1.

Main constituent elements of medieval Latin: Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, Christian
Latin.

Emma Falque
[email protected]

ITEM OUTLINE :

1. Introduction: medieval Latin .

2. Main constituent elements: classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, Christian Latin.
2.1. Classical Latin .
2. 1. 1. Postclassic Latin.
2. 1. 2. Late Latin.
2. 2. Vulgar Latin.
2. 3. Christian Latin.
3. Colophon.
4. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

ARTICLE:

1. Introduction: Medieval Latin

When dealing with Vulgar Latin we must always refer to the fact that its evolution over
time gave rise to the different Romance languages, while the formal register of Latin, what is
known as literary Latin, had a particular evolution, which reaches medieval Latin. Which
puts us in a completely different situation from that of classical Latinity: in it the types of
Latin to which we can refer are variables of the same language, while those varieties were
transformed with the tiempor into two different languages: Latin (medieval) and Romance.
The speakers thus found themselves in the Middle Ages in that situation that is known as
diglossia (Ferguson, quoted by López Morales: 1989, 64-83), because their language stops
the conversation -- the romance -- was different from that of the liturgy, the written
expression, the juridical acts, etc., that is, Latin, which became a learned language.
We should not be surprised by this situation, which currently exists for many languages;
but that even occurs in some way in monolingual speakers. Antonio José Bolívar Proaño,
protagonist of Luis Sepúlveda's novel, An old man who read love novels
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(Barcelona, Tusquets, 1995, p. 81), capable of interpreting a series of very complex signs of
nature, had very serious difficulties in understanding the next beginning of a novel: Paul
kissed her ardently while the gondolier, accomplice of the adventures of his friend,
pretended to look in another direction, and the Gondola, provided with fluffy cushions, slid
peacefully through the Venetian canals.
Misunderstandings such as these in the fieldof Latin are those that, due to a progressive
distance between registers, led to a situation in which the Romance languages coexisted
with Latin in the way we have indicated, as a language of culture and suitable in a particular
way forwritten expression.

Latin spoken>>>>>>>>> Romance

languages

Literary Latin or written >>>>>>>>>>>LATÏN

MEDIEVAL

This medieval Latin is not susceptible to easy characterization. As G. Cremaschi (1959:

57-95) points out, it cannot be considered strictly as a living language, since a community of
speakers is lacking; nor as a dead language, since it is anevolving dynamic language. This
intermediate stage between living and dead language led the German scholar L.Traube to
define, with a metaphor of dubious taste, medieval Latin as a corpse whose nails and hair
continue to grow. Avoiding innecesario dramas , it is not without meaning to consider
medieval Latin as the continuation of the school Latin of the Roman era (Norberg: 1968, 7).

What is problematic is the setting of its chronological limits. In linguistic terms it only
seems that the Latin that is written can be called medieval when the vulgar language of
Romania is Romance and not Latin. Thus for ancient Gaul the testimony of the acts of the
Council of Tours of 813 in which we find an allusion to the language of the people, the
rustica Romana lingua , which was no longer Latin, is the official starting point of medieval
Latinity. This process is, naturally, long and gradual, so the different scholars usually speak
of a "time of transition" that for Gaul would extend between 600 and 800. Before the first
date Latin would be spoken, after the second the existence of romance is already confirmed
(Löfstedt: 1959, 2).

Different is the case of the Iberian Peninsula with its own cultural characteristics, where
the Muslim invasion meant the true bankruptcy of the Hispano-Roman world, comparable
to what the Merovingian kingdom was in Gaul or in Italy the Lombarda domination. We can
agree with J. Bastards (1960: 252) in which the Arab invasion, begun in 711, which had
such transcendence in the linguistic and cultural order, can serve as a starting point for the
study of medieval Spanish Latin.

