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The_Idiot
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Kyrie eleison is Greek not Latin
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Formosus
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Any literate or educated person could read or write latin to some extent, but the number of literate people was much much lower. In the medieval period, the educated were either rich nobles or clerics in the Church (and even some lower ranking clerics had a poor comprehension of Latin). Literacy was a bit higher in the Eastern Empire, due to the civil service and highly urban population, but not at the literacy rates found today.
Again, highly mobile, you mean the wealthy and well to do. The vast majority of people in the middle ages and Renaissance lived in the same place their entire lives, they worked the same fields, etc. Only the very rich were out gallivanting through Europe and the Near East because they had serfs who could farm the land for them, and lower ranking knights to protect their estates while they were gone. They didn’t need to stick around. The average Joe peasant did not have that luxury.
Yes people can “learn the meaning of it” by its repetitive nature (assuming someone tells them the meaning to begin with, or that they have a missal) but that is not the same thing as being able to read or even understand the language. Knowing the translation of the Gloria will not tell you enough about Latin grammar and syntax to be able to understand the rest of the Mass in Latin.
@ProVobis
Yes Jerome’s bible wasn’t the most vulgar of Latin dialects, but it definitely was not Cicero or the height of latinaity. And I did not say the Liturgical language should vanish entirely. It has its place. People who thirst for a better understanding of the Fathers and of the Scriptures, and of the Liturgy will of course continue to study the languages, regardless as to whether they are used in the Liturgy actively or not. There is a lot of theology that the lay person in the pew does not get when the prayers are said in Latin. Even speakers of languages that are similar, like Spanish or Italian, miss out on subtle meanings of the text. For that reason, translations are better for those of us who do not understand Latin or Greek well enough to hear it in the Liturgy (and this is coming from someone who has studied Latin, and Greek to the point where I can read it fairly well with the aid of a dictionary).
With that said, it is up to the individual Sui Iuris churches as to whether the traditional Liturgical language should be used or not. Again, I have no qualms with holding onto these beautiful and venerable languages, but a clear, dignified translation of the vernacular is just as important as the traditional language.
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puzzleannie
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don’t know what that big word means, but your question is contradictory, or at least confusing. Since the rise of Latin as the liturgical language in the West came about because it was the vernacular language, then yes, that would be traditional, and yes I would be in favor of it.
If you mean retaining Greek and other original liturgical languages in the Eastern rites, I am in favor of whatever their bishops decide best serves the liturgy in those rites for those Catholics.
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justme
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In some cases I get the feeling that tradition is seen as being bigger than the Church, as if it is some kind of dogma that the bishops have no right or power to change. If it is a tradition today it is a safe bet that at one time it was something that replaced a tradition in its day.
Another way to put it is that traditionalism, as some are promoting it, seems to be a form of idolatry.
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Phillip_Rolfes
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I believe it is also important to keep in mind the different mentalities between the different traditions with regards to the purpose of liturgy. One aspect that is highly emphasized among the Byzantines, but perhaps not as much among the other traditions (Oriental or Western) is the catechetical nature of the Liturgy. This is often used among those of the Byzantine tradition as an argument for a liturgical vernacular. In the Roman tradition (at least how I grew up) catechesis takes place primarily outside of the liturgy. Apart from lessons in my home, I remember going to catechism classes at one of the local parishes. Also it is expected that children will learn their catechism in school if they attend Catholic schools. No such thing exists among the Byzantines. Archbishop Joseph Raya reminisces about his mother brining the liturgical books home from the local parish so that he could read them, pray them, study them, etc. “No catechisms or any of those Latin things for my children” to paraphrase the words of his mother. Liturgy, for him and many/most Byzantines, is catechsis.
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ProVobis
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You are correct. Church Latin is not Cicero Latin, at least with its meanings. Oratio, for example, is “prayer” not “speech” and Deus becomes the Trinitarian God. Inflection, however, remains as it does in the Slavic languages today. IMO this affords better translation between the Latin and Polish, for example. English (and the Romance languages to some extent) have lost much of these inflections, thus resorting to a specific word order, in some cases in very awkward constructions, to convey the same thought flow. And some of the better translations end up not making any grammatical sense in the English; thus a lot of things may be better left untranslated.
