Hamlin Garland

The Middle Ages

The literature of the ninth and tenth centuries had suggested stirrings and preparation rather than achievement. Notker Labeo, who, in its most important aspect, the development of a literary language, represents its highest point, bequeathed to the next generation a flexible and expressive linguistic instrument. Yet his successors in the eleventh century could scarcely find any use to put it to. This seems the more surprising, since the first half of the century saw a great strengthening of Imperial power under Henry II and Henry III, who with Conrad II reigned from 1002 to 1056. Yet temporal power was not likely to foster literature as long as those who wielded it were illiterate. And as to the clergy, and especially the monastic clergy, who had time to write, their minds were directed away from the things of this world by a new spiritual ferment in the Church.