Late Latin is the scholarly name for the written
Latin of
Late
Antiquity. The English dictionary definition of Late Latin
dates this period from the 3rd to the 6th centuries AD. extending
in Spain to the 7th. This somewhat ambiguously defined period fits
between
Classical Latin and
Medieval Latin. Although there is no
scholarly certainty when classical should end and medieval should
begin, Late Latin is characterized (with variations and disputes)
by an identifiable style.
Being a written language, Late Latin is not identifiable with
Vulgar Latin. The latter during those
centuries served as proto-Romance, a reconstructed ancestor of the
Romance languages. Although Late
Latin reflects an upsurge of the use of Vulgar Latin vocabulary and
constructs, it remains to a large extent classical in overall
features, depending on the author. Some are more literary and
classical, some more inclined to the vernacular. Nor is Late Latin
identical to Christian or
patristic
Latin, the theological writings of the early Christian fathers.
They are considered a subset of Late Latin, but much of the latter
especially in the early part of the period was written by
pagans.
Late Latin formed during a time when mercenaries from
non-Latin-speaking peoples on the borders of the empire were being
subsumed and assimilated in large numbers and the rise of
Christianity was introducing a heightened divisiveness in Roman
society, creating more of a need for a standard means of
communicating between different socioeconomic
registers and widely separated
regions of the sprawling empire. A new and more universal speech
evolved from the main elements: classical Latin, Christian Latin,
which featured
sermo humilis, "ordinary speech" in which
the people were to be addressed, and all the various dialects of
Vulgar Latin. The linguist,
Antoine Meillet, said
Sans que l'aspect
extérieur de la langue se soit beacoup modifié, le Latin est devenu
au course de l'epoque impériale une langue nouvelle, "without
the exterior appearance of the language being much modified, Latin
became in the course of the imperial epoch a new language" and
Servant en quelque sorte de lingua franca à un grand empire, le
Latin a tendu à se simplifier, à garder surtout ce qu'il avait de
banal .... "Serving as some sort of
lingua franca to a large empire, Latin tended
to become simpler, to keep above all what it had of the ordinary
...."
Philological constructs
Late and post-classical Latin
Neither Late Latin nor Late Antiquity are modern terms or concepts;
their origin remains obscure. They are not ancient, either. A
notice in
Harper's New Monthly Magazine of the publication
of Andrews'
Freund's Lexicon of the Latin Language in 1850
mentions that the dictionary divides Latin into ante-classic, quite
classic, Ciceronian, Augustan, post-Augustan and post-classic or
late Latin, which indicates the term already was in professional
use by English classicists in the early 19th century. Instances of
English vernacular use of the term may also be found from the 18th
century. The term Late Antiquity meaning post-classical and
pre-medieval had currency in English well before then.
Imperial Latin
Wilhelm Sigismund Teuffel's first edition (1870) of
History of
Roman Literature defined an early period, the Golden Age, the
Silver Age and then goes on to define other ages first by dynasty
and then by century (see under
Classical
Latin). In subsequent editions he subsumed all periods under
three headings: the First Period (
Old
Latin), the Second Period (the Golden Age) and the Third
Period, "the Imperial Age", subdivided into the Silver Age, the
Second Century, and Centuries 3 — 6 together, which was a
recognition of Late Latin, as he sometimes refers to the writings
of those times as "late." Imperial Latin went on into English
literature; Fowler's
History of Roman Literature mentions
it in 1903.
There are, however, insoluble problems with the beginning and end
of Imperial Latin. Politically the excluded Augustan Period is the
paradigm of imperiality, and yet the style cannot be bundled with
either the Silver Age or with Late Latin. Moreover, the 6th century
in Italy was no longer the Roman Empire; the rule of Gothic kings
prevailed. Subsequently the term Imperial Latin was dropped by
historians of Latin literature, although it may be seen in marginal
works. The Silver Age was extended a century and the final four
centuries represent Late Latin.
