PART I.
Introduction--Decline of Literature in the latter Period of the Roman Empire--Its Causes--Corruption of the Latin Language--Means by which it was effected--Formation of new Languages--General Ignorance of the Dark Ages--Scarcity of Books--Causes that prevented the total Extinction of Learning--Prevalence of Superst.i.tion and Fanaticism-- General Corruption of Religion--Monasteries--their Effects-- Pilgrimages--Love of Field Sports--State of Agriculture--of Internal and Foreign Trade down to the End of the Eleventh Century--Improvement of Europe dated from that Age.
It has been the object of every preceding chapter of this work, either to trace the civil revolutions of states during the period of the middle ages, or to investigate, with rather more minute attention, their political inst.i.tutions. There remains a large tract to be explored, if we would complete the circle of historical information, and give to our knowledge that copiousness and clear perception which arise from comprehending a subject under numerous relations. The philosophy of history embraces far more than the wars and treaties, the factions and cabals of common political narration; it extends to whatever ill.u.s.trates the character of the human species in a particular period, to their reasonings and sentiments, their arts and industry. Nor is this comprehensive survey merely interesting to the speculative philosopher; without it the statesman would form very erroneous estimates of events, and find himself constantly misled in any a.n.a.logical application of them to present circ.u.mstances. Nor is it an uncommon source of error to neglect the general signs of the times, and to deduce a prognostic from some partial coincidence with past events, where a more enlarged comparison of all the facts that ought to enter into the combination would destroy the whole parallel. The philosophical student, however, will not follow the antiquary into his minute details; and though it is hard to say what may not supply matter for a reflecting mind, there is always some danger of losing sight of grand objects in historical disquisition, by too laborious a research into trifles. I may possibly be thought to furnish, in some instances, an example of the error I condemn. But in the choice and disposition of topics to which the present chapter relates, some have been omitted oh account of their comparative insignificance, and others on account of their want of connexion with the leading subject. Even of those treated I can only undertake to give a transient view; and must bespeak the reader"s candour to remember that pa.s.sages which, separately taken, may often appear superficial, are but parts of the context of a single chapter, as the chapter itself is of an entire work.
The Middle Ages, according to the division I have adopted, comprise about one thousand years, from the invasion of France by Clovis to that of Naples by Charles VIII. This period, considered as to the state of society, has been esteemed dark through ignorance, and barbarous through poverty and want of refinement. And although this character is much less applicable to the last two centuries of the period than to those which preceded its commencement, yet we cannot expect to feel, in respect of ages at best imperfectly civilized and slowly progressive, that interest which attends a more perfect development of human capacities, and more brilliant advances in improvement. The first moiety indeed of these ten ages is almost absolutely barren, and presents little but a catalogue of evils. The subversion of the Roman empire, and devastation of its provinces, by barbarous nations, either immediately preceded, or were coincident with the commencement of the middle period. We begin in darkness and calamity; and though the shadows grow fainter as we advance, yet we are to break off our pursuit as the morning breathes upon us, and the twilight reddens into the l.u.s.tre of day.
[Sidenote: Decline of learning in Roman empire.]
No circ.u.mstance is so prominent on the first survey of society during the earlier centuries of this period as the depth of ignorance in which it was immersed; and as from this, more than any single cause, the moral and social evils which those ages experienced appear to have been derived and perpetuated, it deserves to occupy the first place in the arrangement of our present subject. We must not altogether ascribe the ruin of literature to the barbarian destroyers of the Roman empire. So gradual, and, apparently, so irretrievable a decay had long before spread over all liberal studies, that it is impossible to p.r.o.nounce whether they would not have been almost equally extinguished if the august throne of the Caesars had been left to moulder by its intrinsic weakness. Under the paternal sovereignty of Marcus Aurelius the approaching declension of learning might be scarcely perceptible to an incurious observer. There was much indeed to distinguish his times from those of Augustus; much lost in originality of genius, in correctness of taste, in the masterly conception and consummate finish of art, in purity of the Latin, and even of the Greek language. But there were men who made the age famous, grave lawyers, judicious historians, wise philosophers; the name of learning was honourable, its professors were encouraged; and along the vast surface of the Roman empire there was perhaps a greater number whose minds were cultivated by intellectual discipline than under the more brilliant reign of the first emperor.
[Sidenote: Its causes.]
