The role played by the church in preserving the classic Græco-Roman civilizations

Preservation of Greco-Roman works

 The Catholic Church has helped preserve the heritage of Greco-Roman civilizations through the
hard work and patience of the people in monasteries who copied much of the writings of the
Greeks and Romans.
 The monks made diligent efforts to preserve classical learning by saving as many ancient works
as possible.
 Initially, they actively searched for old texts Furthermore, the monks diligently safeguarded
these old texts by storing them in their monastery's library.
 They also made heroic efforts in copying classical texts, thus ensuring their survival and
dissemination throughout the former Empire.
 These efforts were carried out in the scriptoria of a monastery, which were rooms specifically
designated for the replication of written texts.
 Some of the renowned works of ancient literature that have been preserved include those of
Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, and Aristotle.

De re publica by Cicero (54 BCE).

 De re publica was written in six books by Marcus Tullius Cicero between 54 and 51 BCE.
 The books consisted of written dialogues between different political leaders (philosophers,
scholars, military leaders, historians, etc.) discussing political situations of the Roman Republic.
 De re publica survives only in fragments. Large parts of the text are missing.
 Books one to 3 survive in significant chunks, but from the fourth and fifth books only minor
fragments survive, The only part of the sixth book which survives is the final section.

The Vergilius Vaticanus (400 CE)

 The Vergilius Vaticanus or Vatican Vergil, is a rare treasure of the late antique world. Produced
in Rome around 400 C.E.
 It is an illuminated manuscript of Virgil’s Aeneid, illustrating the ancient hero Aeneas’ journey
from Troy to Italy.
 it also contains scraps of Virgil’s second major poem, Georgics, about agriculture and the
tensions between nature and humankind.
 Composed of 76 surviving pages with 50 illustrations, some of them badly damaged.
 originally had about 440 leaves and 280 illustrations.

Metamorphoses by Ovid (8 CE)

  It is a poem consisting of 15 books or parts. The poem was written around 8 CE.
 It contains more than 250 myths, many of them Greek in origin, and runs from the origin of the
universe through the deification of Julius Caesar.
 It is an important source for the Greco-Roman myth, since it survives in its entirety and covers
so much ground.
 It also shows us how many of the Greek myths changed and were adapted in the Roman
context.

Sources

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-fmcc-boundless-worldhistory/chapter/the-catholic-church/

https://www.seekingtruth.ph/history/christianity-builder-of-western-civilization-part-1-of-4/

https://sites.psu.edu/2014groupm/ciceros-political-career/de-re-publica/

https://hyperallergic.com/310911/vatican-digitized-a-1600-year-old-illuminated-manuscript-of-the-
aeneid/

https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/greekromanmyth/chapter/the-metamorphoses/