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 In any case, the classical heritage is manifestly valid in the writers of the fifth
century, as a consequence of the study of ancient authors in schools. If we have
referred to the distance between spoken Latin and literary Latin until giving rise to this
diversification to the birth of the Romance languages, this is not contradicted by the
fact that this written or literary or formal Latin suffered from the fourth century a fuerte
influence of spoken Latin. It is not a question of weakening the border between the
Latin spoken by the literate and illiterate, as Mohrmann suggests, but of the descent of
the formal register of the language. With regard to the relations between medieval
Latin and Christian Latin, these are evident if we consider that the former can be called
without fear of exaggeration – in the words of Ch. Mohrmann (1961: 181-232) – as res
publica clericorum.

However, it would be a fiction to take as uniform, without differences, this medieval

Latin written. Among different possibilities of periodization of this Latin we can use that
of J. de Ghellinck (1969: 6-7) who proposes six main periods:

1.- Transition (V-VIII centuries): From the twilight of the patristic to the beginning of
the Carolingian Renaissance. There are those whom Ghelling calls "founders of the
Middle Ages and their mentality." Let us remember in the Iberian Peninsula the
landmark figure of San Isidoro.

2.- Carolingian Renaissance (c.760-880): Debidor to the vigorous initiative of

Charlemagne, is the period in which the fundamental lines of medieval Latin were
established, saving the intellectual life of disintegration.

3.- Despite the changes of the X century, the post-Carolingian schools continued
their educational work until they arrived, from 1050, at a literary renewal accelerated by
two or three great doctrinal controversies, culminating in the literary activity of San
Anselmo. There is a notable decline—especially during the tenth century, called the
iron age—in Latin cultivation.

4.- The so-called "Renaissance of the twelfth century", coinciding with the rise of
urban life.

5.- The thirteenth century is the prolongation of this renaissance, but with new
features in the evolution of schools and religious and civil society, and with external
contributions, such as the arrival of Aristotle's books.

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 6.- With the breakdown of unity and the growing influence of national literatures in
the fourteenth century , the Renaissance began to emerge, whose precursor signs
vary chronologically from one country to another.

Entering the sphere of medieval Hispanic Latinity, it is necessary to point out with
M.C. Díaz y Díaz (1956, 559-579; 1960, 153-157) that peninsular Latin is singularly
conservative, as opposed to medieval European Latin. This, despite being
consubstantial to medieval Latin a "freezing of development" – in the words of J.L.
Moralejo (1980: 13-137) – that keeps it the same as itself to avoid dialectalization and
Loss of its raison d'lingua franca of the cultivated people, evolved in a more or less
particularized way --according to the countries-- throughout the millennium that
separates Antiquity from the Renaissance. The peculiar conservatism of medieval
Spanish Latin is particularly evident in that at a date such as the sixth century its
morphology and syntax were roughly the same as in the immediately preceding
centuries and that the processes of decomposition that began to affect the language
Latin, were contained by the "renaissance" that occurs in the Peninsula around the
year 600, at a time especially critical for the disintegration of Latin, which ensured a line
of continuity – and not of rupture – between the ancient and medieval world. This line
of continuity extends until the year 950 approximately, when various factors, such as
the growing cultural contacts with France, favored in principle by the pilgrimages to
Santiago and later by the Cluniac reform, led to a series of changes that would soon
begin. to alter the particularities of medieval Spanish Latin and that would lead, on the
one hand, to the linguistic molds of the School of Translators of Toledo and, on the
other, to the CancillEresca language. This last fact explains that in the prodigious effort
made by R. Menéndez Pidal to build his Origins of Spanish, he found in the
documentation of the ninth and tenth centuries, prior to the reform of Latinity that takes
place in the eleventh century, more romance elements (that is, errors) than in the
documentation of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This, being later, had made
Don Ramón think at first that he should have been more permeable to romance than
the previous one.

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1.2

2. Main constituent elements: classical Latin, Vulgar Latin, Christian Latin.

In the opinion of C. Mohrmann (1961: 181-232) medieval Latin had three

fundamental components: classical heritage, Vulgar Latin and Christian Latin. Indeed,
the understanding of medieval Latin depends on the knowledge we have of earlier
Latin, because classical Latin, as Strecker (1957: 20) rightly points out, did not end
suddenly and was immediately replaced by a new Latin, the so-called medieval Latin,
on the contrary, medieval Latin evolved naturally from classical Latin. However, it is
worth making a point: first of all, Strecker understands by classical Latin the literary
Latin used by Latin authors, approximately, from Cicero to Suetonius, and that this
Latin from which the medi eval derives was already in the stage of development that
we find in the authors. late, because many of the characteristics considered typical of
medieval Latin already appear in these authors of the late period, so this late Latin
deserves special attentionby anyone who approaches the study of medieval Latin.

