Authority and Identity: A Sociolinguistic History of Europe Before the Modern Age

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Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Feng Chia University - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-17

Authority and Identity

10.1057/9780230282032 - Authority and Identity, Robert McColl Millar

Also by Robert McColl Millar LANGUAGE, NATION AND POWER (2005) NORTHERN AND INSULAR SCOTS (2007)

TRASK’S HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS (2007)



SYSTEM COLLAPSE, SYSTEM REBIRTH: The Demonstrative Systems of English 900–1530 and the Birth of the Definite Article (2000)


Robert McColl Millar University of Aberdeen



A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age

© Robert McColl Millar 2010

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–23255–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne



All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

List of Illustrations

vi

Acknowledgements

vii

A Note on Naming

viii

Prologue

1

1 Sociology of Language: An Introduction

10

2

19

Linguistic Prehistory

3 The First European Literacies

41

4 The First Hegemonies

68

5

Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces. Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period

6 Competing Hegemonies: The High Middle Ages 7

The Birth of the Modern?: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

99 143 179

8 Conclusions

198

Notes

210

Bibliography

217

Index

237

v



Contents

Illustrations

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 6.1 8.1

Conventional Indo-European family tree The New Zealand model The Pennsylvania model An Indo-European wave model A traditional Uralic tree The Viitso tree The Hääkinen tree The punctuated equilibrium model Language use of the Ashkenazim A new model

22 23 25 26 31 31 32 35 176 206

Maps 0.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 5.1 5.2

Topography of Europe The languages of Europe before writing Physical features and places mentioned in this chapter The ancient Greek dialects Physical features and places mentioned in this chapter Physical features and places mentioned in this chapter Physical features and places in the British Isles mentioned in this and the following chapter 7.1 Physical features and places mentioned in this chapter

vi


2 36 42 49 69 100 101 180


Figures

A great many people have helped me in the writing of this book, both directly and indirectly. My old friend Jeremy Smith first suggested the book; audiences in a variety of fora have given my ideas a generous hearing and provided other ideas to consider. Needless to say, any errors or mistaken analyses are entirely my own. The School of Language & Literature at the University of Aberdeen granted me leave during the final stages of the writing of Authority and Identity. I am grateful to my colleagues in Linguistics for taking on more teaching to cover this. Alison Sandison and Jenny Johnston supplied the maps with great good humour at a busy time of the year. Finally, I would like to thank my family. More than any other of my books, the topics covered in this book were first introduced to me by my father and my late mother. Their willingness to take me, from an early age, to museums and libraries in an attempt to feed that week’s obsession is admirable; I will always be grateful for it. My dear wife Sandra has read the book at a variety of stages, giving helpful feedback even when her schedule was particularly busy. Our beloved daughter Mairi was born while the book was in its final stages. Her joyful presence in our lives has made many tasks easier. This book is dedicated to Sandra and Mairi.

vii



Acknowledgements

In this book I have attempted to use the forms of place names and personal names which are most readily recognizable by readers, unless on historical or linguistic grounds a more authentic form was felt necessary. In general, I have followed Latin practice when giving Greek names: thus Cadmus rather than Kadmos. On a few occasions I have chosen to give the same place different names at different times in history. Thus, the Iberian Peninsula is Iberia before the Roman conquest (and also retains this name when I wish to refer to the peninsula as a whole). The peninsula is generally termed Hispania from the Roman until the Moslem Conquest and its inhabitants Hispanians. Moslem Iberia is al-Andalus. Spain is only used for the present kingdom. I use Britannia for the parts of Britain which were Romanized. Hungary is used both for the present republic and the far larger medieval kingdom of the same name. The dominant ethnic group in this polity are termed Magyars, however; their language is Magyar. When I use Hungarian, this refers to anyone who lived within the medieval kingdom; it also refers to the culture and politics of that polity. Following earlier historians, I use Rus’ to refer to the pre-Mongol cultural zone which included parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

viii



A Note on Naming

0.1

Introduction

Authority and Identity: A Sociolinguistic History of Europe before the Modern Age begins properly with a discussion of the social nature of language. But in order to understand the continent’s linguistic ecologies, it is useful to gain some idea of its geography, topology and biological ecologies. Where – and what – languages are, and were, spoken, has been influenced considerably by geography. Mountains and water can act as barriers to the spread of languages; conversely, mountain passes connect, as do plains, long, wide river valleys and fordable waters.1 The Slavonic languages, for instance, are spread across a vast tract of Eurasia, but are nevertheless still strikingly similar to each other. The languages spoken in the valleys and around the fringes of the Caucasus, on the other hand, differ from each other widely, even when they are related to each other. Linguistic geography is not an even playing field.

0.2 The geography of Europe Continental Europe – excluding the many islands surrounding it and Scandinavia proper – is formed by two major inlets: the English Channel-North Sea-Baltic Sea conglomeration and the MediterraneanBlack Sea conglomeration. Although winter at the eastern end of these two salt water channels could not be described as moderate, the average temperature in these easterly regions does not register the extremes found in similar latitudes where no such inlets exist, such as Central Asia or the North American plains. This comparatively mild climate has meant that agriculture, rather than nomadic herding, has been possible since post-glacial times in the Russian Federation and Ukraine. 1



Prologue

Norwegian Sea

Tromsø

Iceland Sc

Faroes

d an

in

av

ia

Shetland Orkney Isle of Man

North Sea

4

5 6

Ireland

Britain

7 9 8

2 1

3

Baltic Sea

2 3

14 1

Anglesey

Ardennes Loire

13 9 Vosges

4

Massif Central

Azores

Volkhov

Hebrides

North Atlantic Ocean

Cantabrian Pyrenees

5

10

Black Forest

11 8

Pontic Steppe Hallstatt

Carpathians

A l p s

12 6

Parma

7

Danube

Black Sea

Balkan Mts

Corsica Sardinia Balearic Islands

Lipari Is.

Sicily

Mediterranean Sea Canaries 0

400 km

Map 0.1 Topography of Europe


Cyprus

Rivers Meuse-Maas Scheldt Weser Saône Rhône Sava Drava Inn Mosel

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9


FYN 1 SJÆLLAND 2 BORNHOLM 3 GOTLAND 4 JUTLAND 5 HELIGOLAND 6 FRISIAN ISLAND 7 ZEELAND 8 HOLLAND 9 SILESIA 10 BOHEMIA 11 CRIMEA 12 LORRAINE 13 WALLONIA 14

Svalbard Greenland

It has also meant that a Mediterranean climate, associated with seasonal, but generally predictable, rainfall patterns and agriculture connected to the cultivation of grapes and olives, among other products, has been possible throughout the Mediterranean basin and the south shore of the Black Sea, in contrast to, for instance, California, where the Mediterranean climate of the coast quickly disappears, with desert or at least semi-arid climate predominating. A further contributor to this relatively mild climate is the North Atlantic Drift (or Gulf Stream), which channels warm water towards the British Isles, Iceland and the west coast of Norway. Ports such as Narvik and Tromsø, north of the Arctic Circle, are almost always icefree. Nearby, however, lie the colder waters of the North Sea and the Baltic, where the fisheries were particularly productive. As it makes its way southward along the west coast of Europe, the North Atlantic Drift gradually becomes cooler in relation to the land temperature; again, this has encouraged the development of large-scale fisheries in western Spain and Portugal, as well as the exploration and colonization of the Canary Islands, the Azores and, eventually, the Americas, as the current returns to the Caribbean. Continental Europe rises gradually towards the south from alluvial plains through medium-sized hill ranges (including the Massif Central, the Jura and Vosges, the Ardennes, the Eifel, the Black Forest and Harz). The North European plain is relatively narrow in the west, but grows wider towards the east; these middle-sized hill chains eventually merge in Bohemia and Silesia with the outlying chains of more sizeable mountain ranges. To the south lie mountain ranges of considerable height, including the Cantabrian Mountains and Pyrenees, the Alps, Carpathians and the Balkan Mountains. Whilst the northern ascent to these mountains is generally gradual, the descent into the Mediterranean basin is precipitate; indeed, the Italian and Balkan peninsulas (and to an extent Iberia) are almost entirely mountainous. Inevitably this has meant that communication between northern and southern Europe has often been difficult; indeed, were it not for passes between river valleys – increasingly easier the further east you go – it would be nearly impossible. Crossing the Alps today, taking advantage of modern tunnelling technology, can still be daunting; it is not difficult to imagine the impression given by the arrival of Hannibal’s army in Italy after traversing these mountains; even the movements of armies during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were associated with considerable loss of life and epic bravery.



Prologue 3


The mountainous regions of the Mediterranean basin are also liable to seismic activity: particularly earthquakes but also (in the case of Italy and southern Greece), volcanic activity. This has led to occasional instability and particularly fertile soils. Certain minerals are also concentrated in these areas. The only other parts of Europe, judged in its cultural sense, which has much in the way of volcanic activity are Iceland, the Azores and the Canary Islands. From the Alps and Carpathians in particular, as well as the hill ranges to their north, issue a number of major rivers. Flowing to the north and west are the Gironde, Loire, Seine, Scheldt, Meuse-Maas, Rhine (including the Mosel[le]), Weser, Elbe, Oder-Odra and Vistula; further to the east, flowing into the Baltic from hills within the plain, generally lying from central Lithuania to the Volga bend, include the Niemen and the Dvina-Daugava, as well as the Neva-Volkhov system; flowing into the Black Sea: the Danube (including the Inn, Sava and Drava), southern Bug and Dniester, as well as south-flowing streams from lesser hill ranges within the North European plain, such as the Dnieper and the Don; flowing into the Mediterranean: the Ebro, Rhône (including the Saône), Po. The Volga, which empties into the Caspian Sea, is also now surrounded largely by people with a European cultural orientation, particularly in its upper reaches. The lack of major rivers, beyond the Ebro, Po and Rhône, flowing into the Mediterranean from the north (the only major river flowing in from the south is the Nile) has meant that this sea is, in essence, an evaporation basin, so that, if no water flowed into it from the Atlantic, it would eventually dry out. In contrast, the Black Sea, much smaller in area and volume, has a number of major rivers flowing into it. In the past, this meant that the latter sea was much more productive in terms of fish. Both seas have been affected badly by modern industrial pollution; the Black Sea perhaps more than the Mediterranean. The Black Sea is also anaerobic: due to the amount of organic debris deposited from rivers, it is lacking in oxygen beneath a certain level. Unlike similar areas in the eastern south Pacific, where anaerobic water periodically rises to the surface, providing the primary spur to the El Niño phenomenon, no equivalent is present in the contemporary Black Sea ecology (Ascherson 1995: 4–5). Travel by boat is possible for large parts of the lengths of European rivers. Indeed, the distances between, say, the navigable reaches of the Rhône and Saône and the Loire, Seine, Mosel(le) and Rhine, between the Rhine and the Danube, the Dvina-Daugava or Volkhov and the Dnieper, or many eastern rivers and the Volga, are strikingly short and, on most



4

occasions, the portage between one system and another is relatively straightforward with small to medium-sized boats. The Danube river system in particular has provided a highly successful means of transit from the Pontic Steppe and the Black Sea to western central Europe (and all points between) throughout the history of the continent. To the north of continental Europe lies a large peninsula, Scandinavia.2 Mountainous along its northern and western coasts, its heartland in south-eastern Norway and central and southern Sweden is generally low-lying, comprising forests and often large lakes. Because of the western mountain ‘wall’, much of this low-lying area has considerable fluctuations in temperature. The land is often fertile. To the east of the Gulf of Bothnia lies southern Finland, again a land of forest and lakes, situated on an ancient ‘shield’, gouged during the ice ages. Fertility in this area is variable. To its east lie the tundra and taiga of the Eurasian plain. To its south lies the Gulf of Finland. Both the Gulf of Bothnia and the Gulf of Finland are, although part of the sea, almost salt-free due to the amount of melt water which flows into them in spring and summer: they freeze more rapidly than do other seas. In contrast, the Mediterranean and Black Seas are somewhat saltier than average. Another striking feature of the geography of Europe is the presence of many islands – often of considerable size and with highly contrasted ecologies themselves – off its shores. In the Atlantic Ocean considerable diversity is to be found. In the north lies Iceland, a relatively large island with a temperate coastal climate, as well as fertile soil produced by recent volcanic activity, but with a cold and desert heart; settlement has only ever been successful on its margins. It is practically treeless. To its south lie the Faeroes, Shetland and Orkney, again practically treeless but surrounded by seas rich in marine life. Orkney in particular can also be included among the British Isles. The island of Britain slopes from low-lying clay, chalk and limestone scenery in the south-east towards higher, often igneous-based geology to the north and west. There are very few places on the island more than 100 kilometres from the sea. A number of not inconsiderable rivers provide the opportunity for communication into the centre of the island. The northern, mountainous regions also have considerable firths leading into the hinterland. The west coast has a range of rugged islands, the largest of which being Anglesey, Man and the archipelagos of the Hebrides. Many of these islands are mountainous. Ireland can be envisaged as a bowl of hills, often mountains (particularly to the west), surrounding a rather low, often waterlogged, centre,



Prologue 5


originally heavily wooded, much of which acts as the Shannon flood plain. This ‘bowl’ is broken on the east coast at Dublin. The north is partially distinguished from the rest of the island by ranges of hills and mountains; interestingly, inside these hills is a geography not dissimilar to that of Ireland as a whole, with a low-lying centre associated with Lough Neagh. Again, the hills are broken to the east at Belfast Lough. Ireland also has a number of islands, particularly on its ‘broken’ west coast. Britain has far greater fossil fuel deposits than Ireland. In the North Sea lie the Frisian Islands of the Netherlands and Germany, generally conducive to dairy agriculture. Until the modern era, much of the Dutch provinces of Holland and Zeeland was made up of islands, tidal islands and dunes. They have now been incorporated into the European mainland by human ingenuity. Heligoland, much further out in the North Sea, is the last remnant of what were once large, inhabited islands (Geoffrey, Fitch and Smith 2009). There are also a number of islands in the Baltic Sea, in the main lowlying and fertile. Most of these lie between Jutland, northern Germany and south-west Sweden, the largest being Fyn and Sjælland. There are also a number of islands to the east of Sweden’s southernmost tip, including Bornholm and Gotland. To the south and west of Iberia lie islands based on (rarely active) volcanoes: the Azores and the Canaries. As has already been noted, these islands act as ‘stepping stones’ towards the Americas. The Mediterranean also contains a number of islands: the Balearic Islands; Corsica and Sardinia; Sicily and the Lipari Islands, which, like mainland Italy, but to an even greater extent, are highly volcanic; the limestone Maltese islands, acting as a ‘stepping stone’ between Africa and Europe; the many islands of the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas; finally, Cyprus. There are no large islands in the Black Sea; but the Crimean peninsula is, in many ways, separate geologically from the south Russian and Ukrainian steppes, possessing its own steppe surrounded by mountainous territory. Although, historically, a number of ‘precious’ resources have been traded throughout Europe, including jade (from the Baltic region in particular) and walrus ivory (from Scandinavia), tin and beaver pelts (from Britain), silver and gold (from the Mediterranean basin, but also often from Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia), perhaps the most striking resources in which the continent is rich are salt, coal and iron. These are, inevitably, not evenly distributed. Large quantities of rock salt are found throughout the Alps; control of the salt trade of areas such as Parma and Hallstatt has been politically important since prehistoric



6

times (Kurlansky 2003). Elsewhere in Europe a long coastline has made evaporating sea salt much more possible than it is in other parts of the world. Coal deposits are found in Britain, the Cantabrian Mountains and in a long strip across central Europe from Lorraine through Wallonia, the valley of the River Ruhr, Silesia and the valley of the River Don. Coal is also found on Svalbard (Spitzbergen), an archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Iron ore is present in large quantities in many of the same areas. The preponderance of limestone in many parts of Europe has also meant that products such as concrete have generally been readily producible.

0.3

Flora and fauna

Until the recent past, most of continental Europe was covered with woodland. Remnants of this wealth remain. In the drier and warmer parts of the Mediterranean basin, most of the trees are coniferous, although deciduous trees also regularly grow. In early history, it appears that the Mediterranean had greater stocks of woodland than it has today, largely because of climate fluctuation (along, often, with human agency). In the European plain and lesser mountains north of the Alps, historically there was almost blanket deciduous afforestation; the further east you travelled across the plain, however, the less dense the forest became. In central Ukraine and parts of southern Russia, a form of woodland termed ‘forest steppe’ by geographers was present. This was not dissimilar to the original prairies of the Great American Plains: large treeless areas surrounded by forest. To the forest steppe’s north was much denser forest, often a combination of deciduous and evergreen woodlands. As you travelled north or passed into Scandinavia and northern parts of the British Isles, the far hardier evergreens became prevalent. In the mountainous regions of central Europe, similar environmental conditions prevail. In far northern Europe (and among the highest mountains), trees can no longer grow, whether due to the weather or herding mammals. The forest taiga is replaced by tundra, where only bushes – often dwarf versions of more southerly trees – can flourish. To the south of the forest steppe lies the steppe proper: dry, generally flat, grasslands, given to great extremes of temperature. The further east you travel in the steppe, the more like desert it gets. Although there are no water-starved deserts in Europe, the land to the north and east of the Black Sea, the Pontic Steppe, would be very like one if it were not for its great rivers. The ‘steppe corridor’ has always acted as a means of



Prologue 7

8


reaching the Danube valley from the east. It will feature regularly in the early chapters of this book.

Much of temperate Europe is fertile: the soils are generally productive and the weather predictable enough to make agriculture straightforward. Some soils are particularly productive, however. The river valleys – especially in their lower, slower, reaches – are highly fertile. The best lands of the northern European plain were the primary producers of wheat for Europe until the nineteenth century; the forest steppe lands of the Ukraine have also proved themselves highly productive with cereal crops. In mountainous territory or the ‘hard lands’ of, for instance, the Finnish shield, there are fewer examples of good farmland. But it is surprising how many pockets of good soil occur in even the most unlikely area. Nevertheless, in many upland and northern terrains, the acidity of the soil and the briefness of the summer have always made all but the most subsistence-level farming impossible. In these places, herding and (in the far north) hunting remain the most common means of living beyond subsistence. Animal herding, found across the continent from early times, was also common on the steppe, where it interacted well with the nomadic lifestyle of most inhabitants. In other parts of Europe, transhumance was general across a rather more limited area, although the reindeer herders of the tundra also, by necessity, had to cover great distances. Agriculture is thought by most archaeologists to have been introduced from Asia (Minor) into Europe (Cunliffe 2008: chapter 4). In fact, very few ancient domesticated plants have their ultimate origin in Europe. This is particularly true for the domesticated grasses, some of which have European wild cousins which are not the ancestors of present-day crops. That does not mean, however, that Europeans have not attempted from an early period to use the best forms of the adopted agricultural package for their own climate and soil. Thus wheat is common in western and central Europe as the primary cereal, with barley being used to make beer; in north-west Europe, however, barley and oats were the chief cereals, with the former being used to make unleavened bannocks; in more eastern parts of Europe, in contrast, rye was more important than elsewhere on the continent. Domesticated mammals and birds also generally came from elsewhere, although again they began to be bred in certain directions – for



0.4 Agriculture

instance, sheep being encouraged towards greater and faster wool production – than had been the case in the Mediterranean basin. Many local animals – such as the hare and, in particular, the rabbit – moved from being wild animals for hunting to (semi-)domesticated mammals. Because post-glacial Europe has remarkably few large and dangerous mammals – there are, for instance, no native great cats – the new domesticated animals were able to move through the landscape in ways which would have been less likely in, for instance, Africa.

0.5 Conclusion It is easy to produce a deterministic interpretation of how the climate, terrain and ecology of Europe made a considerable contribution to the continent’s evolution and possibly gave its inhabitants a kick-start in development which led to its domination of the world’s resources in the nineteenth century and its continuing wealth in relation to other parts of the world. But while there are features – such as the relative lack of truly cold weather for most of its inhabitants or the wealth of minerals – which make Europe seem particularly blessed, it should be noted that, first, for a large part of its history, Europeans did not know they were Europeans; moreover, many other parts of the Old World were considerably more developed than Europe until the fifteenth century, which represents the end of this book. Nevertheless, the geography and ecology of Europe has interacted with human behaviour from the earliest times. As this book will show, this interaction involves the use of language.



Prologue 9

1

1.1

Introduction

Since at least the 1940s, scholars have been developing a means of understanding the sociological use of contemporary language. Although in the first instance they were concerned with the language use of the European or European-influenced world, research was later extended to include cultures inevitably in contact with the ‘first world’, but displaying patterns of linguistic behaviour not derived from that paradigm. Macrosociolinguistics (as it could also be called) can, with fine tuning, be used to describe the dynamics of language in a wide range of different cultures. While it is not the place of this chapter to give a complete summary of all the sub-disciplines, it will be helpful to the reader to be aware of the state of play in the field before considering the subject matter and narrative of Authority and Identity. The question then is: how far back in time can these findings provide meaningful results? There has always, in fact, been a historical element to the study of the sociology of language. It is, after all, very difficult to explain present behaviour without tracing its historical origins. Moreover, sometimes historical events and patterns provide more apposite examples than anything produced in the twentieth (or twenty-first) century. Thus Fishman (1972: 91–106) uses the example of English and French in England after the Norman Conquest to illustrate diglossia without bilingualism (except for a few interpreters). Nevertheless, the sociology of language has generally avoided making large-scale surveys of linguistic behaviour before the modern age (with the exception of the study of standardization, which, by its nature, often takes long periods to reach fruition). This modern focus makes sense for research accuracy. Although we are unlikely ever to know all 10



Sociology of Language: An Introduction

Sociology of Language

11

1.2

Macrosociolinguistics

Four primary questions underlie Macrosociolinguistics. The first is: how does an individual’s speech interact with societal norms and expectations? The second: what makes a language variety a language? The third: how normal is it for societies to be multilingual? The fourth: why do some language varieties prosper while others do not? Naturally, these are not easy questions to answer; in particular not in a straightforward, seemingly simplistic, way. In the following paragraphs, therefore, I will only really be skimming the surface of the topics concerned. The discussion of later parts of this book will flesh out the distinctions and arguments involved rather more appositely than I can here. 1.2.1 Individuals and the social use of language This topic has, of course, been of profound interest and debate throughout the discipline’s history; naturally, I cannot do it justice in this context and will therefore confine myself to a few concepts. Sociologists of language generally term different contexts in which we speak as domains. For instance, in the essays collected in Jenkins (2000), the domains in which Welsh was used in the nineteenth century are demonstrated to be, primarily, home, church (depending on the denomination, with Methodists more likely to use Welsh than Anglicans) and, often, work, while English was used almost exclusively in school and official contexts. These domains are not, of course, graven in stone. We are all aware, for instance, of circumstances which we considered informal or even intimate but which other people considered more formal and distant; the embarrassment of these faux pas can remain with us for years. Nonetheless, nearly everyone in a particular group has a good sense of what varieties can be used in what circumstances; these rules are so ingrained that nearly every member of a group will consider them common sense. The different levels of formality and social distance which lead to the development of domains also lead to the development of different forms of language intended to suit them. Some people may use different languages in different registers; many more will use different dialects to



the variables in any given situation, understanding how given linguistic situations work now or in the recent past is straightforward, primarily because our experience is of that era and we have a good idea of how individuals and social groupings interact under certain circumstances. The further back we look, the less we understand context and behaviour. That does not mean that it is not worth doing, however.


represent these distinctions, often using the standard variety in formal contexts, even if they normally speak another variety (this is related to diglossia, which we will discuss below). But even if you only use one variety, you will still differentiate linguistically between domains. A member of the English Upper Classes is very unlikely to speak anything except Standard English in a Received Pronunciation accent. Nevertheless, the form of this single dialect which he or she uses in formal contexts – such as a church service – would be very different from the form used when socializing with friends. These different varieties are termed registers; we transgress their boundaries at our peril. 1.2.2

How does a language variety become a language?

