Chapter 41
Section 41 of History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages, Volume 3, by Hartman Grisar. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 3, Language and Art of Declining Rome, Part 2. Some Representatives of Latin in Its Decline. To take some other works, the humble author of Liber Pontificalis betrays by his Latin the sad state of the popular language at the time he wrote,
for his speech swarms with grammatical faults. Those who continued his chronicle, down to Carlovingian times, are not one whit better. For instance, in the notice on Pope Pelagius I, we read Of his successor, John III, it states that he was Ex patre Anastasio in lustrio, for in lustri, and further, Hic instituit ut ministrator oblationem, for oblatio. We can see thereby that the authors
of the Liber Pontificalis were members of the lower clergy, in no wise above the rest of the common people, whose acquaintance, moreover, with the studies then being pursued at Rome, was somewhat remote. For even then, the city was not devoid of schools, where pupils were taught to avoid such blunders, and to select their words so as to express themselves with grace and lucidity. The discipline of such a learning is pleasantly conspicuous in Gregory the Great, towards the
close of the sixth century. He himself, it is true, speaks humbly of his own manner of writing. I make no effort to avoid barbarisms. I pay no heed to the position of the prepositions or their case. He even declares that he deems it very unfitting to make the words of heavenly doctrine submit to the rules of Donatus. We shall, however, be doing the Pope an injustice did we take such declarations too literally. His writings are free from faults of grammar.
It is true his language is far from being as pure and harmonious as that of the classics, or even of some of the earlier fathers. Nevertheless, his Latin is always good and to the point, and occasionally not wanting in quiet elegance and dignity, particularly when he avoids his common failing of lingering too long over his subject or treating it allegorically. The documents drafted at the Papal Curia long maintained a high standard with regard both to style and linguistic precision.
In the 6th and 7th centuries, they rank above the official deeds of the various government offices and courts. They are, for instance, far better than those found in the archives of the Merovingian kings. In the 8th century, however, before the Carlovingian revival had touched Rome, the papal letters, so far as we can judge from the form in which they have come down to us, were sharing in the general decay of language. Among the few writers of the Merovingian kingdom
was Gregory of Tours, of whom we have already spoken. In spite of his education and talent, his is a debased and faulty Latin. We stated above that he wisely shook himself free from the academical rhetoric in vogue. We may now add that his books make us vividly realize the fate of Latin, even in Rome itself. The Bishop of Tours, in his mode of speech, follows largely the lingua vulgaris. He even charges himself with this at the beginning of several of his works,
and the self-accusation, which was exaggerated in the case of Gregory the Great, is quite justified in that of his namesake of tours. Pardon me, he says, if I offend against the laws of grammar with regard to letters and syllables. He depicts his readers rightly scolding him as follows. Thou canst not even distinguish nouns, masculine words, thou mistakest for feminine, and feminine for masculine, or instead of either, thou usest the neuter. Even the prepositions thou
knowest not how to use, and against all learned authority, thou puttest an accusative instead of an ablative, and vice versa. In such wise does he humorously own his faults. As a matter of fact, one could well answer him, Quite so, but thine avowal falleth short of the truth, for thou confoundest not the cases alone, but even the moods, playing habit with the whole Latin conjugation by using auxiliary verbs to express future and past. Thou art reducing the declensions to two
cases, one direct and the other indirect, and expressing the remainder with the help of prepositions. By closely examining the imperfections of his style, one obtains an insight into the transition from Latin to French. In Italy, Latin underwent a similar process before arriving at the Italian of today. Two cases only were retained in the Romance languages, final syllables were disregarded, and the relationship of the words was expressed by prepositions. The non-Latin words,
purloined by the Frankish writer from the popular vocabulary of his country, were to become an ornament of the French language, giving it an aspect of its own and all the charms of youth. With all its defects of style, the Frankish history written by Gregory of Tours provides us, however, with some delightful reading, is a homely account of actual facts, and is all the more valuable from being the earliest history of the nation. It is a surprising fact that in the
6th century, the Greek Empire also produced two Latin works of great interest in the history of the language. Constantinople, or New Rome, the seat of the empire, held the whole world in thrall, even from an intellectual point of view, and from the city on the Bosphorus, a civilization deserving of all respect was spreading everywhere. Byzantine influence was felt. It was in Latin and at Constantinople, under the emperor Anastasius, that Priscianus, the grammarian, wrote the best
and fullest work in existence on the Latin language, namely his Instituciones Grammaticae, comprising 18 books. The manuscripts show it to have been copied in Herbe Roma Constantinopoli by Flavius Theodorus and Antiquarius or Engrosser. The number of manuscripts proves the extent to which Priscianus was studied during the Middle Ages, nor was he the only Latin grammarian in the East, for we must also reckon his disciples, Eutyches, Theodorus, Flavianus, and others.
