Ecclesiastical Latin

Ecclesiastical Latin
	Church Latin, Liturgical Latin
Native to	Never spoken as a native language; other uses vary widely by period and location
Extinct	Still used for many purposes, mostly as a liturgical language of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, as well as in the Anglican Churches, Lutheran Churches, and Methodist Churches. Also used in the Western Orthodox Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Ecclesiastical Latin; ; ; ;
Writing system	Latin
Official status
Official language in	Holy See
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
Glottolog	None
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Ecclesiastical Latin, also called Church Latin, Liturgical Latin or Italian Latin, is a form of Latin initially developed to discuss Christian thought and later used as a lingua franca by the Medieval and Early Modern upper class of Europe. It includes words from Vulgar Latin and Classical Latin (as well as Greek and Hebrew) re-purposed with Christian meaning.^[3] It is less stylized and rigid in form than Classical Latin, sharing vocabulary, forms, and syntax, while at the same time incorporating informal elements which had always been with the language but which were excluded by the literary authors of classical Latin.^[4] Its pronunciation is based on Italian.^[1]

Ecclesiastical Latin was the language of liturgical rites in the Catholic Church, as well as the Anglican Church, Lutheran Church, Methodist Church,^[1] and in the Western Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church.^[2] Today, ecclesiastical Latin is primarily used in official documents of the Roman Catholic Church, and it is still learned by clergy. ^[3]

The Ecclesiastical Latin that is used in theological works, liturgical rites and dogmatic proclamations varies in style: syntactically simple in the Vulgate Bible, hieratic in the Roman Canon of the Mass, terse and technical in Aquinas' Summa Theologica and Ciceronian in Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter Fides et Ratio.

Usage[edit]

Late antique usage[edit]

The use of Latin in the Church started in the fourth century^[5] with the split of the Roman Empire after Emperor Theodosius in 395. Before this split, Greek was the primary language of the Church as well as the language of the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Following the split, early theologians like Jerome translated Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, the dominant language of the Western Roman Empire. The loss of Greek in the Western half of the Roman Empire, and the loss of Latin in the Eastern half of the Roman Empire were not immediate, but changed the culture of language as well as the development of the Church.^[6] What especially differentiates Ecclesiastical Latin from Classical Latin is its utility as a language for translating, since it borrows and assimilates constructions and borrows vocabulary from the koine Greek, while adapting the meanings of some Latin words to those of the koine Greek originals, which are sometimes themselves translations of Hebrew originals.^[7]

Protestant usage[edit]

The use of Latin in the Western Church continued throughout the Middle Ages and into the time of the Reformation. One of Martin Luther's tenets of the Reformation was to have services and religious texts in the common tongue, rather than Latin, a language that at the time, only clergy understood. Protestants refrained from using Latin in services, however Protestant clergy had to learn and understand Latin as it was the language of higher learning and theological thought until the eighteenth century.^[8] After the Reformation, in the Lutheran Churches, Latin was retained as the language of the Mass for weekdays, although for the Sunday Sabbath, the Deutsche Messe was to be said.^[9] In Geneva, among the Reformed Churches, "persons called before the consistory to prove their faith answered by reciting the Paternoster, the Ave Maria, and the Credo in Latin."^[9] In the Anglican Church, the Book of Common Prayer was published in Latin, alongside English.^[1] John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Churches, "used Latin text in doctrinal writings",^[1] as Martin Luther and John Calvin did in their era.^[1] In the training of Protestant clergy in Württemberg, as well as in the Rhineland, universities instructed divinity students in Latin and their examinations were conducted in this language.^[9] The University of Montauban under Reformed auspcices, required that seminarians complete two theses, with one being in Latin and as such, Reformed ministers were "Latinist by training", comparable to Roman Catholic seminarians.^[9]

Catholic usage[edit]

