From the Anglo-Saxon period down to the 17th and 18th centuries, Latin, as well as being the language of church services, was the international language of culture and religion, and it was Latin-learned clerics who taught the English to write.
There appear to have been two distinct periods of Latin influence on Old English. The first corresponds with the 200 years after the arrival of Christianity in Britain in the 7th century. Most of the words it provided in this period were fairly practical. Germanic had already taken in Latin-based words like church and bishop, but now came many new words related to the new religion and its organisation: abbot, alms, candle, martyr, mass, noon, offer, priest, rule, and temple.
Some words dealing with education and culture also date from this period: for example, school, master, grammar, note, and verse (which appears in the Caedmon passage).
Latin influence waned with the turmoil of the Viking invasions during the later Anglo-Saxon period. But just before AD 1000 there started a new wave of scholarly activity in the English monasteries. From this period come new Christian words (some going back further, to Greek) such as cell, collect, demon, idol, and prime and new words to do with learning, such as accent, history, paper, and title.
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