LATIN LANGUAGE 341 murs (=muros). But by the 14th century this distinction, no longer corresponding to any facts in the pronunciation of the French language, fell into disuse, and the objective form alone was used, the last trace of inflexion thus disappearing. On the other hand, Italian and Spanish seem never to have passed through the former stage, but to have adopted from the first the accusative form as the basis of their own subjective as well as objective case, although in the plural (corone, anni) a desire to avoid confusion has led the Italian to adopt forms pointing rather to the nominative. Again, the neuter gender is lost entirely in the Romance languages; neuter words have become masculine as a rule, not, however, without many exceptions, due in some cases to false analogy, in others to the corruptions of the popular Latin. We may notice also the development of the article out of the popular use of ille and unus found in all the Romance languages.
The comparison of adjectives shows the steady growth of the preference for analytic over synthetic forms, which is a characteristic of Romance grammar generally. The use of magis and plus, comparatively rare, especially the latter, in Latin, has become quite normal, the former in Spanish, Portuguese, and Roumanian, the latter in the other language, while the suffixed forms -ior and -issimus have left but few traces, and the definite article has been generally employed to form the superlative on quite a new principle.
In the case of pronouns some of the most common (e.g., hiv, is, uter) are lost altogether, and many new ones are created by composition.
In the conjugation of verbs, the principal changes are due to the disintegration of the old forms, leading to their replacement by compound forms. In popular Latin there was already a strong ten dency to analytic forms, such as habeo compertum, habeo dicere, which supplied the model for numerous similar expressions. Thus the passive inflexions have been entirely replaced by the use of auxiliary verbs; the perfect is formed with the aid of habere (for which Spanish and Portuguese often employ tenere [tener, ter]}, the future is compounded with habeo (j'aimer-ai, &c.); a new mood, the conditional, is formed by a termination borrowed from the past imperfect; and supines and gerunds are entirely lost. In regard to the inflexion of particular verbs, it is of especial importance to notice the distinction between strong and weak forms, the accent in the former falling on the root (créscere), and in the latter on the termination (amáre); comp. tiens = ténco, but tenons = tenémus.
In adverbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, the chief point to notice is the extent to which, as in pronouns, simple forms have been replaced by compound forms, either as a result of the indistinguishable shape assumed by the latter in course of time, or with a view to a more complete expression of meaning. The former cause has led, for example, to the loss of adverbs distinguished from adjectives merely by a termination, worn away by the lapse of time; the latter to compounds like désormais (= de ex hora magis), beaucoup (= bellum colaphum, "a fine stroke").
In derivation the Romance languages ore especially rich, the loss of numerous simple Latin words, which either were too short to bear the abbreviating effects of time, or would have assumed an inconvenient form under the influence of the necessary phonetic changes, being compensated by new creations. Thus in the place of res, vis, ius, os, rus, sus, crus, mus, we find derivatives from causa, fortia, directum, bucca, campania, troia, gamba, sorex; and diminutives very frequently replace their primitives. We may notice finally how frequently it was necessary to adopt new forms in order to avoid homonyms, thus bellum was driven out by lellus, aequus by equus, puer by purus, sol by solum. Frequently words of non-Latin origin were employed for this purpose.