Most of us think of language in Platonic terms: there is a German, or Thai, in absolute terms, separate from all other languages. But our experience of our own language suggests that matters are a lot messier than these absolutes. For German, one dialect, Standard High German, exists which foreigners learn. All literate German speakers read, write and speak this variety, although many also speak their native dialect. These dialects are often very different from each other. The Swiss German dialects are, for instance, practically incomprehensible to all other German speakers except those nearby, in south-western Germany or western Austria. One dialect – Luxembourgish – is treated as a language by its native speakers (although many German speakers would deny it that status). Finally, in the north a set of dialects, generally termed Low German, has more in common with Dutch than any High German variety; particularly in urbanized areas, the local variety has been largely displaced by a variety close to the standard, but with some local pronunciation features. Of all these varieties, which is German? Joseph (1987) suggests that the regular experience of most speakers is that their linguistic universe is dominated by another linguistic variety. Most literate people are willing to accept this imposition. A linguistic avant-garde develops, however, who wish to use and develop their native language in the same domains the High (H) variety enjoys. In order to do this, Joseph argues, it is much easier not to allow anything more than slight variation in the new language, largely because highly regulated languages like Latin (after antiquity) did not exhibit the kinds of variation all languages – and speakers – exhibit. The avantgarde therefore concentrates on the synecdochic dialect, a dialect which quickly becomes first among equals. It is upon this literate dialect that all, or almost all, of the attention of the literate is directed. Whenever a new written variety comes into being, native users will always consider



12

13

it less well developed than the dominant variety. Thus eighteenthcentury English was compared unfavourably with Latin. Classical Latin, for instance, did not permit ‘double negative’ constructions along the lines of colloquial English I ain’t done nothing; therefore, prescriptive grammar disallowed the natively correct usage in the mother tongue. Joseph considers all these forces elaboration or acculturation. By the end of the process, a standard language has been created. No longer first among equals, to many the standard is the language, with all other dialects being aberrant variants of the ‘language’. If the standard becomes too distant from its native speakers, it is in danger of becoming an absolute standard, one that cannot change, since it is seen at some levels as ‘perfected’. Modern Standard French is close to this, since the written and spoken languages are highly divergent from each other. Beyond the absolute standard is the classical language, a language which no longer has native speakers, such as Latin, Old Church Slavonic or Sanskrit. Written Arabic falls somewhere between the two, although the Modern Standard variety is more vibrant than most absolute standards. Kloss (in particular, 1978) developed similar ideas, although his starting point is quite different. He suggests that, simplifying somewhat, there are two basic reasons why we see a language as a language. In the first instance, linguistic distance makes us aware that we are dealing not with highly distinctive dialects but rather a separate system. Basque, for instance, has only patchy records until the twentieth century; it also has, particularly in its spoken form, much lexis borrowed from the Romance languages (and their ancestor, Latin). Nonetheless, it is obviously a separate entity. Kloss calls this language by distance Abstand. Abstand is not an absolute, of course. German and Polish are obviously Abstand; Polish and Czech are much closer to each other, although the gap is still greater than between Czech and Slovak, where Abstand is not really possible due to mutual intelligibility. Kloss therefore claims that there needs to be another way of perceiving language status: Ausbau. As we have seen in our discussion of Joseph’s ideas, language varieties, as they ‘become’ languages, gradually take on the features and roles of the old standards they are replacing. Kloss calls this Ausbau, ‘development’, the conscious human decision to ‘improve’ a language and to ‘conquer’ domains previously used by another variety. This is essentially the elaboration and acculturation mentioned above. It should be noted that Abstand and Ausbau are not mutually exclusive, although some varieties may be more likely to base their status claims upon one rather than the other. Most contemporary languages have elements




14


1.2.3 Personal and societal multilingualism Since the sociology of language as a subject was largely developed in the post-war United States, it is understandable that practitioners have been particularly interested in the nature both of personal and societal multilingualism. A society made up largely of immigrants, the United States presents an opportunity to observe how speakers of a great number of languages react in a society where one language – English – is dominant. The encouragement to conform linguistically in a society of this type is, of course, considerable, so that it is possible, if you come from certain backgrounds, never to have heard anything other than English spoken for any length of time and to find the external evidence of multilingualism – television channels geared entirely at a Spanish-speaking audience, for instance – both puzzling and in some senses disturbing. The country can therefore be seen as a combination of a multilingual minority (who may be the majority in the place they live) and a monolingual majority. The question which macrosociolinguists have asked is: to what extent is this state of affairs normal? Moreover, has this altered over time or space? Americans visiting Europe can sometimes be heard to express surprise – perhaps even annoyance – that so many languages are spoken in a region which is significantly smaller and less populous than their own country. In fact, had they travelled elsewhere in the ‘Old World’ – in particular sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia – they would have found that there are surprisingly few languages spoken in Europe. Indeed, while in places like the tropical rain forests of South America or South-East Asia, having a few thousand speakers is quite normal for any language, very few European languages have fewer than a million speakers, while there are a number with tens of millions of speakers and some with hundreds of millions of speakers. This is not abnormal – we need only look at China to see how one language can dominate a large area politically and demographically. But it should not be taken as the norm. Something in the historical, cultural and economic development of Europe over the millennia has favoured certain language varieties over others in ways which outstrip similar developments in other parts of the world (Millar 2005: chapter 2). One of the effects of language dominance is language shift.



of both, except, as with Czech and Slovak or the two written variants of Norwegian, where historical, political or cultural reasons are central to the separation, something demonstrated vividly in the recent demise of Serbo-Croat and its replacement by four, largely mutually intelligible, standard languages: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin.


15

Language shift (or ‘language death’, a term rarely used by specialists) has always happened. Its causes can be dramatic. For instance, a tribal grouping in Amazonia numbering around four hundred members can easily become disrupted by a single cause, such as an epidemic disease not previously encountered by the group. Alternatively, the same tribe’s way of life may become impossible due to the incursion of loggers and ranchers on their traditional territory. On neither occasion is it likely that every member of the tribe would die (although that does certainly happen); the survivors, deracinated, are very unlikely to be able to stay together somewhere else; rather, necessity will force them to move to an urban area where, to survive, the use of a lingua franca will become necessary. The chances of their passing their native language on to their children is very low indeed. On this occasion no organization took the decision to remove the language from use. Instead a combination of events – social, economic and political – planned to achieve other goals helped create the conditions necessary for language shift. There have been, of course, regular attempts to suppress a language. Scottish Gaelic has been banned on at least one occasion, for instance. The use of language varieties other than Castilian Spanish was heavily circumscribed under the Franco dictatorship in Spain from 1939 on. This came very close to outright suppression for Basque (Clark 1980; Fishman 1991: 150–4). These statesponsored language shifts are less than effective, however, unless they include actual genocide among their goals. It is true that Gaelic is not in a healthy state in terms of numbers, having suffered a catastrophic loss of speakers in the past two centuries. But this collapse did not take place during a period when those in power were intent upon suppressing the language. Indeed, at least from the end of the Second World War, those with power in Scotland have been well disposed to Gaelic. It is social, cultural and economic forces which have come close to dealing the death blow. In the case of Spain, Basque arguably came out of the Franco period with higher levels of literacy in the language and more speakers than when it went in. Finally, it should be noted that it is not always the less prestigious language which loses out in a competition. High prestige languages can also cease to have speakers. A good example of this can be found in ancient Mesopotamia (Ostler 2005: chapter 3). The first literate language, Sumerian, was spoken in a number of cities whose technology was highly advanced for the time. Over a lengthy period Mesopotamia was infiltrated by Semitic speakers; most notably Akkadian. This



1.2.4 Language maintenance and shift1


movement was focused on the wealth of Sumeria, so that eventually it was Akkadian speakers who ruled the ancient cities. Yet Sumerian continued for hundreds of years as the language of prestige in government and literature. Nevertheless, it had ceased to have any native speakers; its use had become the marker of belonging to a privileged elite. Similar elite non-native survival can also be claimed for Latin and Sanskrit (and to an extent Pali), with the distinction that, unlike Sumerian, these languages to a degree survive in their descendants.

1.3 A historical sociology of language? 1.3.1

The linguistic past

To what extent can we hope to observe the same phenomena in a more distant past as Kloss in particular descried in the modern era? There are, for instance, very few, if any, examples in the past of what Joseph terms engineered standardization: no language committees and very few populist/popular movements existed (although the discussion of the ‘best’ form of Italian by actors such as Dante Alighieri in the early fourteenth century demonstrates awareness of language planning, albeit with no implementation programme). Instead, standardization takes place circumstantially. Although people may be interested in the language and its ‘improvement’, the standard itself develops through the use of the most qualified speakers – qualified due to wealth, skill, power or personal or family attainment. For example, during the crucial period in the late Republican and early Imperial periods of Roman history, there were no language committees or individual language planners working on Latin. Central government did not publish decrees stipulating what form of Latin was to be used in schools. Nevertheless, standardization took place, largely due to the efforts by men of letters to produce the ‘best’ Latin stylistically and to comment upon the use of Latin by others. An ‘invisible hand’ (Keller 1994) worked within the language community, so that individuals, through mutual influence, established a variety which eventually superseded all other written forms of Latin (although the modern Romance languages are primarily descendants of non-standard Latin, as we will see in Chapters 4 and 5). Inherent in these developments is the awareness among speakers of a language that particular varieties are more suited to specific purposes than are others. Lower prestige varieties are regularly used in a speech community; but the sociolinguistic domains in which they are found are homely and connected to specific relationships and places. For varieties with high prestige the same set of circumscriptions are present.



16

17

This state, diglossia, is still widespread (Ferguson 1972 [1959]), although modern educational practices may have rendered it obsolete in some places. Thus while in German-speaking Switzerland most people speak their local dialect only in certain circumstances, largely connected to local and homely topics, while employing a Swiss-accented form of Standard High German in more public and prestigious domains, many non-Gaelic speakers in Scotland no longer use the former Low variety – Scots – in any circumstances, instead using colloquial registers of Scottish Standard English in Low contexts (Millar 2005: chapter 1). In the past, however, when literacy was less prevalent and state control over the educational process much more limited, diglossia must have been the norm throughout Europe. Although diglossia is inherently stable, what the Low (L) and High (H) are can change over time; it is from these changes that the linguistic avant-garde are able to start a campaign to make L take on the characteristics of H. Many scholars, following the lead of Fishman (1972: 91–106), would consider diglossia possible where the varieties in conjunction are not variants of the same language – as is the case in Switzerland – but where two (or more) distinct languages are involved. Thus, in eighteenth-century Finland, Swedish was the H variety for all Finns, whatever their background. It should be noted that most Finnish-speaking Finns had little or no command of Swedish; this did not lessen the latter language’s prestige in any way. In fact, those who could only speak Finnish would never have found themselves in the situation where the H variety was obligatory, such as in public affairs or most educational contexts. Finnish speakers who wished to get on in this framework had to gain native or near-native competence in Swedish. There is every chance that most Finnish speakers – by far the majority in the territory – would have accepted these socially embedded strictures as quite natural and commonsensical. It needed the separation of Finland from Sweden, the institution of an autonomous Grand Duchy by the incoming Russian authorities, their encouragement of Finnish particularism as an antidote to nostalgia for Swedish rule among the middle classes and the explosion of national romanticism across the Nordic world to change this situation (Vikør 2000: 117–21). It could be claimed in fact that, throughout recorded history, there have been language varieties which have been prestigious within a society, while other language varieties continue to be spoken, but are not given at least overt prestige. On regular occasions, however, the stability of diglossia breaks down and speakers abandon one language variety for another. This is particularly observable where there is considerable distance between the two or more varieties involved.





1.3.2

The present book and its intellectual context

Authority and Identity is intended both as a narrative history of language use in Europe and as a means of testing some Macrosociolinguistic ideas at a considerable distance into the past. It is practically unique in treating the history of Europe’s language use in a sociolinguistic way. There are, of course, a number of works which discuss some of the developments covered here. Only one exhibits the same combination of breadth and depth: Ostler (2005). In a sense, this represents a more ambitious programme than Authority and Identity, since it claims to be a ‘language history of the world’. Although a number of European themes are touched upon, in particular in relation to the hegemony of English, these are inevitably treated in relation to other language situations throughout the world. Not in itself a bad thing, it almost inevitably implies a loss of detail through its globality. It also has to be recognized that, admirable though the book undoubtedly is, its assumption that some languages are more ‘fit’ to succeed due to their structure or other linguistic features is worrying in a book which is designed to attract a non-scholarly educated audience. A considerable number of books are concerned with the linguistic history of a particular region or language at a particular time. Many of these deal with the relationship between language use and societal change, largely from a sociolinguistic perspective: most notably, perhaps, Harris (1989), Adams (2003 and 2008), McKitterick (1989 and 1990), Woolf (1971), Wright (1982 and 2002) and Crowley (2005). None of them constitutes a concerted attempt to connect one period with another, however, or to recognize over-riding themes in linguistic history. A number of historians have also attempted to discuss historical change in the use of language. While their interpretations often demonstrate a deep understanding of the historical ecology of a specific time and place, their linguistic analyses can sometimes be worrying, in particular in their near-total reification of languages in history as if they were modern textbook languages rather than constantly varying entities. There is only one work which concentrates fully on the linguistic history of Europe (along with the Middle East). Myhill (2006) makes many good points about the relationship between language and political or cultural development in Europe and the Middle East. But, as we will see in the final chapter, the ideological framework established by Myhill means that the argument is inherently flawed. Because of this problem, references will not normally be made to this book until the final chapter.



18

2

2.1

Introduction

The story of Europe’s languages begins in silence. For most of its human history, the continent’s inhabitants did not possess writing technology. It is nearly impossible to know anything about their languages, even when we can build up a fair picture of what sort of lives they led.

2.2

Archaeology and Old European

A few whispers pierce this silence. Archaeology can tell us something about the patterns of movement and connection present in preliterate times, as summarized by Cunliffe (2008) (and the contributors to Cunliffe 1994). After the initial settlement of Europe as the ice retreated, cultures developed which maintained contact with, and regularly borrowed from, each other. New ideas – cereal cultivation, domestication of animals and, eventually, metallurgy – radiated along tried and tested routes. Even on Europe’s margins, sophisticated settlements such as Skara Brae in Orkney were connected to a much greater world of ideas and products. Whether new ideas were spread by movement of peoples or purely through transfer is beyond the scope of this book. It is very likely, in fact, that both migration and transfer played a part in the spread of change, a view supported by what we know about ethnic and cultural change in medieval sub-Saharan Africa (Oliver and Atmore 2001). But as Harding (2000: 384) points out, physical types which might in the past have been analysed as representing different ‘races’ and ‘cultures’ are regularly found buried together in cemeteries across the continent. What must be recognized is that even the Indo-European languages are 19



Linguistic Prehistory

20


Water-courses have at all times played important roles in the lives of human beings, as life-sustaining sources of water and of fertile alluvial soil, as means of communication, as obstacles, as boundaries, as objects of religious worship, etc. Major rivers in particular have always been known far beyond their catchment areas, even to people who had no personal acquaintance with them. It is therefore only to be expected that their names should have a special power of survival when names of other natural features did not. This apparent longevity can result in some interesting problems when assigning linguistic origins to river names. For instance, there are river names with variants of don- found across Europe, the most famous of which being the Don of the Ukrainian steppe and the Danube of central Europe. Many onomasticians would trace their origin from Old Persian dānu ‘river’ (Kitson 1996: 88). This would explain the eastern European names, certainly, where domination by Iranian-speaking nomads was intermittent into historical times. It is difficult to see how rivers in western Europe, such as the Don in Aberdeenshire, could have been named in this way. Moreover, archipelagos, like the British Isles, and peninsulas, like Iberia, seem particularly given to these unexpected forms; the periphery of these areas, such as northern Scotland or Galicia, especially so. This problem has long been recognized. Earlier scholars, such as Ekwall (1928), were inclined to see many of these anomalous forms as ‘pre-Indo-European’. Yet the Don example just cited appears to put this view in doubt: the root is Indo-European, but cannot be explained by any conventional descent down that ‘family tree’. Krahe’s school (Krahe 1962; Schmid 1968) put forward an alternative explanation: most of these names were indeed Indo-European, but represented a sub-family, Old European, which had spread across large parts of Europe before the Indo-European languages known in historical times spread. Thus, Don is not necessarily Iranian in origin (although this may have acted as a reinforcement for its retention in eastern Europe); rather, the names derive from an Indo-European root shared by Old European and later Indo-European varieties. Scholars differ on precisely how and when Old European spread and what Indo-European roots are represented. There can be little doubt



not now, and probably have not been for millennia, spoken predominantly by descendants of the original ‘Indo-Europeans’. Nevertheless, river names can cast some light on the languages of early Europeans. Nicolaisen (1976: 173) points out that

that it existed, however, despite the doubts expressed, particularly about the detail, by some scholars (Bojtár 1999: 51–2 provides a summary of these views). It is likely that the high level of Old European survival in places like Scotland is due to there being relatively few settlers at any time: the fewer the settlers, perhaps, the less likely onomastic change is. Moreover, being on the geographical periphery of the continent may mean that some innovations never reached it. There are, however, a few river names – the Spey in Scotland being one – which still defy interpretation. They may, of course, always do so: a pre-Indo-European substratum would be unlikely to be related to any language now spoken (with one exception, which we will deal with below).

2.3 2.3.1

Indo-European Family trees and wave models

Further insight is offered by what we know about how the languages of Europe are related. Scholars of some European languages have, of course, considerable advantages for this quest: we have earlier versions of the same language; the older a variety is, the closer it will be to its relatives. With the exception of Albanian and the Baltic languages, we have at least a thousand years of written evidence for almost all of the sub-families of the Indo-European languages of Europe. The FinnoUgric languages, which make up the other major European language family, do not have such an advantage. Historical linguists have gradually built up relationship patterns between Indo-European languages, generally predicated upon the idea that languages diverge over time. The time-based nature of this process means that, some time in the past, less geographical variation was possible or present for a language due to the fact that less time had elapsed since all speakers shared essentially the same dialect and variation and change was less advanced. This is a powerful tool in our perception of relationship; there are flaws, however, in proceeding with the idea that languages always diverge, as we will see below. Nevertheless, it is a convenient image. Because historical linguistics grew out of the intellectual foment which produced Darwinian biology and shares some of the same intellectual concerns – most notably the idea of divergence from a common ancestor – it is inevitable that the ‘family tree’ concept, demonstrating ‘descent’, should have been passed from one to the other. Most modern Indo-Europeanists produce a family tree along the lines of Figure 2.1.



Linguistic Prehistory 21

22

Authority and Identity Proto-Indo-European

Eastern Branch (satem)

West European Celtic-Italic Celtic Italic Germanic Tocharian Hellenic

Anatolian

Baltic-Slavonic Baltic Slavonic

Indo-Iranian/Aryan Albanian Armenian

Iranian Indian

Figure 2.1 Conventional Indo-European family tree Source: Adapted from Barber 1993: 70–1.

Some of what is displayed in this figure is surprising. Central European languages, such as Czech or Latvian, apparently have more in common with the Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages, spoken thousands of kilometres away, than they do with languages such as German or Swedish, spoken nearby. This split is primarily phonological, however. The Baltic, Slavonic and Indo-Iranian languages share a number of common developments, not least an early full palatalization of proto-Indo-European *km to m ‘hundred’ (as in Modern Russian sto). In the other Indo-European languages, this palatalization was either delayed (as with the Romance daughters of the Italic language Latin or the Germanic languages) or never happened (as with the Celtic languages and Greek). But there are also occasions when Baltic, Slavonic and Germanic languages share features, as do Germanic, the Italic languages and Celtic (most specialists assume the last two share an origin later than IndoEuropean, although some interpret the similarities as due to contact rather than genetic proximity). It is difficult to plot these multiple, often apparently mutually exclusive, relationships on family trees. Moreover, would it be at all likely that all the splits which created the various sub-families took place at essentially the same time? Even



Western Branch (kentum)

the founding fathers of the discipline thought this impossible; secondary constructs like Indo-Iranian were deemed necessary (Mallory and Adams 2006: 76–7). Yet most trees still appear to represent a neat separation at the same time into sub-families. This flies against experience with language change, where some groupings – such as the Germanic languages – seem to be diverging more rapidly than others, such as the Slavonic languages. Attempts have been made to produce a family tree which addresses at least some of these reservations. Clackson (2007: 10–3) introduces two such experiments, both employing the rapid high variable analyses possible with modern computer programs. The first of these is the New Zealand family tree (Gray and Atkinson 2003) as shown in Figure 2.2. Gray and Atkinson used only lexical information to distinguish between the language sub-families, largely because this type of information is both freely available in considerable numbers and straightforward to analyse digitally. A chronological pattern of development can be established with the model, with the Anatolian languages (here termed Hittite) inevitably separating from the rest earliest, followed by the Tocharian languages (spoken in central Asia in the first Christian millennium). Then comes the putative ancestor of Greek and Armenian, followed by Indo-Iranian, here associated with Albanian. This leaves a group of European languages, with Balto-Slavonic most distant, followed by the Celtic languages and with the Romance/Italic and Germanic languages closest. Indo-European

Anatolian Tocharian

Greek

Armenian Balto-Slavonic

Albanian

Indo-Iranian

Germanic

Italic

Figure 2.2 The New Zealand model Source: After Gray and Atkinson 2003: 439; simplified.


Celtic




This is radical. It is normal to treat Greek as closer to the other European languages; the Baltic and Slavonic languages are normally placed along with the Indo-Iranian; Celtic and Italic are normally considered closer to each other than either is to Germanic; and so on. Partly this is because of the experiment’s solely lexical focus; we also have to recognize, however, that many linguists have been conditioned by seeing more traditional trees and by the map: since Greek and Albanian are spoken in the Balkans, it seems perverse somehow not to place them within a European language framework; yet geographical proximity, even over millennia, does not necessarily imply linguistic closeness, as the Baltic and Baltic-Finnic languages demonstrate. But the New Zealand model is not entirely satisfactory, since it does not include syntax and phonology in its analysis. This is worrying, as experience suggests that syntax in particular is slow to change, meaning that common patterns can be seen centuries after separations have taken place; lexical use changes at an often frantic pace. It is therefore not the most reliable evidence for distant descent rather than recent contact and borrowing. Clackson (2007) therefore introduces a further recent tree developed using state-of-the-art technology, which he terms the Pennsylvania family tree (see Figure 2.3). Unlike the New Zealand tree, this model has employed syntactic and phonological (as well as lexical) information in its analysis. At some levels, this tree is not entirely different from the New Zealand one. This is true not only in those features which are predictable, such as the ‘peeling off’ of Anatolian and Tocharian at an earlier point, or where the result is unexpected, such as the separation of Greek so decidedly from other European languages (also true for Albanian, separated relatively early from the other languages). Other points make this model more ‘traditional’ than the New Zealand one, not least the association of the Italic and Celtic languages, and the association of Balto-Slavonic with the Indo-Iranian languages. Particularly impressive, perhaps, is that the team which developed the Pennsylvania tree have not placed Germanic anywhere, since they did not feel that they could find a best fit for it. This is understandable since, as we have seen, Germanic appears regularly to ‘jump’ – most notably, between ItaloCeltic and Balto-Slavonic – depending on the tree. This last point is profound. There is, most linguists would believe, something fundamentally wrong with using only family trees to register both language relationship and linguistic history. This unease is not new. Practically from the first family trees, there have been critics, often with a background in dialectology, who have



24


Indo-European

Tocharian B

Hittite Lycian

Luvian

Albanian

Latin Old Irish

Welsh

Oscan Greek

Umbrian

Armenian

Vedic

Old Church Slavonic Old Prussian Avestan

Old Persian

Lithuanian Latvian Figure 2.3 The Pennsylvania model Source: Adapted from Ringe, Warnow and Taylor 2002: 90.

questioned its rigidity. In Darwinian theory, once species separate from each other, they may not reproduce successfully. Languages, however, are not species. The discussion above of Germanic’s ‘fit’ in to the rest of any tree is confused by the fact that some shared Indo-European features may be due to long-standing contact rather than descent from a common ancestor. Moreover, the model is based upon the idea that languages always diverge. Languages always change, it is true, but divergence may not be what the change entails. There is, for instance, dissent over whether Latin and its relative Faliscan are part of a larger Italic group along with



Tocharian A


Oscan and Umbrian (themselves a group), or whether their common features are due to long-term contact. Linguistic convergence, while not as common as divergence, is certainly not unusual; we will observe its processes on a number of occasions. Finally, there is overwhelming evidence that linguistic change moves across space not through genetic relationship, but rather through proximity. Heine and Kuteva (2006) demonstrate that a number of features – such as the development of a discrete definite article – have been spread across Europe with little concern for genetic affinity. This wave-model acts as a corollary to the tree-model, introducing a flexibility otherwise impossible, along with the chance that similarities between varieties can be due to contact rather than descent (and also, of course, that unusual inherited features may be reinforced and retained in two varieties because of contact). Wave diagrams as shown in Figure 2.4 (see also Mallory and Adams 2006: 73) have been produced. Here there is less difficulty in allowing apparently double relationships, since the emphasis is on exchange rather than descent. But this cannot replace tree diagrams entirely. Wave diagrams work well when part of a synchronic analysis; they cannot fully illustrate or explain how all mutual relationships developed.

Tocharian Germanic

Balto-Slavonic

Indo-Iranian

Italo-Celtic

Albanian

Armenian Greek Figure 2.4 An Indo-European wave model Note: Change begins in the inner circle; its impact is considerably lower in the outer circle.