It is not, I think, very easy to give a perfectly satisfactory solution of the rapid downfall of literature between the ages of Antonine and of Diocletian. Perhaps the prosperous condition of the empire from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, and the patron age which those good princes bestowed on letters, gave an artificial health to them for a moment, and suspended the operation of a disease which had already begun to undermine their vigour. Perhaps the intellectual energies of mankind can never remain stationary; and a nation that ceases to produce original and inventive minds, born to advance the landmarks of knowledge or skill, will recede from step to step, till it loses even the secondary merits of imitation and industry. During the third century, not only there were no great writers, but even few names of indifferent writers have been recovered by the diligence of modern inquiry.[480] Law neglected, philosophy perverted till it became contemptible, history nearly silent, the Latin tongue growing rapidly barbarous, poetry rarely and feebly attempted, art more and more vitiated; such were the symptoms by which the age previous to Constantine announced the decline of human intellect. If we cannot fully account for this unhappy change, as I have observed, we must, however, a.s.sign much weight to the degradation of Rome and Italy in the system of Severus and his successors, to the admission of barbarians into the military and even civil dignities of the empire, to the discouraging influence of provincial and illiterate sovereigns, and to the calamities which followed for half a century the first invasion of the Goths and the defeat of Decius. To this sickly condition of literature the fourth century supplied no permanent remedy.
If under the house of Constantine the Roman world suffered rather less from civil warfare or barbarous invasions than in the preceding age, yet every other cause of decline just enumerated prevailed with aggravated force; and the fourth century set in storms, sufficiently destructive in themselves, and ominous of those calamities which humbled the majesty of Rome at the commencement of the ensuing period, and overwhelmed the Western Empire in absolute and final ruin before its termination.
The diffusion of literature is perfectly distinguishable from its advancement; and whatever obscurity we may find in explaining the variations of the one, there are a few simple causes which seem to account for the other. Knowledge will be spread over the surface of a nation in proportion to the facilities of education; to the free circulation of books; to the emoluments and distinctions which literary attainments are found to produce; and still more to the reward which they meet in the general respect and applause of society. This cheering incitement, the genial sunshine of approbation, has at all times promoted the cultivation of literature in small republics rather than large empires, and in cities compared with the country. If these are the sources which nourish literature, we should naturally expect that they must have become scanty or dry when learning languishes or expires.
Accordingly, in the later ages of the Roman empire a general indifference towards the cultivation of letters became the characteristic of its inhabitants. Laws were indeed enacted by Constantine, Julian, Theodosius, and other emperors, for the encouragement of learned men and the promotion of liberal education. But these laws, which would not perhaps have been thought necessary in better times, were unavailing to counteract the lethargy of ignorance in which even the native citizens of the empire were contented to repose.
This alienation of men from their national literature may doubtless be imputed in some measure to its own demerits. A jargon of mystical philosophy, half fanaticism and half imposture, a barren and inflated eloquence, a frivolous philology, were not among those charms of wisdom by which man is to be diverted from pleasure or aroused from indolence.
In this temper of the public mind there was little probability that new compositions of excellence would be produced, and much doubt whether the old would be preserved. Since the invention of printing, the absolute extinction of any considerable work seems a danger too improbable for apprehension. The press pours forth in a few days a thousand volumes, which, scattered like seeds in the air over the republic of Europe, could hardly be destroyed without the extirpation of its inhabitants.
But in the times of antiquity ma.n.u.scripts were copied with cost, labour, and delay; and if the diffusion of knowledge be measured by the multiplication of books, no unfair standard, the most golden ages of ancient learning could never bear the least comparison with the three last centuries. The destruction of a few libraries by accidental fire, the desolation of a few provinces by unsparing and illiterate barbarians, might annihilate every vestige of an author, or leave a few scattered copies, which, from the public indifference, there was no inducement to multiply, exposed to similar casualties in succeeding times.
