Question 68

Which language served as the shared written language of the Church and of learning across medieval western Europe?

Greek, which was also the language of Byzantine scholarship
Latin, even though most ordinary people did not speak itCorrect answer
French, which spread as a language of courts and of romances
Arabic, because scholars in Spain and Sicily wrote in it

Explanation

Church services, charters, chronicles and scholarly writing across the Latin west were all carried on in one learned language, which let a scholar move between kingdoms without changing the language of his books. Greek fails because it was the language of learning in the Byzantine east rather than in the western kingdoms, whose everyday speech was developing into separate vernaculars.

Explanation

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