Classical and Medieval Latin

I've read a lot of disparaging comments about Medieval Latin lately -- "the average Dark Age scribe" this and "the average Dark Age scribe" that -- and instead of replying directly to one of these stern Ciceronians in some such snarky manner as: "Jeepers, you sure know a lot about Dark Age scribes! Could you cut and paste some especially bad examples of their bad Latin so that we may all together jeer at their ineptitude and utter disregard of vowel quantity?" I thought it might be better to express myself here, to my, hopefully somewhat better-disposed usual readership, and just to mention a few very basic things. 

 

First of all, although it's hard to imagine that any Latinists do not already know this, it may be helpful to remind ourselves that almost every single bit of the Classical Latin corpus which has survived to our time, survived because Medieval monks copied it. Medieval students were taught Latin, not just with the Vulgate (not that that would have been so terrible. Jerome could write), but also with Cicero and Caesar and Vergil, and with all of the other Classical authors. As hard as it seems to be for some to grasp, the Classical authors were copied in order to be taught. Classical Latin rotting on Medieval shelves was the exception, not the rule.

Secondly, something which seems quite obvious to me, but perhaps only because I've brooded upon the subject unusually long: the corpus of Classical Latin is very small. A few million words written by a few hundred authors. The amount of Medieval Latin preserved today is many times greater. The mediocre Classical authors have disappeared, the everyday Medieval schlubs have not. If we're going to compare Classical Latin with Medieval, we should compare like with like: the best Classical authors with the best Medieval authors. Livy with Matthew Paris. Ovid with Alcuin. Cicero with Abelard. But Paris, Alcuin and Abelard, of course, tend not to be read by those who insist that only ancient Latin is Latin at all, let along being the only Latin worth knowing about with the possible exception of a few Renaissance  Italian Ciceronians.

As far the average Medieval scribe is concerned, there is very little average ancient Latin left with which he could be compared: some scraps of papyrus from Oxyrhynchus, some graffiti on the walls of Vesuvius, some of the humbler of the ancient Latin inscriptions. Nothing which is conventionally counted in the Classical corpus.

I do hesitate to point this out, I feel I'm being a bit rude, but I feel I have little choice: those who disparage Medieval typically have not just read very little of it, and what little they have read, they have treated very unfairly by condemning it because it is different in style than Cicero. Very few people judge contemporary English, I believe, by firmly insisting that if it doesn't sound just exactly like Shakespeare, it's crap. It's also quite rare, I believe, to insist that that which is called 17th-, 18th-, 19th-, 20th or 21st-century English is not English at all, if it does not very closely resemble Shakespeare, and nevermind that Pope, Fielding, Wordsworth, Joyce and I had all read Shakespeare.

That would be to ignore the fact, if one had ever learned it all, that languages change.

I don't delude myself that I'm going to change the mind of a single Ciceronian, anti-Medievalist Latinist. And I certainly don't dispute that Classical Latin is wonderful and offers more than an entire career's worth of scope for study -- any more than any of those Medieval scribes would have disputed it, who copied it, and are the only reason we still have it. 

But perhaps I've given a smile to a Medieval Latinist or two, who, like me, grows a bit weary now and then of the way their field is denigrated by some.

Ciceronianism

Several years ago, I read a volume from the I Tatti Renaissance Library entitled Ciceronian Controversies (2007, ed Joann Dellaneva), and thought to myself, How odd! that 420 to 530 years ago in Italy, eminent authors of all genres believed that the only way to write Latin correctly was to imitate Cicero! I blogged about this absurd tendency, to treat a single author as if he, and he alone, were worthy of imitation among all of the authors of an entire language which is thousands of years old, and I moved on.

Imagine (if you CAN) how I feel now, having finally noticed (yes, clearly, I am not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, not the quickest to notice things) that Ciceronianism is alive and well today. Latinists, TODAY, may be arguing a point of Latin writing style or usage, and one of them can point out, "Cicero wrote it this way," and, very often, that will end the debate!

People still study Shakespeare in English classes, and I have nothing at all against that. But does anyone, anywhere, teach English as if Shakespeare were the ONLY English-language author worthy of imitation? If someone does, would it even be necessary for me to enumerate the drawbacks of such an approach?

Well, such an approach is taken -- TODAY. AMONG US -- in the study and teaching of the Latin language. How often? I do not know. Oftener than not? I do not know.

I know only that, now that I have finally noticed that Ciceronianism outlived the Renaissance, I can not ignore it. I can not prevent myself wondering about such things as: is it actually unusual, for someone who has devoted their professional life to the study of Latin, that they might read no Latin at all other than Latin written by Cicero for an entire day? A week? A month? A LIFETIME?

Is it unusual for a Latinist to judge a piece of Latin writing, whether written in the 21st, the 16th or the 1st century AD, by the single criterion of how much it resembles what Cicero wrote?

Is it unusual for a Latinist to assume that everything Cicero wrote was above reproach from a linguistic-stylistic point of view?

And how exactly would those percentages change if, the preceeding three paragraphs, "Cicero" were changed to "Cicero and Vergil"?

Whatever the points of view of Latinists on these and other matters, I don't imagine that I will change their minds. I do drastically over-estimate my abilities much of the time, but I don't over-estimate them THAT much. The best I can hope for is to gain a bit more clarity about those who share my enthusiasm for the Latin language. And of course, not ALL of those people are Ciceronianists, or even Cicero-and-Vergilianists. See for example the Ad Lectorum before the novel Capti by Stephen Berard, who, it is entirely clear to me now, will be judged less than an eminent Latinist by the Cicero-and-Vergilianists, but who is appreciated by some others. And there's no need for anybody to fight over anything here. It's just that there is one more thing to debate, about which, I had mistakenly assumed, people had long since ceased to debate. Excelsior. (Yeah, it's also been very recently that I finally figured out that "Excelsior!" had become a common expression because of Stan Lee, and not because of contemporary Latinists in general. Be that as it may, it's still perfectly good Latin.)