Latin and the Professions from The Classical Tradition
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The uses of Latin since it became a “dead” language, without native speakers, early in the Middle Ages, have been many and various.
The language survived and was transformed owing to its use in major institutions such as the Church, the state, and the universities.
Latin was for a long time the professional language of the clergy, lawyers, doctors, and university teachers and for a shorter period
was the language of diplomats.
Latin was the language of the Catholic Church from the 360s until the 1960s, employed in the liturgy and to a lesser extent in Church
administration. The clergy were therefore supposed to be able to read, write, and speak Latin, and many did so, although it is clear
from the records of episcopal visitations in the late Middle Ages that some parish priests lacked that skill. It was only in the later 16th
century that seminaries were founded to give priests a formal training for their profession. In other words, at the very time that the
Protestants were insisting on a vernacular liturgy, the Catholic Church was becoming more Latinized. Even sermons were sometimes
delivered in Latin in the Europe of the Counter-Reformation, and attempts were made to teach the language to Catholic converts in
other continents, from Mexico to Japan. Latin is still used for papal encyclicals, and there is an office at the Vatican for translating
neologisms into Latin, from atomic bomb (globus atomicus vi explodans) to miniskirt (tunicula minima) to computer (instrumentum
computatorium).
Latin was also the language of Europe’s universities, from their rise in the 12th century until the 18th century or even later. In the Middle
Ages, when most of the students as well as the teachers were clergy, the use of Latin in the academic world posed few problems. But
serious criticisms of this practice emerged, from England to Germany, in the 17th century, and a shift to lecturing in vernacular
languages, at least in some subjects, came in the 18th century. By the 19th century, use of the vernacular had become the norm,
although in some places (such as The Netherlands, France, and Germany) Latin remained the language of inaugural lectures—to the
embarrassment of some professors—and also that of doctoral dissertations, forcing some scholars to seek professional translators. A
last vestige of the system, which survived into the second half of the 20th century, was the elementary Latin required for entry to
Oxford and Cambridge, irrespective of the subject the student wished to study. At Heidelberg some knowledge of Latin is still required
of doctoral candidates in oriental studies.
In medieval and early modern universities it was possible, after gaining a general education by following the “arts” course, to acquire a
professional training in one of three subjects: theology, law, or medicine. In Catholic Europe, theology was studied from Latin texts,
such as the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and the Bible was cited in its Latin translation, known as the Vulgate. Even in the Protestant
world, theologians (including Luther and Calvin) often wrote in Latin. As for the two secular professions, “law” generally meant either
civil or canon law, studied from Latin texts, and medicine was based on Greek texts (especially those of Hippocrates and Galen) in
Latin translation. To this day, the jargon of lawyers (cui bono, habeas corpus, etc.) draws heavily on Latin, and that of the medical
professions draws on Greek. It was only from the 18th century onward that vernacular languages were regularly used in the training of
lawyers and physicians.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, university graduates were employed in government, and much government business was conducted in
Latin or at least recorded in that language. In the 16th century the use of Latin as a language of administration declined in France,
England, and some other states, though it remained the norm in the Habsburg Empire until the 1790s. Latin was also the language most
used by diplomats until the rise of French at the end of the reign of Louis XIV. It remained the language of the learned world (the
respublica litterarum, or republic of letters) until the 18th century. Both the advantages and disadvantages of the employment of Latin in
all these domains are clear enough. Speaking and writing Latin excluded the majority of the population, from peasants to upper-class
women (with a few famous exceptions, from the Italian Isotta Nogarola to Queen Elizabeth I). Some early modern reformers claimed
that the clergy, the lawyers, and the physicians did this deliberately, to drum up trade—that is, to make a mystery of the ordinary and so
create a need for their professions. On the other hand, given the number and variety of European languages, the use of Latin as a
lingua franca was convenient, to say the least. In the academic world students and teachers were able to move from one country to
another and still communicate. Diplomats did not need to learn one another’s languages, as they possessed a common, neutral
medium of negotiation. Again, it is no accident that it was in the multilingual Habsburg Empire that Latin survived the longest as the
language of administration. The Latin sermons of the Counter-Reformation Church may also have been a kind of lingua franca through
which speakers of one Romance language could communicate with speakers of others.
