ABSTRACT
In any age up to the Renaissance, the Latin literature of Europe is the measure of its intellectual life. In a day when all books which made a pretense to learning were written in Latin, such books are a barometer recording by their number and importance the advances, the retrogressions, or the periods of hesitation in European civilization. But while Latin is the language of learning, not all books written in it are necessarily learned. Learned men have their moments of leisure. All through the Middle Ages important positions in the government and at court were filled by bishops and clerks trained for the church, men whose progress through the schools or the university had by a process of natural selection marked them as possessed of the intellectual grasp and learning needed in dealing with the problems of government and the State. Such men, though churchmen, were more occupied with worldly than religious matters and in some cases their natural inclinations were anything but pious. It would be a mistake to think that their reading-done in Latin with the ease that comes of long habit-was exclusively edifying. Hence such Latin books as the De Nugis Curialium, the Speculum Stultorum, the Otia Imperialia, and the mass of light, satirical, and scurrilous verse that we know as Goliardic poetry.
