Liturgical Languages

[dcointin]

I’ve attended the Tridentine Mass several times now, most recently this past Sunday. I personally didn’t find the Latin to be a hindrance. I’ve never taken Latin, but I am familiar with a few terms from my Lutheran background, and I could guess at the basic meaning of many of the phrases I heard. A very nice woman gave me one of her extra missals after the service, so with this to follow along with I shouldn’t have any problem with it in the future. I actually look forward to attending these services learning more Latin as I go. Ironically, it’s my Catholic fiancee that didn’t like the service because she “couldn’t understand anything” and was “bored”. Perhaps being Orthodox I’m more accustomed to different languages in the liturgy such as Greek and Slavonic, and this isn’t off putting for me.

 

[Formosus]

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.

Not even all the clergy were competent in Latin. Sure there were a lot of highly educated clerics, but the average parish cleric was not all that well educated. I do not deny that a portion of the population was mobile. Warriors, clerics, nobles, and wealthy merchants who could afford protection. These people were not what I’d call a significant population. 1% was not meant as a literal statement, but as a comparison to the silly slogans of the OWS movement. These travelers were not the norm of society, but exceptions and even they did not command Latin well enough to understand the subtleties of theology. Further I think its important to recognize that this mobility only begins to appear in the high middle ages and late middle ages (after being interrupted by the Black Death for a bit). I do not disagree that many in society moved around more frequently then some would say, but that does not change the fact that the overwhelming majority of society were poor farmers who never went more then ten miles from their home.

I will grant you that a significant portion of people may have known Latin during the Renaissance. But after the inorganic return to classical forms of Latin, Latin as the “universal language” of Europe (Western Europe) began to fall into decline to where the vast majority of people do not know any Latin beyond “veni, vidi, vici.”

And no I did not live through the TLM and I can not speak for those who have. I have heard the experience of many who have and sometimes it matches up with your experience, and other times it does not. Personally, I do not care if the Latin Church returns to only Latin in the Liturgy, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see a huge exodus of Catholics out of the Church following such a change. I like that my Patriarchate promotes proper translations of the Liturgy into English, Ukrainian and even Spanish. We have begun to make missionary inroads among the Hispanic population of the US and I imagine that trend will continue to grow.

 

[andrewstx]

Strangly enough, (on ConstantineTG’s list of DLs on video) I saw Copts using Latin during DL (Kyrie Eleison)

That is actually Greek and not Latin.

 

[andrewstx]

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.

Actually church Greek and Slavonic are close enough to Modern Greek and Russian that they are easily understood.

The vernacular is still the principle at work in the Orthodox churches, and I would not know a word of Latin if it weren’t from singing in accapella choir.

 

[ConstantineTG]

That is actually Greek and not Latin.

Curiously there is indeed no Latin translation of Kyrie Eleison, while there is to other languages including Old Church Slavonic.

 

[couponfit]

A very controversial topic in the Church concerns the use and preservation of Liturgical languages. So are you for it in favor of tradition, or against it in line with vernacularism?

Even was latin was used by the Church of Rome it was a vernacular as all the church’s of christ used vernaculars. I personally think it’s best to keep the language local, but there is great love for tradition.

 

[ConstantineTG]

Even was latin was used by the Church of Rome it was a vernacular as all the church’s of christ used vernaculars. I personally think it’s best to keep the language local, but there is great love for tradition.

I agree, the Liturgy is not only meant as a way to worship God but also to instruct the people on how to worship God (lex orandi, lex credendi). If people have no idea what is being said or what’s going on, what kind of catechesis is that?

 

[ProVobis]

That is actually Greek and not Latin.

Κύριε ἐλέησον would be real Greek.

Funny how we “borrow” Latin words like “honor, color, actor, agenda, senator, bonus” (there’s a ton of them) and call them English; yet if Latin borrows Greek, it’s still Greek.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Κύριε ἐλέησον would be real Greek.

Funny how we “borrow” Latin words like “honor, color, actor, agenda, senator, bonus” (there’s a ton of them) and call them English; yet if Latin borrows Greek, it’s still Greek.

English, I have read, is about 1/3 Latin-derived. The “Romance languages”, of course, would be more so. English is also about 1/3 derived from an older form of French, much of which is also Latinate. About 1/3 of English is derived from various Anglo-Saxon languages.

 

[ProVobis]

English, I have read, is about 1/3 Latin-derived. The “Romance languages”, of course, would be more so. English is also about 1/3 derived from an older form of French, much of which is also Latinate. About 1/3 of English is derived from various Anglo-Saxon languages.