But the formation of the Romance languages, and their occasional employment in popular songs and stories, at first hardly affected at all the use of Latin as the language of literature. Its adoption as the means of utterance of the Christian church lent to it, in the days of its most marked decay, a new though a strangely transformed life. So appropriated, it became familiar to all who had even the elements of education throughout western Europe; it was universally retained in the services of the church, if not in the discourses with which these services were sometimes, but by no means always, accompanied; all philosophy and theology to which the new and unformed popular idioms could give no expression was necessarily expressed in its terminology; and it remained, as it is at the present day, the official language of the ecclesiastical authorities. In France it is not until the 10th century that we find any considerable remains of the vernacular in the form of charters and other muniments, and literary prose does not begin until the 12th century, when French versions of the chronicles, originally written in Latin, are fairly common. In Italy, as was perhaps natural, the use of Latin for literature was retained still more tenaciously, and the development of the national language in its new form was extremely slow. It was not before the 13th century that there was any serious attempt at writing in Italian; the earliest prose work, the 'Composizione del Mundo, dating from the middle of that century, quite in accordance with the spirit of Italian thought at the time, was a scientific treatise. Numerous novelle are preserved to us from about the same period; but the use of Italian as an organ of literary expression was still so little established that Dante found it natural to write, not only his political treatise De Monarchia, but also his defence of the vulgar tongue De Vulgari Eloquio, in Latin.[1] Even in the sixteenth century sermons addressed to a mixed audience in Italy were frequently delivered in Latin. The fact that so large a proportion of the chronicles of the Middle Ages proceeded from the monasteries serves to explain the continued use of a language familiar to the writers alike in their religious exercises and in their theological studies; and in our own English chronicles we have perhaps a unique instance of the history of a nation recorded for centuries in its own vernacular. Further, as the clergy supplied the secretaries and often the ministers of state in every court in western Europe, Latin continued to be the language of diplomacy and public business; and, as all science and learning was confined to them or to their pupils, works appealing to a learned audience were of necessity clothed in the same garb. Of the vast mass of Latin poetry produced in the cloisters of the Middle Ages, perhaps it is enough to say, with a scholar whose studies made him exceptionally familiar with it, "It offers no one exception to the eternal irrepealable law, that no great poet is inspired but in his native language." Even the Latin hymns, some ot which have taken their place among the perennial treasures of the church, owe their charm almost wholly to the intensity of their religious emotions, and to the lofty or plaintive music to which they were wedded, and not to any power in wielding the resources of the language, or happy artistic skill. It is perhaps in the De Imitatione Christi that ecclesiastical Latin is seen in its most perfect form. The style is of course wholly unlike that of the classical writers; but the Hebraic individualism, which in the Latin fathers often seems to clash inharmoniously with the general tone of the diction, has here proved strong enough to absorb the whole into its own key. Its terse and pregnant vigour, its direct simplicity, its profound thought, and its intense passion of self-devotion give it a place in the history of literature hardly inferior to that which it has always held among works of religious edification. It was one of the happy effects of a universal language that such a book, embodying, as none other did, the whole spirit of mediæval Christianity, should at once be accessible to the whole of Christendom.
Literary Latin.
During the long period for which Latin continued to be the language of learning and science, we find the writers who used it dividing themselves broadly into two great classes, according as they were accustomed to employ the current language of the cloister and the court, or aimed at a reproduction of the rhythm and diction of classical times. Of course the line cannot be drawn sharply, and all degrees of purity in idiom and syntax are represented, from the barbarous expressions which teem in many of the chroniclers to the purism of the Ciceronians. But it is not hard, as a rule, to determine in the case of any particular writer whether his style is merely derived from the traditional teachings of the schools, or drawn from a fresh study of the great models; and, while it is impossible to trace in detail the fluctuations in the greater or less badness of the former group, it may not be improper to sketch in outline the origin, the development, and it is to be feared that we must add the decline, of the art of using the Latin language with purity and grace. The attempt to return to something like the classical standard may perhaps have originated in the schools of Charles the Great, but it was least unsuccessful where, as in England, Latin was never a living language, and all knowledge of it had to be obtained from regular grammatical instruction. In the 9th and 10th centuries reference is very rarely made to the classical writers; it was only in the 11th century, under the influence of the schools of Lanfranc and Anselm, that a purer taste and a wider knowledge begin to show themselves. If the impulse came from Italy, the scholars of England and France soon surpassed their masters, and there is probably no Italian scholar who can be placed by the side of John of Salisbury, or (in the next century) of Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux. But the influence of the mendicant friars, and the corruption of the monastic houses, led to a decline at least as marked as the revival; and the Latin of the 13th century was not less barbarous, as a rule, than that of the 10th. A far more enduring movement for reform is connected with the name of Petrarch (1304-1374). According to his own account the sweetness and sonorousness of the periods of Cicero charmed his ears, when a boy, and made all other Latin seem to him harsh and discordant. Of course he was unable to escape altogether the influences of his time, and the more accurate scholars of a later age, aided by the vast improvement in the subsidia of learning, such as dictionaries and grammars, find much to censure in his diction. But at least he set the example of that enthusiastic study of the great ancient models which is the only possible road to a finished and harmonious Latin style; and the lesson that he taught was not destined to be forgotten, until it had borne its due fruits. His favourite pupil, John of Ravenna, was himself the teacher of the best scholars of the next generation; and to
- ↑ The history of Walter Spinelli is, however, enough to show that Italian was already assuming precise and definite shape, to say nothing of the Sicilian and early Florentine poets.