As far as vulgarity in St. Jerome’s time there is a list called the Appendix Probi, which gives some example of the differences between Classic Latin and Vulgar Latin, the beginning of the Romance languages. Had the Church truly gone with the vernacular we would have had the priest saying Dominus voscum instead of Dominus vobiscum. Fortunately that didn’t happen.
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5Loaves
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You make an excellent point in your observations, Phillip.
I’ve heard this “Liturgy*** is*** catechesis” many times from EC and Orthodox priests. It’s become a mantra of mine.
While the Roman RIte is much shorter and less packed than the Divine Liturgy I hold the same is also true in the Roman Rite. There is just less there to be catechized by in terms of text. With the new translation of the Roman Rite in English speaking countries I think many of the faithful are actually listening to the words of the rite and learning from it. During the many Scripture readings about water in salvation history which we heard Theophany eve was the reading from the book of Judges about Gideon, the wool fleece and the dew “If there is dew only on the fleece and all the ground is dry, then I will know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you said.” 6:37. As I heard it in my EC parish at Theophany I couldn’t help but think about the new English translation Eucharistic Prayer II * Epiclesis* " Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall, so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
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5Loaves
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I agree. My Church Slavonic is limited to the usual repetitions we have in my parish: “Lord have mercy”, “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal”, “God grant you many years”, “Christ is risen! Truly He is risen!” and maybe a couple more I’m forgetting. However, even though I don’t know what he is saying there is nothing more moving for me than when the priest whose first liturgical language was Slavonic is facing the iconostasis and praying fervently in Slavonic. I know that this is how he as a child first spoke to God and for me there is an even greater sense of intimacy in the prayer by that, even tho I myself do not know what is being said. Both the Russian and the Greek Orthodox churches I go to for some services use both English and their vernacular, Old Church Slavonic and liturgical Greek. Our previous priest rotated between English and Slavonic or Arabic depending on his “mood”. He had a considerable history with the Melkites. When the curtain was pulled back at the start of DL and he began to pray we never knew which of the three languages would come booming out of his mouth.
Even the ROCOR Holy Virgin Cathedral up the street from us is using a Slavonic plus English combination now.
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ProVobis
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One can make a case where Church (Ecclesiastical) Latin and Old Church Slavonic were never considered true vernaculars. Maybe Syriac and koine Greek too???
One shouldn’t overlook the fact that the primary purposes of these liturgical languages was/is to worship in a sustainable fashion, while at the same time capturing the nuances of the first century. Vernaculars presuppose translations of some sort and often have to be changed and reworded due to factors other than religious. I’m all for side-by-side missals with heavy focus on the liturgical language in these matters.
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Phillip_Rolfes
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The idea of liturgical languages being “suitable” isn’t really one that computes in the Byzantine tradition. For the Byzantines, since God became man and spoke in human words, all language has been sanctified and is, therefore, suitable for worship. Again, this may not hold so much for other Eastern and Oriental traditions, but it’s what I’ve always heard from various Eastern Catholic and Orthodox people. Liturgical languages, for us, are primarily a point of reference to ensure that our translation are, well, orthodox.
I do get the impression, however, that the Oriental traditions differ from the Byzantine tradition on this point, with the exception of the Coptics perhaps. In fact, I met a young woman once who was planning on leaving her Armenian Orthodox Church to become Roman Catholic. When I asked her why, the primary reason she gave was the language issue.
The Coptics that I’ve met seem to be very open to the use of the vernacular in their services. In fact, that Coptic services that I’ve been to have combined the use of Coptic (I think), Greek, Arabic, and English, with the majority being in English. They were very beautiful Vespers services and I hope to attend again some time.
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ProVobis
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Phil, one can make a case that all languages, business, legal, oratory, literary, computer, anatomical, mathematical, music notational, etc have been “sanctified” (or “dedicated”) for some purpose. I can pray using “ones and zeros” code and I know how. It’s suitable for me and it’s personal philosophy but it certainly wouldn’t be sustainable for everyone else over centuries, much less two millennia.
It’s like this, the word “gay” changes meanings and many songs and poems have to be rewritten. And when you have a whole languageful of changed meanings over time, that’s not sustainable (or translatable) in my book. One can’t tell me that someone can truly appreciate Shakespeare in a Chinese translation. They can love him and love the plot and refuse to read non-Chinese versions but it just isn’t reading Shakespeare.
