Answer:
The use of vernacular languages for the written word had something of a fluctuating history, with a general tendency to increase towards the later part of the middle ages. Languages are the most powerful symbol of ethnic identity. The encouragement or repression of vernacular literacy has tended to coincide with the expression or suppression of national or ethnic boundaries.
The use of vernacular languages in written works of any type cannot be divorced from events and politics. The adoption of forms of Roman civilization by the Ostrogoth conquerors of Rome resulted in the production of Bibles and other Christian texts using the Gothic language. These are now mainly known only from palimpsests