As I tell people English is 50% barbaric, 50% Latin/French, and 100% pompous.

 

[dochawk]

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.

wasn’t Church Slavonic forme specifically to be mutually intelligible with the various Slavonic tonges of the time?

And th new immigrant/old language/English dispute is really about which language is the vernacular, not whether or not to use the vernacular . . .

hawk

 

[Deacon_Yuhanna]

The Arabic of the Maronite and Melkite Churches is not the vernacular. Their vernacular would be the Lebanese language (sometimes called “lisan al-sham”) in Lebanon or Syria, and then the languages of their other lands, e.g. English, Portuguese etc. Arabic is in fact a literary language in Lebanon and Syria. Their vernacular is not comprehensible to someone who only knows Arabic - and vice versa. Thus the Lebanese who did not learn Arabic in school (e.g. some old women, and the Lebanese in expansion lands) cannot understand the Arabic of the liturgy. Even when some words are very similar (e.g. the word for “all” and “every”) it is often pronounced slightly differently, but that slight difference is enough to throw off those who do not know both languages (i.e. it is pronounced “kill” in Lebanese but “kulla” in Arabic).

The late John Pairman Brown argued, and many scholars agree, that the Lebanese language is in fact an independent Semitic language. It came from Aramaic but now has massive Arabic vocabulary. Even there, the engine words of Lebanese (“fee” meaning “there is” and “can”, and “buddee” or “biddee” meaning “I want” etc.) are not Arabic at all. Lebanese isn’t even a dialect of Arabic because there isn’t substantial mutual intelligibility (e.g. as between an English speaker from Ireland and one from Australia).

So, the Maronite Mass is (apart from certain things only ever said in Syriac) said in the vernacular only when NOT said in Arabic! Yours in Christ, Deacon Yuhanna

 

[MarkThompson]

Curiously there is indeed no Latin translation of Kyrie Eleison, while there is to other languages including Old Church Slavonic.

Yes there is: Miserere Domine. According to one early account, related in the Catholic Encyclopedia, “As the deacon says the names of various people (the Intercession) a number of boys stand and answer always, Kyrie Eleison, as we should say, Miserere Domine.” Apparently the vernacular, Latin form was in use first, with the Greek version imported in the fifth century; "t displaced the older Latin exclamations at this place and eventually remained alone as the only remnant of the old litany."

 

[ConstantineTG]

Yes there is: Miserere Domine. According to one early account, related in the Catholic Encyclopedia, “As the deacon says the names of various people (the Intercession) a number of boys stand and answer always, Kyrie Eleison, as we should say, Miserere Domine.” Apparently the vernacular, Latin form was in use first, with the Greek version imported in the fifth century; "t displaced the older Latin exclamations at this place and eventually remained alone as the only remnant of the old litany."

Thanks! Good to know. Why don’t they use it today? Or is it still used?

 

[Formosus]

wasn’t Church Slavonic forme specifically to be mutually intelligible with the various Slavonic tonges of the time?

And th new immigrant/old language/English dispute is really about which language is the vernacular, not whether or not to use the vernacular . . .

hawk

Well Church Slavonic was a version of Old Bulgarian. I have heard that all Slavic languages in the early middle ages were closer to the “original” Slavic or “proto-Slavic” or whatever they want to call it . I can’t really make a judgment about that. All I know is that there are fairly big vocab differences in Ukrainian and Russian today. It probably isn’t hard to learn one if you know the other, but I doubt a peasant from 19th century Galicia could have spoken to a peasant from outside Moscow without serious difficulty (or that either of them could have spoken to a Bulgarian or Czech peasant).

 

[Formosus]

…
The late John Pairman Brown argued, and many scholars agree, that the Lebanese language is in fact an independent Semitic language. It came from Aramaic but now has massive Arabic vocabulary. Even there, the engine words of Lebanese (“fee” meaning “there is” and “can”, and “buddee” or “biddee” meaning “I want” etc.) are not Arabic at all. Lebanese isn’t even a dialect of Arabic because there isn’t substantial mutual intelligibility (e.g. as between an English speaker from Ireland and one from Australia).
…

Fascinating! Do you happen to know any books on the subject?

 

[MarkThompson]

Thanks! Good to know. Why don’t they use it today? Or is it still used?

Not sure of the answer to your first question; and as to the second, I don’t think it is in use in any litany, although the phrase itself shows up in various places.