Christian, patristic, vulgate and ancient Latin
Low Latin
Low Latin is a vague and pejorative term that might refer to any
post-classical Latin from Late Latin through Renaissance Latin
depending on the author. Its origins are obscure but the Latin
expression
media et infima Latinitas sprang into public
notice in 1678 in the title of a
Glossary (by today's
standards a dictionary) by
Charles du Fresne, sieur du
Cange. The multi-volume set had many editions and expansions by
other authors subsequently. The title varies somewhat; most
commonly used was
Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitas.
It has been translated by expressions of widely different meanings.
The problem is understanding what
media, "middle", and
infima, "low", mean in this context.
The
media is securely connected to
Medieval Latin by Cange's own terminology
expounded in the
Praefatio,, such as
scriptores mediae
aetatis, "writers if the middle age." Cange's
Glossary takes words from authors ranging from the
Christian period (Late Latin) to the
Renaissance, dipping into the
classical period if a word originated there.
Either
media et infima Latinitas refers to one age, which
must be the middle age covering the entire post-classical range, or
it refers to two consecutive periods,
infima Latinitas and
media Latinitas. Both interpretations have their
adherents.

Edward Gibbon, English historian who
espoused the concept of a decline of the Roman Empire resulting in
its fall.
In the former case the
infimae appears extraneous; it
recognizes the
corruptio of the
corrupta
Latinitas Cange said his
Glossary covered. The
two-period case postulates a second unity of style,
infima
Latinitas, translated into English as "Low Latin" (which in
the one-period case would be identical to
media
Latinitas). Cange in the glossarial part of his
Glossary identifies some words as being used by
purioris Latinitatis scriptores, such as
Cicero (of the Golden Age). He has already said in
the Preface that he rejects the ages scheme used by some: Golden
Age, Silver Age, Brass Age, Iron Age. A second category are the
inferioris Latinitatis scriptores, such as
Apuleius (Silver Age). The third and main category
are the
infimae Latinitatis scriptores, who must be
post-classical; that is, Late Latin, unless they are also medieval.
His failure to state which authors are low leaves the issue
unresolved.
He does however give some idea of the source of his
infima, which is a classical word, "lowest", of which the
comparative degree is
inferior, "lower." In the Preface he
opposes the style of the
scriptores aevi inferioris
(Silver Age) to the
elegantes sermones, "elegant speech",
the high and low styles of
Latinitas defined by the
classical authors. Apparently Cange was basing his low style on
sermo humilis, the simplified speech devised by Late Latin
Christian writers to address the ordinary people.
Humilis
(humble, humility) means "low", "of the ground". The Christian
writers were not interested in the elegant speech of the best or
classical Latin, which belonged to their aristocratic pagan
opponents. Instead they preferred a humbler style lower in
correctness, so that they might better deliver the gospel to the
vulgus or "common people."
Low Latin in this view is the Latin of the two periods in which it
has the least degree of purity, or is most corrupt. By corrupt du
Cange only meant that the language had resorted to non-classical
vocabulary and constructs from various sources, but his choice of
words was unfortunate. It allowed the "corruption" to extend to
other aspects of society, providing fuel for the fires of religious
(Catholic vs. Protestant) and class (conservative vs.
revolutionary) conflct. Low Latin passed from the heirs of the
Italian renaissance to the new philologists of the northern and
Germanic climes, where it became a different concept.
In Britain
Gildas' view that Britain fell to
the Anglo-Saxons because it was morally slack was already well
known to the scholarly world. The northern Protestants now worked a
role reversal: if the language was "corrupt" it must be symptomatic
of a corrupt society, which indubitably led to a "decline and
fall", as
Edward Gibbon put it, of
imperial society. Writers taking this line relied heavily on the
scandalous behavior of the
Julio-Claudian dynasty and the bad
emperors reported by
Tacitus and other
writers and later by the secret history of
Procopius, who hated his royal employers to such a
degree that he could not contain himself about their real methods
and way of life any longer. They, however, spoke elegant Latin. The
Protestants changed the scenario to fit their ideology that the
church needed to be purified of corruption. For example, Baron
Bielfeld, a Prussian officer and comparative Latinist, defined his
interpretation of the low in Low Latin, which he saw as medieval
Latin, prejudicially as follows:
The fourth age of the Latin tongue is that of the
remainder of the middle age, and the first centuries of modern
times, during which the language fell by degrees into so great a
decadency, that it became nothing better than a barbarous
jargon.
