History. Poetry. Spooky. Bibles. The Bible and the codex initially took shape within a Roman Empire that stretched from Syria to Scotland.
Greek and Latin were the literary languages, and by fourth century Christianity was the state religion. In the early Middle Ages individual nations began to emerge, with their own languages, cultures, and religious traditions—orthodox Christian, heretical, and pagan—all influencing the ways in which Bible and book were perceived and produced.
Still, the concept of "empire" continued to haunt ambitious leaders who saw faith as a way to unite their diverse subjects. Disseminating a religion of the Word involved both finding interpreters to preach in local languages and teaching people sufficient literacy for reading and copying texts. Missionaries often used a written version of the spoken language while different sounds required the creation of suitable scripts.