2.1. Classical Latin

Medieval Latin is the heir to classical Latin, or to be more exact, to postclassical

and late Latin (Strecker: 1957, 20-22).

2. 1. 1. Postclassic Latin.

This term is usually understood as the period between the s. I and II of our era. Its
main characteristic compared to the previous one is that in that the field of prose and
poetry were totally delimited, while at this time these borders were totally delimited. we
practically disappear: let us think of Livy's prose , impregnated with poetic
procedures, as opposed to Ovid's poetry, full of rhetoric. Against this "modern taste"
there was a reaction at the end of the first century that, led by Quintilian, but also by
Tacitus, would defend the return to the classic. The s. II Apuleius, as Palmer (1974:
149-151) shows with some well-selected examples, represents a limit situation in the
handling of a language full of games of artifice, poetic color, flowery and twisted
exuberance, avoiding all trivial expression..., the "Asian style", in short. However, we
will again find a reaction back to the past, albeit to a more distant past than the
classical era: the Greek literary fashion introduced by Emperor Hadrian prefers Cato
to Cicero and Ennius before Virgil; Fronton, master
of Marcus Aurelius, he will despise Cicero and, in general, at this time lucilius and
Lucretius will be preferred, over Horace and Virgil.
However, the most important innovations of these two centuries will take place, not in
the written language, but in the spoken one.

2.1. 2. Late Latin .

Latin is usually understood by "late Latin" from the third century until its disintegration
into the various Romance languages: this process, however, began already in the
second century and was accentuated during the crisis of the III. With regard to the date
of the disappearance of Latin, several totally different hypotheses have been given:
a) Wartburg (1971: 189) is not too precise in writing that "the initiated decomposition
accelerates from the third century and, especially from the fifth with the tempest of the
German invasions".
b) Hall (1974: 14-15) places the imprecise concept of "proto-Romance" no less than
in the time of Augustus.
c) Palmer (1974:182), finally, says that "afterthe date of the 'bankruptcy' of Proto-
Romance in the various Romance languages it is not surprising that estimates vary
between the fifth and ninth centuries AD". Using the criterion of intelligibility, the answer
to the question "When did Latin cease tobe intelligible to the illiterate masses?" is
perhaps given to us by the experience of Charlemagne, who ordered a restoration of
studies, but soon had to admit that he could not communicate with the people in a
language he had left understood. In the year 813 the Council of Tours formally
recognized the fact of unintelligibility by referring to the Rustica Romana lingua saying:
Et ut easdem omelias quisque aperte transferre studeat in rusticam romanam linguam
aut thiotiscam, quo facilius cuncti possint intelligere quae dicuntur" (Mohrmann: 1961,
II, 151-152), so this date is usually used use as an appropriate chronological
boundary between Latin and Gallo-Romance dialects (Palmer: 1974, 182-183). The
awareness took place later, because it was then, in Carolingian times, when the Latin
literary tradition was restored.
The decisive epoch for the disintegration of linguistic unity would be placed in the
s. VI-VIII, at which time the Latin formation and the interromanic exchange would reach
their lowest level, disappearing the schools, except perhaps in the Italian peninsula,
where it is very possible that the split between medieval Latin and Romance occurred
later, perhaps because of the longer duration there of literary Latinity. In Spain, where
Visigothic Latin maintained great height and grammatical correctness, the rupture was
felt with lessintensity than Gaul, except for the Hispanic March,
probably because of contact with the latter (Bastards: 1960, 277). However, in this
period we find authors who use a Latin imbued with classicism, such as Lactantius and
Boethius; others, permeated by rhetoric and school, wield a decent language such as
Claudius Claudianus, Ausonius and Ammianus Marcellinus; and others, in short,
escriben a Latin already fully evolved, such as Gregory of Tours.
1.3

