Latin in English 1500-1800
Andrea Di Giovanni
©2003
In Early Modern English, the use of Latin had become
an increasingly troubled aspect of two diverging forums in England: the
academic and the religious. Both of
these areas underwent huge changes during the Renaissance and the Reformation.
The Humanist movement of the Renaissance had placed new emphasis on the ideal
of an ancient way of life exemplified by the Greek and Latin classics, and
England joined the rest of Europe in embracing the Humanist movement (Olgilvie
5). The first school with an
exclusively classical curriculum opened in England in 1528, and the rush of
similar schools that followed in its wake coincided “with the rise of the
merchant class who sought the utility of a secular education and were
emboldened by the example of their continental brothers” (Olgilvie 5). Despite
the allure of the classics, as the Early Modern period progressed in England
both the academic and the religious communities tended towards an increasing
use of the vernacular. There were many reasons for this shift towards an
all-pervasive vernacular and Tony Crowley notes that the “crucial conjunction
of the rise of Protestantism with the technological advance of print capitalism
had… tied the language firmly to the nation and thereby massively enhanced its
status (Crowley 55). The move away from Latin in the church, courts of law, and
classrooms meant that the English language essentially became integral to
questions of national identity, not only with respect to other nations, but
also within England itself.
While the use of English as an academic tongue grew,
so too did its lexicon, as academic disciplines such as science and religion
imported and reshaped Latin words into anglicized versions in order to fill
conceptual voids in English (Burke 38). What is important to note is that, as
English gained increasing significance in educational and ecclesiastical
fields, it did so by appropriating areas where only Latin had existed
previously. However, it is also important to note that Latin, despite its
eventual displacement by English in England, remained a crucial skill for a
student of letters. As Burke notes,
both Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida
and Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calender
found themselves translated into
Latin in 1635 and 1653 respectively (Burke 28). Troilus and Cressida
appeared in an Anglo-Latin edition entitled Amorvm
Troili et Creseidae libri duo priores Anglico-Latini and was printed by
John Lichfield in Oxford (EEBO). The Shepherd’s Calender became Calendarium pastorale and it also
appeared with parallel Latin and English texts. The Latin translation was provided by one William Bathurst
(EEBO). These translations demonstrate the perception of Latin as a language of
the learned and as a method of conferring added dignity and importance to a
text.
In the academic arena, Latin was very important as
part of the humanist ideal of one who excelled in both “contemplation and
service to the state” (Rice Jr. 106).
In the English Renaissance the revival of interest in classical learning
made Latin an indispensable skill for studying the classical authors such as
Virgil, Ovid, and Homer (Ogilvie 6).
However, just as the Anglo-Saxon clerics translated their Latin texts
into Old English, an increased demand for the translation of these classics
into English resulted – a practice that resulted in an influx of Latin
loanwords (Millward 225). The knowledge of Latin was important both
academically and in international relations:
it provided a common medium through which the educated elite of the
Early Modern Period could share ideas and discoveries, and with no political affiliation, Latin was a
neutral mode of communication (Burke 35 my emphasis). Speaking Latin was the
sign of the educated elite and the only guaranteed manner of reaching an
international audience (Burke 32, 35).
While full participation in the life of the
Renaissance required the knowledge of Latin, the results of the English
Reformation meant that Latin was not only an increasingly impractical language
through which to communicate with the common Christian, but, as Millward notes,
its “association with the Roman Catholic Church and England’s continental
adversaries tended to undermine its previously unquestioned status as the language of learning” (Millward
226) Originally, England did not follow
the Continental Reformation; King Henry VIII was a conservative who wrote a
book against Luther in 1521 (Rice Jr. 200).
However, his desire to divorce,
Catherine of Aragón, and the Church’s inability to grant his request (Rice Jr.
201) resulted in England’s separation form the Roman Catholic Church in 1534.
The language of the Christian church in England subsequently underwent great
change and English gained prominence in a significant cultural area in which
Latin functioned before. Shortly after
England’s break with Rome the Book of the
Common Prayer and administration of the Sacramentes, and other Rites and
Ceremonies after the Use of the Churche of England (Book of Common Prayer)
was developed in 1549 to unite the country in a single method of worship
(Crystal 65). As Crystal notes, the Book of Common Prayer is the source of
much of the vernacular idiom of English prayer and the unifying force of a
common language helped to forge a national identity.
Tony Crowley discusses Bakhtin’s notion of the
liberation of the vernacular: English as “set free from the dominance of Latin”
(Crowley 55). However, while English certainly began to come into its own as
the Early Modern Period progressed, Latin could not be completely abandoned for
reasons of both tradition and practicality. According to Crowley, when Locke
argued in ‘Some Thoughts Concerning
Education’ (1690) that “‘if a gentleman be to study any language, it ought
to be that of his own country’” he meant that the grammatical or rhetorical
study of the language is important (Crowley 74). Locke’s opinion with respect to Latin was that it was “absolutely
necessary” for the development of a true gentleman
(Crowley 75). The knowledge and
deployment of Latin was considered an important upper class trait, and one that
was zealously guarded to maintain class distinctions. Locke, and others, believed that people who would presumably have
no use for Latin – the merchant class and women – should not waste their time and money learning it (Crowley 75).