26


2.3.2 An Indo-European homeland? The search for the Indo-European homeland is as old as historical linguistics. If we assume that there was once a single proto-Indo-European, it would be unreasonable to assume that the native speakers of this language did not live in essentially the same place and share cultural traits – beliefs, traditions, ways of dressing, and so on – which were different from their neighbours, in a similar way to what we can observe in both industrial and traditional societies today. This does not imply an Indo-European ‘race’, merely a cultural unit. In order for a culture or its language to remain geographically coherent, a relatively limited area needs to be envisaged (Mallory 1989). For cultural reasons, it is probably easier if the experience of all speakers is not diverse, except in terms of the social distinctions which most societies exhibit. It is almost impossible to think of a society of this type and size without there being some linguistic variation; absolute uniformity is unlikely. A variety of ways of establishing where and when the Indo-European homeland existed are discussed by Mallory and Adams (2006: chapter 26). Many are interesting; few can stand alone. It is, for instance, interesting that there are common Indo-European words for salmon (probably), apple, cow and sheep but not for camel, olive or wine (possibly). This appears to rule out Mediterranean or desert steppe environments. Much might be made of the fact that there are common words for ‘mountain’ and ‘lake’, but not ‘sea’. The problem is that this technique – linguistic palaeontology – is most impressive when observed from a distance. The word apparently for ‘salmon’, *lo k , does not s always mean ‘Atlantic salmon’ (as it does in the Germanic languages); in some languages it means ‘salmon trout’. In Tocharian, it meant ‘fish’. The ‘Atlantic salmon’ meaning may well be original; but how do we know? This leaves us with archaeology as a tool for finding a homeland. To work, however, we need to have some idea how long ago proto-IndoEuropean was spoken. But this is easier said than done: languages do not change at an invariant rate (there was a vogue for glottochronology,



We are not quite back at square one, however. No matter how difficult the various ways of plotting the Indo-European languages are, there can be no doubt that such an over-arching construct existed, and that we can reconstruct some internal relationships within this family. These must, inevitably, tell us something of the linguistic history of a large part of Europe.


just such a principle, in the mid-twentieth century; it proved extremely untrustworthy). Although we can say how much change has taken place in a language, we cannot say how long these changes took without the written record. Regretfully, an educated guess, based upon experience, is necessary. Thus the Anatolian languages (in particular Hittite) begin to be recorded approximately 4000 years ago. By this point, they are already different from reconstructed proto-Indo-European; the same is true for Mycenaean Greek, recorded some centuries later. In order for this scale of change to take place, most linguists would imagine a thousand years to have passed since the split-up of Indo-European; more than 2000 years would probably make most specialists uncomfortable. We now have an inaccurate date of around 4000 to 3000 BCE. What was happening archaeologically during this period? One Eurasian culture – situated on the Pontic Steppe on the lower Volga (and, to a degree, Don) as well as to the north of the Caspian Sea – termed the kurgan culture after the great barrows it left behind – probably has the greatest number of fits with the linguistic evidence. It lies near the median point between the furthest extents of the IndoEuropean languages. Moreover, proto-Indo-European appears to have borrowed from the Afro-Asiatic (specifically, Semitic) languages. Words like proto-Indo-European *(s)tauro ‘(wild) ox’ and *septm ‘seven’ are likely to derive from an early descendant of proto-Semitic *tawru and *sab’ (Mallory 1989: 150), suggesting that early Indo-Europeans lived relatively close to the early Semitic cultures developing in the Fertile Crescent (although this could become a circular argument). More importantly, the kurgan culture, like many steppe corridor cultures, spread dramatically into central Europe at around the right time (between 6000 and 5000 years ago) and had a material effect upon the pre-existing cultures.1 Although still Neolithic, the kurgan culture knew metals of various types, precious and functional, and demonstrated considerable command of chariot technology, all of which can be reconstructed for proto-Indo-European. More numinously, it appears also to have been more male-centred and leadership-based than the pre-existing cultures. The Anatolian origin hypothesis, put forward by Renfrew (1987), acts as antithesis to the kurgan hypothesis. Renfrew believes that the initial spread from the Indo-European homeland must be put back by approximately 3000 years and centred on Anatolia. The spread of (cereal) agriculture into south-east Europe during this period underlies this view. The connection with Indo-European is controversial,



28

however. The gap of approximately 5000 years between the first recorded Indo-European languages and the proposed Anatolian homeland seems too long for historical linguists. The first attested Indo-European languages are similar to each other and even the reconstructed language; experience would suggest that this would not be possible after such a long time. Second, in historical times, a number of non-Indo-European languages were spoken in Anatolia, unusually for a homeland area. In the kurgan area, however, the non-Indo-European languages spoken now are easily explicable as later intrusions; in central Europe, all the modern and recorded languages are Indo-European; in southern and northern Europe, this is not the case. It is reasonable to assume that the latter areas received Indo-European speakers later than the former. Since the non-Indo-European cultures of Anatolia appear ancient (indeed, potentially more rooted than the Indo-European), this seems an unlikely place for a homeland. Although there have been attempts to salvage the Anatolian hypothesis by claiming two origins – first in Anatolia, later, in the kurgan area – explaining why the Anatolian Indo-European languages have features, such as a lack of grammatical gender or the preservation of heteroclitic nouns (Luraghi 1998), not found in any of their sister (or possibly niece) sub-families (see Clackson 2007: 18–9), the hypothesis does seem unlikely. We are left with the kurgan hypothesis. This does not mean that this explanation is satisfactory either. In the first place, it is dangerous to equate cultural artefacts with languages (although it is also dangerous to discount them). Moreover, all changes in a society need not be due to external influence: similar ideas can occur to different people at essentially the same time without any mutual influence or one inventor being dominant. This has happened in our own times; it must have been more common when communication was difficult. No current model can explain why the Indo-Europeans should have spread so far. While there is some evidence for the kurgan model of migrants spreading (in lesser or greater numbers) in a ‘wave of advance’ through south-east and central Europe, no such pattern can be seen for either western Europe or the Asian Indo-European languages (Mallory and Adams 2006: 460–3). Basing their findings on what we know about Atlantic Europe’s Neolithic archaeology, Mallory and Adams (2006: 461) suggest an ‘acculturation’ towards Indo-European by the natives rather than largescale migration. This type of change is certainly possible, as our discussion of the Anglicization of lowland Britain in the early Middle Ages




30


2.4 Uralic We know rather less about the origins of the Uralic languages. This family is traditionally broken down into three sub-families: Samoyedic, languages spoken by a small population across north-west Siberia; Finnic, including Finnish, Estonian and Sámi, a number of languages spoken around the Volga bend, such as Mordva (Mordvin), as well as others spoken in the northern Urals, such as Permian; and Ugric, represented by Magyar, spoken in central Europe, Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul), spoken in the lower reaches of the Ob and Yenisei valleys. Finnic and Ugric are considered to be more closely related to each other than either is to Samoyedic; most scholars would consider a sub-family Finno-Ugric to be necessary. In this traditional interpretation, the Uralic homeland was situated from the central Urals to the central Volga. The age of this homeland is probably less ‘deep’ than that of Indo-European, since a number of obvious loans into the Finno-Ugric languages – most notably the root represented by Finnish porsas ‘pig’ – have been borrowed not from proto-Indo-European but from proto-Indo-Iranian, probably in the Ural/Volga region (Collinder 1965: 28–9; Mallory 1989). 2.4.1

The family tree problem

It is much more difficult to reconstruct proto-Uralic (or even protoFinno-Ugric) than it is to reconstruct proto-Indo-European. There are far fewer reconstructible roots possible for the former than the latter; the level of phonological and morphological variation accepted for these roots by Uralicists is much greater than that acceptable to IndoEuropeanists. Moreover, even within the sub-families, it is often difficult to reconstruct closer relationships. Marcantonio (2002: 2) reproduces the traditional Uralic tree as shown in Figure 2.5. Still retaining the family tree, but giving a strikingly different lay-out, is Viitso (1997: 223; cited in Marcantonio 2002: 63, slightly altered), purely of Finno-Ugric, with the split with Samoyedic understood (see Figure 2.6).



will demonstrate. It appears that Indo-European’s cultural and technological associations were too powerful to avoid, even though Atlantic Europe appears to have been culturally confident during this period. I fear the point must be accepted on trust. In any event, the process was not complete in historic times (and, when we consider Basque, is not complete now).

Linguistic Prehistory 31 *Uralic

*Finnic (Non-Ugric)

*Ugric

*Ob-Ugric Ostyak = Khanty Vogul = Mansi

Samoyedic

Northern Yurak-Sam. = Nenets Yenesei-Sam. = Enets Tawgi-Sam. = Nganasan

Southern Delkup = Ostyak-Sam. (Sayan-Samoyed dialects) kamas-Sam. = Kamassian Mator-Sam. = Motor

Magyar

*Permian *Volgaic Zyrian = Komi Cheremis = Mari Votyak = Udmurt Mordvin = Mordva

*Balto-Finnic Finnish Estonian Karelian Livonian Sámi

Figure 2.5 A traditional Uralic tree Note: Traditional view: Sam. = Samoyed(ic); where two names are given for a language, the second is that preferred by natives; some scholars question whether Sámi is part of the Balto-Finnic family, although it is obviously a close relative.

Finno-Ugric

West Finno-Ugric

East Finno-Ugric

Central Finno-Ugric

Volgaic

Kamaic

Sámi Figure 2.6

Balto-Finnic Cheremis Mordvin Permian

Vogul Magyar

The Viitso tree


Ostyak


*Finno-Ugric

32

Authority and Identity Uralic languages

Samoyedic

Cheremis Votyak

Zyrian

Magyar Vogul Ostyak

Figure 2.7 The Hääkinen tree

The apparent inability of Uralicists to agree on these relationships has led to the frustrated ‘bush-model’ (see Figure 2.7) of Hääkinen (1983: 384; cited in Marcantonio 2002: 60, slightly altered). This tree denies the existence of a Finnic sub-family at all. In fact, the primary cause for these problems is the fact that no one bundle of isoglosses actually separates one of the suggested sub-families from any of the others; instead, isoglosses cross the Uralic languages in an irregular way (Marcantonio 2002: 61). Moreover, as Marcantonio (2002) regularly demonstrates, many of the Uralic languages share much with non-Uralic languages from the ‘Altaic’ family. This also appears to be the case for the westernmost, Magyar, which conventional histories would see as having been heavily influenced by Turkic, but which Marcantonio would analyse as a Turkic language heavily influenced over a long period by languages we would consider Uralic. Of course, most reconstructed language families have problems when it comes to the detail of relationship. But no one would deny that all the Indo-European languages are descendants of a proto-IndoEuropean language. While most Uralicists would accept a proto-Uralic, there are some who would prefer to see ‘Uralic’ as a set of interweaving contacts making up a Sprachbund, a language area where unrelated and distantly related languages influence each other over long periods. Thus, while we can definitely reconstruct some sub-groupings within Uralic – definitely Samoyedic and Baltic-Finnic; probably Finnic and Ob-Ugric – all other relationships may well be due to lengthy contacts rather than genetic descent. We will return to the idea of convergence shortly.

2.5

The language isolates

In the early centuries of Mediterranean literacy (Chapter 3), a number of languages existed – Iberian, Etruscan, Eteo-Cretan, among others – which cannot be placed in any language family convincingly. It is quite



Balto-Finnic Sámi Mordvin

conceivable that some of them descend from autochthonous Neolithic languages. Only one of these, Basque, is still spoken today, however. The corpus of the language may give us a few ideas of its linguistic history, therefore. Spoken now by a few million people at the western end of the Pyrenean mountains, Basque, despite more than a century of attempts to connect it to other languages and language families (Trask 1997: chapter 6), appears to be a genuine language isolate, with no (recorded) relatives, living or dead, except its ancestor, Aquitainian, recorded in personal and place names from the time of the Roman conquest of Iberia. Sadly, there is no strong evidence connecting Basque to Iberian, an ancient language with literate expression from (very roughly) the same region. Although it always has to be borne in mind that discussion of Basque tends to encourage scholarly eccentricity (see, for instance, Guiter 1968), Basque’s ergative syntax, agglutinative morphology and unique word-formation patterns present a picture of what at least some European languages may have looked like in the distant past. More than this would be unwise to say.

2.6 Before Indo-European, Uralic and Basque Ascertaining where the ancestors of these language families were originally spoken only partly illustrates language origins in Europe, of course. At most, these reconstructions take us back 7000 years or so; human beings have probably been able to speak for 100,000 years. Logic demands that proto-Indo-European, proto-Uralic (or however the ancestry of these languages is analysed) and the ancestors of Basque and the other isolates must have had ancestors before this point, therefore. Building on work carried out by Soviet scholars in the 1960s and 1970s, a minority of historical linguists reconstruct a macro-family, generally termed Nostratic. The constituents of Nostratic are generally seen as Indo-European, Uralic, Dravidian, Afro-Asiatic and Altaic. Most exponents carry out their research following the standard scholarly methods; it is therefore intellectually respectable. Most historical linguists do not think the reconstruction Nostraticists attempt is possible, however. This does not mean that they do not think that earlier language relationships than Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic existed. But the fact that reconstruction of Nostratic is based upon reconstructions makes it dubious: the more times putative forms are used to produce putative forms, the more reality is distorted. The majority of historical linguists believe that there comes a point – possibly around 9000 to





11,000 years ago – beyond which the reconstructed material becomes too vague for reasonable conclusions to be made. Some scholars employ other methods to look further back. The late Joseph Greenberg and his followers used mass comparison – essentially, the employment of grammars and dictionaries of as many languages as possible to demonstrate relationship. Greenberg demonstrated (to his satisfaction at least) the relationship between languages across wide swathes of space, including Amerind, a macro-family including almost all of the native languages of the Americas, and Euroasiatic, a similar construct to Nostratic (towards which Greenberg was vehemently opposed). Most scholars find the method as a whole deeply – even disastrously – flawed: the choice of material in particular from which the comparisons are made appears to be random and sometimes even (probably unconsciously) fallacious. But there are true believers who hold that this method can take us further back in time: perhaps to approximately 20,000 years ago. Some scholars go even further. There have been attempts, based upon a range of techniques and methodologies, often used interchangeably, to reconstruct much earlier varieties and relationships; perhaps even to reconstruct what has been termed (half-seriously) proto-World. The problem with this project, however, is that it is all-encompassing, but vague and based upon small amounts of information. The ‘roots’ reconstructed are few in number, appear often to be onomatopoeic and are regularly based upon a misunderstanding (or even ignorance) of morpheme boundaries or the individual histories of the languages involved. Trask (2006: chapter 13) presents a devastating, but fair, critique of some of these views.

2.7

Convergence

Part of the problem is the idea – taken directly from Darwinian evolutionary theory – that divergence is the rule of language change. This is not the case. As we will see on a number of occasions, language varieties have often become more rather than less like each other. Dixon (1997) picked up this point and connected it to recent theoretical developments in evolutionary biology. The punctuated equilibrium hypothesis is used by biologists to explain why evolutionary change appears to speed up and slow down in species. When change happens – particularly in the case of species differentiation – it happens quickly and irrevocably, with the new species spreading over and conquering other species’ territory.



34

Essentially, Dixon suggests that, at certain times and places, linguistic punctuation occurs. This event can be caused by different factors – famine, war, a new technology, a charismatic leader – but the results are the same: one group’s language spreads over other languages, inevitably ‘killing’ most of them. Equilibrium sets in; the language of the punctuation diverges into different varieties and, eventually, languages. But if the equilibrium goes on for long enough, convergence between varieties begins to take place: since most people live similar lives, no matter their languages, and because intermarriage becomes increasingly common, languages begin to coalesce. Areal features, rather than genetic descent, become more normal. It is possible that, on occasion, new languages are formed which may share features from a number of earlier language families (see Figure 2.8). We might therefore suggest that one reason why we cannot look far back into the past linguistically is that convergences disrupt our view. It may be that proto-Indo-European is not itself one of the descendants of an earlier proto-language; instead, it is the result of the convergence of a number of languages of different origins. The problems Marcantonio describes in reconstructing proto-Uralic may be due to the fact that it was originally a convergence zone rather than a single language.

equilibrium period

punctuation

Figure 2.8 The punctuated equilibrium model




36


It is something of a letdown to admit that all we can say about European linguistic prehistory with any confidence is that the IndoEuropean, Uralic and Basque languages are the only languages we know to have been spoken in Europe over any period (with the exception of the very rare ‘pre-Indo-European’ place names found in some parts of the continent and the historical language isolates discussed in Section 2.5). Quite often (although not always) the geographical presence of these languages and the spread or contraction of their speakers has some archaeological support; sometimes, however, this is not the case. It would be very surprising if whole language families, never mind languages, had not been spoken in Europe for which we have no records. Dixon’s punctuated equilibrium model suggests that elements of the vanished languages have blended into new convergent varieties. What these original ‘ingredients’ were, and whether any traces survive to the present day, is impossible to say.

The languages of Europe before writing: A snapshot

ld

op

Finnic

?

Finnic Finnic

IC

O

BA

LT

IC

GE

RM

?

r Eu

n ea

AN

2.9

SLAVONIC IR

CELTIC

ian

N

AN

D AC I AN VENETIC IL L YRIAN E I GR E E K E T

ACI

T ?

E

IA

A L E I

C

THR

er

an

Ib

sit

ia

n

C Lu

as L qu e

E

C

Eteo-Cretan (Pelasgic)

?B

I

AN

E

nos

f Lem

Isle o

Sicel E

Etrustcan and relatives

Eteo-Cretan (Pelasgic)

Map 2.1 The languages of Europe before writing



2.8 Discussion

From later history and archaeology, we can tentatively construct a map of language use for the continent in the period immediately preceding the development of literacy approximately 5000 years ago. But we need to recognize that the further away from the Mediterranean basin we look, the more tentative our conclusions are and the more likely it is that we have missed out whole languages. The very act of literacy might make linguistic diversity less prevalent and even cause it to cease to exist. Finally, it should always be recognized that this is not the only way to interpret these data. In central Europe lived a conglomeration of speakers of different Indo-European languages, probably brought into this region from the steppes some thousand to two thousand years previously. These people shared a relatively sophisticated Bronze Age culture, although the tribal groupings involved would have had little sense of kinship with their neighbours. In the south-west of the group were the Italic peoples (possibly one linguistic unit; alternatively two units whose similarities were due to long-term mutual influence). In late prehistory they moved into the Italian peninsula, possibly along the Adriatic coast, or actually across that sea. Their languages developed great dialectal diversity, probably due to the topography of the region.2 To their north and west were the Celtic-speaking peoples. Their languages would eventually be spoken from Bohemia to central Spain and from northern Italy to the British Isles (Fortson 2004: chapter 14; Mallory 1989: 95–107). Many historical linguists believe that the Celtic and Italic language families descend from a common ancestor later than Indo-European. In early historic times, another Indo-European language, Lusitanian (Fortson 2004: 408–9; Tovar 1964–6), was spoken in south-west Iberia. From the small amount of evidence, it does not appear to be a close relative of any other Indo-European language (Sims-Williams 1988a: 354). To the north and east of the Celtic speakers were the less welldocumented Germanic- speaking peoples, living in northern Germany and Poland, the Jutland peninsula, the Danish islands and the southern provinces of Sweden. Lower levels of material culture were available to speakers of these dialects (Fortson 2004: chapter 15; Mallory 1989: 84–7). Their languages shared features with their eastern neighbours, but in other ways were rather closer to Italic and Celtic, as already discussed. Meid (1986) suggests that varieties which were not fully Celtic or Germanic survived into the Roman era in central Germany. This is not impossible, although the lack of evidence should make us hesitant about accepting such a conclusion.





The eastern neighbours of the Germanic peoples spoke Baltic and Slavonic dialects. Many linguists classify these languages as forming a Balto-Slavonic sub-group; others see their common features as the result of long-term contact. The Baltic languages have probably been spoken where they are today for millennia. Moreover, until at least 1500 years ago, it is likely that Baltic speakers held lands from the mouths of the Vistula to southern Estonia (and possibly further north). Their southernmost point of expansion is a matter of some contention, largely due to modern nationalist concerns. It would be fair to say, however, that Baltic speakers at one time or another settled in parts of both Belarus and northern Ukraine, as well as large areas of eastern Poland (Fortson 2004: 375–87; Mallory 1989: 81–4). They may also have spread along a common frontier with Finnic peoples as far as the upper Volga valley: Moscow appears to be Baltic, associated with a grouping named the Goliadi who lived there (Miller 2007: 250–1). 3 To their south and east were probably Slavonic speakers: east of the Vistula, north of the Carpathians and along the boundary of steppe and forest in eastern Europe. Many were semi-nomadic. The more eastern tribes came into regular contact with Iranian speakers whose nomadic, horse-based lifestyle regularly resulted in their becoming overlords of the Slavs. History knows these relatives of the Persians as the Scythians (later to be replaced by fellow Iranians, such as the Cimmerians and Sarmatians). Their influence can still be found in Russian culture in particular, but also in the other Slavonic languages. Bog/boh ‘god’, common to practically all, is Iranian, for instance (Fortson 2004: 368–78; Mallory 1989: 76–81). To the south of the Slavonic speakers were the Illyrians (Wilkes 1992), living in the Danube, Sava and Drava valleys west of the Iron Gates. We know little about their language, which survives only in a few inscriptions (Fortson 2004: 407–8; Mallory 1989: 73–6). The small number of Messapic inscriptions found in south-eastern Italy in historical times may be an Illyrian dialect (although see Woodard 2008a: 7–8, 11–2). A close relationship to Venetic, spoken in north-eastern Italy, Slovenia and Austria, is now rejected (Fortson 2004: 406–7; Wallace 2008b: 126). Illyrian may be the ancestor of Albanian, but this is almost impossible to prove one way or the other. Occupying the central Balkans and beginning to move into Greece were Greek speakers. Speakers of Greek dialects were already starting to come into contact with speakers of another language, called Pelasgian by scholars, from which it borrowed words such as thalassos ‘sea’ and hyakinthos ‘bluebell’, as well as many of the ancient place names of the



38

Greek world (van Windekens 1957). A number of scholars (most notably Finkelberg 2005: chapter 3) suggest that this language may be a divergent variety of one of the Indo-European Anatolian languages; EteoCretan is also placed in this category. We will have much more to say about Greek in the following section and beyond (Fortson 2004: chapter 12; Mallory 1989: 66–71). There is evidence for close ties between Greek and Armenian in ancient times (as discussed above; Mallory 1989: 34). Some memory of this is retained in later Greek stories, where the Armenians are said to have reached their eastern Anatolian homeland from the west, possibly during the late second millennium BCE ‘catastrophe’ discussed in Chapter 3. The same route is also ascribed to another group of IndoEuropeans, the Phrygians, who lived in west-central Anatolia in historic times (Fortson 2004: 400–1; Mallory 1989: 30–33). Their language may have connections with Greek and Armenian (Ajello 1998: 199). Also in the central Balkans were the ancestors of the Macedonians, whose language may have been a separate, but close, relative of Greek or a highly divergent dialect of that language (Fortson 2004: 404). To their east, in European Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania, were speakers of the Thracian (Fortson 2004: 404; Mallory 1989: 72–3), Dacian and possibly Getic languages (if the last is not just another name for Dacian). We know little about these languages, although the peoples who spoke them were of considerable importance in the antique history of the eastern Mediterranean, albeit seen from a Greek viewpoint (Woodard 2008a, b). South of the Indo-European speakers were a wide range of speakers of different languages of different lineages. Unfortunately, literacy only arrived in the eastern Mediterranean after most of these regions were occupied by Indo-European speakers. Nevertheless, we know at the very least a number of the names of the languages and peoples involved. In the Greek islands and possibly also the Peloponnese were speakers of a language scholars sometimes call Minoan, after the great civilization associated with Crete in the second millennium BCE, or EteoCretan. It is probably the language of the Minoan A script, which has largely escaped deciphering. A number of scholars consider this to be essentially the same language as Pelasgian. To the west, on Sicily, were speakers of Sicel and a range of other languages (Schmoll 1958; Woodard 2008a), of which we have a limited number of inscriptions from historic times. A number of languages were spoken in Sardinia, some of which may have had some connection to Iberian. From later periods also we have some evidence




for pre-Indo-European languages in mainland Italy; the only significant corpus comes from Etruscan, spoken in Tuscany and the area of Campania around Naples. Although there are probable connections with languages spoken in ancient times in the Alps and the Aegean, in particular that in an inscription found on the Greek island of Lemnos (Woodard 2008a), Etruscan has never been demonstrated to be related to any other language beyond these. In the Iberian Peninsula, speakers of Iberian were found in considerable numbers. Unfortunately, although we have a considerable corpus of inscriptions, deciphering has had rather limited success. It is, however, unlikely that Iberian was a relative of an ancestor of Basque, spoken in the Pyrenees and Cantabrian mountains in a rather larger area than presently. Although large-scale colonization would only occur later, there is every likelihood that Afro-Asiatic languages would have been spoken in the European parts of the Mediterranean basin, and possibly beyond, as Vennemann (2003) suggests. Large, relatively isolated archipelagos like the Balearic islands probably also had languages peculiar to them. Sadly, we have little or no evidence for this. North of the Indo-Europeans we can say very little with certainty. In the eastern Baltic basin fisherfolk leading relatively unsophisticated lives probably spoke Finnic dialects, as did herders of reindeer and other mammals. Speakers of early Finnic dialects probably lived in the valleys of the Volga and other rivers, as well as in the taiga and on the edges of the tundra. Speakers of Ugric and Turkic dialects, later found in considerable numbers in eastern Europe, may already have been resident, although it is more likely that their movement into Europe started somewhat later. The Finnic speakers had already begun to borrow from their neighbours’ languages, particularly Baltic, but also Germanic and Iranian. Often these words were concerned with the metal-based technology associated with these peoples. It is very likely that there were speakers of Old European and possibly pre-Indo-European languages still living in north-west Europe – in particular, perhaps, in the British Isles.



40 Authority and Identity

3

3.1

Introduction

Inevitably, it was in the eastern Mediterranean that Europeans first became literate. From the third millennium BCE literacy had become widespread among scholarly elites in the Near East. Both Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations were influential in the trading cities of the Syrian and Palestinian littoral and the developing Anatolian cultures; these centres also traded with the eastern Mediterranean islands, the coasts of Asia Minor and the Cycladic islands of the Aegean (Cunliffe 2008: 174–6; 185–88), along with Greece. New technologies also passed along these routes.