2. 2. Vulgar Latin

In addition to Christian Latin and late Latin the third element, in the opinion of
Strecker (1957: 28) that influences medieval Latin is known as "vulgar Latin", which he
refers to as popular Latin, since the beginnings of medieval Latin date back to the time
when the Romance languages were gradually developing from spoken Latin. As a
natural consequence , the words and forms that accompanied this evolutionary
process must also have found their way to the decadent language literary, which had
lost not only its taste for classical modes of expression, but also for grammatical and
formal correction. Even authors who have preserved this sensibility were not afraid to
use colloquial expressions to be understood. In the fifth and sixth centuries a language
had emerged that differed markedly in spelling, morphology and syntax from the norms
previously taught in schools. Strecker (1957: 31) gives as an example the Merovingian
Latin, which therefore has, in his opinion, a bad reputation. This language soon
adopted not only Celtic but also Germanic words that were taken primarily from legal
and military terminology (bannus, bannire, commarcanus, feodum, feudum, infeodare,
werra, gerra, guerra, etc.). Later, the existing Romance languages also made their
influence felt.
Every spoken language assumes a great variety of forms, even on the lips of the
same speaker, because our gestures and linguistic attitudes take appropriate forms for
each occasion in which we speak. To this we must add the linguistic differences
between the social classes, the enlightened, the semi-educated and the totally
uneducated, and even here the border changes constantly, since even within a social
class given the Different generations have their idiomatic particularities (Palmer: 1974,
152-153). Evidently of this "vulgar Latin", the language that is postulated as the origin
of modern vernaculars, which in turn have developed literary forms, we can only have
an indirect knowledge.
We usually refer to Vulgar Latin, as spoken Latin, as a variety dissociated from its
origins from written Latin. (Väänänen: 1971, 25-29). It is normal among Romance
philologists to use such an expression with reference to the Latin of recent times, that
is, the one whose changes and general evolution gave rise to the Romance languages
studied by them. Grandgent (1970, 4th: 20) and Mohrmann (1955: 1) propose that it is
the language spoken by the middle cl asses of Roman society; in the absence of
another better and less vague definition, Löfstedt (1959: 15) resigns himself to
maintaining that it is the language spoken daily by the lower classes of Roman society,
that is, by the vast majority of the population of the Empire; Silva Neto (1957: 21-27)
tries to specify by distinguishing three social layers, nobiles, honestiores and
humiliores, among which
 distributes five linguistic levels: the literary language (nobiles), current (honestiores; it
is a cultured language, influenced by urbanites), vulgar (humiliores, slaves), special
slang (military, gladiators, sailors) and Latin spoken in the provinces. In any
case, the inatibility of this Latin is insurmountable by a fact already observed by
his first great treatise, Schuchardt: (1866-1868, I, 9): that under that name there is not a
single language, but a sum of linguistic layers ( urban language of the middle
classes; urban language of the plebs; rustic language, etc.) and of dialectsthat coexist
from ancient Latin to the Romance languages. Add to this the fact that we do not have
any pure Vulgar Latin text: as Löfstedt (1959: 15) says, even the person with the most
rudimentary education, once he begins to write, isa letter, be it a graphite on a
Pompeian wall, is influenced. by precedents or literary reminiscences . The phrase
"vulgar Latin" is neither correct because of the adjective that appears in it, nor its
meaning is univocal, so that its nature and meaning have traditionally been the
subject of controversy. Authors like K. Sittl, in 1892, or J. B. Hofmann, in
1926, came to deny the existence of this modality of Latin as a linguistic reality
with a coherent entity, considering it only an abstraction. phantasmagorical
(Phantasiegebilde, he called it the first; Phantom des Vulgärlateins, coined the
second) (Löfstedt: 1959, 15). Hofmann declares -in the translation of J.
Corominas (1958: XIII) -: "Strictly adhering to the established criteria of the family
language we will save ourselves from having to deal with the ghost of Vulgar Latin,
which ... neither chronologically nor geographically constitutes a homogeneous
concept". To replace this much-discussed denomination , others have been
proposed: "popular", "familiar", "colloquial", "current", "spoken"; the Romanists, on