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Ridgerunner
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It appears a knowledge of Latin was also common among merchants. Some merchants were wealthy, and some were not. They tended to be better educated than the peasants, but not as well educated as the clergy or the nobility. Peasants in the Medieval period and the Renaissance were not very mobile, but merchants, shippers, etc, certainly were, and there were a lot of them, there being no trains or supertankers to carry huge cargos. A fair number of military people were as well. If one reads, for instance, Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale”, it appears mercenaries such as he might fight for or against the Sultan, for or against the Teutonic Knights in Prussia, for or against various Italian city states, and so on. The French king’s crossbowmen at Agincourt were Italians. Shakespeare speaks of foreign mercenaries multiple times. John Hawkwood, an Englishman and the son of a tanner, was a major mercenary in the French wars and Italian wars and commanded Englishmen, French and Italians, and perhaps whoever else might seem an effective recruit.
Some people during the period didn’t get around very much, but a lot of them did. My own “Irish” ancestors came from Denmark, thence to France, thence to England thence to Ireland.
One needs to also remember that essentially all Italian literature was in Latin before Dante; most English literature was too, until Chaucer, and the English law courts’ proceedings were in Latin until approximately Thomas More’s lifetime.
It can be realized as well that even in Chaucer’s time, there was no such language, exactly, as “English”. There were numerous dialects in England, many of which were not mutually intelligible. Chaucer himself can be said to have “created” English by his writings, using the dialect common among the mercantile class in London at the time.
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dcointin
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This is a controversial issue in American Orthodoxy as well. The Orthodox churches in my area are comprised of mostly immigrants and their children, and the are strongly in favor of the languages of their homelands being used. At most of those parishes the services are conducted in about half Enlgih, though this can vary depending on the day. For example, my brother, who recently converted to Orthodoxy, took his wife who has not to a Greek Orthodox parish to show her what Orthodox services are like. It happened to be the Sunday that their bishop was visiting, so everything with exception to the sermon was in Greek. They left about half way through the service since she complained that she couldn’t understand anything. There are a number of converts and some cradle Orthodox who favor English however, and my parish formed to address that need. We use English for everything but the second and third repitition of the Trisagion where we use Arabic and Greek, and occasionally for a prayer in the litany. The problem with English is that the quality of the translations can be very poor, and the wording varies among jurisdictions. One of the worst examples that comes to mind is after the Paschal liturgy when the priest blesses the meat and cheese from which we had been fasting during Lent. He says “Bless these fleshmeats and curdled milk” three times, and people actually laugh at how absurd it sounds!
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ProVobis
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This is very true. There is no ideal period or area in Anglosphere which used THE English language. It’s more like the English languages, just like we have the Slavic languages. So it’s not one spoken vernacular which we are talking about. Having lived in both the U.K. and the U.S, I can vouch for that. A nine-year old can see them as different languages.
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Formosus
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Modern English dialects are mutually intelligible. Slavic languages is a large category that contains different languages that are not mutually intelligible. Even in the group of East Slavic languages, Ukrainian and Russian are not easily mutually intelligible. I can go to England and , minus a few odd vocab differences, understand what is being said easily. There may be rural dialects that take a bit more effort, but the standard American English is the same language as the standard British English. The dialects of Chaucer’s time disappeared after various migrations in England in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Merchants knowing a bit of Latin, and mercenaries traveling about does not change the fact that the vast majority of people were peasants who never left their homes and probably coylsnt read their own language let alone Latin. Not to sound “cliche” but Latin speakers were the 1% of the middle ages. We only know so much about them because history is written by the literate.
Merchants knowing a bit of Latin, and mercenaries traveling about does not change the fact that the vast majority of people were peasants who never left their homes and probably coylsnt read their own language let alone Latin. Not to sound “cliche” but Latin speakers were the 1% of the middle ages. We only know so much about them because history is written by the literate.
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ProVobis
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And that’s a good thing since the illiterates are the ones who usually morph/corrupt a language. It’s almost like the Heisenberg principle in play here. Make something understandable/measurable and you compromise its other attributes, such as immutability.
That said, I find it significant that the English language was actually made better/more useable because much of Latin, including its alphabet, was incorporated into the English language. Yet many Anglophones will claim they don’t know and don’t want to know a single word of Latin.
