LATINO CRISTIANO. — It is the special language (group language) of Christians, formed within the framework of Late Latin in the early Christian communities. With the expansion of Christianity, it gradually became the common language of the Latin peoples, and the Romance languages arose from II.
I. DEVELOPMENT
The Christian message, having crossed the borders of Palestine, was at first formulated in Greek koinē, which initially was the ecumenical language of Christianity.The ancient Greek Christian texts originating from Rome and the oldest communities of Gaul attest that the primitive communities of the West were Greek-speaking. On the other hand, the oldest Christian documents from North Africa were originally written in Latin; but since the Latin texts of Africa are saturated with Greek elements, one must assume not only Greek preaching but also an initial Greek phase of the African Church. For a long time it was believed that the Latinization of the Christian communities had taken place first of all in the Church of North Africa and that this had subsequently contributed greatly to the Latinization of the Church of Rome. Now, however, it is becoming increasingly evident that the process of Latinization of the Roman community was already under way around the middle of the 2nd century, which means that we are faced with a simultaneous development in Africa and Rome. Indeed, around the middle of the 2nd century, the Bible and other Christian texts originally written in Greek began to be translated into Latin in Rome, for example, the First Epistle of St. Clement. As for the liturgical language, it seems that the Roman Church decided only quite late to Latinize the liturgy entirely, especially the Eucharistic liturgy (the middle of the 4th century).
The process of differentiation of the Christian idiom occupied the course of several generations, gradually altering the character of the Latin language within Christian circles. In this process of differentiation, which was also characterized by a rapprochement with popular language, the oldest versions of the Bible played a very important part. After the creative period of the first two centuries, during which Christian Latin was formed and stabilized, one can discern a kind of slowing down in its development, which was at the same time a consolidation. Then, during the second half of the 4th century, after the peace of Constantine, a new creative activity is witnessed; in this case, however, it involved rather the learned creation of technical theological terms, which were added to the popular formations of the first Christian centuries. In the 5th century, a kind of linguistic conservatism prevailed which, while preserving the heritage of the first Christian centuries, moved toward more traditional norms.
This development was the consequence of the social and cultural emancipation of the Christian communities, which entailed a certain linguistic normativism taught by the school. In this way, a certain Christian humanism made its appearance: a fortunate combination of linguistic and stylistic elements deriving from the literary tradition of Rome and specifically Christian elements, which formed the basis of Christian literature at its apogee.
II. CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES
Christianity gathered its first adherents chiefly among the urban proletariat. It follows that, at the decisive moment in the initial formation of the idiom, the tendencies of the common people prevailed, and this not only because of the social standing of the first Christians, but also for a psychological reason: namely, that Christians decisively rejected the exclusivism and normativism of educated Latin, which were the consequence of a certain exaggeration of the value attributed to precise literary form. A certain utilitarianism took the place of the reverential conservatism that regulated the life of the language in educated pagan circles.The first development of the Latin of Christians is thus characterized by a democratic tendency, manifested above all in the ancient versions of the Bible, which in turn exerted an intense and enduring influence on the language used by Christian circles for communication. During the 2nd and 3rd centuries, an entire technical vocabulary of the Christians was formed; it would remain in use until the end of the Latin period, pass into the Romance languages, persist in medieval Latin, and serve as a model for the languages of all the peoples who would adopt Christianity as preached by the Latin-speaking Church. Now, in order to understand it properly, one must realize that Christianity was originally preached in Greek, and that Christian ideas and institutions entered the West bearing Greek names. Behind every technical term of the two centuries there lies concealed, or is openly displayed, a Greek original.
In Latinizing the oldest technical vocabulary, three processes were employed: either the Greek word was borrowed, or a new word was created, or a new sense was given to words already existing in Latin. In general, it may be said that things or institutions that were more or less concrete retained their original foreign name, thereby making an entire borrowed technical vocabulary commonplace in Christian circles: for example, the nouns: apostolos, ecclesia, baptisma, catechumenus, diaconus, episcopus, etc.; and the verbs: baptizare, blasphemare, prophetare, etc. There are, however, certain categories of ideas that from the beginning were instead interpreted with purely Latin words, whether through lexical neologisms or through semantic neologisms: thus, notions in close relation to Christian doctrine almost always received a Latin interpretation; for example, the entire vocabulary of Christian charity (caritas, dilectio, etc.) is Latin. The same applies to the vocabulary of salvation and redemption (salus, salutare, salvare, salvator, etc.), and to that of the opposition between flesh and spirit (spiritualis, carnalis, etc.). Later, theological and dogmatic terminology would be almost exclusively Latin. Very often, moreover, new words were not created, but the common language itself offered a point of departure, and then a shift in meaning was sufficient to interpret a Christian idea. The words pax, confiteri, salus, gratia, caro adopted a new sense.
