Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Renaissance in Italy, Vol. 1 of 2: Italian Literature
The causes of this tardiness are not far to seek. Latin, the universal tongue of medieval culture, lay closer to the dialects of the peninsula than to the native speech of Celtic and Teutonic races, for whom the official language of the Empire and the Church always exhibited a foreign character. In Italy the ancient speech of culture was at home: and nothing had happened to weaken its supremacy. The literary needs of the Italians were satisfied with Latin; nor did the genius of the new people make a vigorous effort to fashion for itself a vehicle of utterance. Traditions of Roman education lingered in the Lombard cities, which boasted of secular schools, where grammarians and rhetoricians taught their art according to antique method, long after the culture of the North had passed into the hands of ecclesias tics.' When Charlemagne sought to resuscitate learning, he had recourse to these Italian teachers; and the importance of the distinction between Italians and Franks or Germans, in this respect, was felt so late as the eleventh century. Some verses in the Panegyric addressed by Wippo to the Emperor Henry III. Brings the case so vividly before us that it may be worth while to transcribe them here.
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