3.2

Minoan and Mycenaean literacies

A sophisticated culture, conventionally termed Minoan, developed in the early second millennium BCE on Crete, associated with the trade routes between Egypt, the Near East, Asia Minor, Italy and Greece. Sufficient wealth was generated for an urbanized hierarchical social system to develop (Wardle 1994). So powerful was this civilization, so technologically advanced in relation to its less developed northern hinterland that memories of its greatness and terror long remained in Greek myth. From an early point in its development, it was a literate culture. What is striking about this first ‘outbreak’ of writing in Europe is that not one, but at least three scripts were used in Minoan Crete and its successor, Mycenaean Greece. These were probably used at the same time, although not necessarily for the same purpose, language or people. Conventionally, they are termed Cretan Hieroglyphic, 41



The First European Literacies

Eb

ro ARAGON

VALENCIA

Black Sea

Tiber

2 Rome Antium 1 Arpinum

Naples Sybaris

Jaen Cartagena

ASIA MINOR Thebes

Mycenae

Carthage

Syracuse

Pylos

Athens Corinth Sparta

PELOPONNESE

Mediterranean Sea

Thira

Crete

1 LATIUM 2 ETRURIA

0

PHOENICIA

CANAAN

400 km

Map 3.1 Physical features and places mentioned in this chapter



CATALONIA

CISALPINE Po GAUL Massilia

Linear A and Linear B (Olivier 1986). Cretan Hieroglyphic, a largely logographic script, is attested from around the end of the third millennium BCE , and was often used in decorative functions, such as on seals. Linear A was largely syllabic, and appears to have been more functional in its use, in particular in relation to Hieroglyphic. The discovery of the Archanes Script, Linear A’s ancestor, has pushed back literacy on Crete to around 2000 BCE , if not earlier (Godart 1999; Younger 1999). Linear B (first attested around 1600 BCE), apparently a development of Linear A, was used almost exclusively for functional purposes. Although found on Crete, it seems centred primarily around the Peloponnese; in particular, Mycenae and Pylos, featured regularly in Greek myth. Following the discovery in the 1950s that Linear B represented a very early form of Greek, a number of assumptions about the cultural milieu which produced the written form have been possible (Chadwick 1987 and 1992). Sadly, Cretan hieroglyphic and Linear A resist deciphering. 3.2.1

The loss of Cretan and Mycenaean literacy

This first European literacy did not last, with the exception of some first millennium BCE Cypriot inscriptions which exhibit affinities to both Linear A and B (Chadwick 1987: 50–6). This raises the question: why would people willingly give up literacy? The first clue comes from the purposes for which these scripts were employed. Although sometimes used decoratively, most were used for business or administration.1 Generally, writers of alphabetic or syllabic scripts tend to think of them as relatively easy to learn and open to all. This may not always have been the function of literacy. Egyptian Hieroglyphic script, for instance, is difficult to learn; the literacy process was primarily controlled by a priestly/clerkly caste, whose privileges were jealously guarded. The same was probably true of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations. Indeed something of this bureaucratic origin can be seen in the near-standardized nature of the two Greek dialects represented by Linear B (Castleden 2005: 89–90; Palmer 1980: 53–6; Woodard 2008c: 53). When a civilization is put under considerable stress, those in control may choose to divest their society of its less necessary trappings. When the situation becomes particularly critical society itself ‘downsizes’. Economic relationships become more localized and less specialist; society becomes less hierarchical. In these circumstances, the need for a literate caste may not be obvious.



The First European Literacies 43


There is much debate over what caused this change in the Aegean world. In the past, scholars have pointed to cataclysmic events, such as the eruption of the volcano at Thira (Santorini), north of Crete, sometime between 1650 and 1500 BCE. But while events such as this cannot have encouraged growth, no single cause can have acted as sole explanation for the civilization’s decline. More localized earthquakes may have encouraged flight from the cities; ‘uncivilized’ Greek tribes may have pressed down on Mycenaean Greek culture, cutting Crete off from revenue and trade. Endemic warfare between the various cities of the Aegean zone is also evidenced at a variety of sites. Movements of people from Italy and its surrounding islands – the same movements associated with the ravages of the ‘Sea Peoples’ on Egypt – are also likely. The decline appears to have involved at least two ‘drops’: one associated with the rise of Mycenaean Greek on Crete, probably due to powerful immigrants fleeing problems on the mainland; the other with the resurgence and dissolution of the Mycenaean culture proper. The archaeological remains are open to interpretation; the new preference for cremation rather than inhumation may demonstrate immigrants who were partly responsible for the ‘collapse’. 2 Drews (1993) suggests that an iron-weapon-using peasant infantry, generally pursuing shortterm goals, was able to destroy the bronze-using aristocratic city-based society of the preceding era without immediately introducing a new ruling class. During its resurgence, Mycenaean civilization spread across the Aegean into Asia Minor. Castleden (2005: 91) suggests close written connections between the Mycenaean Greeks and Anatolian, Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations. It is quite possible to imagine Mycenaean culture thriving as the conduit through which the products of (eastern and central) Europe entered this world and Aegean and other products moved into the European heartland (Harding 1984 and Castleden 2005: 183). But this world turned out to be a very unstable edifice.

3.3

Greek alphabetic literacy

There is Greek linguistic evidence for people speaking new dialects entering Greece and crossing to Crete at the end of the second millennium BCE (although the archaeological evidence is open to interpretation). An illiterate age followed: new settlements were founded and Greek speakers moved into coastal Asia Minor, following the Mycenaean pioneers. Ironbased technologies spread. The world which is portrayed in the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as many Greek legends, is idealized and, inevitably,



44


focused upon the heroic. But the way of life displayed was to a degree accurate for the last few centuries of the ‘dark ages’: a world of small-scale kings and chieftains (although see Finkelberg 2005: chapter 1). Transfer from Phoenicia

Although Homer’s poem describes a non-literate culture (except in Iliad VI, where Bellerophon is sent with a letter telling the recipient to kill him), it is the product of a literate one. But the writing system associated with this new literacy was not native; rather, the new alphabet, named for its first two letters, had been imported from the Middle East (Coulmas 2003: chapter 6). Some memory of this transfer was maintained in Greek tradition. The historian and cultural analyst Herodotus (active in the fifth century BCE) claimed that the Phoenician Cadmus brought the alphabet with him when he founded Thebes. In working out a system which embedded information on the pronunciation of consonants and vowels, Cadmus had produced the first true writing system. This story is surprisingly accurate. The Greek alphabet is indeed the first fully alphabetic system. Its predecessor, one of the related scripts of Phoenicia and Canaan, was a consonantal-alphabetic system. Only consonants are given letter values, with vowels being ‘understood’; sometimes, when disambiguation is necessary, diacritic marks for vowels are used. But vowels are not given the same weight as consonants in writing.3 Semitic languages base their word-formation around three consonant roots. No native Semitic words begin with a vowel: while English could not retain distinctions between two words if the was left off orange, such an ambiguity would not be possible for Arabic. Greek, like most Indo-European languages, often has word-initial vowels (Coulmas 2003: chapter 6). Moreover, Semitic languages often have more consonant phonemes than do Indo-European. The Phoenician writing system adopted by the Greeks could not represent the considerable number of Greek vowels; the extra consonant symbols were therefore reinterpreted as vowels. New symbols were created for the vowels still not represented. The symbols used, and their direction, took time to settle down. Thus the Roman alphabet is derived from a Greek alphabet, not directly from the ancestor of the standard Greek alphabet. The genius of the alphabet lies in its ease of learning: the previous European writing systems were complex to learn in comparison. With an alphabetic writing system, literacy could no longer be maintained as the property of the scholarly elite.



3.3.1

46


Yet when literacy returns to Greece in the ninth to eighth centuries BCE, it appears to have been associated primarily with creative rather than with non-artistic writing. We do not necessarily know how the first literate people in Greece normally employed their new skill. Harris (1989: 46–9) makes a strong case for laws being written (often carved) from a very early period in Greek literacy. Very little has survived, however, except in much later redactions. Given that the alphabet was first encountered through trading, it would be very surprising if it had not first been used in those contexts. Most of what has been passed down from this period does not survive in early copies; rather, what later generations considered worth preserving affects our perception of the uses of early writing. While sociolinguists would argue that law codes are more important than epic poetry, since their function is necessary for the running of society and defines an individual’s relationship with others, this may not have been the case in the Hellenistic period and later. Moreover, while the writing materials and climate of Mesopotamia and Egypt were uniquely wellsuited to the preservation of both functional and literary texts, that cannot be said normally for Greek documents written in the Aegean world. Here, texts have survived generally because someone has decided they are worth preserving, rather than due to accident. As we will see in our discussion of Byzantine written language use in Chapter 5, the ‘classics’ were admired and copied. What was considered a ‘classic’ was circumscribed in a conservative way. Nevertheless, early writing seems to be intrinsically connected to the development of poetry, particularly epic poetry (Finkelberg 1998). Epic poetry is primarily created by societies whose world is oral. This does not necessarily mean that these cultures are not literate, as the epic tradition of modern Bosnia and Serbia demonstrates (Lord 1960 and Foley 2000). But composition is perceived in oral, memory-centred ways. There is a long-standing debate about the distinction between orality and literacy. Some scholars argue for a fundamental distinction between the oral and literate imagination; others downplay any difference (Botha 2004; Loubser 2004). But with memory rather than script as guide, poets can rarely recite the same poem the same way twice. We can postulate, however, that as poets began to want to produce poetic materials which covered a great deal of ground in considerable depth, memory alone became insufficient. Although non-literate people trained to develop their memories can confound the literate with their ability, limits must exist. Remembering both the sequence



3.3.2 Artistic expression

of events in your poem and also their poetic expression will become increasingly difficult. Naturally, literate poets would have begun to use notes to remind themselves of these sequences, along with, eventually, particularly impressive passages. Especially admired poems might also have been written down in greater detail so they could be recited by someone other than their creator. Common authorship of a tradition, founded upon generations of versions of a poem or story, was abandoned for the idea of a single author whose work others, often at a distance, performed; only writing can make this possible.4 The production of epic poetry assumes an aristocratic class with the means and interest to act as patrons, or the leisure to compose themselves (Robb 1994: chapter 1). This relationship between power (or economic surplus) and poetry was symbiotic until the invention of printing. Nevertheless, the earliest surviving Greek writing – inscriptions on pottery or metal, often the work of ‘ordinary’ Greeks – also shows considerable talent in the epic style and a connection to the subject matter of the central epic poems. Interestingly, their poetic ability can be contrasted to the less than convincing inscription techniques used or the execution of individual letters, providing further evidence of the essential orality of the time. This conclusion is made all the more likely by the fact that most inscriptions were intended for a God or a few friends. Information-giving and receiving were not central functions. Indeed, in the early literate period, there is considerable evidence that even letters used randomly were considered of some importance and demonstrate the civilized nature of the writer (and the vase’s owner). Many of these early ‘impressive scribbles’ also include a form of the verb graphein ‘to write’. On these occasions the medium is the message. Epic poetry first appears fully formed in the shape of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Written in an Ionian dialect (possibly with some Arcadian features underlying), these poems can be examined almost archaeologically, with elements demonstrating considerable age; nevertheless, they stand as units of themselves, at least as they have come down to us. They may not be the work of one writer, but they certainly were composed in the same area, perhaps deriving from the same school (Finkelberg 1998). 3.3.3

The Greek dialects and their literate use

The distribution of Greek dialects at this time has some bearing on the development of literacy and the perception of linguistic identity among Greek speakers (Horrocks 1997: chapter 1). Of course, the geography of the ancient Greek world, spread out across mountainous territory and





archipelagos, lent itself to great geographical variation. In the earliest post-Mycenaean documents we have, a number of dialects can be discerned: Arcado-Cypriot, spoken in the central Peloponnese and Cyprus; Doric, spoken in most of the rest of the Peloponnese and in pockets of more northern Greece and elsewhere; North-West Greek (probably closely related to Doric); Attic, spoken in the environs of Athens and elsewhere; and Ionian, similar to Attic, spoken in the Ionian islands of the Aegean and most of the Greek cities of Asia Minor. The unusual spread of these dialects has regularly been taken to illustrate the history of the region from the end of Mycenaean hegemony to the return of literacy, with varieties such as Doric being comparative – and probably aggressive – newcomers in the Peloponnese and elsewhere (see, for instance, Finkelberg 2005: chapter 6). It should be stressed that these dialects were often very different from each other, to the extent that mutual comprehension was difficult. But many literate Greeks appear both to have had a passive understanding of the other dialects in their written (and, presumably, spoken) form and under certain circumstances have been able to reproduce dialects not native to them in writing. Such abilities were inherent in the early inscriptions already mentioned, where ‘Homeric’ Ionian is often used even though mistakes and hypercorrections demonstrate that the person inscribing does not come from that linguistic background. Drama, although recorded in writing, is by its nature intended for live performance. Yet, as with poetry, it also demonstrates why literacy became so important: the best plays were not just performed once or twice in their place of composition – they were regularly performed and read throughout the Greek world and beyond. One of the surprising features of Greek tragedy in particular is that parts of the plays were often presented in Doric dialect, no matter the origin of the playwright. Because of Athens’ cultural dominance, practically all drama which has come down to us was written in that city. Yet the chorus of Sophocles’ plays speak Doric. Ironically, during the period when Athens and Sparta – the Doric city – were involved in a bitter war, the Athenians still performed drama of this type incorporating the ‘Spartan’ language. Dialect by this point not only implied origin, but also genre. Poetry spoke Ionian, while Tragedy spoke Doric. Any cultured Greek understood either, no matter their origin, although, as Morpurgo Davies (2002 [1987]: 157) points out, ‘the Doric of Attic choruses is far less Doric than that of, e.g., the Peloponnesian inscriptions’. She adds, however, that ‘[t]he dialect switching practised by poets and writers must have contributed to the contemporary feeling that the various Greek



48

THESSALIAN LESBIAN N.W.GK.

LOC. PHOC. AETOL LOC. BOEOTIAN ELEAN

MEG.

ATTIC

IONIC

EAST

ARCA- COR. ARG. DIAN CENTRAL LACONIAN

West Greek DORIC

Arcado-Cypriot

THERAN RHODIAN

Aeolic

CYPRIOT

Ionic 0 0

ETEOCRETAN 200 km

CRETAN

PHOENICIAN

150 miles Scale different from main map

Map 3.2 The ancient Greek dialects Source: After Finkelberg 2005: 110. 10.1057/9780230282032 - Authority and Identity, Robert McColl Millar


LEMNIAN


dialects were joined by a special relationship which separated them from other non-Greek speech varieties’ (2002 [1987]: 157–8). Why should this polydialectalism exist? One of the ironies of archaic and classical Greek history is that while civil war was endemic, a sense of Greek identity was developing. To some extent, Greek patriotism was to the polis, the city of birth. Religion, culture and government could differ dramatically within small areas. Language use certainly played a part in this, with Athens and the Ionian cities often feeling a brotherhood based on linguistic similarities which they could not share with Sparta or even Corinth, despite Athens, Corinth and Sparta being relatively close neighbours in mainland Greece, while Ionian was spoken on islands or on the coasts of Asia Minor. Sparta equally selfconsciously cultivated its Doric connections, no matter how geographically distant. Yet this same localized sense of identity, custom and interest was perceived as part of something much larger and more central. The institution of Pan-Hellenic games, such as the Olympics, continuing even during civil war, whose truces were observed on pain of divine punishment, marks this desire for unity, although Eckstein (2006: chapter 3) makes the point that these ‘rules of engagement’ were regularly broken by all sides. The ideal remained, however (Robb 1994). Greek, despite its diversity, became part of this united identity, particularly as represented in the work of the poets, universally admired and known, at least among opinion-formers (see Harris 1989: 89–90 for an alternative view). As part of the same process, the dialects of some of the cities began to dominate in the written sphere. Partly this was due to political power, since Athens and Sparta in particular eventually dominated large parts of the Greek world. This influence was not merely due to power, however. Cultural eminence encouraged emulation. 3.3.4 Philosophy and the literacy process Why did Greece begin from the seventh century BCE to produce thinkers capable of developing abstract thought, unlike anywhere else in the ancient world? For while Babylonians, for instance, made great contributions to astronomy, their breakthroughs were couched in terms of investigating the wills of the gods or the workings of fate. Greek thinkers, however, while often protecting themselves by using the vocabulary of their civic cults, tended towards empirical observation and theoretical development. Greek philosophy, by its nature, was originally oral. In the various schools, teaching was carried out largely through oral discussion, a



50

system institutionalized by Socrates and his successors in a dialectic where the master asked a question primarily so that a wrong, or naïve, answer be given; from the reaction to this, the master can present his understanding of the truth (Dorandi 1999). Something of this orality is maintained in most of the works of Plato (Solière 2004), for instance, where conversations in normal contexts, such as eating dinner, are used to provide an answer to a range of concerns. None of these works represents verbatim or even summarized versions of genuine conversations. Nevertheless, the orality deemed necessary for the development of argument is noteworthy. Philosophy (including scientific enquiry) is by its nature finely argued. It is understandable that both master and especially disciples would desire clarity in their findings. Other thinkers might wish to observe these findings in order to develop their own or to disprove them (Harris 1989: 63–4). Half-remembered conversations are not the best way to carry out this process. Moreover, not everyone had the resources to sit at the feet of a master. Many ‘lovers of wisdom’ would have had to make do with written records. Over time, written authority would overcome direct witness. Solière (2004) suggests that, by concentrating on the use of writing, Plato and his followers may well have been ensuring elitist control of the thinking process by employing a medium not transparent to everyone, however. Although some philosophical works were written in verse, the Greek tradition was for it to be presented in prose. This is a reasonable attempt to represent the way in which the material was originally presented orally. More importantly, the heightened nature of poetry – verse form, metre, word choice, euphony – inevitably compromises the accurate localized expression of ideas. But prose has one great disadvantage over poetry: it is generally not as memorable. The production of written prose is therefore a great step away from orality. 3.3.5 History and rhetoric In some senses, Greek historical writing is the direct descendant of epic poetry; only in some senses, however, and not only because it was written in prose. Of course, prose history is not confined to the Greeks; Jewish scholars were writing history somewhat earlier. Both traditions appear to derive from the often monumental chronicling of the deeds of kings found in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Syrian littoral. But what marks off both traditions from their predecessors is the benefit of hindsight, and not necessarily being the product of one world view. With the Greeks, the Persian threat, its defeat and the subsequent civil wars





were obviously considered tales worth telling. There is considerable evidence that the historian (and also, occasionally, his readers) read his work aloud to audiences (Pelling 1999). But although the orality of such a performance is obvious, it is significant that the historian was an author, reading from his canonical version. Strongly connected to the written recounting of history was the written recording of political speeches, particularly important in those cities, like Athens, where something like popular sovereignty existed. Indeed, the two traditions quite readily bled into each other, with some works of history obviously either representing a personal defence or manifesto of a politician or the recounting of the working-through of a political programme, as with the works of Thucydides, describing the rise and fall of the Athenian Empire. Again, speech making is inherently oral, as is the rhetorical tradition which underpins it. But the wish to preserve the ideas and language of the greatest speakers spurred on preservation. It is not much of a step from that to perceiving the written rather than the spoken version as more canonical and ‘correct’. It certainly, as Harris (1989: 74–8) points out, appears to have been widespread, at least in the (probably atypical) city of Athens. Only a few examples of this type of decision have come down to us, probably due to the use of easily perishable materials for what were often ephemeral purposes; the records and histories speak a great deal about it. This functional literacy led to the writing of funeral and commemorative announcements, but could be said to remain at the ‘artisan’ level (Harris 1989: 83–4). In cities like Athens, where political campaigns and public voting were becoming the norm, we begin to have evidence of less elite forms of literacy. Political graffiti and slogans, officially sanctioned or not, were commonplace. The fact that the annual vote for who was to be exiled was based upon names written on pottery suggests that a large part of the male population was literate at the time. While the literate might rarely have used their writing skills, they must have had a sense of being part of a literate culture. Sparta had no such strong literary culture, probably because the Spartan cultural outlook despised literary experiment (at least as Athenians interpreted it). Literacy was certainly present, however. 3.3.6

Discussion

Greek literacy was a blend of elite authority and popular use. The use of the written language for both creative and mundane functions should be noted. Greek identity was, despite the many dialects, bound up with the language, increasingly in the written form. Powerful elements



52


within the nation had the cultural and political authority to broadcast their Greek, whether consciously or not. Nevertheless, ‘free Hellas’ had not been able to develop a single variety which was universally accepted as Greek. Outside forces would carry this out.

European literacy was never likely to be confined to the Greek world; a number of other cultures situated on the north shore of the Mediterranean inevitably adapted this new technology. Primacy in this matter should be given to central Italy. But before focusing on this centre of literacy, we will first look at the less successful literacies in Iberia and among the largely Celtic peoples of northern Italy and southern Gaul. 3.4.1

Iberia

The literate peoples of the eastern Mediterranean had long been interested in Iberia, primarily because of its extensive mineral resources. The varied flora, fauna and geography of the peninsula seemed also to stimulate them. Because of this, we know a surprising amount about the social conditions, customs and cultures of Iberian peoples. Tovar and Blazquez (1975: 9–11) are probably only simplifying a little when they divide the Iberian Peninsula, before the Carthaginian takeover of its richest and most developed regions, into three parts. In the north and west, according to their typology, lived peoples of Indo-European language who had been affected to some degree by Mediterranean culture, but without the eclipse of their traditional way of life. In the north-east of the peninsula – roughly from the Ebro to the Pyrenees – lived peoples Tovar and Blazquez (1975: 9) describe as being ‘primitive’, culturally associated with central Europe. Finally, on the coast and up some of the river valleys of the south-east lived peoples ‘civilized’ by contact with Mediterranean culture. Part of this civilization was the use of writing. There is general agreement on the types of script found in the peninsula (Anderson 1988; Swiggers 1996). In north-eastern Spain – Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia – and in the contiguous area of France to the north is found the North-Eastern Iberian script. This is closely connected to what is known as the Celtiberian script, found in inscriptions from the Ebro valley to the north across the central plain of the peninsula to the city of Jaen. The Southern Iberian script is found largely in what is today Andalusia. In the far south-west of the peninsula is found the Tartessian (or South-West) script. All these demonstrate a common



3.4 Literate languages beyond Greece


origin; nevertheless, there is considerable evidence for influence from external scripts. For instance, the North-Eastern Iberian script is influenced formally by the Ionic Greek alphabet, while more southern varieties are equally influenced by the Punic scripts of Carthage and Phoenicia itself. Writing technology was therefore carried over from one group to the other as part of the settlement and exchange. Those areas most readily available to travellers from across the Mediterranean would also have been the first to develop the new technology, later passing it into the heart of the peninsula. This was not a slavish imitation, however. Uniquely for a European derivative of the alphabet, Iberian scripts are partial syllabaries: some symbols stand only for one sound, as in an alphabet; others stand for a plosive consonant followed by a vowel. Because the Iberian scripts are descendants of scripts we know, it is relatively simple to decipher them. It has proved more difficult to understand what the majority of them say, however. Most of the inscriptions are written in a language, termed Iberian, unrelated to any known language. No Rosetta stone exists, as far as we know. Since the types of inscription associated with the script, along with the considerable number of Greek and particularly Latin script representations of the language, are quite limited, however, associated mainly with the dedication of objects and expressions of ownership, along with funerary inscriptions, each of which has a register and style generally transcending language, it has proved possible to interpret some common structures as representing possession. How much further this process can be taken is difficult to say. Some inscriptions are much more readily comprehensible. The Celtiberian script was used to represent a very traditional Celtic language, which may have some Iberian influence (Burillo Mozota 2005). Some time around the seventh or sixth centuries BCE, writing technology passed from eastern Mediterranean peoples to the Tartessians (Correa 1996; Schmoll 1961). These latter peoples quickly developed the technology to suit their own languages. In the fifth and fourth centuries Iberian scripts were exported into what is now southern France. As with so many of these early literacies, writing was employed for a set number of purposes: dedication, commemoration and ownership. Harris (1989: 181) comments that ... with the usual reservations we may suppose that none of the indigenous languages had ever been the vehicle of an extensive written culture. It is significant that the Lusitanian inscriptions are all in the Latin alphabet.



54


3.4.2

Gaulish and north Italian literacies

A few other western European languages had literate expression. In northern Italy, a few inscriptions exist for Lepontic, a Celtic language,5 and for a number of small-scale languages, normally of Italic origin, in the southern reaches of the Alps (Rix 1998 and Schumacher 2004). Generally, the scripts used appear to have originated under the influence of Etruscan, although, over time, they become Romanized. Across the Alps other Celtic dialects were also given some written expression, in both Greek- and, increasingly, Roman-influenced, alphabets. Generally, even with the relatively well attested southern Gaulish, these languages were used for what we might see as the Iberian functions: for tombstones and dedications and to express ownership.