The kind of Latin that was used in all these domains and over all these centuries naturally varied a great deal. In the universities,
thanks to the importance of Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, many Greek technical terms were current in a lightly Latinized form, from
entitas to democratia. In writing, and probably in speaking as well, it was common to mix languages. In composing formal documents, the
scribe who could not think of an appropriate Latin term might lapse into the vernacular, as can be seen in contracts with painters in
Renaissance Italy. Conversely, the record of Luther’s conversations during meals shows him speaking German most of the time but
introducing Latin phrases when speaking about philosophy. Some Renaissance Humanists criticized post-classical Latin as a kind of
corruption and tried to speak and write like Cicero, despite the problem of discussing, in the language of ancient Rome, post-classical
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topics such as cannonry or institutions such as the papacy or the Ottoman Empire. It might be argued that they nearly killed the
language they loved, because the continuing vitality of Latin depended on its adaptation to the purposes of different professions, in
other words, to the production of jargons. One of these jargons, the slang of 15th-century students, a mix of Latin and Italian, was
modeled on—or parodied—the hybrid Latin of lawyers and notaries.
BIBL.:
Burke, Peter, “Heu Domine, adsunt Turcae: A Sketch for a Social History of Post-medieval Latin,” in Language, Self and
Society ed. Burke, Peter and Porter, Roy (Cambridge1991) 23-50.
U.P. B.
© 2010 Harvard University Press (cloth) © 2013 Harvard University Press
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APA
B., U. (2010). Latin and the professions. In A. Grafton, G. W. Most, & S. Settis (Eds.), The classical tradition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. Retrieved from https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/harvardct/latin_and_the_professions/0
Chicago
B., U.P. “Latin and the Professions.” In The Classical Tradition, edited by Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis. Harvard
University Press, 2010. https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/harvardct/latin_and_the_professions/0
Harvard
B., U. (2010). Latin and the professions. In A. Grafton, G.W. Most & S. Settis (Eds.), The classical tradition. [Online]. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. Available from: https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/harvardct/latin_and_the_professions/0 [Accessed 21
January 2019].
MLA
B., U.P. “Latin and the Professions.” The Classical Tradition, edited by Anthony Grafton, et al., Harvard University Press, 1st edition, 2010.
Credo Reference, https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/harvardct/latin_and_the_professions/0. Accessed 21 Jan. 2019.
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Order instructions: Latin and the Professions’
1. Read pdf text Latin and the Professions
2. Read my draft paper
3. Using examples and ideas from the short article ‘Latin and the Professions’, discuss
4. how and when Latin survived as a culturally signi?cant language up until, in some
cases, the 1960s.
5. INCLUDE an body paragraph and an conclusion
6. Modify my intro to make it perfect (make sure thesis statement included)…
7. In your text make sure to include an definition of the term culturally signi?cant language
8. Include example to explain each statement added in the text
9. MLA –WORK CITED & only used this text to write your paper.
DRAFT 1- Latin and the Professions’
The use of Latin as a language was dominated during the Middle Ages among the
Catholic Church. Although many languages have died since then, Latin has survived
the test of time and place. Its use becomes more prevalent in liturgy and
administrative purposes. Similarly, through being used as the man language in
European Universities, the word has been more useful in many countries around the
world. However, regardless of the social and political aspects that Latin was
associated with, through the adoption of cultural elements and usage across the
Middle Ages to date, that language has survived and maintained exceptional
significance to the users. For instance, culturally, Latin was mainly used by the priests
in Catholic and Protestant Churches. It was used for teaching the Catholic converts
and other European Counter-Reformation churches, which are controlled by the
Vatican. Between the 12th century to 18th century, Latin was used in European
Universities as the primary language of communication. In the universities, after the
adoption of general education, the language enjoyed dominance, and both the clergy
and teachers used as the only means of communication.