How was Latin kept alive in the middle ages?

Answer 1

Latin was the language of the Church in Western Europe. The Vulgate Bible was the Latin translation, one of several, that were widely used in the West in the Church. Early papal communication was all in Latin, and so Latin was the established language of the Church from the beginning.

As time passes, languages change. Different dialects of the same language become less and less similar, until the people who speak them are unable to understand each other; this process usually takes about a thousand years or so. The people from different parts of Western Europe found it more and more difficult to communicate over time, and the Latin language evolved into French, Spanish, Italian, and the other Romance Language.

The Church, however, provided education in Latin, and the effect was that as the common language changed, the education remained in a rather conservative formal language that was stable. This benefited not only the Church itself, but the governments of nations, which recorded laws and did diplomacy with each other in Latin, and scholars, who could communicate with each other in Latin, regardless of where in Western Europe they lived.

Answer 2

In the beginning of the Middle Ages, most people in Western Europe spoke Latin, of the type called Vulgar Latin, meaning common Latin. It was recognizably very similar to Classical Latin.

Most languages change with time, and as written works age, people find it increasingly difficult to read them. By the time of Charlemagne, Latin had changed enough that most people found it difficult to read the classics without some education in classical Latin. Also, the Latin of the time of Charlemagne had changed differently in different places, so people who traveled found it hard to communicate with the people they met, even though both were technically speaking medieval Latin.

Charlemagne, as part of his promotion of education, decided that a standard form of Latin should be taught in the schools, and this conformed, more or less, to the Latin of such biblical translations as the Vulgate. The result of this was that Medieval Latin did not change much as a written language as the Middle Ages went on. This was very useful for the purposes of the Church and legal systems, because it meant that people could understand old texts.

But this language was only used by the Church and the governments; people were not teaching it to their children in their households as a spoken language. And so the medieval language of the common people evolved into languages that are derived from Latin, but are clearly not Latin. Such languages include French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and a number of others, in a very large number of dialects.

Ecclesiastical Latin, which is a form of medieval Latin, is still used by the Roman Catholic Church in the Vatican.

There are links below to articles on Medieval Latin and Ecclesiastical Latin.