3.5

Italian literacy

As we have discussed, central Italy was linguistically diverse in the first half of the first millennium BCE. Its geography, largely consisting of mountains and deep valleys, lent itself to variation over a limited area. Three divergent Italic language groupings existed: Latino-Faliscan, Umbrian and Oscan (these last two more closely related, as the Sabellian languages, than either was to Latino-Faliscan). Although these groupings have similarities, mutual intelligibility would have been problematical. Indeed, some scholars see the similarities between Latino-Faliscan and the other Italic languages as being a matter of convergence rather than divergence (Wallace 2008). Umbrian dialects were spoken in the upper reaches of the Tiber valley and to its south along the main Apennine ridge. Oscan was spoken over a wide area, from the Bay of Naples south to the ‘sole’ of the Italian ‘boot’. The Samnites, a powerful alliance of Oscan speakers, lived in the mountains above the farmlands of Campania centred around Naples. There is considerable evidence (Cornell 1995: 304–5) that, in early historical times, Oscan groupings in particular had spread south from their original central Italian homeland along the Apennine chain into previously Latin and Greek territory. Although Latin cities regularly allied themselves with the Oscans, the pressures involved may have



This final comment may well suggest that, at least with this language, the native incentive towards literacy was not strong, despite the presence of fully literate cultures nearby, until centripetal Latin literacy came to be imposed upon it. The concept of literature appears to be absent; creative language was maintained in the oral sphere.

encouraged reliance on the major Latin power – Rome – both by other Latin states and the Greek cities of southern Italy. Latino-Faliscan was spoken in Latium (Lazio), south of the River Tiber to Antium (Anzio). Despite this, a distinctive Italic dialect, Sabine, possibly closer to Oscan or Umbrian, gained some prominence in northern Latium in prehistoric times. The dialect of Latium, in particular the Latin of Rome, eventually overwhelmed this diversity. The ‘wild card’ in this linguistic ecology was Etruscan, unrelated to any nearby language, spoken largely in the area between the Tiber and the Arno, but also around Capua in Campania and across the Apennines in the upper valley of the Po (Bonfante 1990; Rix 2008). It was the first fully literate Italian language. As with mainland Greece, the geography of central Italy lent itself to the development of small-scale city states with pronounced local patriotism. Again like archaic Greece a sense of a larger group identity existed. Despite periodic internecine squabbles the Latins, including the Romans, felt a common bond (Cornell 1995: chapter 12, in particular p. 295); the same was certainly true of the Etruscans. Again like Greece, however, these acknowledgements rarely stood in the way of the self-interest of each city’s ruling classes (Eckstein 2006: chapter 5). But two points mark off this situation from that of Greece. The first is greater linguistic diversity: not between dialects, but between languages which might not even be related to each other. Second, one of these city states managed to overwhelm all of the others to achieve unity, linguistic as much as governmental. In Greece, an outside force was needed to do this. 3.5.1 Influence from outside Despite its geography, central Italy has been highly desirable to outsiders for millennia, largely because of its mineral wealth (Grant 1980: chapter 1). This may also explain why small-scale political organizations could develop and grow: control of a particular site was hotly contested; cities could achieve quite large infrastructures in a relatively small space. Of course, this also led to increased belligerence, since the possibility for expansion was available only at the expense of neighbours (Eckstein 2006: chapter 5). This bounty was not evenly distributed: the land south of the Tiber was less generously endowed than to its north. Nevertheless, the volcanic soils of the whole region produced remarkably high yields for their space; farming of olives and grapes was highly developed. Latium looked both north to the mineral-rich land of the Etruscans and south to the rich farmlands of Campania.





All of these products were of interest to the two great seaborne peoples of the era: the Greeks and the Phoenicians.

Given the poor quality of most of the land in mainland Greece – among the most marginal on the northern shore of the Mediterranean – it was inevitable that, as populations grew in the city states, colonization was perceived as a means of solving the population crisis, increasing the economic clout of the mother city and, the citizens hoped, aggrandizing the city through the achievement of economic and political power (see, for instance, Dunbabin 1948). This was a time-honoured strategy, as the presence of similar dialects across the Ionian Islands and onto Asia Minor demonstrates. In later chapters we will touch upon Hellenization on the northern shore of the Black Sea; some of the most successful Greek colonies were in the central Mediterranean, however. Although we could discuss the influence of Greek cities such as Massilia (Marseille) upon their hinterlands, it was southern Italy and Sicily which received the greatest Hellenization. Indeed, the Romans later called this area Magna Graecia ‘greater Greece’. There are still a few speakers of Greek in small isolated villages in southern Italy (Minuto, Nucera and Zavettieri 1988)6; the culture of the Mezzigiorno, Italy south of Lazio, retains many Greek characteristics. At its height, Magna Graecia boasted some of the greatest cities in the Greek world, including Syracuse, Sybaris and Naples. These cities often overshadowed their mothers and became independent players in contemporary power politics. Their culture – and languages – seeped into the non-Greek lands further north, where trading communities and missions must have been omnipresent. Indeed, some scholars, including Cornell (1995), would see the rich material culture of central Italy, often analysed by earlier scholars as ‘Etruscan’ in origin, as being indicative of a regional cultural koine with Greek culture acting as a catalyst. The very idea of the city state may have been assimilated as part of this koineization; the same is probably true of literacy.7 3.5.1.2

Phoenician and Carthaginian interest in Italy

Phoenician traders had been in the western Mediterranean and beyond since at least the end of the second millennium BCE. Indeed, the first written inscriptions in this region are in their new alphabets. Also from a set of city states in unfruitful territory, the peoples of the Syrian littoral learned that they had to trade and expand to survive. In



3.5.1.1 Greek interest in Italy


general, their chief settlements were on the north coast of Africa, most famously Carthage. Carthage itself became a colonizing power, founding cities in eastern Iberia (including modern Cartagena), Sardinia and Sicily. Mainland Italy does not seem ever to have featured for long as part of this policy (the Greeks were forcefully filling this gap), although the Etruscans (and other central Italians) were undoubtedly influenced by Punic culture, as Grant (1980: 34–9) points out. But Carthage maintained normally good trading and diplomatic relationships with the power blocks forming in central Italy (Huss 1985: 65–6). It was only later that Carthage came into direct conflict with Italian interests. 3.5.1.3

Discussion

The idea of literacy could therefore have been brought to the central Italian focal area by two routes; no doubt influences from both were apparent. It was the Greek variety which was the more powerful catalyst, however. This influence first fell upon the Etruscans, probably because their mineral-rich territories made the inhabitants most receptive to new technologies. 3.5.2 Etruscan literacy Etruscan literacy is difficult to analyse. First, the language is not fully understood. Second, the corpus is nearly completely confined to a limited range of contexts, largely associated with ascriptions of ownership, or funerary inscriptions (Bonfante 1990, 1996). There is nothing approaching a literature, a surprising omission for people obviously talented in the visual arts.8 The closest we have to this type of writing are a range of inscriptions dealing either with religious subjects, such as the writings on the bandages of the Zagreb mummy or the Piacenza liver, apparently a teaching guide for those reading auguries from animals’ livers. Political inscriptions, such as the Pyrgi tablets, a bilingual (Etruscan and Phoenician) text, also exist (Bonfante 1990). This lack of creative writing suggests that the Etruscans’ primary interpretation of literacy was centred around commemoration and the perpetuation of information. Writing had an ancillary quality, establishing ownership and prompting memory; the oral remained the primary vehicle of other functional and particularly non-functional communication (Harris 1989: 150). What the Etruscans excelled in was their willingness to adapt the Greek script. Not being a relative of Greek, and having a strikingly different phonological system, inherited symbols were early on



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abandoned (as was the case with the equivalent of , , , and , , voiced plosives which Etruscan did not have) while others changed in use, so that the equivalent of Greek , employed at that time to represent aspirated /k/ in that language, appears to have been used for // in Etruscan, a sound Greek lacked. Greek , used to represent a long /e/, came to be associated with Etruscan /h/, represented by . At least one new letter was also included. At the time, Greek did not have the sound /f/ (, ‘phi’, then stood for aspirated /p/); the Etruscans developed a new symbol, , to represent this sound, so central to their language. Because Etruscan also had /w/, a sound almost all Greek varieties had lost by then, the Greek symbol for this sound, , ‘digamma’, remained in use in Etruscan. But although these innovations affected the other central Italian scripts, including the Roman, their results were not necessarily the most imitative or expected ones. The Etruscan written form was highly adaptable. The written record illustrates a number of sound changes passing through the speech community. This proximity to speech is unusual: normally, the conservatism of writing slows down the representation of change. This adaptability may be one of the reasons why, as far as we can tell, no standard form of written Etruscan ever developed (although the lack of central control or a permanently dominant city or cities would also have discouraged this). Besides Latin, Etruscan remains the most recorded central Italian language from the period, even if the domains in which it was used were relatively limited. Its written heyday was in the fifth and fourth centuries, coinciding with the zenith of Etruscan power. Written materials survive down to the first century BCE, although a number of the final inscriptions were written in Roman script, demonstrating considerable evidence for bilingualism in Latin and Etruscan and for Roman political and cultural dominance. The spoken language may have survived somewhat longer in country districts; inevitably, however, it succumbed to Latin during the culturally and linguistically homogenizing Imperial period. 3.5.3 Italic literacy Given this breakthrough in Etruria, it was only a matter of time before literacy spread into the surrounding territories. By the sixth century at least, individuals in Latium and among the Umbrians and Oscans were beginning to use writing in a variety of scripts, largely derived from Etruscan script.





Interestingly, the Oscan and Umbrian scripts appear much closer to the mainstream Etruscan script than the Roman does. This is most noticeable in the symbol for /f/ which, as we have seen, was not a phoneme in Greek. The mainstream Etruscan script and most of the scripts used by the Oscans and Umbrians employed the symbol for this sound. Latin, conversely, used the ancestor of modern , a symbol derived from the Greek digamma, , representing /w/ in that language. This symbol was used in early Etruscan inscriptions as part of a digraph along with the symbol for /h/ to represent /f/; the Romans borrowed this in an elided form. The original intention of this digraph may have been to represent // or /hw/, the sound found in Scotland and Ireland for the English <wh> words. The change from // to /f/ is not unknown; for example, Northern Scots dialect speakers pronounce their equivalent to what as fit. Latium, being closest to Etruria, was the first part of central Italy affected by Etruscan innovations, and was therefore able to vary and diverge over a longer period. Indeed, legend blending into history suggests that Rome was ruled by kings of Etruscan origin on at least two occasions. Certainly, there is considerable evidence for horizontal mobility among the ruling classes of Etruria and Latium, with Latins ruling Etruscan cities and vice versa (Cornell 1995: 156–9). Elite multilingualism at least must have been common. Although the innovative pulse seems largely to come from Etruria, including the custom of taking multiple names along the lines of Marcus Tullius Cicero, it sometimes worked in the opposite direction. For instance, the Etruscans borrowed at least one god – Iuno – from the Latins. Cornell (1995: 164; see also 104) comments that, ‘... the adoption of the alphabet in central Italy should not be seen as a simple linear transmission from Etruscan to Latin or vice versa, but as a more complex interactive process involving speakers of both languages’, a view which is both very likely to be correct and also almost impossible to prove. 3.5.4 Latin literacy Throughout most of its history, Rome appears to have had an eminent position within Latium. It was in command of a strategic ford across the Tiber on the border of Etruria, in easily defensible hill territory. As we have already seen, the city was particularly open to external linguistic influence; if the legend of the ‘rape of the Sabine women’ has any basis in fact, this multilingualism dates from the very foundation of the city. We should not allow ourselves the benefit of too much hindsight, however: Rome in the sixth century BCE was a relatively small city in a



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country of small cities, each speaking – and now writing – their own variety of a common language; each under considerable pressure from their neighbours, often formed into polities of considerably greater power or numbers. Circumstances like this inevitably made the citizens of each city not only feel considerable stress but also believe their city had a special role in the greater unit. Rome happened to be the place that took this ‘small but central city’ mentality and exported it first to its neighbours and then to the Mediterranean world and beyond. Unlike Alexander’s Empire, however, the Roman Empire was founded not on a person but on the vision of a place. Part of this vision was linguistic. When Latin and the other Italic languages were first recorded in any number of texts, their subjects had similarities to Etruscan ones: expressions of ownership and commemoration. From an early period, however, all Latin written traditions – in particular, that of Rome – were concerned with law and the responsibilities and rights of citizens (Harris 1989: 165–7). Of course the publication of law does not necessarily rule out oral transfer. Harris (1989: 152–3) remarks that ... when M. Cicero and his brother were made to learn the Twelve Tables [of the Law] by heart in boyhood, this was useful schooling but also a survival of oral culture. But although this orality long remained present, by the third to second centuries BCE written evidence and argument were becoming acceptable in Roman courts, as was the appeal to prior written precedent. By the early first century BCE, it was the norm (Harris 1989: 164–5). The need for evidence in situations where internal pressures were considerable probably encouraged this predisposition (Cornell 1995: 264–5, 279; Eder 1986; Raaflaub 1986a; Toher 1986). These concerns are strikingly different from the first literate impulses for Greek, largely creative and imaginative. Where the two traditions meet is in the written perpetuation of prophecy. In the case of the declarations of the prophetess of Apollo at Delphi, the original output was spoken (Harris 1989: 27–8). The Sibylline Prophecies were offered as a written document to the last king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus. This date or time cannot be affirmed; the first reference to them is in the early fourth century (Harris 1989: 154). Although written in Greek, these prophecies demonstrate the importance placed on the written word and written evidence by Roman from an early period. From what survives, Oscan and Umbrian varieties never developed beyond this stage (as the subject matter of selections like Janssen 1949 demonstrates).





Latin writing from the early period also shows an interest in recording formulae for the taking of auguries from the movement or sacrifice of animals, a practice they shared with the Etruscans. These ‘legal’ traditional uses were also concerned with the correct means of sacrifice and how to address and propitiate the gods. Indeed, the first piece of surviving Latin writing – on the Duenos vase – is concerned with these very topics (Harris 1989: 151). 3.5.4.1

Roman Latin

When Latin was first recorded, the language of Rome was only one of a range of often strikingly different Latin varieties. From an early period, however, the influence of Roman models can be found in other written traditions, although local features cropped up well into the Christian era. Moreover, Rome’s position as a frontier entrepôt meant that it was affected by the languages of its neighbours. Many of these influences have remained in Classical Latin and, indeed, been handed down to Latin’s Romance daughters. As we might expect, there is some Etruscan influence upon Latin vocabulary (Palmer 1954: 46–9). To a twenty-first-century observer, words like atrium ‘internal courtyard’ and fenestra ‘window’, both originally Etruscan, seem everyday. But an internal courtyard and even openings in walls to allow air and light to enter may not have been affordable to anyone in Rome except the ruling classes. In fact, a surprisingly small number of words from this source have survived, perhaps because of the lack of relationship between the two languages. Nevertheless, we can be certain of Etruscan’s role in the mediation of the new cultural ideas and technologies emanating from the eastern Mediterranean through the Latin word triump(h)us ‘(military) triumph’, from Greek θρίάμβοξ, and Catamītus (originally a name in drama, implying a passive, younger, homosexual partner) from Greek Γανυμήδης ‘Ganymede’, where the original voiced nature of , and , sounds unknown in Etruscan, are altered to voiceless ones. Latin, which did have voiced plosives and fricatives, follows the Etruscan practice. Indeed, because Latin borrowed Greek via its Etruscan form , was originally employed to represent both /k/ and //. This was maintained in abbreviations, so that the C in C. Iulius Caesar stood for the name Gaius. It seems therefore that Etruscan’s cultural heritage was admired even when its products caused ambiguities. Nevertheless, Spurius Carvilius Rufa removed this problem in the third century BCE by adding a bar to to create a symbol to represent the voiced sound, although elements of the ambiguity have been



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maintained – possibly an act of homage to the ancestors – in written Latin. Contact with other Italic languages can also be seen in Latin, although the extent to which this happened is often warmly debated. Later ‘history’ reported that the founder of Rome, Romulus, and his Roman followers ‘raped’ (abducted) Sabine women, speakers of a dialect not closely related to Latino-Faliscan, and made them their wives. Whether this is true or not, there is some evidence for just such close contacts over an extended period, largely demonstrated through the strikingly different phonologies of Oscan and Umbrian in relation to Latin. Occasionally both the native and the borrowed word survived, as with coquina ‘kitchen’, found side by side with the non-Latin equivalent popina. The same is true of būbalus ‘buffalo’ and the non-native būfalus. Interestingly, it is the latter which survived into Italian, before spreading to other languages. Sometimes, however, it is only the non-Latin form which has survived into Classical Latin, with the native form nowhere to be found. For instance, bōs ‘cow’ and lupus ‘wolf’ should be *vos and *luquos respectively. More controversial is the suggestion that the variation found from an early period between a diphthong /au/ and a monophthong //, and between a diphthong /ae/ and a monophthong /e/, derives from contact with Oscan and Umbrian. It is certainly true that these monophthongizations are prevalent in those languages; evidence from the writings from other Latin cities and also from Rome and its environs suggests that it is a native development. Indeed, it seems to have had a social meaning, with the diphthongal forms being associated with the speech of the ruling classes and the monophthongal with the urban lower classes and country people. The fact that this split remained constant for centuries suggests that it was diglossic in nature. It may be significant that Publius Claudius Pulcher (died 52 BCE), a member of the aristocratic Claudian family, who for political reasons abandoned his patrician rank for plebeian, is generally known as Clodius. The external and internal developments might, of course, be mutually reinforcing. But what borrowings there were from these close relatives were generally homely, of the land and the city, and dealt with concrete beings and things. The same cannot always be said for the Greek influence upon Latin, which we will discuss shortly. 3.5.4.2

Development

As far as we can reconstruct, it was only Latin among the languages of Italy which developed prose and poetic written literature. It is not that Italian peoples had no tradition of poetry or story-telling. There





are a very small number of fragmentary inscriptions which could be analysed as rather uncomfortable uses of the native Saturnian metre in other Italic languages (Costa 1998; Morelli 1973–4). The purpose of these songs must have been essentially oral, a concept which we have already seen in Greek. But Rome’s expansion into a major regional power from the fourth century BCE brought it into conflict and contact with the Greek-speaking world and culture, in the first place in Magna Graecia and later on the Greek mainland and beyond. At the time, the cultures of the two language groups were strikingly different. As we have seen, even as their territory expanded, Romans tended to maintain a small-town attitude, for good and bad, including a somewhat exaggerated sense of the importance of their political squabbles in the grand scheme of Italy. Painting with a broad brush, Romans had a gift for the practical and utilitarian unmatched by anyone at the time except perhaps the Chinese. The Greeks, on the other hand, although sharing many Roman faults and virtues, had developed a taste for the metaphysical and the aesthetic which did not chime well with the heaviness, for instance, of Roman architecture. Of course the Romans had long been aware of Greek power and culture in Italy. Indeed, in some ways they were the Greek’s pupils in technology and art, albeit often passed second hand via the Etruscans. A ‘cultural cringe’ began to develop in educated Romans’ writings which never entirely left them, but was particularly strong in the late Republic, when wealth accrued from the second and third Punic wars had made the Roman ruling class highly mobile and capable of outbidding all but the richest Greek patron in pursuit of poetry and philosophy.9 This sense of inferiority eventually produced what is arguably the first example of linguistic purism. Many Greek words came into Latin during this period; in particular after Magna Graecia had been brought into the Roman political world in the late third century BCE. These include calx ‘chalice’ and oliva ‘olive’, concerned with an intimate culture somehow connected to the ‘good life’, purpura ‘purple’, a word which would soon have significant political associations and camera ‘room’ (Palmer 1954: 49–52). A number of words dealing with the Greek culture the Romans so admired were also brought in at this time, such as philosophia ‘philosophy’. Interestingly, however, Latin writers seem to have preferred using calques, loan translations, instead of the Greek original, perhaps to aid their readers’ understanding, perhaps due to their desire to express linguistic identity. A (late) example of this is Greek sympathia ‘with-feeling’, loan-translated as compassio, ‘with-feeling’, in Latin.



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Creative literature

It is striking that the first examples of non-functional writing we have in Latin are not of epic or lyric poetry, but rather of comedy (Palmer 1954: chapter 4), in particular the plays of Plautus, born in the middle of the third century BCE. Although he was heavily influenced by the Greek comedy of Menander and Aristophanes and incorporates a considerable number of Greek ideas and vocabulary (whether in their original form or in loan translation), his work can be seen as creative adaptation rather than mere translation. It is very likely, of course, that Rome itself had a long tradition of native comedy performances, which he was also mining for ideas and material. The same can be said for his successor, Terrence (Publius Terrentius Afer), who died around 160 BCE. Despite their lack of pretension, these works were heavily influential in developing Latin’s status and flexibility; their grammatical usage would have a considerable effect on medieval Latin. During the same expansionist phase, epic poetry and tragedy began to be written in Latin. As with comedy, Greek models were followed more or less slavishly depending upon the views and ability of the writer involved. Central to the process was Quintus Ennius (239–169 BCE), whose epic poem Annales tells the story of Rome from the Fall of Troy to the censorship of Cato the Elder in 184 BCE, thereby giving first expression (as far as we know) of the imperial destiny envisaged for Rome. Equally important for the history of Roman literature, and also tangentially for the development of the written language, was his abandonment of the native Saturnian metre for the Greek epic dactylic hexameter rhythm, thus introducing Roman ears attuned to the ‘stateliness’ of Greek epic to the same sensation with Latin.10 The problem was, however, that Latin words, unlike Greek, did not fit dactylic metre comfortably. Ennius and his successors were obliged to create – successfully or unsuccessfully – longer compound words than were normal in the language of daily life in Rome (Palmer 1954: 103–4). If this had not already happened, a new heightened register began to appear. What is interesting to note is that few of these earlier writers were actually born in Rome. Ennius, in fact, wrote in three languages: Latin, Greek and Oscan. Many other later Latin writers were ‘provincials’, including Cicero (born in Arpinum [modern Arpino], a historically Samnite town, some 100 kilometres south from Rome, 106–43 BCE), Virgil (born in Cisalpine Gaul, 70–19 BCE) and Seneca (either born in Hispania, or descended from Hispanians, 4 BCE–65 CE). Because of the nature of the Roman republic and its institutions, most public life was carried out in terms of disputations and statements of intent. Under the influence of Greek models, Roman rhetorical skills



3.5.4.3


reached greater heights of expression, on all occasions developing the capacity of the language. Perhaps because by this time this ostensible city state had become the mistress of large parts of the Mediterranean world, more speeches and other prose works were recorded than was the case with the relatively circumscribed bounds of, for instance, Athens at its height. Other politicians and lawyers (and many interested laypeople) also wanted to read what x had said about y. We know from the speeches of Cicero that some of those represented in his collected works were idealizations (even occasionally complete fabrications) of what he had said. Thus written speech became a genre of itself, separate from the act of speech. Prose writing also developed, including self-help books on running estates such as that written by Cato the Elder. But the particular bent of late Republican Roman writers seems to have been towards history. These were undoubtedly originally encouraged and contained by Greek models. The political and judicial cockpit Rome had become was particularly suited to the writing of contemporary history, often with strongly partisan overtones. At the same time a more ‘academic’ history was beginning to develop, concerned with more ancient events. Yet all were written in a Latin which had become a standard written variety in many ways separate from spoken Latin. Indeed, so influential were this generation and the following that their Latin has remained a model for every writer, and often speaker, of Latin since. And yet spoken Latin continued to change and develop. Thus Roman high culture, created by the influence of Greek culture upon an alien environment with a strong tradition of reporting and disputation, could, by the first century BCE, be seen as a near-equal of Greece. Although the Roman ‘cultural cringe’ long remained in place, we can say that, with the achievements of the poets and prose writers of the first century CE, standard Latin had declared independence. Indeed, part of this declaration appears to be the expression of an occasional bout of linguistic Hellenophobia. The Latin of the late Republic onwards contained significantly fewer Greek borrowings than had that of the third or second century BCE.11 Writers of the time, many of whom were Latin-Greek bilinguals, were expressing their identity – and linguistic self-confidence – by using native and newly coined forms rather than the Greek words they knew so well. Some did this overtly, explaining what they were doing. In doing so, we might see the first stirrings of a western European identity being expressed. Certainly, the model of a literate society using a standardized variety for a variety of different genres, from the nebulous to the mundane, as an essential feature



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of the running of the state, is one which has been repeated ever since, in particular, but not exclusively, by those cultures touched by this Latin model, whether first hand or, increasingly, through the agency of another culture. Interestingly, however, as the evidence set out by Wilkinson (1975) and Rawson (1985) demonstrates, even the nativism eventually espoused by Latin authors may be a sign of self-confidence in their use of the Greek styles. No matter how we analyse these developments, we can certainly say that, by the beginning of the Christian era, Europe possessed two hegemonic languages, both of which were mature standards. How these spread to speakers of other languages will be treated in the next chapter.

3.6

Conclusion

It would be easy to claim that Latin and Greek became dominant in the Mediterranean because their speakers were associated with successful polities. As the next chapter will demonstrate, this hegemony was central to their success. But there is more to this success than mere political and economic clout. Even when Greek and Latin were the languages of circumscribed city states, they had still developed written genres unlike those found elsewhere in Europe. These developments produced both the authority of ancient texts and the local identity of the creative genres.