It is the style of these times that is given the name
of Low Latin.
...
What indeed could be expected from this language, at a
time when the barbarians had taken possession of Europe, but
especially of Italy; when the empire of the east was governed by
idiots; when there was a total corruption of morals; when the
priests and monks were the only men of letters, and were at the
same time the most ignorant and futile mortals in the
world.
Under these times of darkness, we must, therefore, rank
that Latin, which is called lingua ecclesiastica, and
which we cannot read without disgust.
As Low Latin tends to confuse
Vulgar
Latin, Late Latin and
Medieval
Latin and has unfortunate extensions of meaning into the sphere
of socioeconomics, it has gone out of use by the mainstream
philologists of Latin literature. A few writers on the periphery
still mention it, influenced by the dictionaries and classic
writings of former times.
Late Latin authors

Cyprian
As Teuffel's scheme of the Golden Age and the Silver Age is the
generally accepted one, the canonical list of authors should begin
just after the end of the Silver Age, regardless of what 3rd
century event is cited as the beginning; otherwise there are gaps.
Teuffel gave the end of the Silver Age as the death of
Hadrian at 114 AD. His classification of styles left
a century between that event and his final period, the 3rd — 6th
centuries BC, which was in other systems being considered Late
Antiquity.
Starting with Charles Thomas Crutwell's
A History of Roman
Literature from the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus
Aurelius, which first came out in 1877, English literary
historians have included the spare century in Silver Latin.
Accordingly the latter ends with the death of the last of the
five good emperors in 180 AD.
Other authors use other events, such as the end of the
Nervan–Antonine dynasty in
192 AD or later events. A good round date of 200 AD gives a
canonical list of nearly no overlap.
The transition between Late Latin and Medieval Latin is by no means
as easy to assess. Taking that
media et infima Latinitas
was one style, Mantello in a recent handbook asserts of "the Latin
used in the middle ages" that it is "here interpreted broadly to
include late antiquity and therefore to extend from c. A.D. 200 to
1500." Although recognizing "late antiquity" he does not recognize
Late Latin. It did not exist and Medieval Latin began directly at
200 BC. In this view all differences from
Classical Latin are bundled as though they
evolved through a single continuous style.
Of the
two-style interpretations the Late Latin period of Erich Auerbach and others is one of the
shortest: "In the first half of the sixth century, which witnessed
the beginning and end of Ostrogoth rule in
Italy
, Latin literature becomes medieval. Boethius
was the last 'ancient' author and the role of Rome as the center of
the ancient world, as
communis patria, was at an end." In
essence, the lingua franca of classical vestiges was doomed when
Italy was overrun by the Goths, but its momentum carried it one
lifetime further, ending with the death of
Boethius in 524 AD.
Not everyone agrees that the
lingua
franca came to an end with the fall of Rome, but argue that it
continued and became the language of the reinstituted
Western Roman Empire (predecessor of
the
Holy Roman Empire) under
Charlemagne. Toward the end of his reign
his administration conducted some language reforms.
The first recognition
that Late Latin could not be understood by the masses and therefore
was not a lingua franca was the decrees of 813 AD by synods at Mainz
, Rheims
Tours
that from
then on preaching was to be done in a language more understandable
to the people, which was stated by Tours Canon 17 as rustica
Romana lingua, identified as proto-Romance, the descendant of
Vulgar Latin. Late Latin as
defined by Meillet was at an end; however, Pucci's Harrington's
Mediaeval Latin sets the end of Late Latin when
Romance began to be written, "Latin retired to the
cloister" and "
Romanitas lived on only in the fiction of
the
Holy Roman Empire." The final
date given by those authors is 900 AD.