We are warranted by good authorities to a.s.sign, as a collateral cause of this irretrievable revolution the neglect of heathen literature by the Christian church. I am not versed enough in ecclesiastical writers to estimate the degree of this neglect; nor am I disposed to deny that the mischief was beyond recovery before the accession of Constantine. From the primitive ages, however, it seems that a dislike of pagan learning was pretty general among Christians. Many of the fathers undoubtedly were accomplished in liberal studies, and we are indebted to them for valuable fragments of authors whom we have lost. But the literary character of the church is not to be measured by that of its more ill.u.s.trious leaders. Proscribed and persecuted, the early Christians had not perhaps access to the public schools, nor inclination to studies which seemed, very excusably, uncongenial to the character of their profession. Their prejudices, however, survived the establishment of Christianity. The fourth council of Carthage in 398 prohibited the reading of secular books by bishops. Jerome plainly condemns the study of them except for pious ends. All physical science especially was held in avowed contempt, as inconsistent with revealed truths. Nor do there appear to have been any canons made in favour of learning, or any restriction on the ordination of persons absolutely illiterate.[481]
There was indeed abundance of what is called theological learning displayed in the controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries; and those who admire such disputations may consider the princ.i.p.al champions in them as contributing to the glory, or at least r.e.t.a.r.ding the decline, of literature. But I believe rather that polemical disputes will be found not only to corrupt the genuine spirit of religion, but to degrade and contract the faculties. What keenness and subtlety these may sometimes acquire by such exercise is more like that worldly shrewdness we see in men whose trade it is to outwit their neighbours than the clear and calm discrimination of philosophy. However this may be, it cannot be doubted that the controversies agitated in the church during these two centuries must have diverted studious minds from profane literature, and narrowed more and more the circle of that knowledge which they were desirous to attain.
The torrent of irrational superst.i.tions which carried all before it in the fifth century, and the progress of ascetic enthusiasm, had an influence still more decidedly inimical to learning. I cannot indeed conceive any state of society more adverse to the intellectual improvement of mankind than one which admitted of no middle line between gross dissoluteness and fanatical mortification. An equable tone of public morals, social and humane, verging neither to voluptuousness nor austerity, seems the most adapted to genius, or at least to letters, as it is to individual comfort and national prosperity. After the introduction of monkery and its unsocial theory of duties, the serious and reflecting part of mankind, on whom science most relies, were turned to habits which, in the most favourable view, could not quicken the intellectual energies; and it might be a difficult question whether the cultivators and admirers of useful literature were less likely to be found among the profligate citizens of Rome and their barbarian conquerors or the melancholy recluses of the wilderness.
Such therefore was the state of learning before the subversion of the Western Empire. And we may form some notion how little probability there was of its producing any excellent fruits, even if that revolution had never occurred, by considering what took place in Greece during the subsequent ages; where, although there was some attention shown to preserve the best monuments of antiquity, and diligence in compiling from them, yet no one original writer of any superior merit arose, and learning, though plunged but for a short period into mere darkness, may be said to have languished in a middle region of twilight for the greater part of a thousand years.
But not to delay ourselves in this speculation, the final settlement of barbarous nations in Gaul, Spain, and Italy consummated the ruin of literature. Their first irruptions were uniformly attended with devastation; and if some of the Gothic kings, after their establishment, proved humane and civilized sovereigns, yet the nation gloried in its original rudeness, and viewed with no unreasonable disdain arts which had neither preserved their cultivators from corruption nor raised them from servitude. Theodoric, the most famous of the Ostrogoth kings in Italy, could not write his name, and is said to have restrained his countrymen from attending those schools of learning by which he, or rather perhaps his minister Ca.s.siodorus, endeavoured to revive the studies of his Italian subjects. Scarcely one of the barbarians, so long as they continued unconfused with the native inhabitants, acquired the slightest tincture of letters; and the praise of equal ignorance was soon aspired to and attained by the entire ma.s.s of the Roman laity.
They, however, could hardly have divested themselves so completely of all acquaintance with even the elements of learning, if the language in which books were written had not ceased to be their natural dialect.
This remarkable change in the speech of France, Spain, and Italy is most intimately connected with the extinction of learning; and there is enough of obscurity as well as of interest in the subject to deserve some discussion.
[Sidenote: Corruption of the Latin language.]
It is obvious, on the most cursory view of the French and Spanish languages, that they, as well as the Italian, are derived from one common source, the Latin. That must therefore have been at some period, and certainly not since the establishment of the barbarous nations in Spain and Gaul, subst.i.tuted in ordinary use for the original dialects of those countries which are generally supposed to have been Celtic, not essentially differing from those which are spoken in Wales and Ireland.