And I’m done with the thread.
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Formosus
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No language is immutable, not even Latin. In the Middle Ages, Latin went through plenty of different changes depending on who was writing, when it was written, and where. Modern consistency in Latin came about because of the Renaissance rediscovery of classical texts, and that is what killed Latin as the universal language of Europe. I love the Latin language and I wish people would study it, and other languages more. I think its the worst failing of our school system that Latin and the classics have been almost removed from the curriculum of public schools. I just do not think that having it as the sole language which a western liturgy should be celebrated in. The prayers (especially of the Extra Ordinary form) contain rich theology that the faithful should be permitted to hear without having to have their nose in a book the whole time. The East likewise should use a mix of whatever vernacular and liturgical language is appropriate for their communities. I beleive its not a popular opinion in the UGCC, but I think some Church Slavonic should be used for certain common prayers (such as the cherubic hymn or the Our Father perhaps). Or we could do like the Melkites, and use Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, and English for our Trisagion .
Do not misunderstand me, I think corruption of language is a bad thing and should be fought against. But preserving the language like its a museum piece does not really help its cause.
.Do not misunderstand me, I think corruption of language is a bad thing and should be fought against. But preserving the language like its a museum piece does not really help its cause.
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Phillip_Rolfes
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No language is immutable, not even Latin. In the Middle Ages, Latin went through plenty of different changes depending on who was writing, when it was written, and where. Modern consistency in Latin came about because of the Renaissance rediscovery of classical texts, and that is what killed Latin as the universal language of Europe. I love the Latin language and I wish people would study it, and other languages more. I think its the worst failing of our school system that Latin and the classics have been almost removed from the curriculum of public schools. I just do not think that having it as the sole language which a western liturgy should be celebrated in. The prayers (especially of the Extra Ordinary form) contain rich theology that the faithful should be permitted to hear without having to have their nose in a book the whole time. The East likewise should use a mix of whatever vernacular and liturgical language is appropriate for their communities. I beleive its not a popular opinion in the UGCC, but I think some Church Slavonic should be used for certain common prayers (such as the cherubic hymn or the Our Father perhaps). Or we could do like the Melkites, and use Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, and English for our Trisagion
Do not misunderstand me, I think corruption of language is a bad thing and should be fought against. But preserving the language like its a museum piece does not really help its cause.
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Ridgerunner
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I question whether you can support the assertion that only 1% understood Latin. The nobility and gentry of Medieval and Renaissance Europe was a significant portion of the population. Many nobles and gentry did not actually rule over very many people, and there were a lot of them. Merchants were also numerous. There were no Walmarts where a handful of people could deal with a vast quantity and array of products. Most merchants had a limited line of goods and a limited quantity, and there were a lot more of them per capita than today. Same with military people. There were literally unemployed fighters everywhere, looking to hook a job somewhere…anywhere…with anyone. Same with transporters. When you could, at best, haul goods on a ship no bigger than a medium sized yacht of today, that meant a lot more ships, sailors and officers than is the case per ton today when enormous ships are so lightly manned that a tiny handful of pirates can capture the whole vessel with relative ease. There were no big truck rigs. One merchant might have a string of mules, but that would be it. It took a lot of them to get things around.
And, of course, the clergy were a greater percentage of the population then than now. And nobody could teach in a university or attend one without learning Latin. Even tradesmen, whose schooling was fairly limited, were taught Latin, right from the start.
I think we underestimate the mobility of people in those eras and their knowledge of Latin.
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Ridgerunner
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Did you actually live it? I don’t think I needed a book from about age 10 on, and I think most of my contemporaries were the same. No, we couldn’t hold a casual conversation in Latin, but we certainly knew what the prayers meant, right down to the last jot and tittle. The hymns too. I honestly think the only people who really believe “nobody understood it” are those who never lived with it on a regular and sustained basis.
Not long ago, the TLM was approved in our diocese by a new bishop and (while it’s some distance away) I attended a few times. From the very first one, I knew exactly what the prayers meant and were. I suspect those who grew up with it would have the same experience.
And frankly, as an admirer of the English language (I do like Anglican use because the English usage is superb…even majestic) I am even more impressed with Latin than I am with everyday English in the liturgy.
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