Ecclesiastical Latin continued to be the language of the Roman Catholic Church until the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) created by Pope John XXIII to discuss reforming liturgy. The Council decided to allow languages other than Latin to be used in Mass in order to relate the Church and its values to modern culture.^[10] However, the Church still produces its official liturgical texts in Latin, which provide a single clear point of reference for translations into all other languages. The same holds for the official texts of canon law and many other doctrinal and pastoral communications and directives of the Holy See, such as encyclical letters, motu proprios, and declarations ex cathedra.^[11]

The Holy See has for some centuries usually drafted documents in a modern language, but the authoritative text, published in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, is usually in Latin. Some texts may be published initially in a modern language and be later revised, according to a Latin version (or “editio typica”), after this Latin version is published. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church was drafted and published, in 1992, in French. The Latin text appeared only five years later, in 1997, and the French text was corrected to match the Latin version, which is regarded as the official text. The Latin-language department of the Vatican Secretariat of State (formerly the Secretaria brevium ad principes et epistolarum latinarum) is charged with the preparation in Latin of papal and curial documents. Occasionally the official text is published in a modern language, e.g., the well-known edict Tra le sollecitudini^[12] (1903) by Pope Pius X (in Italian) and Mit brennender Sorge (1937) by Pope Pius XI (in German).

The rule now in force on the use of Latin in the Eucharistic liturgy of the Roman Rite states Mass is celebrated either in Latin or in another language, provided that the liturgical texts used have been approved according to the norm of law. Except for celebrations of the Mass that are scheduled by the ecclesiastical authorities to take place in the language of the people, priests are always and everywhere permitted to celebrate Mass in Latin.^[13]

Comparison with Classical Latin[edit]

There are not many differences between Classical Latin and Church Latin. One can understand Church Latin knowing the Latin of classical texts, as the main differences between the two are in pronunciation and spelling, as well as vocabulary.

In many countries, those who speak Latin for liturgical or other ecclesiastical purposes use the pronunciation that has become traditional in Rome by giving the letters the value they have in modern Italian but without distinguishing between open and close "E" and "O". "AE" and "OE" coalesce with "E"; before them and "I", "C" and "G" are pronounced /t͡ʃ/ (English "CH") and /d͡ʒ/ (English "J"), respectively. "TI" before a vowel is generally pronounced /tsi/ (unless preceded by "S", "T" or "X"). Such speakers pronounce consonantal "V" (not written as "U") as /v/ as in English, and double consonants are pronounced as such. The distinction in Classical Latin between long and short vowels is ignored, and instead of the 'macron', a horizontal line to mark the long vowel, an acute accent is used for stress. The first syllable of two-syllable words is stressed; in longer words, an acute accent is placed over the stressed vowel: adorémus 'let us adore'; Dómini 'of the Lord'.^[14]

Language materials[edit]

The complete text of the Bible in Latin, the revised Vulgate, appears at Nova Vulgata - Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio.^[15] New Advent^[16] gives the entire Bible, in the Douay version, verse by verse, accompanied by the Vulgate Latin of each verse.

In 1976, the Latinitas Foundation^[17] (Opus Fundatum Latinitas in Latin) was established by Pope Paul VI to promote the study and use of Latin. Its headquarters are in Vatican City. The foundation publishes an eponymous quarterly in Latin. The foundation also published a 15,000-word Italian-Latin Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis (Dictionary of Recent Latin), which provides Latin coinages for modern concepts, such as a bicycle (birota), a cigarette (fistula nicotiana), a computer (instrumentum computatorium), a cowboy (armentarius), a motel (deversorium autocineticum), shampoo (capitilavium), a strike (operistitium), a terrorist (tromocrates), a trademark (ergasterii nota), an unemployed person (invite otiosus), a waltz (chorea Vindobonensis), and even a miniskirt (tunicula minima) and hot pants (brevissimae bracae femineae). Some 600 such terms extracted from the book appear on a page^[18] of the Vatican website. The Latinitas Foundation was superseded by the Pontifical Academy for Latin (Latin: Pontificia Academia Latinitatis) in 2012.