Rome, says Augustin, imposed not only her yoke, but her language, upon conquered nations. The success of such an attempt is indeed very remarkable. Though it is the natural effect of conquest, or even of commercial intercourse, to ingraft fresh words and foreign idioms on the stock of the original language, yet the entire disuse of the latter, and adoption of one radically different, scarcely takes place in the lapse of a far longer period than that of the Roman dominion in Gaul. Thus, in part of Britany the people speak a language which has perhaps sustained no essential alteration from the revolution of two thousand years; and we know how steadily another Celtic dialect has kept its ground in Wales, notwithstanding English, laws and government, and the long line of contiguous frontier which brings the natives of that princ.i.p.ality into contact with Englishmen. Nor did the Romans ever establish their language (I know not whether they wished to do so) in this island, as we perceive by that stubborn British tongue which has survived two conquests.[482]
In Gaul and in Spain, however, they did succeed, as the present state of the French and peninsular languages renders undeniable, though by gradual changes, and not, as the Benedictine authors of the Histoire Litteraire de la France seem to imagine, by a sudden and arbitrary innovation.[483] This is neither possible in itself, nor agreeable to the testimony of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons at the end of the second century, who laments the necessity of learning Celtic.[484] But although the inhabitants of these provinces came at length to make use of Latin so completely as their mother tongue that few vestiges of their original Celtic could perhaps be discovered in their common speech, it does not follow that they spoke with the pure p.r.o.nunciation of Italians, far less with that conformity to the written sounds which we a.s.sume to be essential to the expression of Latin words.
[Sidenote: Ancient Latin p.r.o.nunciation.]
It appears to be taken for granted that the Romans p.r.o.nounced their language as we do at present, so far at least as the enunciation of all the consonants, however we may admit our deviations from the cla.s.sical standard in propriety of sounds and in measure of time. Yet the example of our own language, and of French, might show us that orthography may become a very inadequate representative of p.r.o.nunciation. It is indeed capable of proof that in the purest ages of Latinity some variation existed between these two. Those numerous changes in spelling which distinguish the same words in the poetry of Ennius and of Virgil are best explained by the supposition of their being accommodated, to the current p.r.o.nunciation. Harsh combinations of letters, softened down through delicacy of ear or rapidity of utterance, gradually lost their place in the written language. Thus _exfregit_ and _adrogavit_ a.s.sumed a form representing their more liquid sound; and _auctor_ was latterly spelled _autor_, which has been followed in French and Italian. _Autor_ was probably so p.r.o.nounced at all times; and the orthography was afterwards corrected or corrupted, whichever we please to say, according to the sound. We have the best authority to a.s.sert that the final _m_ was very faintly p.r.o.nounced, rather it seems as a rest and short interval between two syllables than an articulate letter; nor indeed can we conceive upon what other ground it was subject to elision before a vowel in verse, since we cannot suppose that the nice ears of Rome would have submitted to a capricious rule of poetry for which Greece presented no a.n.a.logy.[485]
A decisive proof, in my opinion, of the deviation which took place, through the rapidity of ordinary elocution, from the strict laws of enunciation, may be found in the metre of Terence. His verses, which are absolutely refractory to the common laws of prosody, may be readily scanned by the application of this principle. Thus, in the first act of the Heautontimorumenos, a part selected at random, I have found, I.
Vowels contracted or dropped so as to shorten the word by a syllable; in _rei_, _via_, _diutius_, _ei_, _solius_, _eam_, _unius_, _suam_, _divitias_, _senex_, _voluptatem_, _illius_, _semel_; II. The proceleusmatic foot, or four short syllables, instead of the dactyl; scen. i. v. 59, 73, 76, 88, 109; scen. ii. v. 36; III. The elision of _s_ in words ending with _us_ or _is_ short, and sometimes even of the whole syllable, before the next word beginning with a vowel; in scen. i.
v. 30, 81, 98, 101, 116, 119; scen. ii. v. 28. IV. The first syllable of _ille_ is repeatedly shortened, and indeed nothing is more usual in Terence than this licence; whence we may collect how ready this word was for abbreviation into the French and Italian articles. V. The last letter of _apud_ is cut off, scen. i. v. 120; and scen. ii. v. 8. VI.
_Hodie_ is used as a pyrrhichius, in scen. ii. v. 11. VII. Lastly, there is a clear instance of a short syllable, the antepenultimate of _impulerim_, lengthened on account of the accent at the 113th verse of the first scene.
