In 1085, Alfonso IV of Castile captured Toledo from the Muslims, and the library there became a great centre for the copying and dissemination of classical literature throughout Europe, including works like Ovid and Tacitus. Paris in particular became a great centre of learning and many English clergy and nobles in particular travelled there to study. Gerald of Wales, for example, is fond of quoting Ovid in his works, whilst Pliny's Historia Naturalis crops up in a variety of places, most notably in Adam of Bremen's Chronicon when Adam populates the mysterious lands beyond the northern frontier of Christendom with the marvellous beasts Pliny had described as living beyond the southern reaches of Roman civilisation.

Even before then it is likely that there was some knowledge of Roman history. Alfred the Great is an afficionado, and even mints coins based on Roman solidi found in Britain. His daughter Æthelflæd founds military camps along Roman lines and also reinstates the manufacture of pottery in the Roman style in Stafford.