Medieval Latin was the form of
Latin used in the
Middle
Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the
liturgical language of the
medieval
Roman Catholic
Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and
administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,
Medieval Latin should not be confused with
Ecclesiastical Latin. There is no real
consensus on the exact boundary where
Late
Latin ends and Medieval Latin begins. Some scholarly surveys
begin with the rise of early
Christian
Latin in the middle of the 4th century, others around the year
500, and still others with the replacement of written
Late Latin by written
Romance languages starting around the year
900 (see under
Late Latin).
Influences
Influence of Christian Latin
Medieval Latin was characterized by an enlarged vocabulary, which
freely borrowed from other sources. It was heavily influenced by
the language of the
Vulgate, which contained
many peculiarities alien to Classical Latin that were the
consequence of more or less direct translation from
Greek and
Hebrew; these
peculiarities were mirrored not only in its vocabulary, but also in
its grammar and syntax.
Greek
provided much of the technical vocabulary of
Christianity. The various
Germanic languages spoken by the Germanic
tribes, who invaded western Europe, were also major sources of new
words. Germanic leaders became the rulers of western Europe, and
words from their languages were freely imported into the vocabulary
of law. Other more ordinary words were replaced by coinages from
Vulgar Latin or Germanic sources
because the classical words had fallen into disuse.
Latin was
also spread to areas such as Ireland
and Germany
, where
Romance languages were not spoken
and which had never known Roman
rule. Works written in these lands where Latin was a learned
language with no relation to the local vernacular also influenced
the vocabulary and syntax of medieval Latin.
Since abstract subjects like science and philosophy were
communicated in Latin, the Latin vocabulary developed for them is
the source of a great many technical words in modern languages.
English words like
abstract,
subject,
communicate,
matter,
probable and their
cognates in other European languages
generally have the meanings given to them in medieval Latin.
Influence of Vulgar Latin
The influence of
Vulgar Latin was also
apparent in the
syntax of some Medieval Latin
writers, although Classical Latin continued to be held in high
esteem and studied as models for literary compositions. The high
point of development of medieval Latin as a literary language came
with the
Carolingian
renaissance, a rebirth of learning kindled under the patronage
of
Charlemagne, king of the
Franks.
Alcuin was
Charlemagne's Latin secretary and an important writer in his own
right; his influence led to a rebirth of Latin literature and
learning after the depressed period following the final
disintegration of Roman authority in Western Europe.
Although it was simultaneously developing into the Romance
languages, Latin itself remained very conservative, as it was no
longer a native language and there were many ancient and medieval
grammar books to give one standard form. On the other hand,
strictly speaking there was no single form of "Medieval Latin".
Every Latin author in the medieval period spoke Latin as a second
language, to varying degrees of fluency, and syntax, grammar, and
vocabulary were often influenced by an author's native language.
This was especially true beginning around the 12th century, after
which the language became increasingly adulterated: late-medieval
Latin documents written by French speakers tend to show
similarities to medieval French grammar and vocabulary; those
written by Germans tend to show similarities to German, etc. For
instance, rather than following the classical Latin practice of
generally placing the verb at the end, medieval writers would often
follow the conventions of their own native language instead.
Whereas Latin had no definite or indefinite articles, medieval
writers sometimes used forms of
unus as an indefinite
article, and forms of
ille (reflecting usage in the
Romance languages) or even
quidam (meaning "a certain
one/thing" in Classical Latin) as something like a definite
article. Unlike in classical Latin, where
esse ("to be")
was used as the only auxiliary verb, Medieval Latin writers might
use
habere ("to have"), as Germanic and Romance languages
do. The accusative infinitive construction in classical Latin was
often ignored, in favour of introducing a subordinate clause with
the word
quod or
quia. This is almost identical,
for example, to the use of
que in similar constructions in
French.
In every age from the late eighth century onwards, there were
learned writers (especially within the Church) who were familiar
enough with classical
syntax to be aware that
these forms and usages were 'wrong' and able to resist their use.
Thus the Latin of a theologian like St.
Thomas Aquinas or an erudite clerical
historian such as
William of Tyre
tends to avoid most of the characteristics described above, showing
its period in vocabulary and spelling alone; the features listed
are much more prominent in the language of lawyers (e.g. the
11th-century English
Domesday Book),
physicians, technical writers and secular chroniclers. However, the
last-mentioned point — the indirect-statement construction with
quod — was especially pervasive and is found at all
levels.