4

4.1 Development of the Greek koine At the height of its ‘classical age’, Greek was, as we have seen, sundered into separate, often written, dialects. Some literate Greeks had at least a passive command of the written forms of a number of different dialects; poets and dramatists had an active command of these, used for different purposes in their writing. Nevertheless, the lack of a standardized form of Greek made government beyond circumscribed areas difficult. In a world where great powers were beginning to rise, swift inter-communication was more than desirable. Yet the small-scale Greek patriotisms made any attempt at homogenization almost impossible. Nevertheless, most Greek prose was written in only one dialect: the Attic of Athens (although Spartan Doric also had a prose tradition). The synecdochic dialect was already present.1 Athens was a major cultural and political centre, straddling a number of the main trade routes. Its philosophy schools were influential, attracting masters and pupils from throughout Greece. Its political experiments, while eventually unsuccessful, may have encouraged free thinking and the development of new ideas. Its imperial expansion after the Persian wars meant both that it was a major power – encouraging patronage of the arts and philosophy – and a place ‘provincials’ considered the centre. Moreover, all over Greece, but particularly in those areas participating in Athens’ economic and political experiments, education became available and often affordable; its content was consistent across large areas. Finally, linguistic explanations come into play. Because Attic is very similar to Ionian, it shared vicariously in that variety’s poetic associations and was readily comprehensible across a wide part of the ‘new’ Greek world. In particular, it was Ionian varieties which were coming 68



The First Hegemonies

The First Hegemonies 69

North Sea Baltic Sea

BRITANNIA Rhine

Don

Dnie

per

Olbia

DACIA

AQUITANIA CISALPINE GAUL GAUL

La Graufesenque

NORICUM TRANSYLVANIA PANNONIA e CROATIA nub

Milan

Massilia Corsica

Rome

LATIUM Sardinia

Mediterranean Sea 0

400 km

Da

DALMATIA Iron

Gates

CRIMEA Black Sea

MOESIA

MACEDON

natia Via Eg

Constantinople

EPIRUS Athens ILLYRIA Rhodes PELOPONNESE Sparta THRACE


into contact with speakers of other languages in Asia Minor. Since the culture of Athens at the time was largely unique and its language similar to those these non-natives were learning, prestige flowed towards it. Spartan Doric was too different from these dialects to be attractive. We have the beginnings of a standard Greek – the first European variety to reach such a stage. But it was external history which spread a developed Attic so effectively that it killed off almost all pre-existing dialects. At the apex of Greek culture, as both philosophical and literary experiment flourished, the competing city states of the Greek world were eclipsed by newer and more large-scale power structures; in particular, by Macedon, previously a cultural backwater, although associated with a warrior tradition both sniffed at and feared by southern intellectuals and statesmen. The Macedonians considered themselves Greek. Philip II of Macedon made sure that his son, Alexander, was exposed to Greek culture throughout his childhood – including having no less a figure than Aristotle as his tutor. The experiment worked, since Alexander and his various successors became proselytizers for Greek culture throughout the eastern Mediterranean and beyond. Yet the Greek culture – and the Greek language – which they carried with them was not the variegated and regionally distinctive one brought into being by the city states. 2





The Greek promoted by the great Hellenizing conquests of the near east in the fourth and third centuries BCE had to be one which could be learned and used relatively easily by non-native speakers. Linguistic variation was therefore avoided in writing. Probably semi-consciously, writers began to move towards a compromise written dialect, the koine glossa, based largely on Attic, but with some of the morphological peculiarities of that dialect disfavoured for Ionian features or some features common in other dialects, but not in Attic-Ionic (Horrocks 1997: 36). Through experience, writers and speakers must have established that this was the most effective form of communication, perhaps largely due to its prestige. It quickly became the spoken and written use language of the new Greek world, to the exclusion of any other variety. Indeed, so successful was the koine that only one modern Greek dialect – a Doric variety, Tsakonian, spoken in the Peloponnese (Scutt 1912–3) – is not descended from it. 3 By the beginning of the Christian era, Greek inscriptions were being written as far afield as Upper Egypt and the Punjab. But Greek only survived as long as those in power were Greek speakers. Something of the former diversity was maintained through a highly prescriptive school system. Schoolchildren were largely educated in the art of rhetoric and good writing, developed through the study and imitation of archaic and classical authors. Many educated Greeks (and Hellenized people of other origins) knew screeds of Homer verbatim. It was certainly the done thing to drop tags from ancient authors into your speech and writing. The curriculum was narrow; we know what it comprised largely because it was these works which survived into the schools of medieval Byzantium. Thus scholars were exposed to a range of Greek dialects; many were able to imitate these varieties when genre demanded that they did so. It is likely that ancient dialectal literature was studied at the same time as the education system and other economic and cultural forces overwhelmed the dialects with the koine. Moreover, the presence of the Greek literary canon has meant that, as the Greek language has diverged, many influential speakers have attempted to maintain as much as possible of its structure and vocabulary. We will consider this again in Section 4.2.6.1. 4.1.1

Spread of Greek in eastern Europe

The Greek literacy process produced a strong sense of its speakers’ uniqueness, possibly superiority, in relation to their neighbours. Strangely, this view was shared by these neighbours. The Odrysian



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dynasty of Thrace gradually moved towards the use of Greek – at first amongst its leaders, but eventually among the writers of graffiti – even before the Macedonian expansion (Archibald 1998). This sense of superiority became increasingly marked during the Hellenizing period. These attitudes on language and the process of spread have considerable importance both as we trace the influence of Greek speakers on European languages and also in explaining some of the ways in which language, ethnicity and power were combined later in Europe. The Greeks, after all, were the first European colonizers of other parts of the European continent. Their most earnest students were their conquerors, the Romans.

4.2

The hegemony of Latin

From around 300 BCE to Octavian’s victory at Actium in 31 BCE, Roman diplomacy and arms were victorious throughout the Mediterranean basin. In the west, victory over Carthage made Rome a major player in the politics of North Africa, Iberia and southern Gaul. Here the triumph of Latin was eventually almost total. In the eastern Mediterranean, competition between the Macedonian successor states, the collapse of Ptolemaic Egypt as a major power from the late third century BCE on, the ensuing power vacuum (Eckstein 2006: 104–16), the in-fighting in the Greek cities and the ambitions of the partly Hellenized kingdoms of Asia Minor and the Near East all eventually led to Roman rule (although many Roman statesmen at least pretended not to be interested in territorial aggrandizement). Latin did not follow the victorious armies so readily, however. As Roman power expanded across Italy, with the exception of the Greek-speaking south, a town’s leading families would gradually abandon Samnite, or Umbrian, or Picenian, or other varieties, for the metropolitan norm. The trading classes, as they were incorporated into the ‘globalized’ economy of the Roman state, needed Latin to prosper. They would also want to appear one of the ‘better people’ in the town, and would therefore ape the ruling classes. Eventually, knowledge of Latin percolated to the working people. As the economy moved increasingly towards the use of slaves (Bradley 1998), many country people either found themselves falling into bondage or having to move for work; on almost all those occasions, Latin was a much-needed lingua franca. 4.2.1

The spread of Latin: Italy and slavery

Evidence suggests that most other languages of central and southern Italy continued to be written into the first century BCE, although





increasingly rarely (Adams 2003: 111–48). They probably continued to be spoken for some time after this. But they have left little or no trace in the Italian linguistic ecology for the past 1500 years. Similar forces were active elsewhere in the Roman world. Partly shift was due to the prestige of Roman government and culture. As important, particularly in the early stages, was colonization. In an attempt to solve a population crisis or to control conquered territory, regular in the period’s endemic warfare, Rome and its Latin allies would plant settlers – often retired soldiers – in new territory. Originally prevalent in Latium, the same process was developed in Italy and, eventually, the whole Mediterranean world (Cornell 1995: chapter 14; Eckstein 2006: chapter 5). When strongly perceived threats existed, such as the fourth and third century Celtic aggression from their north Italian bases or Pyrrhus of Epirus’ Hellenistic invasion in 280–75 BCE, these foundations would have been popular with local people. Indeed, in their treatment of their allies (Wilkinson 1975: 36–7) within the new order, Romans often exhibited considerable tact, despite the horrors of the early first century BCE Social Wars. Even when Rome’s allies were not happy with their status and treatment, however, there was little, except during war, they could do about it. These settlements were probably not populated exclusively by speakers of Latin – particularly Roman Latin. Nevertheless, the association of these Latin dialects with the centre of power could only have encouraged unequal bilingualism, with speakers of other languages being obliged to learn Latin. The similarities between Latin and other Italic languages might even have encouraged convergence and eventually dialectalization, as in modern Europe, with Low German (in relation to High German) and Scots (in relation to English). The conservatism of the written form makes this difficult (although not impossible – see Adams 2003 and 2008) to observe. The submergence of the other Italic languages, along with their cultures, was naturally not universally welcomed. Even in the first century BCE, the Italic peoples were still capable of insurgency, despite Rome being the most powerful state in the Mediterranean basin (Salmon 1982 and Keaveny 1987). But negotiations between the allies in the various ‘revolts’ and ‘mutinies’ of the period often took place in Latin. Moreover, a number of statesmen and generals of the late Republican and early Imperial periods, such as Marius and Cicero, and artists, such as Livy and Vergil, came from areas which were not Latin, never mind Roman. Some were descended from colonists; many were not, however. Often the latter were particularly strident in their embrace of Romanitas.



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In this light, we may view the concept of tota Italia [‘all of Italy’] and the use of ethnonyms in the definition of geography as a method of Romanisation that stressed the distinctiveness of the Italian peoples but united them politically with Rome at the centre. Such a viewpoint seems at first sight contradictory, but it may reflect the ideological and cultural complexity of the process known as Romanisation. As this suggests, Latinization was not necessarily due to complete adherence to Roman norms, a point to which we will return. From a relatively early point in the process bilingual inscriptions occurred. At first, the inscription in the local language was given prominence, with the Latin being merely an abbreviated paraphrase; regularly there were ‘mistakes’ in the Latin which can be explained as interference from the writer’s first language. Later, Latin became the default, with the local language being ancillary and ‘faulty’. After this, full texts in the local language were no longer found; on occasion, however, a man’s ancestors might be referred to in the local language, even though he was fully Romanized: probably a form of filial piety. At this point, we regularly find short inscriptions in the local language written in Roman script: local literacy is fragmenting. Perhaps the saddest example comes at the end of the process: there are a few examples of someone using the local script for Latin. Local identity could only be expressed in script; not in language. All of these developments – which would, of course, replicate as Roman power spread – meant that there would always be a significant number of non-native Latin speakers, demonstrating different levels of language ability. In many places, most notably the poorer parts of Rome, but also in other cities, learners might have outweighed native speakers. Under these circumstances, as modern discussions of the language use of immigrants demonstrate, it is likely that at least some features which come from the first language of speakers are carried over to the second (as discussed, for instance, by Thomason and Kaufman 1988: chapter 3). Interference features also crop up through the differences between the two languages, producing features not found in either language but in some senses a compromise; new speakers are also likely to learn the major grammatical patterns of a language while not learning the exceptions or variations all languages have.



Laurence (1998) presents a highly nuanced discussion of the process by which the peoples of Italy became Romanized, commenting that

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[m]any [slaves] who spoke only a local language of origin must have been unable to understand the language spoken by their new masters. Forced migration over vast distances can be assumed to have been accompanied by a high incidence of disease, malnutrition and mortality. Physical deracination was surely followed by psychological or emotional deracination, with many of the enslaved suffering separation from family members. This loss of autonomy was therefore accompanied by loss of native language, with acquisition of the master’s language representing a survival bid. Bradley (1998: 86) goes on to discuss whether choosing slaves from different language backgrounds in the training of gladiators was normal policy in an attempt to avoid rebellions. He does not accept this view, pointing out (1998: 86) that if foreign slaves and their Italian masters had to establish a basic form of communication in order for work to be accomplished then such communication could be exploited by slaves for their own purposes. This environment suggests that pidgin – and creole – varieties developed. While this experience is in line with the modern linguistic experience of European-induced slavery in the Caribbean, it is worth noting that we have little or no evidence for such varieties. This is not surprising. With the exception of household slaves – often native Greek or Latin speakers – most slaves would have had little time or opportunity to use literacy technology, even if they were literate. The varieties of Latin they used are entirely lost to us. But, with the exception of the period from 200 BCE to 50 CE, when rapid expansion produced many ‘foreign’ slaves, most slaves in Latin-speaking homes had been ‘produced’ within the empire. While Latin (or Greek) need not have been their first language, they must have grown up at a time and place dominated by these languages. Except for the first foreign slaves, it would have been practically unknown for a slave unable to speak Latin to enter a place where this was true for everyone else. For the easy running of the new slave’s workplace, it would make sense for both master (or overseer) and slave to achieve a rough and ready Latin



This learning of a new language was not confined to the free poor. In the last Republican centuries and the first Imperial decades, Rome was awash with slaves taken in warfare. Bradley (1998: 22) comments that

rapidly. This Latin would be learned from his fellow slaves, many of whom might have had impressive (or potentially native-speaker level) Latin. In order to explain why African American Vernacular English is much more like Standard English than the post-creoles of the Caribbean, Mufwene (2001) discusses what actually happened linguistically when black slaves were brought to North America from around 1600–1850. He demonstrates that, while large-scale cotton, tobacco, rice or sugar plantations were common in the final phases of American slavery, in its first stage most Africans lived in the same building as their owners and indentured servants. No matter the unpleasantness of their lot, these early slaves were likely to converse with native English speakers. They probably developed a form of English not terribly different from that of the surrounding whites. When the culture of slavery changed during the eighteenth century, with large plantations making close linguistic interaction with white native speakers less possible, descendants of those ‘homestead stage’ slaves would have acted as a means of ‘normalizing’ the English of new slaves. Something similar can be envisaged for the Latin of slaves. Generally, when speakers of other languages were enslaved in a particular place, they did not have to develop a new lingua franca, since the Latin of long-term slaves was practically always available. The new varieties developed under these circumstances had some creole-like characteristics (Trudgill 1983 and 1986); they would have been much closer to vernacular forms of Latin than we might expect. Nevertheless, the nonnative Latins of both free and unfree might have had some effect on the development of spoken Latin, especially in the loss or drastic simplification, from the first century BCE on, of a large part of the inflectional morphology of the noun and verb phrase. We have very limited evidence for this, however. Moreover, language internal explanations can also be given for these developments; it is likely, in fact, that the contacts discussed here were a catalyst and not the cause itself.4 4.2.2

The spread of Latin: Roman citizenship

Rome was an unusual imperial power in one significant sense: a citizenship originally based upon strenuously protected connections to a specific city was gradually expanded to almost all the Imperial subjects by the third century CE (Nicolet 1988: chapter 1; Sherwin-White 1973). Because of the conservative Roman constitution, this achievement of citizenship5 was often accomplished via the granting of Latin status, a near-citizenship, without some of the privileges, in tune with the





central Italy from which Rome sprang. The Italian urbanization process acted as a major part of the acculturation of outsiders as (potential) Romans and in their use of Latin (Lomas 1998). The ‘Roman package’ of laws and military might was perceived as practically inexorable in the western empire (Sherwin-White 1973: 249–50); as Ando (2000) suggests, it was also practically irresistible. This model quickly became divorced from race or place of birth: ... the best Roman minds of the late republic, notably Cicero, developed and came to recognize by name a really civilized concept, humanitas. This was a combination of the Greek paideia, for which the nearest English equivalent is ‘culture’, and kindly consideration – respect for others born of self-respect. It was complementary to the sterner quality of virtus (manliness) and came eventually to transcend barriers of race and rank. (Wilkinson 1975: 22) A central element of the spread of Roman culture (and, eventually and inevitably, Latin language) was ‘the theology of victory’ (Ando 2000: 277–8). Because the rapid spread of Roman imperial power slowed and eventually stopped under Augustus and his successors, even those who had been conquered could appreciate (or were taught to appreciate) the Roman order following defeat. When local people considered the Roman monuments erected to commemorate the Roman victory over their ancestors, they would have felt not grief or anger, but rather ‘a mildly heightened awareness of the history of their empire and of their place in it’ (Ando 2000: 308–9). In fact, the dominant viewpoint among Latin writers and thinkers – notably Cicero and Virgil – in the late Republic and early empire was that Roman culture and Latin language were so powerful as to overwhelm all ‘lesser’ languages and culture (Farrell 2001). Naturally, these developments were not without critics, both in Rome, as Sherwin-White (1973: 237) points out, discussing protests again the ‘barbarianization’ of the citizenship, and also in the provinces, as the passive resistance to Romanization attempted by Sardinians of Punic language and culture after their island, along with Corsica, was made a Roman provincia in 227 BCE (van Dommelen 1998) demonstrates. The centripetal force of hegemonic homogenization was normally too great to withstand in the west, however. 4.2.3

The spread of Latin: The provinces

This process of Roman takeover inevitably spread beyond the Carthaginian and Hellenistic worlds. Less sophisticated areas were



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included in the Empire, whether because of the perennial problem imperialists face – that a conquered territory is not secure until its hinterland is secure – or because of the poisonous and competitive politics of the late Republic, where political success at home was associated with victory (and loot) in the field. Thus speakers of Gaulish and other Celtic languages, Illyrian, Thracian and a number of Germanic languages came under Roman rule. In the west, the administrative language quickly became Latin. Given the cultural capital Greek possessed, even when Greek speakers were the ruled, it is unsurprising that that language remained associated with high culture in the eastern Empire, the primary lingua franca (as witnessed by its use in the New Testament, on occasion, as in the Revelation of John, by a non-native speaker) and the language of lower levels of government. There was little danger that Greek would be excluded in the way that the western languages were. It is to these Latinized regions that we first turn, therefore. 4.2.3.1

Hispania

As Iberia was incorporated into the Empire in the last two centuries BCE, its precocious local literacy was replaced by the Roman alphabet and, eventually, the local languages by Latin. Haley (2003) discusses considerable Italian migration into south-western Hispania, mingling relatively easily with local people without much evidence of inter-communal tension. Although he does not mention language in the region, his analysis of the apparently native use of Roman naming techniques from an early stage suggests a relatively untraumatic transfer to Roman identity, at least for the local elites. This peaceful changeover was probably due to the fertility and latent wealth of the region (local people must have seen that Roman trade networks paid better); it was not always echoed elsewhere in Hispania. Indeed Roman relationships with native people appear, particularly in the north-west and centre, to have been a matter of partial pacification interspersed with bloody altercations, not necessarily always producing a Roman victory, at least in the short term (Richardson 1986; Tovar and Blazquez 1975). The violence may have been encouraged by the general lack of Roman understanding of the tribal rather than city-based organization of Hispanians away from the coasts and the major valleys (Richardson 1986: 74, 174). Indeed larger units appear to have been developing among the natives, perhaps due to the obvious success of similar Roman models (Richardson 1986: 133). That many locals from more developed areas quickly began to assume some of the cultural behaviour of their new masters is unsurprising





(Richardson 1986: 3), even going so far as, again, from a relatively early period, adopting Roman naming practices (Richardson 1986: 164). Intermarriage between those of Roman and Italian origin and natives, while not exactly widespread, was not uncommon. Moreover, by the beginning of the Christian era many inhabitants of Hispania of Roman and Italian descent were beginning to consider themselves Hispanian (Richardson 1986: 162–3). That written expression of the autochthonous languages of Hispania ceases at the latest by the end of the first century CE (and considerably earlier in any volume) is unsurprising. This probably represents language shift towards Latin among the southern and eastern elites. But even at the end of the first century, a new settlement on the north coast – Flaviobriga – combined the current emperor’s family name with a Celtic suffix (Harris 1989: 182). In the northern mountains and in the less fertile and affluent midlands of Hispania, native languages were probably still spoken after the first century CE. We have little, if any, evidence of this, unfortunately (unlike Gaul, as we will see shortly). Even in these areas, however, Latin was ubiquitous, a point reinforced by the imperial Latin borrowings into Basque. 4.2.3.2

Noricum, Pannonia and Moesia

Generally, when we look at maps of the Roman frontiers, we can find reasons for why these happen to fall in a particular place; we assume, or are taught to assume, that logic decreed the boundary. But this need not necessarily be the sole explanation for a frontier’s existence. The Rhine was not a boundary between language families before Roman interference in local politics; nor has it proved to be since, with Germanic speakers generally occupying 100–200 kilometres width of territory west of the Rhine. It was only a true frontier while the Romans were powerful enough to enforce it. This is even more the case for south-east Europe north of the Hellenized world: the Roman provinces of Pannonia (and to a lesser extent Noricum, largely equivalent to Austria) and Moesia. Here the Danube marked the frontier between Roman provinces and barbarian territory to their north. Yet before the Roman occupation, the plain of the middle Danube was a ‘cockpit of nations’. The plain and its hilly southern periphery had been a place contested between peoples speaking Illyrian, Macedonian, Thracian (and Dacian), Celtic and, occasionally, Iranian varieties (Mócsy 1974). Although, before Roman occupation, Celtic speakers (relatively recent newcomers from the eastern Alps) appear to have wielded most power, this lessened, but did not destroy, the multilingualism of the region.



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Indeed, on occasion, some peoples, such as the Scordisci, hegemonic in the second century before Christ, ‘... are to be regarded as merely one of the Celts’ political creations and not a Celtic tribe’ (Mócsy 1974: 11), with a Celtic cultural patina over an Illyrian base. The Danube and its great tributaries were rarely major boundaries between cultures (although they did act as demarcation zones between smaller units) before the Romans came. They became so during Roman occupation but have since reverted to type. Rome began to take an interest in the area around the eastern Adriatic when they became interested in the Hellenistic world. Their rivals and enemies in Epirus and Macedon were not averse to inducing their northern neighbours to create problems for the Romans in northern and eastern Italy (Mócsy 1974: 10). For a long period, however, Roman intervention was punitive and temporary (Richardson 1986: 8–9). By the late Republican period, and under Augustus and Tiberius, attempts were made to subjugate the Illyrian mountains. Since this proved difficult to contain while Pannonia and Moesia remained uncontrolled, Roman troops eventually found themselves conquering all the land south of the Danube. What happened afterwards linguistically is difficult to interpret. Undoubtedly Latin spread in these regions, a fact underlined by the survival until the late 1800s of Dalmatian, the autochthonous Romance dialect of the eastern Adriatic. But the arrival and settlement of Germanic, Slavonic and Magyar speakers across both provinces in the period following the collapse of central and provincial authority makes it very difficult to assess. The presence, reported since the eleventh century, of speakers of related descendants of Latin in the Balkans, often termed Vlachs, probably represents a remnant of the linguistic patterns of the Roman Balkans. Today Aromanian speakers live in pockets in northern Greece, as well as in the contiguous areas of Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria and on the plains of Serbia and, considerably to the north and west, in Dalmatia. Winnifrith (1987) conducts an admirable survey of theories of origin for this people, so often contaminated by modern nationalist debates on the history of Romania (and its claim to Transylvania) and the ‘ownership’ of Macedonia in its broadest sense. Jireček (1876, 1902–4, 1911–8) demonstrated that the line between Latin and Greek language hegemony ran through central Albania, the northern part of the Republic of Macedonia and so north-eastwards to the Danube. Obviously, the northernmost of the Aromanian speakers live quite close to this line; most do not. Winnifrith (1987) suggests





on a number of occasions that urban Latin speakers would have been common in the ‘Greek’ area, given the working language of the Empire; a connection with the maintenance and security of the Via Egnatia, the main Roman road through the western Balkans, is also possible. But these Romance speakers are settled on the edge, not the centre, of Pannonia or Moesia, where no such survivals have been reported. Latin language and Roman culture took surprisingly long to be accepted wholeheartedly in these provinces (Mócsy 1974: for instance, 150). Eventually, however, in the wake of the ‘salvation’ of Roman power under Diocletian and his successors, Pannonia in particular became the lynchpin in the protection of the Roman centre. The provinces, already affluent from agricultural production and mining, now went through a hundred-year economic boom because of the fortification of the middle Danube. This involved the large-scale movement of people into the province. Latin would have spread in this mixed context. For instance, in the third century, local people referred to themselves by the Roman method, with only their cognomina giving any hint of a non-Roman background (Mócsy 1974: 247). Indeed, du Nay emphasizes (1996: 13) the level to which Latin became (and remained) the primary language of the northern Balkans. Nevertheless, Thracian may have been spoken in the region beyond the end of Roman control (du Nay 1996: 12). But across the Danube, many peoples – speaking Germanic, Celtic, Iranian, Slavonic and Turkic dialects – were beginning to be dammed up. When the Roman centre broke down, these peoples would be central to the collapse of Latin-speaking Pannonia and Moesia. Indeed, Marcus Aurelius had begun the transfer of small ‘barbarian’ groups into Roman territory to relieve tensions to the north. This practice was followed on a number of occasions in the period that followed: speakers of Germanic and Slavonic dialects must have lived in these provinces in some numbers. A further Balkan problem is the ancestry of Albanian. The ultimate origin of this language is much contested and does not concern us here. What is strange, however, is that, although even patchy records of the language do not begin until the fourteenth century, we know something about the language and its users in late antiquity and the early medieval period from the language itself. Most speakers of Albanian live north of the Jireček line, since the language has borrowed copiously from Latin, often for concepts and things which were part of the late Roman ‘package’, such as meshë ‘mass’ and mrekull ‘miracle’, Of course, Albanian has continued to borrow from the Romance languages (in particular, Italian); some borrowings, such as qiell ‘heaven, sky’, from



