It has been said that the literati of the Middle Ages--the monks and
schoolmen--sought to keep the people in ignorance by writing in Latin.
Those who so think can ill have studied the trend of events in Europe
for several hundred years before the Reformation, or its bearing on
literature.
After the fall of the Roman Empire vast hordes of barbarians invaded
Europe. In every country the language was in a state of transition. One
nation often spoke two or three different dialects according to
locality. In England the Gaelic, Anglo-Saxon, the Cymric (or Welsh) and
the Norman-French all had their day. Under these circumstances it was
impossible to have a literature in the language of the people until, in
the course of time, the national languages were formed, and during this
period of transition the Latin was the language of literature, the one
medium of communication between the literati of different countries;
and had it not been for the preservation of learning in the cloisters
during these ages, all knowledge, and literature, and even Christianity
itself, would have been lost. The monks, therefore, deserve more credit
than is usually meted out to them by hasty or superficial critics.
In the earliest ages Ireland was the seat of the greatest learning in
Europe. While England was still plunged in barbarism, and France and
Germany could boast of no cultivation, Ireland was full of monasteries
where learned men disseminated knowledge. The Latin language thus
became a means for preserving the records of history, and it has also
been a treasure house of stories, furnishing material for much of the
poetry of Europe. One of these legends gave Scott the story of the
combat between Marmion and the Spectre Knight.
It has been said that the Ancients did not know how to hold converse
with nature, and that little or no sign of it can be found in their
writings. Matthew Arnold has traced to a Celtic source the sympathy
with, and deep communing with nature that first appeared among European
poets. Under the patronage of Charlemagne the cloisters and
brotherhoods became even more learned and cultivated than they had been
before. Whatever the people knew of tilling the soil, of the arts of
civilization, and of the truths of religion, they learned from the
monks. By their influence States were rendered more secure, and it is
to the monks alone that Western Europe is indebted for the superiority
she attained over the Byzantines on the one hand (who were possessed of
far more hereditary knowledge than she), and over the Arabs on the
other, who had the advantage of eternal power. The cloisters were
either the abode, or the educators, of such men as the Venerable Bede,
Lanfranc and Anselm, Duns Scotius, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of
Monmouth (who preserved the legends of Arthur, of King Lear, and
Cymbeline), of Geraldus Cambrensis, of St. Thomas a Kempis, of Matthew
Paris, a Benedictine monk, and of Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, who
came very near guessing several important truths which have since been
made known to the world by later scholars.
The Bible was protected and cherished from age to age in these
cloisters, where it was, in fact, preserved solely by the labors of the
monks, who translated it by hand, with illuminated border and text.
When a new religious house was opened, it would obtain from some older
monastery a copy of one of these priceless copies of the Sacred
Scriptures; and then this new house in its turn, would set to work to
multiply the number of Bibles, through the labor of its monks and
brothers.
The German translation of the Bible was made in classic High Dutch, and
many later writers have fashioned their style from it, although modern
scholars, Catholic and Protestant, have found many faults in it,
especially whole passages, wherein Luther has erred. This craze for
High Dutch caused the historians of both Denmark and Sweden to utter a
vigorous protest against the influx of High Dutch literature into their
respective countries in the sixteenth century. They averred it was
ruining the native language and literature; but, in spite of this,
Lutheranism got a firm foothold in both these nations.
In the sixteenth century the poetry of all Southern Europe was affected
by the upheaval caused by Luther and his teachings, while in the
Northern countries it was even worse; for, as a great German author
(von Schlegel), has said:
"The old creed could not be driven into contempt without carrying along
with it a variety of images, allusions, poetic traditions and legends,
and modes of composition, all more or less connected with the old
faith."
The struggle that we can trace (in all the works Luther has left) of
his own internal conflict between light and darkness, faith and
passion, God and himself, is a type and indication of what took place
in literature during the Reformation, when the old was in opposition to
the new.