How much of classical antiquity was known in the Middle Ages?
January 12, 2016 8:18 AM Subscribe
I know that Aristotle mostly faded out after the fall of Rome, and that it was revived when Christian scholars began to translate Arabic editions into Latin in the 12-13th centuries. Fair enough. But what about Homer and the playwrights? Did they similarly disappear, and were they rediscovered alongside Aristotle? Would a 12th century monk have known who Pericles was? Would he have known Herodotus? The Pre-Socratics? If not, how were they recovered? Can someone point me toward some free online material where I can read about this topic? Thanks.
Best answer: iTunes has a free history course on the early Middle Ages taught by Yale's Paul Freedman that touches on some of this.
My sense is that it's complicated --- when you say "a monk," a monk where? The Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine empire was Greek-speaking and my understanding is that knowledge of classical antiquity persisted far longer there than in the Western Roman Empire. A monk when?, also --- there were periods of political stability that allowed for greater cultural exchange/learning in the West as well --- the Carolingian Renaissance in the early 9th century for example. Or the early 12 century when the first universities were founded in Western Europe. If you're clinging to a rock somewhere in the British Isles fending of Viking raiders every other Tuesday, you may well have not heard of Aristotle et al. On the other hand, if you're in a major trade center behind stout castle walls with a good library and regular contact with points further east, then maybe so.
posted by Diablevert at 8:54 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
My sense is that it's complicated --- when you say "a monk," a monk where? The Eastern Roman Empire/Byzantine empire was Greek-speaking and my understanding is that knowledge of classical antiquity persisted far longer there than in the Western Roman Empire. A monk when?, also --- there were periods of political stability that allowed for greater cultural exchange/learning in the West as well --- the Carolingian Renaissance in the early 9th century for example. Or the early 12 century when the first universities were founded in Western Europe. If you're clinging to a rock somewhere in the British Isles fending of Viking raiders every other Tuesday, you may well have not heard of Aristotle et al. On the other hand, if you're in a major trade center behind stout castle walls with a good library and regular contact with points further east, then maybe so.
posted by Diablevert at 8:54 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Here's one source which says, "The classical heritage flourished throughout the Middle Ages in both the Byzantine Greek East and the Latin West."
Here's a more detailed description. "Greek monasteries, none of which could have been completely without books, flourished in Rome from the seventh to the eleventh century. "
posted by beagle at 8:57 AM on January 12, 2016
Here's a more detailed description. "Greek monasteries, none of which could have been completely without books, flourished in Rome from the seventh to the eleventh century. "
posted by beagle at 8:57 AM on January 12, 2016
Best answer: Very briefly, it's important to distinguish between the Latin Middle Ages, roughly corresponding to the western half of the Roman Empire, and Byzantium. Except for those Greek texts that were translated in late antiquity (the Prior Analytics, Plato's Timaeus, and a few others), Greek literature was unavailable to most people in the Latin West. Latin texts, meanwhile, were of little interest in the Greek East. There, a selection process went on in which texts that were not used in schools tended to disappear (e.g. we have seven plays by Aeschylus of the over 100 that he wrote).
The twelfth- and thirteenth-century translation movements in Iberia and Sicily, from Arabic to Latin and from Greek to Latin, tended to involve philosophical and medical texts, not historical or poetic texts, which had no formal place in the medieval university curriculum. There was a very abridged Latin translation of the Iliad, the Ilias latina, written in antiquity and known in the Latin West, but to my knowledge no translations of the Greek dramatists or comic playwrights until the Renaissance. Similarly, the Greek historians were translated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The humanist movement, with roots in late thirteenth-century Padua and popularized in the fourteenth century by Petrarch and Boccaccio, emphasized grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and ethics, and also Greek, especially after Manuel Chrysoloras's brief stint as a teacher in Florence.
Our hypothetical monk might have known the names Pericles and Herodotus. He would probably know Democritus and Heraclitus, but as the "laughing philosopher" and the "weeping philosopher," not on account of their doctrines.