Latin was associated with the learned and leisured and the vernacular was
associated with the merchant class (Crowley 75).
For more practical reasons, Latin could not be
wholly abandoned by the English.
Beginning in the Renaissance and Reformation and continuing into the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the English language experienced a huge
influx of borrowed words. Latin was the main source of these borrowings (Nevalainen
364), and the influx increased as the vernacular began to be used more
extensively in academic and scientific circles. Some knowledge of Latin was needed to speak confidently in
subjects such as theology, science, and law in English. The result was a huge increase of English
vocabulary and Nevalainen writes that the period from the late sixteenth to
mid-seventeeth century was the “period of the fastest vocabulary growth in the
history of English in proportion to the vocabulary size of the time”
(Nevalainen 336). This saturation of
English with foreign words not only attracted criticism – purists referred to
excessive Latin borrowings and constructions as “inkhorn” terms and were much
opposed to their use (Crystal 60, Nevalainen 359) – but also resulted in the
need for English-English dictionaries to explain the new terms that had entered
the lexicon. The instability of the
language, due in part to the influx of words, was taken up by writers such as
Johnathan Swift his Proposal for
Correcting, Improving and Ascertaining the English Tongue (1712). Swift hoped to reform and
stabilize the language “order to create a proper vehicle of communication”
(Crowley 60). It was not until Samuel
Johnson published A Dictionary of the
English Language in 1755 after finding the state of things to be “copious
without order,” (Crowley 56) that the English language was examined
meticulously (Crystal 74).
The Renaissance and Reformation had set in motion a
linguistic path away from Latin and towards the vulgar tongue – English. As Tony Crowley writes, the English language
found itself wracked by issues of standardization in spelling, grammar, and
usage (Crowley 55-6). Crowley also
notes that the creation of a Standard English inevitably meant that some forms
and usages had to be left out (Crowley 56) and scholars often attempt to show
that Johnson’s particular position on the social scale is explicable by an
examination of his habits of usage and which terms he included in the Dictionary. Susan M. Fitzmaurice notes that
in the eighteenth century “a facility to speak well and appropriately seemed
increasingly to guarantee social mobility” (Fitzmaurice 309). The burgeoning English language, then, while
it provided a distinct national identity, also served to reinforce class
distinctions. The ‘type’ of English one
spoke, made up of one’s vocabulary and usage, accorded one a particular place
on the social scale. Johnson, despite
his Latin training and complex linguistic constructions , was the son of a
bookseller (Ousby 491) and not of the gentility. Instead, as Hudson points out, despite the tendency to consider
Johnson’s Dictionary as “an
instrument for suppressing lower-class idioms and for authorizing the language
of the upper classes as the only ‘proper’ English,” his inclusion of some cant
and ‘low’ words and exclusion of other words considered acceptable by
fashionable society meant that the Dictionary
was not a “polite” book. Fashionable society subsequently treated Johnson just
as his Dictionary is accused of
dividing others along “class lines”(Hudson 77, 88, 89).
Critics, both in his own day and in the present,
associate Johnson’s prose style and his excessive use of Latinisms as the mark
of one overtly attempting to climb the social ladder. Hudson quotes from Thomas Edwards, a contemporary of Johnson’s,
who complains in 1755 that Johnson crowds his work with “monstrous words…which
were never used by any who pretended to talk or write English” (Hudson
88). These “monstrous words” are known
as inkhorn terms, and Johnson had a great affinity for them. Hudson notes that this “reveals the
influence of seventeenth-century science and philosophy on his thought” since
the seventeenth century was a period of rapid change from Latin to the
vernacular (Hudson 88 fn). J.C.D. Clark
believes that since Johnson was trained in the Anglo-Latin tradition, he had a
high emotional investment in its continuance and consistently bemoaned the
demise of Latin in everyday usage (Clark 67 and Weinbrot 176). On the other hand, ‘polite’ society found
Johnson’s excessive use of inkhorn terms such as aedespotick, turbinated, and
perflation, off-putting and his style “stilted and opaque” (Hudson 88-9).
The resistance Johnson encountered with respect to
Latinisms was not a new form of protest to surface against the flagrant use of
inkhorn terms to augment the English lexicon.
Inkhorn terms are so named because they tend to be used more in writing
than in speech (inkhorns or inkpots were containers in which one stored ink)
and are largely held to be a literary affectation (McArthur 521). McArthur records a passage by Thomas Wilson
in The Arte of Rhetorique written in
1553:
Among all other lessons this should be first learned,
that we never affect any straunge ynkehorne termes, but to speak as is commonly
received: nether seeking to be over fine nor yet living over-careless, using
our speeche as most men doe, and ordering our wittes as the fewest have done. Some seeke so far for outlandish English,
that they forget altogether their mothers language.