The other Latin word penned by a Greek has not attained such wide celebrity as the first, on account of the nature of its contents. For the history of the decline of the Latin tongue, it is, however, very valuable, and is of some significance in the history of civilization. we refer to Anthemesis De Observatione Siborum, a sort of guide for housekeepers and cooks, written at the beginning of the 6th century and dedicated to King Theodoric. The Greek author had
learned his Latin in Italy during the Gothic period, and his language is accordingly colloquial rather than literary. Indeed, he acquaints us admirably with the vulgar idiom then in vogue in Italy. For instance, he uses de for the genitive and ile for the article, two words retained in Italian. The verb to become he renders by de venere and good evening by bona sera. His word cabalicare has since grown into cavacare and medietas into medieta, etc.
Even better witnesses to the condition of the language in Rome exist in a number of extant inscriptions of the 6th century, which, with unimpeachable certainty, show the decline of grammar in the capital of the Latin world. Here we have no fear of the work, having been touched up by later copyists, but may rest assured that we have before us the actual language of the day. The two following examples are not epitaphs on people of the lower class, carelessly chiseled
by some ignorant stonemason. Like so many of the faulty inscriptions in the catacombs, everything points to the epitaphs in question, having been composed and executed according to the best talent of the day. Both inscriptions belong to the close of the 6th century. One is the metrical epitaph of Eugenius, the notary, and his family, inscribed on a massive marble tablet, which contains the praise of his little son, Boethius. At the end, it is stated
that provision had been made by will for oblations and lights. Ex testamenti paginam ad ablitione vel luminaria. The garden given for this purpose lay, as the epitaph says, iuxta porta portuense. In addition, a portion of a fundus or estate was also devised as a gift. The second epitaph is that of Eusebius, near St. Paul's Basilica. This pious and charitable man, after having finished the restoration of the neighborhood
of the basilica, erected a memorial tablet, which still exists. The inscription testifies as much to the deplorable state of Latin as to the damage done to the church and repaired by Eusebius. According to the text, he himself had restored. Picturus quas in ruinus erat totus. Also, tectum cum tegulis. Likewise, marmora quae minus habuit. Among other things, in superiora, marmoravit palatium. His alumnae or assistants had put up
bars to keep out thieves. Causae Fures, Sium Multum Male Facent. The inscription contains a number of vernacular architectural terms which might be sought in vain among standard Latin authors, such as Speclorum, Clostrum, Incinus, Manganum. Even the solemn dedicatory inscriptions of the popes in the basilicas they had erected or restored do not always escape the influence of the bad taste prevailing. They are not, indeed, disfigured by faults of grammar, like the epitaphs
of Eugenius and Eusebius, but their phraseology is often so ponderous and so involved as to be scarcely intelligible, particularly when the inscriptions are in verse. For instance, we may still read under the mosaic of Pope Honorius, about 638, in the Basilica of St. Agnes on the via nomantana, six disticks, a chaotic assemblage of sounding words, of which only the general drift can be guessed. In this inscription, we have a masterpiece of linguistic impotence and want of
taste. The six disticks might well have been condensed into one. End of section 41.
