What Role Did Monasteries Play In Medieval Europe

After the collapse of the Roman empire, Europe was in cultural and intellectual stagnation. The Swerve is based on medieval Europe and Renaissance beginning with something that Stephen Greenblatt picked up a poem called was written by Lucretius in a college book sale. He was fascinated by the ideas that how to handle death. His mother was anxious about death so he was influenced by his mother because his mother used it as a manipulative device. He was curious about that book was written long ago time and he thought that this book included ideas for considering modern. I will mention that some aspects such as what roles did monasteries play in the Middle Ages and the role of monastries in medieval Europe in the preservation and production of manuscripts through the book.
Monasteries were first and primary religious institutions so people joined to live a religious life and for the forgiveness of sins and for rectification. Furthermore, monasteries were significant for education. After the Roman Empire collapsed particularly as the Western Roman Empire collapsed the monks were the only people to study and the resources to store and copy books. many monasteries became famous in terms of their libraries and the best libraries in Western Europe tended

to be found in the monasteries. Copying books was part of the monastic occupation and many important manuscripts survived due to medieval monks copied them.

The manuscripts were naturally disappear in the ancient times maybe they were hidden for finding. Poggio Bracciolini who was the papal secretary and he was responsible for Latin correspondence. When Pope John XXIII dismissed , he finds himself in Germany. He went in there for looking for old manuscripts in monasteries. And he found On the Nature of Things in Germany monastry. Theses manuscripts were copied throughout the centuries by monks. The monks in the monasteries were some of the only people in the Middle Ages who knew how to read and write. They provided education to people. The monks also wrote books and recorded events and they also had libraries for working on books. Thanks to them it is not impossible to know about what happened during the Middle Ages. the Nature of Things was saved by these monks and libraries. Moreover, it was not easy for being a book hunter in that time for Poggio. Monastic order had certain rules for ancient texts and these rules included requirements for literacy and the demand for books. On the other hand, recorders had to write over older texts to transcribe to new texts at the control of the monastery librarians. Germany and Switzerland were had remote monasteries and Poggio was proper to revocate these ancient texts because he was informed about the church. Greenblatt claim that Poggio pave his way into the library of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda whose monks were skilled and much production took place in the monastery so it increased the size of the library. Therefore, he found some interesting works and one of the most important works was On the Nature of Things.
To sum up all ideas, in medieval times, in monastries, there were different orders of monks and monks were generally the most educated people during the Middle Ages.

They had their own libraries to keep record to manuscripsts. Therefore, they saved many of greater treaures such as On the Nature of Things. According to Greenblatt, Poggio Bracciolini was a founder of this book which was hidden. To find it, Poggio went to Germany monastries but monastries had strict rules about literacy and demanding books. On the other hand, Poggio was the appropriate person to access to monastic libraries. Consequently, if I were Poggio, i would achieve these libraries to found these treausers no matter what happened during these

times.