the other hand, speak of "common romance " or "proto-romance"; if the term
"vulgar" is retained, this is due to the inertia of tradition (Väänänen: 1971, 25-29).
"Vulgar" is also used as opposed to "classical" at two different levels : chronological
one, as a continuation of the golden period, of registration the other, as a
model of non-formal language , or if herself
prefers, colloquial.
Placing ourselves on the plane of linguistic registers, the opposition between
"classical" and "vulgar" is understood, therefore, as formal and colloquial. The problem
then lies in the fact that this assessment is conditioned by access to this tipor
colloquial record. The Romanists count on it as a new hypothesis that is reached
through the comparative method between the different Romance languages, with this
way a uniform language, Proto-Romance, is accessed by that way, although we know s
that the languages are not uniform, hence the need to reconstruct different proto-
Romances or different modalities of Vulgar Latin for most of Romania, for Sardinian,
for the Suditalian dialects and for the
Romanian (Lausberg: 1976, I, 84-99); Latinists are interested in leaving the plane of
hypotheses and constructing with reliable data descriptions of a reality of the use that
may appear in an inscription of Pompeii, in a writing of Columela and even in books
that, because they are oriented to a particular audience --is the case of Mulomedicine
-- or because of their late character -- this is the case of the Peregrinatio--, can serve to
bring out all that reality, which we can hardly find in otherwriters.
The systematic compilation that H. Schuhardt made all the Latin-vulgar linguistic
material existing from the V-IV centuries B.C. to 700 B.C. in his Der Vokalismus des
Vulgärlateins, although today surpassed in certain aspects, hisput an undeniable
advance in Latin-vulgar studies by serving as the basis and basis and starting
point for further studies. In this respect, the Väänänen of the Pompeian inscriptions is
fundamental and is, without a doubt, the model to follow in this type of studies.
We have previously placed ourselves on the plane of the registers, which does not
mean thatwe should not give a social approach to this term as well, since this sermo
cotidianus, which is how we consider vulgar Latin, has an area of intersection in what
represents the way of speaking of the lowest social groups. Sociolinguistismhas taught
us that the differences between registers and strata are not pure and that, therefore,
linguistic use cannot be explained only in terms of style or in terms of social group.
Raised these facts in the diachronic axis, the progressive separación between the
formal and colloquial register gives rise from a certain moment to different languages:
medieval Latin, continuation of written Latin, and the Romance languages, heirs of
spoken Latin.
This spoken Latin was also spoken inearlier times in the history of the language, so
that there is also Vulgar Latin in the classical or archaic era: in fact the latter, for not
registering a degree of formalization of the language literary as a norm of Latinites, but
also by the fact that the documents that we have of it come to a certain extent from
literary genres close to the colloquial language (think of the plautine comedies), it
presents coincidences with the literary documents of the time late (to give an example,
the confusions between male and neuter gender) (González Rolán: 1976, 73-121).
Let us see, even briefly, what are the grammatical differences of Vulgar Latin
compared to Classical, which are manifested andaccentuated especially in the era of
Postclassic and Late Latin. From the phonetic point of view, we can point out the
following:
1. The vowel quantity loses phonological value, in favor of the accent and the vowel
timbre.
 2. Changes in vowel timbre , monoptonation of diphthongs, syncopation, hiatus, and
other vowel alterations.
3. Africaation of the iod and the dental and guttural plus iod groups.
4. Sound in intervowel position of deaf occlusives and fricatization of the sound in the
western area.
5. Convergence of antevowel and intervowel initials u and b into a bilabial fricative
consonant and consequent confusions.
In the morphosyntactic field we can highlight:
1. Tendency to eliminate gender neutral.
2. Manifestations of the process of ruin of the casual system and substitution of the
functions marked by the cases through prepositions
3. Confusions between anaphoric is and demonstratives.
4. Progressive imposition of the periphrastic forms of the comparative.
5. Progressive use of periphrastic verbal expressions of the habeo dictum type and
of the forms of the passive perfect instead of those of the present (erat amatus por
amabatur), etc.

