As to Italy, the Greek continued to be spoken in the Greek colonies in Calabria and Sicily
down to the eleventh century. Boëthius was familiar with the Greek philosophers. Cassiodorus
often gives the Greek equivalents for Latin technical terms.^813
Several popes of this period were Greeks by birth, as Theodore I. (642), John VI. (701),
John VII. (705), Zachary (741); while others were Syrians, as John V. (685), Sergius I. (687),
Sisinnius (708), Constantine I. (708), Gregory III. (731). Zachary translated Gregory’s "Dialogues"
from Latin into Greek. Pope Paul I. (757–768) took pains to spread a knowledge of Greek and sent
several Greek books, including a grammar, some works of Aristotle, and Dionysius the Areopagite,
to King Pepin of France. He provided Greek service for several monks who had been banished
from the East by the iconoclastic emperor Copronymus. Anastasius, librarian of the Vatican,
translated the canons of the eighth general Council of Constantinople (869) into Latin by order of
Pope Hadrian II.^814
Isidore of Seville (d. 636) mentions a learned Spanish bishop, John of Gerona, who in his
youth had studied seven years in Constantinople. He himself quotes in his "Etymologies" from
many Greek authors, and is described as "learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew."
Ireland was for a long time in advance of England, and sent learned missionaries to the
sister island as well as to the Continent. That Greek was not unknown there, is evident from Scotus
Erigena.
England derived her knowledge of Greek from Archbishop Theodore, who was a native of
Tarsus, educated in Athens and appointed by the pope to the see of Canterbury (a.d. 668).^815 He
and his companion Hadrian,^816 an Italian abbot of African descent, spread Greek learning among
the clergy. Bede says that some of their disciples were living in his day who were as well versed
in Greek and Latin as in their native Saxon. Among these must be mentioned Aldhelm, bishop of
Sherborne, and Tobias, bishop of Rochester (d. 726).^817 The Venerable Bede (d. 735) gives evidence
of Greek knowledge in his commentaries,^818 his references to a Greek Codex of the Acts of the
Apostles, and especially in his book on the Art of Poetry.^819 In France, Greek began to be studied
under Charles the Great. Alcuin (d. 804) brought some knowledge of it from his native England,
(^813) E.g. in De Artibus, etc., cap. 1 (in Migne’s ed. II. 1154): "Nominis partes sunt:
Qualitas, ποιότης.
Comparatio, σύγκρισις.
Genus, γένος.
Numerus, ἀριθμός.
Figura, σχη̑μα.
Casus, πτω̑σις."
In the same work he gives the divisions of philosophy and the categories of Aristotle in Greek and Latin, and uses
such words as η θος,πάθος,παρέκβασις,ἀνακεφαλαίωσις,στάσις,ἀντέγκλημα,ἀντίστασις,πραγματική,ἀπόδειξις,
ἐπιχειρήματα, etc.
(^814) See Hefele, IV. 385 sq.
(^815) Bede (Hist. Eccl. IV. 1) calls him "vir et saeculari et divina literatura et Graece instructus et Latine." Pope Zachary
speaks of Theodore as "Athenis eruditus" and "Graeco-Latinus philosophus."
(^816) William of Malmesbury calls this Hadrian "a fountain of letters and a river of arts."
(^817) L.c. V. c. 2, and V. 8, 23.
(^818) He quotes e.g. In Luc. 6:2 the Greek, for Sabbatum secundum primum (δευτερόπρωτον). Opera, ed. Migne, III. 392.
(^819) De Arte Metrica Opera, I. l50-176. He explains here the different metres of Greek poetry.