William of Malmesbury's Life and Works

Abstract

The movement which we call the twelfth century Renaissance included a revival of Latin classics and Roman Law, the rediscovery of much Greek and Arabic science and philosophy, the development of Romanesque architecture into Gothic, and the writing of history of greater quantity and improved quality. John of Salisbury, archbishop Theobald's curial clerk, who died in 1180 as bishop of Chartres, is generally regarded as England's most finished product of this movement, but a generation before him William, monk of Malmesbury, already displayed many of its characteristics. A polymath whose interests included history and hagiography, law and the classics, archeology and architecture, he had however none of John's cosmopolitanism or contact with the great men of his day, he had little acquaintance with science or philosophy and contributed nothing to the development of theology. A monk all his life, he was representative of the scholarly Benedìctine researcher (he was almost halfway in time between St. Bede and Mabillon), but he was also outstanding because he had the genius and the wide range of interests which were shared by few.