Lexical differentiation was not limited to technical terms denoting Christian things; in Christian circles, in fact, a considerable number of new words were formed that did not denote specifically Christian things, ideas, or conceptions, but rather general ideas. This surprising fact can be explained only by reference to the very conception of a special language, which in itself implies differentiation throughout the entire domain of the language, without any need for an external necessity in each individual case: examples of this kind are: appretiare, arrepticus, beatificare,
beneplacitum, cohabitare, conrecumbere, cooperatio, cooperator, corruptibilis, fornicari, immacrescibilis, damnator, etc.
Differentiations may also be noted in the syntactic sphere, which cannot be justified by the concrete need for a technical expression. In this case, they very often involve general tendencies of the language that, within the linguistic community of Christians, led to a particular development. One might mention, for example, the special use of adjectives of belonging in place of the genitive, in fixed expressions such as: divina gratia, passio dominica, apostolica praecepta, divina misericordia, etc.; a certain predilection for free and expressive constructions, such as that of the collective singular, the isolated nominative, etc.; and the use of certain verbal constructions, such as ad with verba dicendi, benedicere with the accusative, and the technical use of the phrase credere in. Very often, as in the last of the cases cited, Latin usage was stimulated by the example of Hebrew or Greek constructions: for example, the periphrasis of the future with the verbs coepi, incipio; the indirect question introduced with si and, in most cases, with the indicative; the use of the final infinitive; and the use of the genitive in expressions such as homo peccati, etc.
III. THE LATIN OF THE CHURCH
This is a particular branch of the Latin of Christians. The oldest form of the Latin of the Church is found in the Latin of the ancient versions of the Bible, which were composed in a very popular language. The translators, simple people without literary training, drew extensively on the language of the people and at the same time practised extreme literalism, being unconcerned with literary considerations: they translated word for word, very often preserving the syntactical construction of the Greek original, which had already been influenced in several respects by Hebrew. Because of the numerous exotic elements of a linguistic and stylistic nature, the language of the ancient versions, although extremely popular, had a distinctive character that clearly set it apart from the ordinary language of the Christian communities.These ancient versions generally offended the taste of men of letters because of their popular and at the same time exotic character. Lactantius observes that the vulgar character of the ancient versions scandalized men of letters and that this constituted an insurmountable obstacle for many of them, steeped as they were in the literary culture of the period. Nevertheless, in Christian circles this rough and scarcely literary form was ultimately accepted as the biblical style. In his Locutiones in Heptateuchum, St. Augustine endeavours to point out and explain the linguistic and stylistic peculiarities of the ancient versions, characterizing them as biblical elements; he recognizes the existence of a biblical language and style, clearly distinct not only from the common language of educated people but also from the ordinary language of Christians. He accepts them and, in his books De doctrina christiana, recommends the Bible as an example of Christian eloquence. After Lactantius, a shift occurred in the inner meaning of the language; this explains how St. Jerome, a man of letters and a good connoisseur of literary Latin, was able, when revising the ancient versions of the Bible, to preserve many words and expressions that were highly daring and even vulgar. For St. Jerome’s contemporaries, these elements had been ennobled as traditional features of the biblical language.
A more mature form of Christian Latin appears in liturgical Latin. Since the Western liturgy, and that of Rome in particular, was Latinized at a very late period, Roman liturgical Latin presents, in its oldest form, a highly advanced phase of the Latin of Christians. For this reason, liturgical Latin is clearly distinct from biblical Latin, which still and always bears certain traces of the oldest versions of the Bible.
From its origins, the Roman Latin liturgy was able to draw upon all the riches of a mature language;
its style is an autonomous Roman creation, clearly distinct from the style of Eastern prayer, and is manifested first of all in the oldest liturgical texts, such as the Canon of the Mass. It underwent various influences in different periods—Byzantine, Gallican, and others—but none of these influences, which in most cases tended to diminish the very severe and hieratic character of the Roman style in favour of a more mysterious, more poetic, or more affective style, ever succeeded in entirely eliminating the character of solemn sobriety and of virile, austere unction belonging to the ancient Roman style. The highly solemn and hieratic style of the Canon of the Mass draws upon the heritage of ancient Roman worship; it is related to the style of the ancient national prayer of Rome, from which it took its striving for grandeur, its verbosity, and its juridical precision. Thanks to the fact that the West long remained faithful to the primitive spirit, which left certain liturgical prayers to the spontaneous or premeditated improvisation of the celebrant, the emergence of traditional liturgical forms became possible; a traditional formulary and style were formed for certain types of prayer: the «oremus» have one style and the «prefaces» another.
In the curial style, the Latin of the Church found its most official expression, consciously departing from the popular character of the language commonly used by the Christian communities; it was influenced by the language of Roman law and, above all, by the style of the Empire’s official documents. It therefore remains faithful to the very strict norms established by cultivated Latin.