Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/44

 L4TIN

21

L4TIN

for 08, The language he uses includes, besides a large mirt of Clascal Latin and the ecclesiastical Latin of Tertullian and St. Cyprian, borrowings from the popu- lar sp)eech of his day — incantare, falsidicus^ tantillus, cordatus — and some new words or words in new meanings — spiritiudis, adorator, beaiifiais, (rdificare, meaning to edify, inflaiio, meaning pride, reatiu^, mean- ing guilt, etc. It is, we think, useless to pursue this inquiry into the realm of Christian inscriptions and the works of Victor of Vito, the last of these Latin writers, as we should only find a Latin peculiar to certain indi- viduals rather than that adopted by any Christian communities. Nor shall we delay over Africanisms, i. e. characteristics peculiar to African writers. The very existence of tnese characteristics, formerly so strongly held l)y many philologists, is nowadays gener- ally questioned. In the works of several of these African writers we find a pronounced love for em- phasis, alliteration, and rhythm, but these are matters affecting style rather than vocabulary. The most that can be said is that the African writers take more account of J^atin as it was spoken {sermo cotidianus), but this speech was no peculiarity of Africa.

St. Jerome's Contribrdion. — After the African writers no author had such influence on the upbuilding of ecclesiastical Liitin as St. Jerome had. Ilis contribu- tion came mainly along the lines of literary Latin. From his master, Donatus, he had received a gram- matical instruction that made him the most literary and learned of the Fathers, and he always retained a love for correct diction, and an attraction towanls Cicero. lie prized good writing so higlily that he grew angrj' whenever he was accused of a solecism; one-half of the words he uses are taken from Cicero, and it has been computed that besides employing, as occasion required, the words introduced by earlier writers, he himself is responsible for three hundred and fifty new words in the vocabulary of ecclesiastical Latin; yet of this numl)er there are hardly nine or ten that; may fitly be considered as barbarisms on the score of not conforming to the general laws of Latin deriva- tives. " The remainder ", says Goelzcr, " were created by employing ordinarv suffixes and were in harmony with the genius of the language." They are both accurately formed and useful words, expressing for the most part abstract qualities necessitated by the Chris- tian religion and which hitherto had not existed in the Latin tongue, e. g., clericatus, imjKTmtentia, deitasj dualitas, ghrificatio, corruptrix. At times, also, to sup- ply new needs, he gives new meanings to old words — conditor^ creator, redemplor, saviour of the world, pro'- destinatio, commiinio^ etc. Besides this enriching of the lexicon, St. Jerome rendered no less service to eccle- siastical Latin by his edition of the Vulgate. Whether he made his translation from the original text or adapted previous translations after correcting them, he diminisheer of Hebraisms and modes of speech — v^ir desidcrio- rum, filii inu^idtatM, hortvs iK)luptalu, infcrioris a Danide^ inferior to Daniel — which completed the shaping of the peculiar physiognomy of church Latin.

After St. Jerome's time ecclesiastical Latin may be said to be fully formed on the whole. If we trace the various steps of the process of producing it we find (1) that th3 ecclesiastical rites and institutions were first of all known by Greek names, and that the early Christian writers in the Latin language took those words consecrated by usage and embodied them in their works either in ioto (e. g., angdus, apostolus, eccU' «a, evang^ium, clerus, episcopus, martyr) or else trans- lated them(e. g.,verbum, persona, testamerUum, gerUilis), It sometimes even happened that words bodily incor- porated were af terwarrls replaced by translations (e. g., chrvima by dnnum, hffpoRlaRvt by substaniia or persona,

exomologesia by confessio. synodus by concilium). (2) Latin words were created by derivations from existing Latin or Greek words by the addition of suffixes or prefixes, or by the combination of two or more words to- gether (e. g., evangelizare, Incarnaiio, consubstaniialis, idololatria) . (3) At times words having a secular or profane meaning are employe<l without any modifica- tion in a new sense (e. g.,fidelis, deposUio, scriptura, sacramentum, resurgere, etc.). With respect to its ele- ments, ecclesiastical Latin consists of spoken Latin (scrmo cotidianus) shot through with a quantity of Greek words, a few primitive popular phrases, some new. and normal accretions to the language, and, lastly, various new meanings arising mainly from development or analogy.

With the exception of some Hebraic or Hellenist expressions popularized through Bible translations, the grammatical peculiarities to be met with in eccle- siastical Latin are not to be laid to the charge of Christianitv; they are the result of an evolution through wnich the common language passed, and are to l)e met with among non-Christian writers. In the main the religious upheaval which was colouring all the beliefs and customs of the W^estern world did not unsettle the language as much as might have been expected. Christian writers preserved the literary Latin of their day as the basis of their language, and if they added to it certain neologisms it must not be for- gotten that the classical writers, Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca, etc., had before this to lament the poverty of Latin to express philosophical ideas, and had set the example of coining words. Why should later writers hesitate to say annunciatio, incarnaiio, prwdestinatio, when Cicero had said moniiio, debiiio, prohibition and Livy, coercitio? Words like deltas, nativitas, trinUas are not more o<ld than autumnitas, olivitas, coined by Varro, and plebilas, which was used by the elder Cato.

Development in the Liturgy. — Hardly had it l)een formed when church Latin had to undergo the shock of the invasion of the barbarians and the fall of the Empire of the West; it was a shock that gave the death-blow to literary Latin as well as to the Latin of everyday speech on which church Latin was waxing st rong. Both underwent a series of changes that com- pletely transformed them. Literary Latin became more and more debased; popular Latin evolved into the various Romance languages in the South, wiiile in the North it gave way before the Germanic tongues. Church Latin alone survived, thanks to the religion of which it was the organ and with which its destinies were linked. True, it lost a portion of its sway; in popular preaching it gave way to the vernacular after the seventh century; but it could still claim the Lit- urgy and theologj', and in these it served the purpose of a living language. In the liturgy ecclesiastical Latin shows its \ntality bv its fruitfulness. Africa is once more in the lead with St. ('yprian. Besides the singing of the Psalms and the readings in public from the Bible, which made up the main portion of the primitive liturgy and which we already know, it shows itself in set prayers, in a love for rhythm, for well-balanced endings that were to remain for cen- turies during the Middle Ages the main characteristics of liturgical Latin. As the process of development went on, this love of harmony held sway over all prayers; they followed the rules of metre and prosody to begin with, but rhythmical cursus gained the upper-hand from the fourth to the seventh, and from the eleventh to the fifteenth, century.

As is well known, the ctirsus consists in a certain arrangement of words, accents, and sometimes whole phrases, whereby a pleasing modulated effect is pro- duced. The prayer of the " Angelus " is the simplest example of this; it contains all three kinds of cursus that are to be met with in the prayers of the Missal and the Breviary: (1) the cursus planus, "nostris iii- f unde " ; (2) the cursus tardus, ** incamationem cognovi-