A companion to Latin studies.

  • John Edwin Sandys
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A companion to Latin studies. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    The Middle Ages, c. 529 to c. 1321 a.d. 1247. Early in the Middle Ages, Gregory the Great {c. 540—604) confesses to a contempt for the art of speech, and admits Ages. ' ^ that he is not unduly careful in the avoidance of barbarisms Gregory or inaccurate uses of prepositions, 'deeming it utterly un- worthy to keep the language of the Divine Oracles in subjection to the rules of Donatus'. In the same century the decline of Latin learning in Gaul is attested by the writings of of Tours. another Gregory, the bishop of Tours and the historian of the Franks (^r. 538—594), who repeatedly apologises for his imperfect knowledge of Grammar, and supplies us with proof that the pronunciation of Latin had already begun to differ from its spelling; e was confounded with /, and o with u; many of the consonants were pronounced feebly, or suppressed altogether; aspiration was little observed, and a sibilant sound was introduced into d and fi. After 600 a.d. the de- cadence of Latin is exemplified by the fantastic grammarian of Toulouse, who gave himself the name of Virgilius Maro. Grammarian. ^ . . . . His only value lies in the way in which he illustrates the transition from Latin to its Provengal descendant, and from quantitative to rhythmical forms of verse. (His date is probably 650, a/ier Isidore'.) 1248.. Early in the seventh century {c. 613) and in the neighbourhood of Pavia, the monastery of Bobbio was founded by the Irish monk, coiumbanand Columban (c. 543—615). It long remained a home of Bobbio. learning for Northern Italy. Many of its Mss have been GaUus and dispersed among the great libraries of Rome and Turin and St Ga en. Milan. In 614, the monastery of St Gallen was founded above the Lake of Constance by one of Columban's comrades, and, during the Middle Ages, important Latin mss were there preserved until they were brought to light in the Revival of Learning. 1249. Less than twenty-five years after the foundation of Bobbio and St Gallen, Isidore, bishop of Seville (d. 636), compiled from Isidore of j.]^g ^ggj. treatises of Suetonius, and from other sources, an Seville. , , . encyclopaedic work called the Origines which gathered up for the Middle Ages much of the learning of the Roman world. 1250. Later in the same century, in England, a school was founded by Theodore of Tarsus, archbishop of Canterbury from 668 Tarsus^^ °^ to 690, who made many of the monasteries of England Aidheim. schools of Greek and Latin learning. Among the pupils of Bede. the school at Canterbury was Aldhelm {c. 650—709), the future abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne, whose lengthy dialogue on Latin prosody is enlivened with riddles in Latin verse. While Aldhelm is the father of Anglo-Latin poetry, his younger and more famous contemporary, Bede (673—735), has left his mark mainly in the field of prose. He is ' the most general scholar of his age'. ^ Manitius, Lat. Lit. des MAs, i (1911) 121. Zimmer, S. Ber. Berl. Akad. 1910, p. 1067, placed him c. 460.