Wikipedia:Main Page history/2015 August 19

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. (Full article...)

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August 19: Feast of the Transfiguration (Julian calendar)

• 295 BC – The oldest known temple to Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility, was dedicated.
• 1895 – American outlaw and folk hero John Wesley Hardin was shot dead by an off-duty lawman in El Paso, Texas.
• 1945 – During the August Revolution against French colonial rule, the Viet Minh under Ho Chi Minh (pictured) took control of Hanoi in northern Vietnam.
• 1989 – Hungary opened its border with Austria as part of the Pan-European Picnic, allowing several hundred East Germans to defect to the West.
• 2005 – Thunderstorms in southern Ontario, Canada, spawned at least three tornadoes that caused over C$500 million in damage.

• More anniversaries:

  • August 18
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