I don't know of any comprehensive, reliable online sources, but you can find R. R. Bolgar's foundational work, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, in good libraries. The standard introduction to the transmission of classical literature is L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars. The recent volume edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn Most, and Salvatore Settis, The Classical Tradition, has a number of useful articles, e.g. "Book, Manuscript: Development and Transmission" (disclosure: I wrote the entries on Botany and Zoology).
posted by brianogilvie at 8:58 AM on January 12, 2016 [10 favorites]
The twelfth- and thirteenth-century translation movements in Iberia and Sicily, from Arabic to Latin and from Greek to Latin, tended to involve philosophical and medical texts, not historical or poetic texts, which had no formal place in the medieval university curriculum. There was a very abridged Latin translation of the Iliad, the Ilias latina, written in antiquity and known in the Latin West, but to my knowledge no translations of the Greek dramatists or comic playwrights until the Renaissance. Similarly, the Greek historians were translated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The humanist movement, with roots in late thirteenth-century Padua and popularized in the fourteenth century by Petrarch and Boccaccio, emphasized grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and ethics, and also Greek, especially after Manuel Chrysoloras's brief stint as a teacher in Florence.
Our hypothetical monk might have known the names Pericles and Herodotus. He would probably know Democritus and Heraclitus, but as the "laughing philosopher" and the "weeping philosopher," not on account of their doctrines.
I don't know of any comprehensive, reliable online sources, but you can find R. R. Bolgar's foundational work, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, in good libraries. The standard introduction to the transmission of classical literature is L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars. The recent volume edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn Most, and Salvatore Settis, The Classical Tradition, has a number of useful articles, e.g. "Book, Manuscript: Development and Transmission" (disclosure: I wrote the entries on Botany and Zoology).
posted by brianogilvie at 8:58 AM on January 12, 2016 [10 favorites]
BTW, "the history of the classical tradition" is an active area of research with its own scholarly society (the International Society for the Classical Tradition) and journal (The International Journal of the Classical Tradition).
posted by brianogilvie at 9:04 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by brianogilvie at 9:04 AM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Best answer: From The Cambridge Companion to Homer: "The Iliad and Odyssey were, so far as we have evidence, totally unknown to Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Yet the 'matter of Troy' was, next to the meteoric saga of Alexander the Great, the most popular of topics for romances founded on classical sources."
In other words, just to add to/slightly modify what brianogilvie said, while classical texts themselves may not have been available (either in originals or in translation--though keep in mind 'translation' means something quite different at that time than the way we think of it now, more like 'adaptation') in the Middle Ages, the plots and characters from certain historical and poetic texts (especially Homer, but others as well) were definitely circulating in various forms. It depends on the individual text/author; I would suggest searching for the term "textual transmission" in relation to authors you're particularly interested in.
One fairly detailed and popular recent work that might interest you is Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, which is about the rediscovery of Lucretius in the Renaissance. It follows a pretty standard narrative about the rediscovery of antiquity in the Western European Renaissance, but also has some discussion of the ways in which information about the text, if not the text itself, would be circulating in the Middle Ages.
posted by Owl of Athena at 9:07 AM on January 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
In other words, just to add to/slightly modify what brianogilvie said, while classical texts themselves may not have been available (either in originals or in translation--though keep in mind 'translation' means something quite different at that time than the way we think of it now, more like 'adaptation') in the Middle Ages, the plots and characters from certain historical and poetic texts (especially Homer, but others as well) were definitely circulating in various forms. It depends on the individual text/author; I would suggest searching for the term "textual transmission" in relation to authors you're particularly interested in.
One fairly detailed and popular recent work that might interest you is Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve, which is about the rediscovery of Lucretius in the Renaissance. It follows a pretty standard narrative about the rediscovery of antiquity in the Western European Renaissance, but also has some discussion of the ways in which information about the text, if not the text itself, would be circulating in the Middle Ages.
posted by Owl of Athena at 9:07 AM on January 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham deals with these questions in depth.
posted by supermedusa at 9:08 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by supermedusa at 9:08 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
sorry that is not free or online but you may still want to check it out
posted by supermedusa at 9:09 AM on January 12, 2016
posted by supermedusa at 9:09 AM on January 12, 2016
Would he have known Herodotus? The Pre-Socratics? If not, how were they recovered?
