GREEK IN THE LATIN MIDDLE AGES
Organized by Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Columbia University

[Panel as described in the Call for Papers]
It is widely held that during the deep break which occurred between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West in the Middle Ages the formal study and knowledge of Greek, and therefore its cultural influence, disappeared from the West. The work of Cassiodorus and of his scholar-monks at Vivarium is still considered by modern scholars as the last effort until the 12th century Renaissance to incorporate Hellenic knowledge into the Latin culture of Western Europe.

Recent works, however, have begun to question this widely-held assumption, and have shown that Greek texts circulating and translated in the West were far more numerous and varied than has hitherto been recognized, and that attempts at studying Greek were more significant and successful than previously thought. Walter Berschin's Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages; Michael W. Herren, ed., The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: The Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages; Bernice M. Kaczynski's Greek in the Carolingian Age: The St. Gall Manuscripts; and the study of Theodore's teaching at Canterbury by B. Bischoff and Michael Lapidge are examples of this exciting recent scholarship.

The purpose of this session is to explore the variety of ways in which Greek and Greek texts continued to be important in the culture of the Latin West. We welcome papers treating all questions concerning this topic, for example, the tradition of a particular text or author, a discussion of a translation center, the analysis of particular methods and tools employed by translators.

Mark Mastrangelo, Brown University
Prudentius's Knowledge of Greek: A Reappraisal