medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On Sunday, November 23, 2008, at 5:21 pm, John Briggs wrote:
> From: "jbugslag"
> >
> > This is perhaps not a stupid question but certainly an uninformed
> one. In
> > depictions of the Annunciation, Gabriel's greeting to Mary is
> variously
> > spelled as "Ave gratia plena" and "Ave gracia plena". Does anyone
> know
> > why these two spellings occur, and what might account for the use of
> one
> > or the other?
>
> In medieval Latin, any "t" before an "ia" or an "io" was in danger of
> being
> replaced by a "c".
That's true of words in whose base form the '"ia" or "io" followed an accented syllable (the majority of cases, including _gratia_). I'm not so sure that it's also true of e.g. _tiara_; certainly the danger there would have been far less.
The underlying phonetic developments in Latin (assibilation, in unaccented syllables, of /t/and of /k/ before /i/ or /j/) are already attested from the fourth and fifth centuries CE.
Best,
John Dillon
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