Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 19, 2015

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.