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Latin caelum, with the original plosive rather than fully palatalized fricative, as in French ciel, are Imperial (Haarmann 1972; Malcolm 2002: 36). Why did the Albanians not cross over to Latin like the ancestors of the Arumans? This is particularly pertinent, since Aromanian and Albanian appear to share a substratum of pre-Roman Balkan words (Malcolm 2002: 28); an Albanoid group of languages across the Balkans influencing all languages as a substrate has been proposed (Hamp 1976). Although some scholars (most notably Howard-Johnston 1983) have suggested that the Latin influence on Albanian is a result of urbanized living followed by flight from cities (similar to that assumed for Aromanian), the extent to which Albanian has affected the vocabulary of pastoralism – but not so much crop cultivation – in Aromanian and Romanian (Malcolm 2002: 39) suggests that the ancestors of the Albanians were already pastoralists when Latin speakers, for whatever reason, assumed new occupations. The linguistic ancestors of modern Albanians probably lived in less developed and Latinized, probably mountainous, parts of the western Balkans. Although their lives were profoundly influenced by the Roman presence, with considerable knowledge of Latin, their native language was preserved, albeit in a profoundly changed form. Because of their pastoralist specialization, other groups borrowed a number of technical terms from pre-Albanian. The Balkan Romance languages, however, appear to have been already connected (not genetically) to pre-Albanian, since they share similar substratal features. It might be argued that the ‘journey towards Latin’ taken by Aromanian was similar to that taken by pre-Albanian, with the proviso that the former passed into the Romance camp while the latter did not. This similarity found across language boundaries is a primary feature of the Balkan languages today; while many similarities found now are due to contact in the last 500 years, this appears not always to be the case. There is, in fact, some evidence for a close genetic relationship between the present speakers of Aromanian and Albanian, as demonstrated by Comas et al. (2004); strangely, the geneticists do not underline this, however, being more interested in suggesting a ‘Thracian’ origin for the Arumans. 4.2.3.3

The Thracians and Dacia

Outside of the Greek-speaking south, we are constantly frustrated by how little contemporaries cared to record what Balkan languages were like. Paeonian (Katičić 1976) is a case in point. Spoken to the north of Thessaloniki in classical times, our sole knowledge of the language is one gloss in a text by Aristotle and a small number of personal, tribal





and place names. Modern scholars have associated Paeonian with every slightly better recorded language family of south-east Europe and beyond. With this type of evidence, supposition is much easier than conclusion. Nevertheless, as we saw in Chapter 3, the Thracians had, from an early period, represented the ‘other’ for the Greeks. The remains recognized as Thracian portray a sophisticated, although largely non-literate, culture which became increasingly Hellenized during the Macedonian period (Archibald 1998; Hoddinott 1981), while also under Greek influence from the Greek colonies and emporia on the Black Sea. Throughout the eastern Balkans, in most of what is now Romania and into the Pontic Steppe, a population speaking dialects of Daco-Thracian lived. South of the Danube, after the flowering of the Hellenized Odrysian kingdom in the last centuries BCE, it is likely that moves towards Greek or Latin as everyday language became commonplace. North of the Danube, Getic or Dacian cultures thrived, in contact with Greek colonies such as Olbia, where hybrid cultures appear to have developed (the Latin poet Ovid, in exile there, claimed to have written a book in Getic). From early on, however, Iranian inroads into the Danube valley threatened the integrity of the Getic speakers; the presence of Celtic and, later, Germanic speakers only added to this problem. It was only in a region protected by mountains and rivers that DacoThracian culture continued to flourish into the Christian era. Despite their belief in the defensibility of the Danube frontier, the Romans were aware of the threat from the indigenous people of Transylvania and its environs. These Dacians had first become known in the literate world through the actions of a charismatic leader, Burebista, who gained power around 80 BCE over a number of Celtic and Daco-Thracian tribes, as well as exercising considerable control over the Greek Black Sea colonies. Although later Dacian leaders were not able to achieve the same level of control, there can be little doubt that, as Roman power was established in Pannonia and Moesia, the independent power of the Dacians became a thorn in the Roman flesh (MacKendrick 1975: chapter 3). When another effective leader, Decebal, achieved power towards the start of the second Christian century, he was immediately embroiled in war with the Roman Danube forces. His initial success led to the intervention of the Emperor Trajan and, in 106, Decebal was defeated (Hoddinott 1981: chapter 10; MacKendrick 1975: chapter 4). In the next few years, Roman power was extended along the eastern bulwark of the Carpathians, although the northern Pannonian plain behind the new



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province was not incorporated into the Empire. Always a costly defensive wall, Roman forces were withdrawn from Dacia Traiana in 271. Two Dacian provinces were then set up south of the Danube: Dacia Ripiensis and Dacia Mediterranea. Since it is unlikely that Roman forces would have been keen to commemorate a setback, Dacians must have lived on both sides of the Danube. Some of the more ‘civilized’ inhabitants from north of the river may also have chosen to follow their protectors south. The idea that there was massive depopulation after the Roman withdrawal is based upon a mistaken reading of ancient texts (Ellis 1998). Nevertheless, an area formerly dominated by Dacians or Getae became ruled, albeit temporarily, by Goths, Sarmatians, other Germanic peoples, Huns and Slavs over the next two to three hundred years. What happened linguistically in abandoned Dacia is one of the puzzles of European history. The problem can be stated thus: from at least the beginning of the second millennium, speakers of a Romance language had lived in considerable numbers north of the Danube, in Wallachia and Moldavia, which were never incorporated in the Empire, and in Transylvania, which was. In the last, a large Magyar minority is also present. No single issue is more bitter for either Romanian or Hungarian historians than ‘who came first?’. Simplifying somewhat, the Romanian position is that the Romanians are Romanized Dacians: they are autochthonous and all other inhabitants of the Romanian lands are interlopers. The Hungarian view, however, is that their own ancestors, when occupying Pannonia in the eighth and ninth centuries, did not find any organized communities in Transylvania: the Romanian speakers now present in that province came both across the Carpathians and over the Danube somewhat later than the Magyars. Naturally, a compromise is almost impossible between such diametrically opposed viewpoints; viewpoints which have been informed as much by contemporary expediency as strict scholarly method (van de Vyver 1996). Underlying these contentions is a linguistic issue. Most of the Roman provinces in Europe were Roman for at least 400 years; often for considerably longer. Britannia, dealt with in the next chapter, was Roman for over 300 years. Dacia was part of the Empire for approximately 165 years. And yet it is Dacia which appears, in the Romanian language, to demonstrate linguistic continuity from the Roman period, while British Latin survived for no more than a couple of generations after the Roman withdrawal. The problem with Dacia maintaining Latin is that, as we have seen, the Balkan Roman provinces were often conservative in maintaining





their original languages; 165 years seems too short a time to have complete switchover to the new language. Those who deny a Dacian origin for Romanian tend to suggest that late Roman sound changes found in Romanian do not permit the complete break assumed by the Dacian withdrawal; there are many apparent borrowings from Albanian, also suggesting a southern origin (du Nay 1996: 58, 60–83). Generally, this view implies that, in the confused and dangerous Balkans of the seventh century on, Latin speakers – the ancestors of the modern Arumans – moved in considerable numbers into the Carpathians. The Romanians are therefore migrants, just like everyone else in the region. My own feeling is that there were movements such as that envisaged; the problem is the numbers that would have had to have moved to achieve the linguistic transfer. Some Latin speakers may have remained in the north, possibly with their Latin skills backed up every few generations by service in the military. There is, inevitably, very little evidence for this hypothesis, however. 4.2.3.4 The Iranian nomads Beyond the Roman limes much was happening for which we have only incidental knowledge. The evidence discussed in Chapter 5 suggests that new peoples were beginning to form, often from units disparate in culture and language. One grouping remains in view throughout the Classical and Imperial periods, however: the Iranian-speaking steppe nomads. The Scythians both fascinated and horrified the Greeks. Nomadic and (apparently) bloodthirsty, they also produced artwork of considerable quality, even if it failed to satisfy Classical aesthetic rules. It was largely also through them that Greeks received the products of China and India (Rolle 1989). Because of this trade, along with the furs and other products which came down the Dniester, Dnieper and Don, the Greeks early on developed trading cities at the mouths of these rivers and on the Crimea. Eventually a hybrid culture developed where people were either Greek or Scythian, depending on the context (Minns 1913; Rostovtzeff 1922; see also Bulag 1998 for a discussion of hybridity). In the last centuries BCE, the Scythians were pushed west by other Iranians, the Sarmatians (Sulimirski 1970). This westward movement can be observed from early times to the Middle Ages, although the language of those moving westward changed over the years. The Sarmatians were, if anything, more warlike than the Scythians, using heavy swords and chain mail in their cavalry formations, rather than the horse-borne archery of earlier Iranian groups. So powerful was the shock-effect of



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heavy cavalry meeting infantry that the Romans themselves had to develop similar cavalry wings (often Sarmatian mercenaries). By the time Roman forces approached the Danube in strength in the first century CE, Sarmatian groups – most notably the Iazyges – were already present. As the western Roman system began to unravel in the late fourth century, a major Sarmatian grouping, the Alans (Bachrach 1973) were able to lead a confederation of different cultural groups across the Rhine and, eventually, into Hispania. We can therefore assume that the Sarmatians were a people to be reckoned with; one which even the Roman Imperial forces respected. But with the exception of Ossetic, spoken in the western Caucasus in the Russian Federation and Georgia, and Yassic, apparently the language of an Ossetic colonial group, recorded in a fifteenth century Hungarian word-list (Neméth 1959), both originally Alanic, none of the Iranian languages spoken in Europe in the Roman era survived into the medieval period. Partly this disappearance is due to the inexorable working of the steppe corridor. From the third century CE on, Iranians were no longer moving into the Pontic Steppe; instead new groups appeared, speaking Turkic languages, the most famous being the Huns. In the chaos which preceded and followed the Huns’ eruption into Europe, many peoples, great and small, were, as we will see in Chapter 5, remade or sank into obscurity. Moreover, it is likely that, like many steppe nomads over the centuries, the Sarmatians represented a small aristocratic elite over people culturally and linguistically influenced by its masters, but continuing to speak varieties of their native languages. Over time, the elites switched over to the majority language. As we saw in Chapter 2, most of the Slavonic languages have a considerable number of Iranian words – in particular the East Slavonic languages. Some of the ethnic names of the Slavonic peoples are, in fact, Iranian, including Croat and Serb (and its variant Sorb). There is an old tradition in Poland that the clans upon which the large aristocracy is based descend from Sarmatian clans. Although largely obscured, therefore, the Sarmatians had a considerable part to play in the development of medieval Europe. 4.2.4

Microcosm: Gaul

Writing about the Gauls and Gaul is not without its pitfalls, since, from the first time they appeared in written history, they have been associated with a range of ideological concepts which probably had very little to do with the ways their societies and cultures worked. More than





anyone else, they became the Romans’ ‘other’, the society with which they compared all that was good (and all that was wrong) in their society. The Gauls could be both wicked and noble savages, depending on the writer’s viewpoint. Certainly the Romans feared the Gauls: the only people to sack Rome (around 390 BCE) after it became a major Italian power. Although an urban civilization in reality, Rome long thought of itself in agrarian terms. Cato (died around 150 BCE), a statesman, wrote a treatise on husbandry; Vergil’s first great poem, the Eclogues, acts as both handbook for and hymn in praise of Italian agriculture. Both associate correctness of behaviour and well-being with an ordered environment. Rightly or wrongly, the irregular movements of Gaulish peoples north of the Alps and into the valley of the Po were at odds with this sedentary ideal. Given the rather elastic nature of their terms for central Europeans, the movements of Germanic peoples were also seen as part of the same process (which in many senses they were). Finally, the political structure of Gaul, made up of small tribes in a state of near-perpetual war, was at odds with the admiration for order which marks much late Republican and early Imperial Roman identity. The Gauls were, in short, a handy canvas upon which to paint whatever suited your argument at the time. The Gauls possessed a class of professional intellectuals (Ross 1999: chapters 1 and 2). As a group, the Druids took language extremely seriously. They were the controllers of memory, maintaining covenants, treaties and agreements over extended periods, using this power for the benefit of their favourites. Works of the imagination, in particular epic poetry associated with the politically prominent, were within their preserve. This account does not include their numinous associations which, naturally, must have been considerable, but about which we know very little which is not titillating or malicious. What is striking – although it is in line with several cultures we have already encountered in Europe and elsewhere – is that this great intellectual culture was entirely oral. This is at odds with the later Druids of the British Isles, where writing was used for some purposes. We can assume, perhaps, that the work the intellectuals carried out would have been threatened when written record replaced memory. Probably, the knowledge underlying this oral culture was considered too important or special to be reduced to writing. Most pre-conquest Gaulish inscriptions are found in areas, such as the lower Rhône valley, which had already come under considerable Greek and Roman influence. The Roman conquest of Gaul took some time and included different types of colonization, all of which had linguistic consequences. Cisalpine Gaul, in Italy, was probably Romanized at the time of the



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Roman expansion throughout Italy. It was often termed Gallia Togata, ‘toga-wearing Gaul’. The rich farmlands of the Po valley were opened up to settlement by Italians and expired volunteer soldiers. Latin quickly triumphed in these areas, possibly as a lingua franca for speakers of various Italic and Gaulish dialects. By the late first century BCE, the province had been included in Italy proper. Nevertheless, many of the names of ancient cities in northern Italy – Milan, for instance – still betray their Celtic origin. Over the Alps, Roman interests were long directed towards the lower Rhône, which acted as a land connection between their Iberian territories and Italy. In addition to this, the trading wealth of the Greek city of Massilia (Marseille) made closer political connections even more attractive. Moving from being a major extraterritorial player to one which wielded power within the region to final hegemony would have been straightforward for the Romans. Certainly, the area was considered entirely Roman by the end of the second century BCE (see Ebel 1976 for a discussion of the Romanization process). This early conquest had a number of cultural outcomes which, taken together, might be said to make the Provincia more ‘Roman’ than the rest of Gaul, possibly because it shared directly in Mediterranean culture in ways more northerly Gauls could never do. The conquest of the rest of Gaul Gallia Comata or ‘long-haired Gaul’, essentially present-day France extended to the Rhine and the Swiss Alps – was carried out from the middle of the first century BCE. Traditionally, it is associated with Julius Caesar’s campaigns from 58 to 51 BCE. Certainly, Caesar’s legions carried Roman power to the English Channel and also, with some difficulty, wiped out large-scale resistance. But ‘mopping-up’ operations continued well into the Christian era and there were major revolts, notably in the chaotic year following Nero’s murder (68 CE), when the Rhine legions became preoccupied with the Imperial succession. 4.2.4.1

The historiography of Roman imperialism

What happened in Gaul can be applied to the rest of Roman Europe; indeed, many similarities exist between what the incorporation of the new territories into the Empire entailed and the experience of recent imperialism. This means that it is difficult at any time to distinguish between the views on imperialism and political alignment of a scholar and the actual historical record. This is not merely a modern issue. As Woolf (1998) suggests, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians, generally writing in countries which were imperial powers,





tended to see the Romanization process in culture and language as inevitable and progressive. Thus savage barbarians are tamed by Roman culture and the Latin language, producing, in the end, the ‘Latin races’, particularly the French, themselves with a ‘civilizing mission’ to the ‘benighted’. A monolithic and homogenized Roman culture, based upon the Latin language, rapidly became the norm in all of the western provinces (Meillet 1948: 229). A counter-trend developed from the 1960s on, as the European empires collapsed and some of imperialism’s darker effects became evident in the fundamental instability of many post-colonial states, particularly in Africa. Focus was then given to those affected by the changes: the local peoples and, to a degree, the soldiery of the Empire, who were often colonials themselves. History of the period began to concentrate on local resistance to Romanization, emphasizing ways in which local customs and traditions continued despite the imperial ‘masters’, as well as pointing out that the material wealth of many transalpine territories was considerable before the conquest. 4.2.4.2

Linguistic globalization and Roman Gaul

From a language point of view there is a problem with this interpretation. In the western Roman Empire, excepting Britannia (discussed in Chapter 5), only Basque, rendered discrete by its isolate status and spoken in mountainous territory, of all the indigenous languages, survived the Roman Empire. Resistance to Romanization cannot have gone that far. Certainly, when we look at Gaul, we have to make a number of qualifications. As already noted, the more southerly parts of the region became Romanized quickly, with considerable numbers of Roman citizens being settled on public lands (often confiscated from ‘rebels’). Beyond these areas, colonization in its true sense of movement of expired veterans and poor citizens to free land did exist, but was probably not prevalent. Here we can generally distinguish between rural and urban areas, with the latter showing rather more cultural Romanization (Drinkwater 1983: chapters 1 and 2). But the inhabitants of both were normally overwhelmingly Gaulish, generally from the tribes of the surrounding countryside. Indeed, beneath the Latin governmental terminology, it is normally easy to observe the pre-existing tribal structures continuing. Finally, in the frontier zone the Roman Army was a constant presence, although, as we have already noted, the soldiers themselves were increasingly not Italian. At least in the first centuries CE it was standard practice for troops from one part of the Empire to be



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used in another, possibly to discourage corruption and potential armed rebellion, although legions were sometimes based for generations in one place, encouraging considerable fraternization with local people at different levels. The use of local auxiliaries, particularly in the cavalry, also increased interaction between the army and local peoples. Van Dam (1985), Woolf (1998) and Hingley (2005) present a rather more nuanced analysis of the interaction between Romans and locals, which may help to explain what happened to Gaulish. Essentially, the local elites quickly moved towards imperial cultural norms (indeed, elements of Mediterranean culture, such as wine-drinking, were present in Gaulish society long before conquest), but although the inscriptions are generally in Latin, dedications to gods often refer to the names of local gods or to a syncretistic deity. Acculturation must have been provisional. The citizens of the new urban areas also assumed many of the trappings of Roman culture; this may be not so much cultural subservience as a willingness to participate in what was, in many ways, a form of globalization. Thus we find local pottery manufacturers making wares which copy the styles of Mediterranean manufacturers, primarily because their prestige means they sell. Van Dam (1985: 23) suggests that, during periods of high stress, particularly in the imperial crisis of the third century and later, Roman terminologies of power and deference were generally used to describe Gallic rank and power differences, not Roman. Few people appear to have considered this a problem. At its height, during the attempted Gallic empire (260–274), this RomanoCeltic vision was potent (Van Dam 1985: 28, 31), although there were also counter-currents of exclusively Roman sentiment among some Gallo-Romans (Van Dam 1985: 33). Language comes into this as well. In their new markets, Latin was the necessary language of business and everyday interactions for Gaulish manufacturers. Inevitably, those who had Latin from childhood fared better than those who learned it imperfectly as an adult. What you did may have dictated what language you used. For instance, in the extensive earthenware finds at La Graufesenque (Adams 2003: chapter 7) in south-western France, Gaulish potters’ inscriptions are present, but so are many Latin ones, despite the fact that these were almost certainly all for factory-internal functions. Artisans used Latin because of context. Over a few generations, as Adams (2003) regularly points out, the sheer usefulness and perceived modernity of Latin encouraged families, no matter how tied to their ancestral culture, to move over to that language. Eventually, residual bilingualism would be considered pointless and discarded. Indeed it is striking that some





of the later inscriptions (as late as the fourth century) use Gaulish as part of a drinking game which might have had sexual overtones, or as the language of magical incantations. On both occasions Gaulish has been demoted to special, often mistrusted, domains in the urban context. In the frontier zone, Latin would inevitably have become the local lingua franca, with local people needing to learn the language to trade with the Army. It should be noted, however, that the Latin used by many of the troops would have been Camp Latin, rough and ready language used by non-natives. This variety may have affected the development of Latin in Gaul. In rural areas, Gaulish would have lasted longer, particularly among the peasantry. But the fact that the rural middle and upper classes were turning to Latin must have meant that, eventually, communication between landlord or merchant and peasant relied upon Latin. Peasant parents may also have encouraged the use of Latin by their children. Eventually, if more modern examples of language shift are anything to go by, Gaulish speakers would have become marginalized, separated from each other by long distances and unable to use their native language. Their children would probably have some understanding of Gaulish but would not pass it on to their children. Indeed, they might even consider the language a hindrance. Nevertheless, during the thirdcentury crisis and later, a few significant Gaulish words continued in use, largely associated with social rank and, in particular, warfare (Van Dam 1985: 31, 46). Whether this means that there was full-blown Gaulish competence among Gallo-Roman opinion-makers is impossible to say, although it does seem unlikely. People quite often use buzz-words and slogans in a language they do not understand but which has some kind of identity-symbolism for them, as seen in the slogans in Irish used in Republican areas of Belfast and elsewhere from the 1970s on. Few people understood what they said; everyone knew what they meant. Thus Gaul became linguistically Roman; whether it became so culturally is uncertain. A colonial creole elite became fully Romanized. Indeed, in late Imperial times, the Aquitainian elite considered themselves more linguistically and culturally ‘correct’ than their fellow provincials, who used a sermo rusticior ‘more rustic language’, at least according to a character in Sulpicius Severus’ Dialogii (Adams 2008: 240–2). Most others went with the cultural flow while retaining many local features for centuries, including the language. Interestingly, however, the elite Latin-based culture of the Empire had its last flowerings in Gaul, a flowering which continued even after the imperial apparatus had faded away.



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In the western Empire as a whole, a form of diglossia prevailed. Literary Latin was omnipresent among the literate, constructed through the reading of a small number of authors, both in prose and poetry, mainly dating from the last generation of the Republic and the first two or three of the Principate. Education was a central element in the Romanization process. In a sense, the educated in western Europe existed as a tightknit but geographically dispersed web, a network of people who had been taught to write in a similar manner, argue in a similar manner and possibly also think in a similar manner. The Empire existed for so long, in this monolingual state – at least for those who mattered – that it was almost impossible to imagine a system where there was not only one ruler, one language and one law. Yet underneath this homogeneity was a rather more varied linguistic landscape, even when we discount the (dying) native languages. 4.2.5.1 Social and geographical variation We have already discussed the variability inherent in the Latin of Rome, based upon class, geographical background and (increasingly) ethnic origin. This was carried into the provinces and encouraged by its new linguistic and cultural environments. Most Latin speakers who came as colonists to the western Empire were not speakers of literary, but rather popular, Latin. Although other norms might have been enforced at elite level, eventually these ‘vulgar’ idioms and pronunciations won out. Thus French speakers do not call a horse by a descendant of Classical Latin equus, but rather by a descendant of popular caballus (French cheval, originally ‘nag’). In the case of the Latin of Hispania, early colonization may even have meant that features of other Italic languages – in particular, Oscan – were carried into the local Latin, although Adams (2008: 406–21) demolishes this view convincingly. Given what we know of how languages change, these low features would eventually have ‘seeped’ into the high language, particularly since we know that many of the features of literary Latin were, even in the first century CE, rarely represented in speech – in particular grammatical features, such as a number of case forms and tenses, but also phonology (such as the use of /h/) and lexis – except where levels of formality (and also a crib) made them accessible. It is very likely that everyone – rich and poor, educated and unschooled – used many ‘vulgar’ features in their spoken Latin, depending upon register. But the near-loss of literacy in many parts of the former Empire in the fifth,



4.2.5 Imperial diglossia


sixth and seventh centuries made the low variety’s success much more total than it might otherwise have been. In each place there would have been contact between the local languages and Latin. On no occasion did this contact change local Latin to the extent that it became a separate language; it would nonetheless have encouraged a dialectal diversity which would already have been likely to develop because of the great distances between centres in the Empire and the relatively slow transport between them. The level to which the local Latin varieties of the Empire were affected by contact is a hot topic in Romance studies, with some scholars denying any contact-induced influence for the period, while others perhaps see contact origins in too many changes. The median position, that some changes were probably influenced by contact, even if we accept that the changes involved are perfectly possible without, is the most sensible. For instance, one of the Latin words for ‘goat’ is capra; this is the form which survives into standard Italian. In Spanish, however, the descendant is cabra /kara/; in French, chevre /vr/. The original unvoiced /p/ has been voiced and changed from a plosive to a fricative: lenition. While it is common to all languages, it is particularly central to the systems of the Celtic languages. It is striking that in those places where Celtic languages were replaced by Latin – Gaul and Hispania – this feature is also common in the descendants of the local Latin. Whether this was the sole reason for the change is impossible to say: lenition is a common process. Other features were also present in the new provincial Latins. In the first place, as already discussed, there were speakers of a variety of different languages in the Roman army, both regulars and auxiliaries. As far north as Vindolanda on Hadrian’s Wall, we have an inscription by a speaker of Palmyrean, a form of Aramaic spoken in Jordan. But all soldiers would have needed to know a considerable amount of Latin in order to follow orders and communicate with their comrades. It is very likely that pidgin forms of Latin would have been used in the first place, with, in the case of the auxiliaries in particular, elements of this reduced Latin being carried back across the frontier to their homelands – explaining, perhaps, the early Latin borrowings, often for military or prestige concepts, found in the Germanic languages. Over time, new, creole-like, forms of Latin would have come into being, with relatively simple grammars, reduced sound systems and a vocabulary which, while Latin-dominant, would contain words derived from a range of sources.6 This Camp Latin would have been that used to locals on the frontier and may well have been the Latin that the locals first learned. It is interesting to note that the grammatical structures of



