Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/629

 Books and Science in the Middle Ages 535 which can be mastered only after a great deal of study. The people of the more remote Roman provinces and the incoming barbarians naturally paid very little attention to the niceties of syntax and found easy ways of saying what they wished.^ Yet several centuries elapsed after the German invasions be- fore there was anything written in the language used in con- versation. So long as the uneducated could understand the correct Latin of the books when they heard it read or spoken, there was no necessity of writing anything in their familiar daily speech. But by the time Charlemagne came to the throne the gulf between the spoken and the written language had become so great that he advised that sermons should be given thereafter in the language of the people, who, apparently, could no longer follow the Latin. Although little was written in any German language before Charlemagne's time, there is no doubt that the Germans pos- sessed an unwritten literature, which was passed down by word of mouth for several centuries before any of it was written out. The oldest form of English is commonly called Anglo-Saxon Ancient and is so different from the language which we use that, in order Anglo-Saxon to be read, it must be learned like a foreign language. We hear of an English poet, as early as Bede's time, a century before Charlemagne. A manuscript of an Anglo-Saxon epic, called Beowulf^ has been preserved which belongs perhaps to the close of the eighth century. The interest which King Alfred displayed in the English language has already been mentioned. This old form of our language prevailed until after the Norman Con- quest ; the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle^ which does not close until 1 154, is written in pure Anglo-Saxon. Here is an example : " Here on thissiim geare Willelm cyng geaf Rodberde eorle thone eorldom on Northymbraland. Da komon tha landes menn 1 Even the monks and othei:s who wrote Latin in the Middle Ages often did not know enough to follow strictly the rules of the language. Moreover, they introduced many new words to meet the new conditions and the needs of the time, such as imprisonare^ " to imprison " ; uilagare^ " to outlaw " ; baptizare^ " to baptize " ; foresta, " forest " ; /eudum, " fief," etc.