See below -
>When did Latin become the language of the Church? Did it do so officially?
>
>I ask because today Christians and non-Christians often use Latin phrases
>in debating the ethics of warfare ('jus ad bellum' et cetera).
>
>Thanks,
>Colm McKeogh,
>University of Waikato,
>New Zealand
There are two questions here.
1 All those tags (res clamat ad dominum, odiosa restringenda etc)
arise because most of canon law (and so a lot of other law) borrowed
from Roman law (see any good classical dictionary). And in the
medieval universities they spent a good deal of time talking and
writing about this. It extended into what became moral theology. And
very useful some of them are, as memory-aids.
2 Christianity as based in the west (I leave out the middle eastern
areas) ie Rome and Mediterranean litoral at first spoke the standard
language of the Empire viz koine Greek (see any New Testament
introduction) So the liturgy etc was Greek (Kyrei eleison preserves
this). And the same is true of southern Gaul, which is liturgically
important. A lot of the surviving texts are from liturgies.
But (a) North Africa tended to stick to Latin (also Spain), and was at
that time keenly Christian (and linguistically the Donatists were
just the same) (b) when the proportion of barbarians increased, there
was no possibility of the limited resources then available making
vernacular translations except into proto-French (ie what they
called Rustic Latin), so that in Spain-Italy-France both liturgy and
other church writing slid gradually and imperceptibly into Latin.
Ireneaeus and Hippolytus wrote in Greek: Tertullina, Augustian,
Gregory in Latin.
Finally Latin became the common language of official Europe (for
Christian purposes there was not much else then, until you went East
of the Adriatic), very much as English is in India, Africa and
computing. (Try sending email in French or German)
Haute vulgarisation, I am afraid. It would take me much too long to
be any more academic - apologies to the refined...
a.c.
Anselm Cramer OSB
Ampleforth Abbey, York
GB - YO6 4EN
[log in to unmask]
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|