I recall the commentary to Dante I was reading saying that (circa 1300) he had not read Plato since there were no Platonic manuscripts. As for the pre-Socratics, I guess most people would have gotten their knowledge of them from Aristotle's discussions in Metaphysics.
posted by thelonius at 9:55 AM on January 12, 2016
I recall the commentary to Dante I was reading saying that (circa 1300) he had not read Plato since there were no Platonic manuscripts. As for the pre-Socratics, I guess most people would have gotten their knowledge of them from Aristotle's discussions in Metaphysics.
posted by thelonius at 9:55 AM on January 12, 2016
In reply to theonius, the Timaeus was available in Chalcidius's partial Latin translation with commentary; it became the basis for a neoplatonic natural philosophy in the twelfth century. On the other hand, Aristotle's Metaphysics was not fully available before Michael Scot's early thirteenth-century translation via Ibn Rushd (Averroës), though there were three earlier partial translations.
posted by brianogilvie at 10:38 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by brianogilvie at 10:38 AM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
> The Inheritance of Rome by Chris Wickham deals with these questions in depth.
Er, no it doesn't—I just finished it, and while it's a great book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to know about the so-called "Dark Ages," it doesn't really discuss what the question is about. Its focus is on politics and society, not high culture; Homer is mentioned briefly (as in "the East continued to read Homer, the West didn't"), and I don't recall any references to the playwrights.
posted by languagehat at 1:03 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Er, no it doesn't—I just finished it, and while it's a great book that I would recommend to anyone who wants to know about the so-called "Dark Ages," it doesn't really discuss what the question is about. Its focus is on politics and society, not high culture; Homer is mentioned briefly (as in "the East continued to read Homer, the West didn't"), and I don't recall any references to the playwrights.
posted by languagehat at 1:03 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
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"you can find R. R. Bolgar's foundational work, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, in good libraries."
===========
Read online for free
posted by Quisp Lover at 2:41 PM on January 12, 2016
"you can find R. R. Bolgar's foundational work, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries, in good libraries."
===========
Read online for free
posted by Quisp Lover at 2:41 PM on January 12, 2016
My link above was not what I thought it was.
Best alternative is $12 for a used copy on Amazon
posted by Quisp Lover at 3:22 PM on January 12, 2016
Best alternative is $12 for a used copy on Amazon
posted by Quisp Lover at 3:22 PM on January 12, 2016
Response by poster: Thanks everyone. Great information, all.
To clarify, I kept my OP vague intentionally so as to get as much information as people had to offer. If anyone is following the thread and is interested in following up, my question was instigated by a character in a story I've been writing. He is a broadly-educated Bordeaux smuggler in the 14th century who, after his clan is murdered, poses as a vicar in a small village in West Sussex. So, plague, murder, etc., etc.
None of my OP bears directly on the plot, but as I continue to develop my character's personality and motivations, and especially his theology and historical worldview, I was curious to know what parts of antiquity might have been known to him and what would be impossible for him to know.
Thanks again, everyone.
posted by jwhite1979 at 9:46 PM on January 12, 2016
To clarify, I kept my OP vague intentionally so as to get as much information as people had to offer. If anyone is following the thread and is interested in following up, my question was instigated by a character in a story I've been writing. He is a broadly-educated Bordeaux smuggler in the 14th century who, after his clan is murdered, poses as a vicar in a small village in West Sussex. So, plague, murder, etc., etc.
None of my OP bears directly on the plot, but as I continue to develop my character's personality and motivations, and especially his theology and historical worldview, I was curious to know what parts of antiquity might have been known to him and what would be impossible for him to know.
Thanks again, everyone.
posted by jwhite1979 at 9:46 PM on January 12, 2016
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Though Rome was sacked by Alaric in 410 (for the first time since the Gauls in 390 BCE), the Empire didn't just disappear, it had already moved east to Constantinople (nee Byzantium) under Constantine, and the empire actually grew a bit under Justinian. Byzantine scholars preserved classical science, literature, philosophy, engineering, architecture, art and medicine. And Constantinople didn't actually fall to Mehmed II until 1453! The Byzantine Empire maintained trade, political, and ecumenical relations with both European kingdoms and with the Roman Catholic church both before and after the Great Schism in 1054. That's not even getting to the Crusader states of Outremer, who, of course had closer relations due to their proximity. The Classical World didn't die or disappear, it just retreated from the more far-flung regions Western Europe. And that's just the Christian states! Remember, around 1000 C.E. most of Spain was under the Caliphate of Cordoba.
So, who are you talking about, in particular?
posted by leotrotsky at 8:53 AM on January 12, 2016 [7 favorites]