Language

Although none is named in the manuscript, some of the authors have been identified other sources. They prove to have been of various nationalities, and hence native speakers of various tongues including English, French, German and other vernaculars of the time They wrote in Latin because at the time of composition literacy was synonymous with Latinity. To read and write was by definition to read and write Latin--and to speak it, think in it, perchance to dream in it as well. It was the international language of western Europe and the Church--or of Christendom, to combine two modern concepts in one medieval term. Learning was traditionally a function of the religious life, and such education as there was lay in the hands of the Church and the monasteries. The first step in education was necessarily the acquisition of Latin, since it was the everyday medium of instruction for everything that followed.