With regard to the sources of Vulgar Latin, together with literary ones such as
Lucilius, Varro, Plautus, Terence, or the Satyricon, and to a lesser extent Pliny, it is
fundamentally the technical works that can provide us with colloquialisms and even
vulgarisreserved for the spoken language: thus the treatises of gastronomy (Apicio,
Testamentum Porcelli), of veterinary ( Mulomedicine Chironis, Vegetius), medicine
(Celsus, Empirical Marcellus, Oribasius) and architecture (Vitrubio, Frontino). The
grammarians themselves also provide valuable data: Appendix Probi, Varro, Quintilian,
Festus, Aulus Gellius, Probus, Terentian Maurus, etc. The inscriptions are the most
revealing sources of colloquial use, among which the graffiti pompeyanos and the
Defixionum tabellae are particularly interesting. To which should be added the Christian
authors, who admitted numerous vulgarisms, since the well-known affirmation of St.
Augustine is very significant: Melius est reprehendant nos grammatici quam non
intelligant populi (In Psalm., 138, 20).
1.4

2. 3. Christian Latin

Of great importance for the history of Latin and Western civilization was the
language developed by an exclusive group, we refer to Christian Latin. The early
Christian communities lived their lives in conditions that explain thegrowth of what
Palmer (1974: 185-186) calls a "special language", that is, the one that develops a
community within a community. For the most part it consists of a special vocabulary,
but sometimes there are also peculiarities of pronunciation, word form and syntax. In
the field of lexicon to designate peculiar objects, processes and notions a certain group
can coin new words and expressions(neologisms) or, more frequently, give a twist to
words already existing in the general language (semantic change). As specialized and
technical, a language of this type is characterized by greater precision and exclusivity,
whichcan be studied and deliberated.
The primitive Christian communities created a special language, from a new vision
that penetrated and transformed their whole world, living an intense life of community,
repudiating traditional paganismand retreating on themselves by persecutions, the first
Christians were transformed almost into a secret society, giving rise to a kind of Latin
that resulted in great measure incomprehensible to strangers (Palmer: 1974, 186).
This language was used in the Christian circles of the Roman world and its first
testimonies date from the end of the second century.
Without going into depth in the old controversy of whether Christian Latin is really a
Sondersprache, as defended by Schrijnen (Nijmegen, 1932 = Bologna, 1986) or a
"group language" (Gruppensprache) as Preferred by Ch. Mohrmann (1986, 91-120), let
us remember only the opinion of Ghellinck (1938: 449-478) who concludes that, in
order to defend Schrijnen's thesis, it would have to be shown that Latin de Christians,
in addition to its lexical peculiarities, presents authentic morphological and syntactic
differences and innovations that distinguish it from the spoken or written Latin of the
late period, differences that, however, have not been sufficiently proven. mind.
Therefore, the idea is increasingly being imposed that the language used by Christians,
with the exception of technicalities and lexical changes, "is not different from the usual
Latin, as long as we accept a greater influence of the popular trends of spoken and
late Latin, and the marks. left by the tongues in which the original message in the
Bible has arrived (Codoñer: 1985, 123).
 The first to study the peculiarities of Latin of Christian authors were researchers of
the Swedish school, among them M. G. Koffmane (Entstehung und Entwicklung des
Kirchenlateins, Breslau, 1879), at the end of the s. XIX and early XX; in the last
century in the thirties the philologists of the Nijmegen school, around J. Schrijnen,
already conceived this Latin as a peculiar language, whose characteristics they
described in brilliant works. Among them are those of J. Schrijnen himself, author of
the work Charakteristik des Altschristlichen Latein, Nimega, 1932, and those of his
disciple Ch. Mohrmann, many of whose studies are collected in Études sur le latin
des chrétiens, I-IV, Rome, 1958-1977.
In summary, we can say that the formation of Christian Latin is defined by the joint
actionof three factors:
a) Influence of the Greek language. It is due not only to the fact that the
Christian religion, developed in the Hellenistic world, handled texts written in the Greek
of the Koine, but also to the fact that, in Rome itself, the most important nucleus of the
new Christians was constituted by the population coming from the eastern part of the
Empire, whose familiar language was Greek. That is the reason, for example, that St.
Paul isto be believed in this language his letter to the Romans (Callius: 1965, 49).
This influence was felt especially on the lexical level for what can be seen: A.
Blaise (1955: 15 ff.), and in particular for the influence on Latin Christian literature of
Greek culture and literature: L. Alfonso (1982: 141-146) and M. Simonetti (1983).
Christians opened the door to a torrent of Greek words, such as: apostata, apostolus,
baptisma, ecclesia, episcopus, martyr...
b) The humble origin of the first Christians that Tertullian reveals as simplices,
reckless et idiotae, or, in the words of Ch. Mohrmann, the "tendence democratique",
which caused an important transformation in syntax and style: from the "aristocratic"
periodic style is passed to the parataxis, and from the conscientious concinnitas to the
uarietas; a clear, flexible and, above all, functional language is sought (Mohrmann:
1955, 29). All this summarised by San Jerónimo: non otiosis philosophorum scholis
paucis discipulis sed uniuerso loquatur hominum generi (Epist, 49, 4).

