Latin West

Medieval period: Christian world

"Greek East" and "Latin West" are terms used also to divide Chalcedonian Christianity into the Greek-speaking Eastern Orthodox peoples of the Eastern , centered on the Byzantine Empire, and the Latin-speaking Roman Catholic peoples of Western Europe and the Maghreb. Here, Latin West applies to regions that were formerly part of the Western Roman Empire, specifically Italia, Gallia (Gaul), Hispania, Mauretania, Dalmatia, and Britannia. It also later-applied to areas that had never been part of the Empire but which later came under the culture sphere of the Latin West, such as Magna Germania, Hibernia (Ireland), and Caledonia (Scotland). In this sense, the term "Latin" came to refer to the liturgical and scholarly language of the Western Roman Empire, as many of these regions did not, in fact, speak Latin.