[Sidenote: Its corruption by the populace,]
[Sidenote: and the provincials.]
These licences are in all probability chiefly colloquial, and would not have been adopted in public harangues, to which the precepts of rhetorical writers commonly relate. But if the more elegant language of the Romans, since such we must suppose to have been copied by Terence for his higher characters, differed so much in ordinary discourse from their orthography, it is probable that the vulgar went into much greater deviations. The popular p.r.o.nunciation errs generally, we might say perhaps invariably, by abbreviation of words, and by liquefying consonants, as is natural to the rapidity of colloquial speech.[486] It is by their knowledge of orthography and etymology that the more educated part of the community is preserved from these corrupt modes of p.r.o.nunciation. There is always therefore a standard by which common speech may be rectified; and in proportion to the diffusion of knowledge and politeness the deviations from it will be more slight and gradual.
But in distant provinces, and especially where the language itself is but of recent introduction, many more changes may be expected to occur.
Even in France and England there are provincial dialects, which, if written with all their anomalies of p.r.o.nunciation as well as idiom, would seem strangely out of unison with the regular language; and in Italy, as is well known, the varieties of dialect are still more striking. Now, in an advancing state of society, and especially with such a vigorous political circulation as we experience in England, language will constantly approximate to uniformity, as provincial expressions are more and more rejected for incorrectness or inelegance.
But, where literature is on the decline, and public misfortunes contract the circle of those who are solicitous about refinement, as in the last ages of the Roman empire, there will be no longer any definite standard of living speech, nor any general desire to conform to it if one could be found; and thus the vicious corruptions of the vulgar will entirely predominate. The niceties of ancient idiom will be totally lost, while new idioms will be formed out of violations of grammar sanctioned by usage, which, among a civilized people, would have been proscribed at their appearance.
Such appears to have been the progress of corruption in the Latin language. The adoption of words from the Teutonic dialects of the barbarians, which took place very freely, would not of itself have destroyed the character of that language, though it sullied its purity.
The worst law Latin of the middle ages is still Latin, if its barbarous terms have been bent to the regular inflections. It is possible, on the other hand, to write whole pages of Italian, wherein every word shall be of unequivocal Latin derivation, though the character and personality, if I may so say, of the language be entirely dissimilar. But, as I conceive, the loss of literature took away the only check upon arbitrary p.r.o.nunciation and upon erroneous grammar. Each people innovated through caprice, imitation of their neighbours, or some of those indescribable causes which dispose the organs of different nations to different sounds. The French melted down the middle consonants; the Italians omitted the final. Corruptions arising out of ignorance were mingled with those of p.r.o.nunciation. It would have been marvellous if illiterate and semi-barbarous provincials had preserved that delicate precision in using the inflections of tenses which our best scholars do not clearly attain. The common speech of any people whose language is highly complicated will be full of solecisms. The French inflections are not comparable in number or delicacy to the Latin, and yet the vulgar confuse their most ordinary forms.
But, in all probability, the variation of these derivative languages from popular Latin has been considerably less than it appears. In the purest ages of Latinity the citizens of Rome itself made use of many terms which we deem barbarous, and of many idioms which we should reject as modern. That highly complicated grammar, which the best writers employed, was too elliptical and obscure, too deficient in the connecting parts of speech, for general use. We cannot indeed ascertain in what degree the vulgar Latin differed from that of Cicero or Seneca.
It would be highly absurd to imagine, as some are said to have done, that modern Italian was spoken at Rome under Augustus.[487] But I believe it may be a.s.serted not only that much the greater part of those words in the present language of Italy which strike us as incapable of a Latin etymology are in fact derived from those current in the Augustan age, but that very many phrases which offended nicer ears prevailed in the same vernacular speech, and have pa.s.sed from thence into the modern French and Italian. Such, for example, was the frequent use of prepositions to indicate a relation between two parts of a sentence which a cla.s.sical writer would have made to depend on mere inflection.[488]
From the difficulty of retaining a right discrimination of tense seems to have proceeded the active auxiliary verb. It is possible that this was borrowed from the Teutonic languages of the barbarians, and accommodated both by them and by the natives to words of Latin origin.