Through the death of Boethius, 524 AD

Constantine the Great

Ausonius

Ambrose
- Domitius Ulpianus (170 AD —
228 AD), jurist, imperial officer
- Julius Paulus
Prudentissimus (2nd & 3rd centuries AD), jurist, imperial
officer
- Aelius Marcianus (2nd & 3rd
centuries AD), jurist
- Herennius Modestinus (3rd
century AD), jurist
- Censorinus (3rd century AD),
historian, essayist
- Quintus Gargilius
Martialis (3rd century AD), horticulturalist,
pharmacologist
- Herodianus of Syria (170 AD — 240 AD),
historian
- Gaius Asinius Quadratus
(3rd century AD), historian
- Quintus Septimius Florens
Tertullianus (160 AD — 220 AD), "the father of Latin
Christianity", polemicist against
heresy
- Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus (about 200
AD — 258 AD), converted rhetorician, bishop of Carthage, martyr, saint
- Novatianus (200 AD — 258 AD),
theologian, rival pope, excommunicant
- Quintus Serenus Sammonicus
(2nd century AD, early 3rd century AD), scholar, educator
- Commodianus (3rd century AD), poet,
Christian educator
- Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius
(240 AD — 320 AD), converted rhetorician, scholar, Christian
apologist and educator
- Ammianus Marcellinus
(325/330 AD — after 391 AD), soldier, imperial officer,
historian
- Claudius Claudianus (4th
century AD), court poet
- Gaius Julius Solinus (3rd
or 4th century AD), topical writer
- Nonius Marcellus (3rd or 4th
century AD), topical writer
- Marcus Aurelius
Olympius Nemesianus (fl. 283 AD), poet
- Aquila Romanus (3rd century AD),
rhetorician
- Eumenius of Autun (3rd century AD),
educator
- Aelius Festus
Aphthonius (3rd or 4th century AD), grammarian
- Calcidius (4th century AD),
translator
- Gaius Marius Victorinus (4th
century AD), converted philosopher
- Arnobius of Sicca (4th
century), Christian apologist
- Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius
Constantius Augustus (272 AD — 337 AD), last pagan and first
Christian emperor, administrator, correspondant
- Nazarius (4th century AD), rhetorician,
educator
- Gaius Julius Victor (4th
century AD), rhetorician
- Gaius Vettius Aquilinus Juvencus (4th
century AD), Christian poet
- Nonius Marcellus (3rd and 4th
centuries AD), grammarian, lexicographer
- Julius Firmicus
Maternus (4th century AD), converted advocate, pagan and
Christian writer
- Aelius Donatus (4th century AD),
grammarian, rhetorician, educator
- Palladius (408/431 AD — 457/461 AD),
saint, first bishop of Ireland
- Sextus Aurelius Victor (ca. 320
AD — 390 AD), imperial officer, historian
- Eutropius (4th century AD), imperial
officer, historian
- Aemilius Magnus
Arborius (4th century AD), poet, educator, friend of the
imperial family
- Decimius Magnus Ausonius (ca. 310 AD —
395 AD), poet, rhetorician, educator, friend of the imperial
family
- Claudius Mamertinus (4th
century AD), imperial officer, panegyricist, embezzeler
- Hilarius (4th century AD),
converted neo-Platonist, theologian, bishop of Poitiers, saint
- Ambrosius (337/340 AD — 397 AD),
theologian, Bishop of Milan, saint
- Lucifer (d. 370/371 AD),
theologian, Bishop of Sardinia
- Priscillianus (d. 385 AD),
theologian, first person executed as a heretic
- Flavius Sosipater
Charisius (4th century AD), grammarian
- Diomedes Grammaticus (4th
century AD), grammarian
- Postumius Rufus Festus Avienus (4th
century AD), imperial officer, poet, translator
- Priscianus Caesariensis
(fl. 500 AD), grammarian
Through the beginning of written Romance, 900 AD
Late Latin styles
Some of the features of Late Latin are as follows.
Notes
- Roberts (1996), p.537.
- Auerbach (1958), Chapter 1, Sermo Humilis.
- Meillet (1928), p.270.
- Meillet (1928), p.273.
- LXII.
- Praefatio LXIII.
- Auerbach (1965), p.85.
- P. 196.
Bibliography
See also
External links