Wilson’s examples of inkhorn terms are: revoluting, ingent affability, ingenious
capacity, and splendidious
(McArthur 521). A contemporary of
Wilson’s, Sir John Cheke, who also destested inkhorn terms writes to Sir Thomas
Hoby in 1557: “I am of this opinion that our own tongue should be written clean
and pure, unmixt and unmangled with borrowing of other tongues” (Johnson
115). A sense of national identity was
intimately linked with the “purity” of the language spoken.
Inkhornisms became so thoroughly associated with
Samuel Johnson that in the 1780s the term “Johnsonian” was coined to refer to
his particular style of inkhornism or anything resembling it. McArthur notes that Johnson’s moralizing
essays in The Rambler best exemplify
“Johnsonian” writing with its long words and phrases such as “I could seldom
escape to solitude, or steal a moment from the emulation of complaisance, and
the vigilance of officiousness” (McArthur 549). The eighteenth century tended away from such formal discourse,
and Johnson Latinate vocabulary was not well accepted (McArthur 549). In the
nineteenth century another word, “Johnsonese” surfaced as another pejorative
term to refer to the elevated style of Samuel Johnson (McArthur 549) and it alludes to the notion that Johnson’s static
attempt at upward social mobility and his highly esoteric writing style
employing Latin and Latinisms to maintain a scholarship as a “profession” was
considered uncouth and pedantic (Hudson 88-89). Samuel Johnson is the perfect
example of a scholar caught in the crossfire between nationalistic tendencies
towards a pure vernacular, and the long European history of Latin in
academia.
By the end of the eighteenth century the position of
the vernacular English as the language of academia, religion, and law was
complete: in 1687 Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
had appeared in Latin in order to reach the broadest audience (Millward 227 and
Rice. Jr. 18.) whereas in 1704 Newton’s Opticks;
or, a treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections, and colours of
light was published in English
marking the period in which significant scholarly work began to appear in the
vernacular (McArthur 587). By 1776 the prevalence of Latin in the academic
realm in England had declined sharply, and the authority of English was assured
(Finegan 536).While
English had certainly come into its own by the end of the eighteenth century,
it is important to bear in mind what Peter Burke calls a “provision conclusion”
surrounding the case of Latin versus the Vernacular, in this case,
English: “Although declared ‘dead’,
Latin would not lie down. It remained
useful, indeed vigorous in particular domains and in particular parts of Europe
throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries” (Burke 24). For example, in fields such as medicine and
botany, Latin remained, and is still today, a crucial tool for learning, and
knowledge of the Latin involved still functions to designate one as learned in
the area.
Suggested Reading:
Peter
Burke, “Heu domine, adsunt Turcae: A Sketch for a Social History of Post-medieval
Latin.” In Language, Self, and Society: A
Social History of Language” Peter Burke and Roy Porter, eds. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. 23-50.
Tony
Crowley, Language in History: Theories
and Texts. London: Routledge, 1996.
Nicholas
Hudson, “Johnson’s Dictionary and the Politics of ‘Standard English’” The Yearbook of English Studies 28
(1998) 77-93.
Francis
R. Johnson, “Latin versus English: The Sixteenth-Century debate over scientific
terminology.” Studies in Philology.
41 (1944) 109-135.
Terttu
Nevalainen, “Early Modern English Lexis and Semantics,” In Roger Lass, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language
1476-1776. Vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Edward
F. Rice Jr., Foundations of Early Modern
Europe 1460-1559. 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
1994).
Howard
D. Weinbrot, “Johnson, Jacobitism, and the Historiography of Nostalgia,” The Age of Johnson 7 (1996) 163-211.
Works Cited
Burke,
Peter “Heu domine, adsunt Turcae: A
Sketch for a Social History of Post medieval Latin.” In Language, Self, and
Society: A Social History of Language” Peter Burke and Roy Porter, eds.
Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991. 23-50
Clark
J.C.D. Samuel Johnson: Literature,
Religion and English Cultural Politics fromt eh Restoration
to Romanticism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Crowley,
Tony. Language in History: Theories and Texts. London: Routledge, 1996.
Crystal,
David. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the
English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Finegan,
Edward. “English Grammar and Common Usage.” In The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Johnson,
Francis R. “Latin versus English: The Sixteenth-Century debate over scientific terminology.” Studies in Philology. 41 (1944) 109-135.
Lapidge,
Michael. “The Anglo-Latin Background.” In A
New Critical History of Old English Literature. Stanly B. Greenfield and David
G. Calder, eds. New York: New
York University Press, 1986.
Fitzmaurice,
Susan M. “The Commerce of Language in the Pursuit of Politeness in Eighteenth Century England.” English Studies 4 (1998) 309-328.
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Nicholas. “Johnson’s Dictionary and the Politics of ‘Standard English.’” The Yearbook
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Tom ed. The Oxford Companion to the
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C. M. A Biography of the English Language,
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R.M.. Latin and Greek: A History of the
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to 1918. Connecticut: Archon Books, 1964.
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Howard D. “Johnson, Jacobitism, and the
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Early
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April 21, 2003.