True or False: Many medieval stories were written in Latin only.

The story behind the answer

Latin dominated church, law, and scholarship, but many beloved medieval narratives were composed in vernaculars people actually spoke. Old French gave us the Song of Roland and Chrétien de Troyes’s Arthurian tales; Middle English produced Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Old Norse preserved the Icelandic sagas; Middle High German offered the Nibelungenlied; Old English bequeathed Beowulf; Italian had Dante’s Divine Comedy; and Castilian Spanish featured El Cantar de Mio Cid.

From the 12th century onward, courts and growing urban audiences fueled demand for romances, epics, saints’ lives, and comic fabliaux in local languages, often rooted in oral performance. These works not only entertained but also helped shape and standardize Europe’s emerging literary languages.