The pa.s.sive auxiliary is obtained by a very ready resolution of any tense in that mood, and has not been altogether dispensed with even in Greek, while in Latin it is used much more frequently. It is not quite so easy to perceive the propriety of the active habeo or teneo, one or both of which all modern languages have adopted as their auxiliaries in conjugating the verb. But in some instances this a.n.a.lysis is not improper; and it may be supposed that nations, careless of etymology or correctness, applied the same verb by a rude a.n.a.logy to cases where it ought not strictly to have been employed.[489]
Next to the changes founded on p.r.o.nunciation and to the subst.i.tution of auxiliary verbs for inflections, the usage of the definite and indefinite articles in nouns appears the most considerable step in the trans.m.u.tation of Latin into its derivative languages. None but Latin, I believe, has ever wanted this part of speech; and the defect to which custom reconciled the Romans would be an insuperable stumbling-block to nations who were to translate their original idiom into that language. A coa.r.s.e expedient of applying _unus_, _ipse_, or _ille_ to the purposes of an article might perhaps be no unfrequent vulgarism of the provincials; and after the Teutonic tribes brought in their own grammar, it was natural that a corruption should become universal, which in fact supplied a real and essential deficiency.
[Sidenote: p.r.o.nunciation no longer regulated by quant.i.ty.]
That the quant.i.ty of Latin syllables is neglected, or rather lost, in modern p.r.o.nunciation, seems to be generally admitted. Whether, indeed, the ancient Romans, in their ordinary speaking, distinguished the measure of syllables with such uniform musical accuracy as we imagine, giving a certain time to those termed long, and exactly half that duration to the short, might very reasonably be questioned; though this was probably done, or attempted to be done, by every reader of poetry.
Certainly, however, the laws of quant.i.ty were forgotten, and an accentual p.r.o.nunciation came to predominate, before Latin had ceased to be a living language. A Christian writer named Commodia.n.u.s, who lived before the end of the third century according to some, or, as others think, in the reign of Constantine, has left us a philological curiosity, in a series of attacks on the pagan superst.i.tions, composed in what are meant to be verses, regulated by accent instead of quant.i.ty, exactly as we read Virgil at present.[490]
It is not improbable that Commodia.n.u.s may have written in Africa, the province in which more than any the purity of Latin was debased. At the end of the fourth century St. Augustin a.s.sailed his old enemies, the Donatists, with nearly the same arms that Commodia.n.u.s had wielded against heathenism. But as the refined and various music of hexameters was unlikely to be relished by the vulgar, he prudently adopted a different measure.[491] All the nations of Europe seem to love the trochaic verse; it was frequent on the Greek and Roman stage; it is more common than any other in the popular poetry of modern languages. This proceeds from its simplicity, its liveliness, and its ready accommodation to dancing and music. In St. Austin"s poem he united to a trochaic measure the novel attraction of rhyme.
As Africa must have lost all regard to the rules of measure in the fourth century, so it appears that Gaul was not more correct in the next two ages. A poem addressed by Auspicius bishop of Toul to count Arbogastes, of earlier date probably than the invasion of Clovis, is written with no regard to quant.i.ty.[492] The bishop by whom this was composed is mentioned by his contemporaries as a man of learning.
Probably he did not choose to perplex the barbarian to whom he was writing (for Arbogastes is plainly a barbarous name) by legitimate Roman metre. In the next century Gregory of Tours informs us that Chilperic attempted to write Latin verses; but the lines could not be reconciled to any division of feet; his ignorance having confounded long and short syllables together.[493] Now Chilperic must have learned to speak Latin like other kings of the Franks, and was a smatterer in several kinds of literature. If Chilperic therefore was not master of these distinctions, we may conclude that the bishops and other Romans with whom he conversed did not observe them; and that his blunders in versification arose from ignorance of rules, which, however fit to be preserved in poetry, were entirely obsolete in the living Latin of his age. Indeed the frequency of false quant.i.ties in the poets even of the fifth, but much more of the sixth century, is palpable. Fortunatus is quite full of them. This seems a decisive proof that the ancient p.r.o.nunciation was lost. Avitus tells us that few preserved the proper measure of syllables in singing. Yet he was bishop of Vienne, where a purer p.r.o.nunciation might be expected than in the remoter parts of Gaul.[494]
[Sidenote: Change of Latin into Romance.]
