Silent Reading and the Rise of Romance

In The Rise of Romance, Vinaver suggests we might "look for the cause and the meaning of the change" (3) by the "strangely similar" emergent phenomenon of silent reading (4):

[St. Ambrose] read, Augustine tells us, to himself, that is to say silently: 'his eyes wandered along the page and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were at rest.'  This to St. Augustine seemed remarkable: he had never seen anyone read like that, and he thought that perhaps St. Ambrose wanted to avoid being questioned 'by some doubtful and attentive listener' or, more probably, wished to preserve his voice which was easily weakened. 'Whatever his motive in so doing, doubtless in such a man it was a good one.'  What St. Augustine could not have known was that in watching St. Ambrose read he was seeing the birth of a new world....