430
JESUIT EDUCATION
opponents of this system represent it. Some of the Latin text books on philosophy are written in accurate Latin.[1] It is not, however, this custom of speaking Latin which we wished to adduce as a provision of the Ratio Studiorum, to advance the study of Latin during the course of philosophy. But we find in the Ratio, among the rules for the Prefect of the higher studies, the following clause: "He shall give every student of philosophy a classical author and admonish him not to omit reading it at certain hours."[2]
- ↑ "Monkish Latin" has become a byword from the days of the humanists on to our age. The technical terms introduced by the scholastics are, it is true, not found in the writings of the ancients. Still we cannot deny that the schoolmen had a right, for the sake of greater brevity and precision, to form new words, from old roots, in order to avoid the cumbrous circumlocutions of a Cicero. Many modern scholars view the scholastic Latin much more favorably than was customary a few decades ago. Thus Mr. Leach, who is anything but friendly to the scholastics, says: "The medieval schoolmen sinned no more against pure Latinity, than the modern scientific writer sins against English undefiled, if such there be. " And Mr. Rashdall writes: "Among the students of a University and among the clergy generally much villainous Latin was no doubt talked, just as much villainous French is or was encouraged by the rule of French-speaking in English Seminaries for Young Ladies. But the Latin which was written by the theologian, or historian . . . was not as bad as is commonly supposed by those who have only heard it abused. J. S. Mill has rightly praised the schoolmen for their unrivalled capacity in the invention of technical terms. The Latin language originally rigid, inflexible, poor in vocabulary, and almost incapable of expressing a philosophical idea, became in the hands of medieval thinkers, flexible, subtle, rich." Univers. of the M. A., vol. II, pp. 595-596. See also Paulsen, l. c., vol. I, pp. 45-48.
- ↑ Reg. Praef. Stud. 30.