Defective, however, as it had become in respect of p.r.o.nunciation, Latin was still spoken in France during the sixth and seventh centuries. We have compositions of that time, intended for the people, in grammatical language. A song is still extant in rhyme and loose accentual measure, written upon a victory of Clotaire II. over the Saxons in 622, and obviously intended for circulation among the people.[495] Fortunatus says, in his Life of St. Aubin of Angers, that he should take care not to use any expression unintelligible to the people.[496] Baudemind, in the middle of the seventh century, declares, in his Life of St. Amand, that he writes in a rustic and vulgar style, that the reader may be excited to imitation.[497] Not that these legends were actually perused by the populace, for the very art of reading was confined to a few. But they were read publicly in the churches, and probably with a p.r.o.nunciation accommodated to the corruptions of ordinary language.
Still the Latin syntax must have been tolerably understood; and we may therefore say that Latin had not ceased to be a living language, in Gaul at least, before the latter part of the seventh century. Faults indeed against the rules of grammar, as well as unusual idioms, perpetually occur in the best writers of the Merovingian period, such as Gregory of Tours; while charters drawn up by less expert scholars deviate much further from purity.[498]
The corrupt provincial idiom became gradually more and more dissimilar to grammatical Latin; and the lingua Romana rustica, as the vulgar _patois_ (to borrow a word that I cannot well translate) had been called, acquired a distinct character as a new language in the eighth century.[499] Latin orthography, which had been hitherto pretty well maintained in books, though not always in charters, gave way to a new spelling, conformably to the current p.r.o.nunciation. Thus we find lui, for illius, in the Formularies of Marculfus; and Tu lo juva in a liturgy of Charlemagne"s age, for Tu illum juva. When this barrier was once broken down, such a deluge of innovation poured in that all the characteristics of Latin were effaced in writing as well as speaking, and the existence of a new language became undeniable. In a council held at Tours in 813 the bishops are ordered to have certain homilies of the fathers translated into the rustic Roman, as well as the German tongue.[500] After this it is unnecessary to multiply proofs of the change which Latin had undergone.
[Sidenote: Its corruption in Italy.]
In Italy the progressive corruptions of the Latin language were a.n.a.logous to those which occurred in France, though we do not find in writings any unequivocal specimens of a new formation at so early a period. But the old inscriptions, even of the fourth and fifth centuries, are full of solecisms and corrupt orthography. In legal instruments under the Lombard kings the Latin inflections are indeed used, but with so little regard to propriety that it is obvious the writers had not the slightest tincture of grammatical knowledge. This observation extends to a very large proportion of such doc.u.ments down to the twelfth century, and is as applicable to France and Spain as it is to Italy. In these charters the peculiar characteristics of Italian orthography and grammar frequently appear. Thus we find, in the eighth century, diveatis for debeatis, da for de in the ablative, avendi for habendi, dava for dabat, cedo a deo, and ad ecclesia, among many similar corruptions.[501] Latin was so changed, it is said by a writer of Charlemagne"s age, that scarcely any part of it was popularly known.
Italy indeed had suffered more than France itself by invasion, and was reduced to a lower state of barbarism, though probably, from the greater distinctness of p.r.o.nunciation habitual to the Italians, they lost less of their original language than the French. I do not find, however, in the writers who have treated this subject, any express evidence of a vulgar language distinct from Latin earlier than the close of the tenth century, when it is said in the epitaph of Pope Gregory V., who died in 999, that he instructed the people in three dialects--the Frankish or German, the vulgar, and the Latin.[502]
[Sidenote: Ignorance consequent on the disuse of Latin.]
When Latin had thus ceased to be a living language, the whole treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the people. The few who might have imbibed a taste for literature, if books had been accessible to them, were reduced to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated through a kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools, confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for the purposes of religion, afforded no encouragement or opportunities to the laity.[503] The worst effect was, that, as the newly-formed languages were hardly made use of in writing, Latin being still preserved in all legal instruments and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as well as of books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name.[504] Their charters, till the use of seals became general, were subscribed with the mark of the cross. Still more extraordinary it was to find one who had any tincture of learning.
Even admitting every indistinct commendation of a monkish biographer (with whom a knowledge of church-music would pa.s.s for literature[505]), we could make out a very short list of scholars. None certainly were more distinguished as such than Charlemagne and Alfred. But the former, unless we reject a very plain testimony, was incapable of writing;[506]
and Alfred found difficulty in making a translation from the pastoral instruction of St. Gregory, on account of his imperfect knowledge of Latin.[507]