Current use[edit]

Latin remains the official language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church.^[19] Until the 1960s and still later in Roman colleges like the Gregorian, Roman Catholic priests studied theology using Latin textbooks and the language of instruction in many seminaries was also Latin, which was seen as the language of the Church Fathers. The use of Latin in pedagogy and in theological research, however, has since declined. Nevertheless, canon law requires for seminary formation to provide for a thorough training in Latin,^[20] though "the use of Latin in seminaries and pontifical universities has now dwindled to the point of extinction."^[21] Latin was still spoken in recent international gatherings of Roman Catholic leaders, such as the Second Vatican Council, and it is still used at conclaves to elect a new Pope. The Tenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2004 was the most recent to have a Latin-language group for discussions.

Although Latin is the traditional liturgical language of the Roman (Latin) Church, the liturgical use of the vernacular has predominated since the liturgical reforms that followed the Vatican II: liturgical law for the Latin Church states that Mass may be celebrated either in Latin or another language in which the liturgical texts, translated from Latin, have been legitimately approved.^[22] The permission granted for continued use of the Tridentine Mass in its 1962 form authorizes use of the vernacular language in proclaiming the Scripture readings after they are first read in Latin.^[23]

In historic Protestant Churches, such as the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Churches, Ecclesiastical Latin is often employed in sung celebrations of the Mass.^[1]

References[edit]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A. (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 961. ISBN 9780192802903. The Second Vatican Council declared that the use of Latin was to be maintained the liturgy, though permission was granted for some use of the vernacular; in the outcome, the use of the vernacular has almost entirely triumphed, although the official books continue to be published in Latin. In the C of E the Latin versions of the Book of Common Prayer have never been widely used, though, for instance, John Wesley used Latin text in doctrinal writings. The option of using traditional Latin texts in sung worship has been retained by choirs in both the Anglican and Lutheran Churches.
^ ^a ^b "On the Western Rite Liturgy | Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese". antiochian.org. Retrieved 2017-12-30.
^ ^a ^b "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Church Latin". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2018-11-27.
^ Collens, Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, pg. vi
^ Collins, Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, pg. vi
^ Leonhardt, Jürgen (2013). Latin: Story of a World Language. Munich: Harvard University Press. p. 94. ISBN 978-0-674-05807-1.
^ Collins, Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, pg. vi
^ Janson, Tore (2007). Natural History of Latin: The Story of the World's Most Successful Language. Oxford University Press. p. 126. ISBN 978-0199214051.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Waquet, Françoise (2002). Latin, Or, The Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries. Verso. p. 78. ISBN 9781859844021.
^ "Second Vatican Council | Roman Catholic history [1962–1965]". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-11-27.
^ "CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Church Latin". www.newadvent.org. Retrieved 2018-11-27.
^ Adoremus.org
^ Redemptionis Sacramentum, 112 Archived February 3, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
^ Roman Missal
^ Vatican.va
^ Newadvent.org
^ Vatican.va
^ Vatican.va
^ As stated above, official documents are frequently published in other languages. The Holy See's diplomatic languages are French and Latin (such as letters of credence from Vatican ambassadors to other countries are written in Latin [Fr. Reginald Foster, on Vatican Radio, 4 June 2005]). Laws and official regulations of Vatican City, which is an entity that is distinct from the Holy See, are issued in Italian.
^ Can. 249, 1983 CIC
^ Cross, Frank Leslie; Livingstone, Elizabeth A. (2005). The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford University Press. p. 961. ISBN 9780192802903.
^ Can. 928 Archived December 4, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, 1983 CIC
^ ["Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-01-01. Retrieved 2015-03-27.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link) Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, article 6

The New Missal Latin by Edmund J. Baumeister, S.M., Ph.D. Published by St. Mary's Publishing Company, P.O. Box 134, St. Mary's, KS 66536-0134, USA
Byrne, Carol (1999). "Simplicissimus". The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. Retrieved 20 April 2011. (A course in ecclesiastical Latin.)