biases of the historiographers.