9 - Conclusion

Summary

The Laterculus has been easily available in both Migne's Patrologia Latina and Mommsen's edition in Monumenta Germaniae Historica for a century without attracting attention: it has always appeared to be a brief and unprepossessing text of which Angelo Mai could say, not unjustifiably, ‘Latinitas ualde squalet’. In a context of chronicle texts, it has seemed to earlier commentators to be poor stuff, naive and ill-informed.

This study has sought to demonstrate that it was written in Canterbury by Archbishop Theodore at some point between 669 and 690. Its contents, background, manuscript-context, sources and Latinity are compatible with such a conclusion. No other possible explanation for the text can be proffered which does not create more problems than it solves.

Having exhaustively considered the reasons for assigning it to the school at Canterbury, the second focus of this study has been to demonstrate that, far from being naive and primitive, it is the product of genuine and extensive scholarship, and thus no discredit to one of the outstanding figures of Anglo-Saxon literary culture. The Theodore revealed by the Laterculus is a very remarkable man indeed. One salient aspect of the text is its practicality as a teaching document: parts of Malalas's Chronographia have been reshaped into a concise text which offers a simple and effective guide to the kind and quantity of world history which an un-Romanized people would need in order to set the central mystery of Christ's life on earth in context.