Latin Language In The Middle Ages

The Usage of the Latin Language in the Middle Ages The Roman Empire covered parts of the three continents: Europe, Asia and Africa. It brought together a large number of varying cultures, economies and languages (Garnsey 1). But how did the Roman rulers manage to conduct this Roman Empire as a unity, while it contained so many differences? The Romans often behaved as if vernacular languages did not exist, but were sometimes prepared to use Greek as a lingua franca (Adams, preface xix). This meant that the Romans operated in Latin, with some Greek exceptions. While the Roman Empire grew bigger and bigger, so did the Latin language to a point where it became the dominant language in the Western world. But in 476 AD, the Western Roman Empire …show more content…
This meant that Latin, although usually merely associated with the Roman Age, was still used after this period. But how was the Latin language represented in the Middle Age, and by whom was it still used? Latin lost none of its universality in the process, although it became more and more exclusively a literary language of people who spoke another language, but could not write it (Auerbach, 85). To illustrate this, Auerbach gives the example of the British Isles: “Here [the British Isles] Latin had been introduced only as a literary language and for this reason continued to be employed far more correctly, but even so the old Roman tone was lost.” (Auerbach 85). When the Germanic people …show more content…
Academics used this language to express their education and to reach a wider audience since Latin was known in a vast region. However, only schooled people were able to read Latin because it became a language of the educated (Curtius, xxiv). Rulers used Latin to communicate amongst each other. The Latin language expressed authority, and the fact that common people, regarded as the ‘lower class’, could not read this language, contributed to this. Latin was seen as on old language, and therefore the written form gained in prestige, whereas the spoken vernacular was seen as inferior. The church profited from the ignorance of the laymen, in the sense that the laymen could not read written Latin. At first, priests simply tried to gain authority by using a language that only they could understand. But later on, they desired more wealth and started to sell indulgences. The priests deceived people into thinking that these indulgences would grant purchasers forgiveness, as if one can buy a key for heaven. This shows that the language of the great literature from 0 B.C. until the fifth century, became a language of the higher educated and of the church. Latin no longer represented the flourishing society from the time of the Roman Empire, but it became a symbol of power and