Christian Latin or ecclesiastical Latin (Strecker: 1957, 22, note 3) is influenced by

the language of the Fathers of the Church, i.e. Tertullian, Jerome and St. Augustine,
among others, and by the Latin of the Bible. In turn, in the Latin of the Bible we find
linguistic elements from the biblical Greek texts (Septuagint) and, through these, from
the Hebrew texts. It should be remembered that the language of the Bible and of the
Church, moreover, was the origin of most of the Greek words introduced into Latin.
medieval, such as anathema, baptizare, or diaconus. Biblical Latin had a great
influence on syntax as well. The fact, for example, that the construction of infinitive with
accusative was replaced by quod, quia or quoniam can certainly be traced back to the
Vulgate; it is also not uncommon to find in medieval texts that ut quid equals "why"
and the expression should not be amended and changed into et quid or at quid, as
some editors often do, since it also has a biblical origin (Strecker: 1957, 24).

Likewise, it is important to understand medieval Latin to take into consideration that

the Church, in addition to the purely linguistic influence, imposed, to a large extent, her
orientation on the literary fact. The ecclesiastical element appears constantly in one
form or another, even going so far as to be introduced by non-Christian prose and
poetry, even if only in the form of parody. In the opinion of Strecker (1957: 25) this
ecclesiastical element is what separates in a clear way the medieval Latin from the
classical Latin, on the one hand, and, on the other, from the Latin of the humanists.
That is why it is essential to have a deep knowledge of the Vulgate and its followers, of
the Fathers of the Church and of the liturgical texts, such as the Breviary or the
missals, which are influenced by the Itala.
The Latin of the Christian liturgical texts forms a language that we could describe as
hieratic, very different from that of a spoken language, since it was created by the
Church to ensure a precise and clear expression of the doctrines of the Christian faith.
This type of language tried to fulfill two tasks: to satisfy the basic needs
ofcommunication and also to express religious feelings with dignity (Mohrmann: 1950,
5-30).
In dealing with Latin, which he calls "ecclesiastical" and others "Christian", as a basic
element of medieval Latin, Strecker himself offers the bibliography that we could call
fundamental, along with the precise references of dictionaries, concordances etc. to be
able to address the different aspects of this Latin, so we refer to it (Strecker: 1957, 25-
28).
3. Colophon

To conclude we want to recall the synthesis offered by A. Fontán and A. Moure in

his Anthology of Medieval Latin (1987: 15): "As a language, medieval Latin is the
natural extension of what has been known for almost a century under the name of
"late Latin". But enriched by two other living currents in the Latin language of the final
centuries of Antiquity [...] the "Vulgar Latin" and what has been called the "Christian
Latin". The key to the historical process of change and preservation in which
medieval Latin was generated lies in the conjunction of these three diverse and
intermingled linguistic realities present in the only language of the Roman West."

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