The role of Christian Latin in the development of Romance vocabulary: a lexical study of the Peregrinatio Egeriae
Date:
Abstract:
The notion that there was a separate and distinct ‘Christian Latin’ has been debated for several decades. While the idea that there was a specifically Christian Latin was long supported, it has become progressively clear that defining such a register is a much more complex problem than it seemed in earlier scholarship. What is undeniable in the context of this debate is that the lexicon used by Christian writers presents a number of unusual features. A further investigation of these would undoubtedly prove valuable, in that it could lead to a clearer understanding of the problem in its entirety.
Among the peculiarities of Christian Latin vocabulary, some have been touched upon more often. Most famous is perhaps the influence of Greek. The early translations of biblical texts indeed display such a great amount of Greek borrowings that their language is sometimes defined as ‘translationese’ (see e.g. Adams, 2016). These borrowings naturally became part of the standard (Christian) vocabulary. A number of other phenomena can be observed. It was not unusual, for instance, for lexemes to undergo semantic shift, a process which was sometimes due to a willingness to avoid associations with paganism, e.g. oratio, which in Classical Latin is mostly used with the meaning ‘speech’, is used in Christian Latin in place of preces, which again in Classical Latin is the standard word for ‘prayer(s)’ (Burton, 2011: 492). In this context, what I intend to explore is the following. One can hypothesize that before the spread of Christianity, Latin in the Roman Empire was spoken by non-native speakers to the extent it was needed by (or for interacting with) the ruling and military classes. In this view, the Christians, to whom spreading their Word was vital, are to be held responsible for the wider diffusion of Latin in the Western Empire. It might therefore be suggested that Christian Latin played a part in the development of the Romance languages. Support for this can be found in some of the Romance replacements for basic classical vocabulary, e.g. Italian parlare or French parler, meaning ‘to speak’, both of which derive from Christian Latin parabolare, meaning ‘to tell in a parable’, went on to substitute for loqui, the Classical Latin for ‘to speak’.
In order to start assessing the extent of this phenomenon, I have chosen to perform a lexical analysis of the Peregrinatio Egeriae. Being a rare example of extended prose with an abundance of late features, this text is one of the most studied examples of post-classical Latin literature. For the same reason, it serves as the perfect case study for my own inquiry. In this paper, I will show the results of my analysis, discussing the more typically Christian lexical items that seem to have substituted, at least in this text, for their Classical counterparts, and checking them against their Romance equivalents where possible. While the study of this text alone cannot lead to definitive answers with respect to the original question, I hope that the findings of this ‘pilot project’ will serve as a launching pad for a study of wider scope.
References:
Adams, J. N. 2016. ‘Gospel of John (6.51-69) from the Vetus Latina (Codex Palatinus, e), and the corresponding passage from the Vulgate’. In Adams, J. N., An Anthology of Informal Latin 200 BC – AD 900, pp. 429-444. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Burton, P. 2011. ‘Christian Latin’. In Clackson, J. (ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language, pp. 485-501. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.