The hermeneutic style of Latin, a style with many unusual and arcane
words, especially from Greek, became the nearly universal preference in
tenth-century England. It was first found in the work of Apuleius in the
second century and then in Europe in the later Roman period. In the
early medieval period some leading Continental scholars were exponents,
including Johannes Scotus Eriugena and Odo of Cluny; the most
influential hermeneutic writer was the English seventh-century bishop
Aldhelm. In England the hermeneutic style became increasingly
influential in the tenth century when Latin scholarship was reviving; in
continental Europe, the style was only ever used by a minority of
writers. It was the house style of the English Benedictine Reform, the
most important intellectual movement in later Anglo-Saxon England. The
style fell out of favour after the Norman Conquest, and the twelfth-
century chronicler William of Malmesbury described it as disgusting and
bombastic. Historians were equally dismissive until the late twentieth
century, when scholars such as Michael Lapidge argued that it should be
taken seriously as an important aspect of late Anglo-Saxon culture.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutic_style>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
295 BC:
The oldest known temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love,
beauty and fertility, was dedicated.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_(mythology)>
1895:
American outlaw and folk hero John Wesley Hardin was shot dead
by an off-duty lawman in El Paso, Texas.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Hardin>
1945:
During the August Revolution against French colonial rule, the
Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh took control of Hanoi in northern Vietnam.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Revolution>
1989:
Hungary opened its border with Austria as part of the Pan-
European Picnic, allowing several hundred East Germans to defect to the
West.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-European_Picnic>
2005:
Thunderstorms in southern Ontario, Canada, spawned at least
three tornadoes that caused over C$500 million in damage.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Ontario_Tornado_Outbreak_of_2005>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
strumpet:
1. A female prostitute; a woman who is very sexually active.
2. A female adulterer.
3. A mistress.
4. (derogatory) A trollop; a whore.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/strumpet>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope
which, seized upon with faith, can work out salvation … Let us not
deceive ourselves: we must elect world peace or world destruction.
--Bernard Baruch
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bernard_Baruch>