– Robaird O’Cearbhaill
No other language has had such influence around the world over such a long period. Latin’s vital role in the Church and wider Christianity, diplomacy, culture, and academia, in philosophy, theology, law and science, as well as in civil administration in the history of Western civilization, is indisputable. But times change and Latin does still have roles in education, academia and science and, most of all, its place in Catholicism and Christianity.
In interviews with O Clarim Oxford-educated Latin scholar, Dr John Whelpton, pointed to three best contemporary histories of Latin. Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin and the World It Created, Latin: Empire of the Sign, From the XVI to the XX century and Leonhardt’s Latin: Story of a World Language. Another Oxford-educated classicist and linguist, Dr Nicholas Ostler, traced over two millennia of Latin, and its profound long term effects on the West, as one of three, core, must-read Latin histories.
Complementing and broadening Ad Infinitum in a modern history time frame, Francois Waquet’s Latin: Empire of the Sign expands the 16th to the 20th centuries’ story of Latin, and its ever powerful impact on the world despite competing with vernacular competition, beginning on a wide scale with the official use of French in France in the late 1500s. But despite this competition the period was a turning point for Latin as scholars then shunned Middle Ages Latin to rediscover the golden age of classical Latin crossing the last BC years to the AD era, through the works of a pantheon of great writers. Cicero, Virgil, the Aeneid’s Horace, poet and myths writer Ovid, and grand historian Livy.
Whelpton showed the review of Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin and the World It Created by John Timpane, and stressed the age-old importance of Latin. “At its peak, Latin was the transnational tongue of the business place and the docks; the diets, throne rooms and city halls; the courts, the schools, the churches. You could go almost anywhere in Europe and Latin would be your companion, your guide, your go-between. The Latin language has been one constant in the cultural history of the West for more than two millennia.”
Ostler argued persuasively that Latin is above all the enduring legacy of ancient Rome and its empire; given that leading Western scholarship was only practiced in the languages of Rome, A.D. to the late modern era. A conclusion Whelpton backs too.
Ostler Latin wrote of the modern day “soaring mood music of the Catholic Church.” Latin is a language of the heart, a common cultural basis for Europe: “one tradition until 1250 AD for another five hundred years thereafter – in Latin, thinking behind the western Europe’s history, the soul of (its) civilization,” Whelpton concords.
In Latin: Empire of the Sign, the Parisian scholar, Waquet agrees with Ostler while tracking how French displaced Latin in diplomacy and became the Lingua Franca of Europe in the 17th century. Nevertheless, into the 19th and 20th centuries, Latin remained a prestigious language of culture and conversation but mostly used by the elite.
Jurgen Leonhardt Latin: Story of a World Language takes the enduring significance of Latin from antiquity and it’s alive and well, surviving as dialects in all romance languages, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese from their late Middle Ages Vulgar Latin source. Classic Latin books are still read and still used in law science and in the Church.
As Whelpton said, “Most of the basic vocabulary in French, Italian etc. is recognizably Latin, since the Romance languages are simply dialects of Latin which changed over time. Italian and Spanish are closest to the original. Sardinian Italian is closest to ancient classic Latin.”
Echoing Lundhardt he said the importance of Latin is to get “closer to something central to the development of European civilization, to read Latin literature in the original, to get a clearer idea of the interconnections of many modern languages. Why did Latin stay three times as long as the Roman Empire? For some experts it was the universality of the language in the Church throughout the world that kept it so alive. Latin – Universal language and Universal Church.
Latin was not originally the language of Catholics. The Roman province of Judea where Christianity began was a Greek language area. Latin was only chosen after Rome became Christian, Whelpton explained. The decision was made to use but the vernacular Vulgate Latin for the populace only – the elite knew Greek. Roman Emperor Constantine in the early years of the 4th century decided to make Christianity the official religion of the Empire.
While more vernacular dialects of Latin began to expand into Italian, Spanish Portuguese and French, standard Latin continued to be used in Church and schooling after the Western Roman empire collapsed through the Early Middle Ages and beyond, especially through monks in monasteries who provided religious knowledge and practice and general education including cornerstones Latin and Greek.
Follow