Changes in vocabulary, syntax, grammar and orthography
Orthography
The most striking differences between classical and medieval Latin
are found in
orthography. Some of the
most frequently occurring differences are:
- The diphthong ae is usually collapsed and simply
written as e (or e
caudata, ę); for example, puellae might
be written puelle (or puellę). The same happens
with the diphthong oe, for example in pena,
Edipus, from poena, Oedipus. This
feature is already found on coin-inscriptions of the fourth century
(e.g. reipublice for reipublicae). Conversely an
original "e" in Classical Latin was often represented by "ae" or
"oe" (e.g. "aecclesia" and "coena" )
- Because of a severe decline of the knowledge of Greek, in
loanwords and foreign names from or transmitted through Greek,
y and i might be used more or less
interchangeably: Ysidorus, Egiptus, from
Isidorus, Aegyptus. This is also found in pure
Latin words: ocius ('more swiftly') appears as
ocyus and silva as sylva, this last
being a form which survived into the eighteenth century and so
became embedded in modern botanical
Latin.
- h might be lost, so that habere becomes
abere, or mihi becomes mi (the latter
also occurred in Classical Latin); or, mihi may be written
michi, indicating the h came to be pronounced as
k, which is its pronunciation even today in Ecclesiastical Latin (this
pronunciation is not found in Classical Latin).
- The loss of h in pronunciation also led to the
addition of h in writing where it did not previously
belong, especially in the vicinity of r, such as
chorona for corona, a tendency also sometimes
seen in Classical Latin.
- -ti- before a vowel is often written as -ci-
[tsi], so that divitiae becomes diviciae (or
divicie), tertius becomes tercius,
vitium vicium.
- The combination mn might have another plosive
inserted, so that alumnus becomes alumpnus,
somnus sompnus.
- Single consonants were often doubled, or vice versa, so that
tranquillitas becomes tranquilitas and
Africa becomes Affrica.
- vi, especially in verbs in the perfect tense, might be
lost, so that novisse becomes nosse (this
occurred in Classical Latin as well but was more frequent in
Medieval Latin).
These orthographical differences were often due to changes in
pronunciation or, as in the previous example, morphology, which
authors reflected in their writing. By the 16th century,
Erasmus complained that speakers from different
countries were unable to understand each other's form of
Latin.
The gradual change of Latin did not escape the notice of
contemporaries.
Petrarch, writing in the
14th century, complained about this linguistic "decline", which
helped fuel his general dissatisfaction with his own era.
Medieval Latin literature
The corpus of Medieval Latin literature encompasses a wide range of
texts, including such diverse works as
sermons,
hymns,
hagiographical texts,
travel literature,
histories,
epics, and
lyric
poetry.
Early period
The first half of the 5th century saw the literary activities of
the great Christian authors
Jerome (c.
347–420) and
Augustine of Hippo
(354–430), whose texts had an enormous influence on theological
thought of the Middle Ages, and of the latter's disciple
Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390-455). Of
the later 400s and early 500s,
Sidonius Apollinaris (c. 430 – after
489) and
Ennodius (474–521), both from
Gaul, are well-known for their poems, as is
Venantius Fortunatus (c. 530–600). This
was also a period of transmission: the
Roman patrician
Boethius (c. 480–524) translated part of
Aristotle's
logical corpus,
thus preserving it for the Latin West, and wrote the influential
literary and philosophical treatise
De consolatione Philosophiae;
Cassiodorus (c.
485–585) founded an
important library at the monastery of Vivarium near Squillace
where many texts from Antiquity were to be
preserved. Isidore of
Seville (c. 560-636) collected all scientifical knowledge still
available in his time into what might be called the first
encyclopedia, the
Etymologiae.
Gregory of Tours (c. 538–594) wrote
a lengthy history of the
Frankish kings.
Gregory came from a Gallo-Roman aristocratic family, and his Latin,
which shows many aberrations from the classical forms, testifies to
the declining significance of classical education in Gaul.
At the
same time, good knowledge of Latin and even of Greek was being preserved in monastic culture in Ireland and was
brought to England
and the
European mainland by missionaries in
the course of the 6th and 7th centuries, such as Columbanus (543–615), who founded the monastery
of Bobbio
in Northern
Italy. Ireland was also the birthplace of a strange poetic
style known as
Hisperic Latin. Other
important Insular authors include the historian
Gildas (c. 500–570) and the poet
Aldhelm (c. 640–709).
Benedict Biscop (c.
628–690) founded the
monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow and furnished
it with books which he had taken home from a journey to Rome
and which
were later used by Bede (c. 672–735) to
write his
Ecclesiastical History of
the English People.
Many medieval Latin works have been published in the series
Patrologia Latina,
Corpus Scriptorum
Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum and
Corpus Christianorum.
Important medieval Latin authors
4th–5th centuries
6th–8th centuries
9th century
10th century
11th century
12th century
13th century
14th century
Medieval Latin literary movements
Important medieval Latin works
Notes
- See Desiderius Erasmus, De recta Latini Graecique sermonis
pronunciatione dialogus, Basel (Frobenius), 1528.
References
- K. P. Harrington, J. Pucci, and A. G. Elliott, Medieval
Latin (2nd ed.), (Univ. Chicago Pres, 1997) ISBN
0-226-31712-9
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