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the Romance languages are much reduced from that of classical Latin. Although these changes were already at work naturally in Latin, it is quite possible that they were encouraged in those places where camp Latin was spoken; in particular, in what is now France. There may also be some linguistic evidence for the rough and ready humour of the Roman soldiery. The Latin word for ‘head’ is caput, as found in modern Spanish cabedo. In French (tête) and Italian (testa), the word for the same concept is descended from a word for ‘wine jug’. As with English mug for ‘face’ (or German Kopf ‘cup’), it is likely that there is a metaphor of what soldiers do with their heads underlying this; unlike in English, this has become the mainstream word for the concept, with the ancestral form becoming highly specialized, as in French chef, if it survives at all. 4.2.5.2 Contemporary evidence for geographical variation The use of Latin during the Imperial period can sometimes appear monolithic in the same way as Roman culture can appear the same across the (western) Roman world. The standard variety seems omnipresent. Even in those contexts where we might expect other influences to be felt – in graffiti and the writings of learners and semi-literates – it is remarkable how far standard models have penetrated. Nevertheless, regionalisms are perceptible in the Latin-speaking world – some contact-induced, many not – some of which have descended into the modern Romance languages. As Adams (2008) points out, this bias towards the standard is particularly true for the African provinces (with the exception of Egypt, where Greek was dominant); wherever documents exist in any numbers, however, regionalisms are found. Adams recognizes, with reference to the Latin of Gaul, that ‘[written] evidence only hints at the distinctiveness of local forms of the language’ (2008: 361). Moreover, ‘[t]he uniformity of the language of literary texts written in the provinces is not relevant to the issue, and there is a difference between a literary standard and regional (spoken) koine. The first cannot be used to establish features of the second’ (2008: 698). This final point overstates the case, perhaps. Adams’ book actually demonstrates that, with the usual caveats, this can be done. Nonetheless, his point about the literary standard holds. Imperial society (or the literate part we know about) was particularly linguistically aware. The Younger Pliny preserved an anecdote about his fellow provincial Tacitus. A stranger at the Circus had a ‘varied and learned conversation’ with Tacitus. When he was told that he was speaking to someone whose work he had read, he asked: Tacitus es an Plinius? ‘Are you Tacitus or Pliny?’ (Adams 2008: 196–7). Thus linguistic




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centrism was combined with knowledge of diversity. While provincial writers (and doubtless speakers) strove for uniformity, the vernacular as an identity symbol (no matter how self-consciously or ironically employed) was present from an early period in the colonization. The East

Rome had a special relationship with Greek, with Greek literature and culture being much admired. The Roman poet Horace (65–8 BCE) famously commented: ‘Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artis intulit agresti Latio’ (‘Greece, the captive, took her savage victor captive, and brought the arts into rustic Latium’) (Alcock 1993: 1). Both Ando (2000) and Sherwin-White (1973) make the point that, possibly because of their sense of polis citizenship, possibly because much of the eastern Mediterranean world was ruled indirectly, it was only in the second and third centuries that Roman citizenship was ‘rolled out’ in the east as it had as much as two hundred years earlier in the west. This citizenship would have implied neither linguistic nor cultural adherence to Roman models (except in the most banal and general sense); length of use meant, however, that the Greek speakers of medieval Constantinople considered themselves Romans. Nevertheless, Latin was the Imperial administrative language; it was Latin which replaced local languages in Illyria and the Danube valley down to the Iron Gates. Indeed, a number of leaders of the Imperial revitalization in the third and fourth centuries, such as Diocletian, were Balkan Latin speakers (Grant 1999; Williams 1985). But this revitalization also encouraged the separation of the Empire into eastern and western halves under co-Emperors. Although both eastern and western Emperors were for centuries Latin speakers, the physical separation, along with the siting of a new capital in Constantinople, began to tip the balance towards a pragmatic use of Greek in the eastern administration. The victory of Greek was inevitable, in particular after the Western Empire ceased to exist in the second half of the fifth century. 4.2.6.1

Greek purism and the popular language

Greek literature continued; indeed in many ways gained depth and breadth. Perhaps because of the conservative school system, perhaps because of the loss of ‘free Hellas’, many writers from the period 50 CE to 250 CE specifically chose to ignore – indeed, despise – the koine. Instead, in this second sophistic age, writers, including Appian, Lucian and Cassius Dio, chose to write in as close as possible a representation of classical Attic Greek (Swain 1996; Dihle 1994: especially pp. 53–4). In



4.2.6

a sense this is an attempted rejection of the vulgarity and excess of the post-Alexandrian Hellenism; it also may be a reclaiming of Greek from new users by those who had ancestral claims, as they perceived it. Like many linguistic conservatives (Crowley 2003; Milroy and Milroy 1985), a deep suspicion of an extension of literacy no doubt developed, with the viewpoint that popularization encourages the language’s users to choose the lowest common denominator. These views may have been particularly strong when political and artistic liberty – the hallmark of the elite classes of the Greek cities – no longer existed. But the Roman ruling classes were, as we have seen, generally keen to encourage Greek letters, acting as patrons for a variety of elitist Greek writers (Dihle 1994: 46). Nevertheless, as was the case in the early nineteenth century, when Romantic ideologues from western Europe came to Greece to help its independence bid succeed, and were often deeply demoralized by how little modern Greeks resembled their ancient Greek archetypes, Romans, as cultural tourists, were more kindly disposed towards the new Atticist purism than the colloquial Greek of everyday life. The preference for an Attic standard in preference to the ‘uncultured’ koine and its descendants was strong throughout the Roman period (Dihle 1994; Swain 1996: 19). One example is the retention for poetic reasons of a knowledge of the now obsolescent ‘accent’ (Dihle 1994: 251–2), exemplified by Herodian in the second century CE. Archaism almost inevitably lessens comprehension – except to the initiated, who have acquired special knowledge through expenditure and time. Tensions have often existed between traditionalists and modernizers in relation to the written language; these tensions often masked deeper political and economic tensions. Nevertheless, although the second sophistic period would have an abiding effect among conservative exponents of Greek, there was always a fundamental flaw in the programme. Almost to a man and woman, all Atticists, both Roman and Byzantine, used a spoken Greek descended from the Hellenistic koine. The use of Attic became less and less tenable as the time between its native use and the writer’s own times increased. New (and intermediate) forms inevitably infiltrated Attic. The artificiality of the language produced almost inevitably led to linguistically radical writers using forms of language closer to contemporary usage. We will return to this dialectic in the next chapter. 4.2.7

Christianity and language

Populist Greek language use was also supported by the spread of Christianity and the koine varieties used in its holy book. The everyday





language of Jesus and his disciples was Aramaic, with Hebrew as the sacred language. But they lived in a society saturated with Greek ideas and language. We cannot really say whether Jesus knew Greek, but certainly many of his followers, most notably Saul (Paul) of Tarsus, a Greek-speaking town in Asia Minor, would have been fluent. When the Gospels and attendant books were written in what was probably the second generation after the faith’s foundation, towards the end of the first century, they were written in Greek. As the Acts of the Apostles tells us, a long-standing argument in the early Church was over whether it should remain exclusively Jewish. Paul and his followers, along with others, favoured complete openness to everyone, no matter their ethnic background or religious beliefs before conversion, a view eventually triumphant in the whole Church. Given this, koine Greek acted as a conduit through which the new religion spread. In western Europe, on the other hand, where Greek was not well-known outside cities or educated circles, the religion did not ‘take’ quite so readily. The Greek of the Bible became profoundly influential in the development of that language over the next two millennia. Although it was written in a demotic form of the koine, it quickly began to assume nearclassical status, artificially prolonging the koine’s life as the main use language of the eastern Church and, eventually, the Byzantine bureaucracy. Gradually spoken and written Greek became divorced, particularly outside the urban centres. The same would happen, as we will see, with Latin and the Romance languages. The difference is that these Romance languages were eventually given written expression as separate entities. That was long impossible with spoken Greek. Predictably, it was most successful in Rome, where large immigrant communities, mainly from the east, lived, speaking Greek with considerable ability. Slaves, particularly house-slaves, were often literate in Greek; it is interesting that, in its first few centuries, the new religion was often classified by its detractors as a religion for slaves. It also quickly became the religion of choice of well-educated Roman gentlewomen – although rarely of their menfolk, at least to begin with. In the provinces, large cities like Marseille or Lyons, with considerable Greekspeaking populations, also saw early spread for the religion. 4.2.7.1

Latin and Christianity

Inevitably, however, Christians now had to think hard about their missionary language. Greek no doubt exuded holiness; Latin was the more useful language and also the language of the state. From an early period, therefore, scripture and liturgy were translated into Latin (although



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the holiness of Greek is still demonstrated in the Roman liturgy, where the call and response Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison! is employed despite incomprehension for many). There has always been a tension in Christianity between the individual approach all believers make to God and the need to maintain orthodoxy. In the early Christian centuries, the Church, rocked by occasionally bloody persecutions, nearly span out of control. It was particularly important, therefore, that central control of the holy books was kept. Latin translation was highly acceptable, but authorized versions (such as the Vetus Latina ‘Old Latin’ versions of the second Christian century7) were much preferred, the most famous, and final, being St Jerome’s Vulgate (early fifth century), written in a Latin which has classical elements, but is speech-like in its rhythms and includes a number of ‘vulgarisms’ (Palmer 1954: 187–8).8 Moreover, Jerome had an agenda: unlike earlier translators, he moved away from literal translation if the underlying meaning would benefit from a different Latin idiom (Lafferty 2003: 26). Lafferty (2003) makes a strong case for the assured status of Latin in the western church in the late Empire and Middle Ages being due both to the authority of writers like Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose and the canonization of a Latin liturgy in Rome and particularly Milan, in the late fourth century.9 The fact that an intellectual of the calibre of Augustine should have had very limited Greek demonstrates the parting of the ways of the two halves of the Empire; it may also represent a declaration of independence. In fact, many Christian (and, to a lesser extent, Greek) Latin writers obviously felt discomfort with the pagan culture from which they sprang.10 Early Church Fathers were generally ill-disposed towards all aspects of pagan culture; as Christianity became the protected and eventually official language of the Empire, however, compromises had to be made with the Roman establishment, of which the Church was becoming a part. This compromise underlies the survival of so many pagan literary works into the post-Roman age: Christians either found them useful or agreed that they were of sufficient quality that their ‘demonic’ origin could be overlooked. Nevertheless, Christian writers remained uncomfortable with some pagan words, preferring to borrow Greek equivalents. For instance, vates, ‘an interpreter of the future’, was replaced absolutely by Greek propheta (Palmer 1954: 187). On the other hand, words such as deus ‘god’ were carried from the old to the new with changes of meaning. This apparent inconsistency is one which has been consistently demonstrated in later conversions. The differences between Greek and Latin became crucial in the discussions of the nature of God which consumed the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries.





Conclusion

The first linguistic hegemonies in European history had a profound effect on the subsequent directions which the linguistic history of the continent took. The level of homogeneity achieved was overwhelming. In the Latin parts of the mainland Empire, only two autochthonous languages – the ancestors of Basque and Albanian – survived. The present diversity in the same area is due either to the diversification of Latin or the importation of language previously not used within the mainland Empire. Moreover, although elite language use was dominant in the written sphere, we also have considerable evidence of non-elite varieties which may have had some influence on the future development of Latin and its descendants. Thus the monolithic western Latin use was tempered by non-elite variation and change. Imperial authority and personal and social identity were carried by the use of Latin; eventually the tension between the two would ‘split’ Latin. The fact that Greek was a language of subject peoples had little longterm impact. Part of this resilience was due to its being the primary language of Christianity. This eminence eventually moved the koine (and behind it Attic) dangerously close to an absolute standard, however.



4.3

Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces. Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period

5.1

The Germanic ‘peoples’ and their migrations

In the previous chapter the language use of the Imperial centre or often highly Romanized provincials was our primary focus. There was little cause, except with the Dacians and Iranians, to consider the large part of Europe outside Imperial control. Nevertheless, northerners (and easterners) caused Romans both fear and fascination (Ferris 2000). In this chapter we will still need to see matters largely from a literate viewpoint; nevertheless, the non-literate beyond the frontiers were the instigators of much of what follows. Before 1945 the Völkerwanderung, ‘migration of the (Germanic) peoples’, was normally represented as the movement of organized peoples, each speaking its own dialect of Germanic. This romantic vision has little in common with the late antique reality. Indeed the royal houses of Anglo-Saxon England can rarely be traced back to the Germanic settlement on Britain, despite later myth construction (Yorke 1990). Hierarchically ordered, permanent organizations were rare. A great many of the Germanic tribal names Tacitus gives in his Germania (late first century CE) were no longer present in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Major groupings, such as the Cherusci or the Marcomanni, along with a considerable number of smaller peoples, especially those placed by Tacitus along the lower reaches of the Weser, Ems and (particularly) Rhine, appear to have disappeared three hundred years later when the frontier was developing towards its terminal state of flux. The one exception to this are the Frisii (or Fresones), whose comparative isolation in the marshes at the mouths of the Rhine 99



5

100


North Sea Baltic Sea

Illerup El

Moselle

e

Tours

er

in

Aachen ARDENNES EIFEL Fulda Trier

F r a n c i a

Regensburg Bohemia Passau Moravia

Ruthenia

Galicia

Bukovina Bavaria Salzburg C ARPATHIANS Pannonia

Milan

Preslav e Danub

Ravenna

Thrace Toledo

Rome

Philipopolis

Macedonia

Black Sea

Adrianople Constantinople

Thessaloniki

Mediterranean Sea


and eastward may make them a special case, similar to more northern and eastern peoples mentioned by Tacitus, such as the Langobardi and Anglii, whose names at least survived until the times of the ‘great migrations’. Looijenga (2003: 70–1) suggests, however, that, after the dramatic loss of population and agricultural activity the area suffered in the second and third Christian centuries, new groups, originally from Jutland and the area around the Elbe (in other words, Anglo-Saxons) settled, both temporarily and permanently, in the lands of the (former) Frisians; some assumed the name and identity of the former inhabitants.1 The ‘national’ identities of the Germani were fluid, particularly during times of stress (Goffart 2006). For instance, Odovacer, who deposed the last western Emperor in 476, had gained power in Italy as leader of a group of Germani often named Goths (but sometimes Vandals). Yet he was by birth a member of the Sciri, a grouping which may have been Iranian or Illyrian; more confusingly, his father, Edeco, was a central figure in Attila’s Empire, but may in fact have been a Germanic Thuringian.2 It is unusual that we know so much about this particular ‘German’, but his confused identity was probably not rare. Indeed, this



be

es

W Ems

Rh

MORAY

Aberdeen

G Iona

M RA

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AN

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DALRIADA R. F o

E

CLY

B

R

e

yd

Cl

ATH

Edinburgh

R.

DE

rth

N IA

STR

IC

Carrickfergus

GALLOWAY

ll n’s Wa Hadria

Tara Dublin

York ELMET

Wexford Waterford

rn ve Se R.

Cork

mber

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R . D ee

Hu

R.

Tr

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EAST ANGLIA

WORCESTERSHIRE

Sutton Hoo S

Cardiff

N ER ILT

H

C Bath St Albans London Canterbury Malmesbury Westminster DEVON

CO

W RN

KENT

WESSEX

Winchester

ALL

Isle of Wight

Map 5.2 Physical features and places in the British Isles mentioned in this and the following chapter



Centrifugal and Centripetal Forces 101


uncertainty over tribal names and geographical positions can be traced back to the first contacts with the Germani. The Roman limes on the Rhine-Danube must have represented an only partly permeable frontier for the ‘Barbarians’; certainly its presence provided an additional variable in their relationship with each other which would not otherwise have been present. In the previous chapter we saw that there was a general tendency for ethnic groups to take the ‘steppe corridor’ to the pastures of Pannonia. There also appears to have been a general tendency for groupings settled on the northern plains and in the Weser and Elbe valleys to move towards more productive lands (Todd 1987: chapter 2 in particular). While this movement might proceed in unexpected directions, such as the Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain, the primary movement was west and south, into the good lands of Bohemia, Moravia, southern Germany and the Rhine valley. Here the Germani came into contact (and conflict) with the Roman frontier forces. Many Germani crossed these frontiers to serve either as auxiliaries or, increasingly, as regulars in the army. It is very likely that some Germanic peoples – or sizeable parts – actually moved within the limes long before the Roman collapse: in particular, the Franks on the lower and middle Rhine.3 Yet many more Germani remained bottled up outside the frontier, affected by Roman culture and economic and political force (while also influencing it). Nevertheless, with the exception of outbreaks like those of the Marcomanni and their confederates across the Danube and into Italy (162–71) and of the Alemanni across the upper Rhine (in particular, 268 and 269), naturally when Imperial forces were under great pressure elsewhere, their position in relation to the Empire remained static.4 Inevitably, the nature of Germanic society changed. Interesting linguistic phenomena occur when people from different social, cultural and, particularly, geographical backgrounds, speaking varieties of the same languages, come to live in a new place. Both the original settlers and particularly their children begin to create – normally at most semi-consciously – new varieties, based upon those of the original settlers but with new forms developing as compromises. Most scholars working on new dialect formation assert that part of the instigation for this new variety is as a means of expressing a new identity. Something similar to this probably happened as the two main new confederations on the Rhine – the Franks and the Alemanni – and those on the north German plain – the Saxons – formed (James 1988: 34–6;



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In the traditional songs which form their only record of the past the Germans celebrate an earth-born god called Tuisto. His son Mannus is supposed to be the fountainhead of their race and himself to have begotten three sons who gave their names to three groups of tribes – the Ingaevones, nearest the sea; the Hermiones, in the interior; and the Istvaeones, who comprise all the rest. (Tacitus 1970: §. 2) These three groups may comprise the basic units of West Germanic: Low German (including Frisian, English and to an extent Dutch), Middle German (Frankish, including Thuringian and the present dialects of Saxony; Dutch shares some features with this grouping) and Upper German (Alemannic and Bavarian). But the Istvaeones may represent the East Germanic peoples. 5.1.1 East Germanic When the first Germanic languages are recorded – in runes from the second century, in alphabetic writing in Gothic in the fourth – we cannot talk about there being separate Germanic languages as such beyond a split between East Germanic and all the others. Gothic is obviously different from the language of the runes; this was probably also true for Gepidic, Vandalic and Burgundian, for which we have little more than a few personal names. There is some archaeological and rather more textual evidence that a population whose cultural traits were associated with the Germanic heartland of northern Germany, Denmark and particularly southern Sweden moved east and south in the early centuries of the Christian era, settling on the shores of the Black Sea and the rich alluvial soils beside the rivers which flow into it. But although the end result is beyond doubt, some critics, notably Hachmann (1970), have questioned the Scandinavian origin story. Certainly, the archaeological record for this cultural movement is rather more convincing in the transition from Poland to the Pontic Steppe than from Scandinavia to the former (Heather 1996: chapter 2 in particular). Small but influential groups may have made the Baltic crossing; this elite origin story was then assumed by all members of a later group. In contact with the local Getic, Greek and Iranian cultures, new ‘Gothic’ kingdoms were formed throughout the Ukraine. Most of these did not survive the advent of the Huns; however, there were still East Germanic speakers in the Crimea in the seventeenth century.



Todd 1992: 192–3). In Germania, Tacitus describes three large-scale Germanic units:


Along with the Goths came, we think, the Gepids. Other speakers of East Germanic languages, including Vandals and Burgundians, did not move so far into south-eastern Europe. What little evidence there is suggests that, around 200 CE, the Vandals lived along the upper Oder and to the north of the western Carpathians. They probably remained in intermittent contact with both the West Germanic peoples and the Goths. Eventually, however, all ‘named’ peoples attempted to cross the Roman frontiers, propelled by internal forces and the impetus of the Huns. In the aftermath of the fall of the Hunnic Empire, East Germanic speakers lived in close proximity with other Germani. Some mutual intelligibility may still have been possible – the conquest of Hispania by Suevi and Vandals suggests as much. Certainly, some West Germanic speakers might have had at least a passive understanding of Gothic during the period of Hunnic hegemony. Moreover, although ‘Arianism’ largely spread from the Goths to other East Germanic groups, as we will see, many West Germanic Langobardi were converted to that form of Christianity before their invasion of Italy. 5.1.2 The Huns The social, political and linguistic flux of the groupings held by the Roman limes was considerable by the middle of the fourth century. The advent of the Huns in eastern Europe acted as a further catalyst for change among all peoples outside the frontiers. We know little about the origins of the Huns. It is generally assumed they were the first group of Turkic nomads to enter Europe from the Eurasian steppe; beyond this, all is conjecture (Thompson 1996: 19–24). The Huns were certainly considered a people apart by both Romans and their fellow Barbarians. Their use of terror tactics, necessary for warrior nomads with limited food reserves, differed from the life of most other peoples, committed to limited forms of violence for limited goals. For those with whom the Huns came into contact, at least until they encountered the full force of Rome, there were only three choices: flee, die or become a subservient part of a Hunnic Empire. Flight was certainly the primary goal for the Goths who arrived on the lower Danube in 376, petitioning the Roman authorities for the right to cross. The largely settled lives of their ancestors were gone. This was also true for Goths who came under Hunnic rule. Pressures in this new society led to reconfigurations of ethnic identity, in divergent directions: towards a return to a society based upon small fighting bands, but also into ever-larger confederations.



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This reached its zenith in the Hunnic Empire of Attila in the first half of the fifth century, where people from a diversity of linguistic and ethnic backgrounds called themselves ‘Huns’. Ironically, the lingua franca of this power was not Hunnic but Gothic. Even Attila is Gothic. The use of a subject people’s language is not unknown – the Incas, for instance, employed Quechua, the language of a conquered people, known by the largest number of people within their territories (Ostler 2005: 355–67). Gothic was the only literate language spoken natively in Hunnic Europe. Although the Huns appeared uninterested in literacy, the prestige and importance of literate Gothic was considerable under their rule. 5.1.3 Post-Hunnic Germani When, after Attila’s death, the Huns rapidly lost control of their subordinates, new ‘nations’ were formed. These often shared a name with a pre-Hunnic people. But their ethnic and linguistic make-up would have been different. This was also true for ‘Goths’ or ‘Franks’ or ‘Langobardi’ entering the Latin-speaking world (Heather 1991: 327–8). These new arrivals had come into considerable contact with the Romans; indeed, many had probably served in the Roman army and spoke some Latin. These people were no longer tribal, and were likely to follow powerful leaders who had a plan to bring them loot, land and a chance to build a safer, perhaps more ‘Roman’, life. Given the ethnic mixing and the considerable linguistic ability present, it is unsurprising that families or small groups could shift from group to group without difficulty. Thus the first great ‘invasion’ of the western Empire in 405–8 included groups calling themselves Suevi, a (West) Germanic group, Vandals (under two separate leaderships as the Siling and the Hasding), an (East) Germanic group and, at first predominantly, the Alans, an Iranian group. After a sojourn in Gaul, these groups settled in Hispania, the Alans holding most territory. Due to a successful Roman reconquest, only a group calling itself Vandal remained an independent unit in south-east Spain, eventually migrating to North Africa. Were all these ‘Vandals’ Vandals? Certainly, their cultural and linguistic traits – ‘Arian’ Christianity, the use of an (East) Germanic dialect – suggest the Vandals were dominant; these Vandals are likely to have contained Alans and Suevi, however. This uncertainty does not even touch upon the ethnolinguistic composition of these ‘peoples’ before the migration. 5.1.4 Germanic pre-invasions literacy There was some Germanic literacy, leaving aside for the moment that of Gothic. The native Runic futhark was used from at least the second





Christian century, employed to carve in wood, bone and stone and to engrave metal. These were, of course, laborious processes employing letters which were angular and linear; the media involved must not have encouraged lengthy inscriptions or spontaneous scribbling. 5 The origin of the runes is contentious. Most letters resemble those of the Alpine alphabets mentioned in Chapter 3; but the earliest runes, with the exception of a few inscriptions from south-eastern Europe, are found in what is now Scandinavia – particularly Denmark (Looijenga 2003); they are most common there throughout the late antique and early medieval period. The distance from Denmark to the limes is considerable. Nevertheless, the similarities are so striking that a connection seems inescapable. Roman cultural items have been found far into Germania (for instance, the weapons deposit at Illerup in Jutland [Wells 1999: 4–6], although weapons dumps are also found closer to the frontier). At the very least we can use the runes as an example of contact (direct or indirect) between the literate Mediterranean world and the north not controlled by the Roman authorities. In the extant Germanic mythology the runes are associated with powerful magic. It is reported, for instance, that Odin hanged himself upside down and remained dead for nine days merely to discover their secrets (Buchholz 1968). Yet necromancy is not central to the inscriptions which have survived. As we might expect, these largely record ownership or commemorate the dead. Both might have some magical quality, but the evidence is not overwhelming.6 It is interesting that Wulfila, fourth century translator of the Bible into Gothic, did not use the Gothic equivalent of write (originally ‘carve’), instead preferring meljan, the word for ‘paint’, which some commentators (for instance, Cusack 1998: 41) consider evidence for his wishing to avoid the pagan associations of the runes. This may well be the case, although the English use of write suggests that this was not a tremendous problem; moreover, a number of Christian English writers occasionally used runes, most notably Cynewulf. Indeed, one runic symbol, (representing // or //), is still used in Icelandic and was employed historically for other Scandinavian languages and English for sounds which Latin did not have.7 5.1.5 North-West Germanic The language of the runic inscriptions represents a rather conservative and consistent variety of a language which is neither West nor North Germanic. This North-West Germanic written language (Antonsen 2002: chapter 2) lasted for some time, in fact, almost to the point when



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West Germanic varieties, which are strikingly different from the Runic language, began to be realized in Roman script. The Runic language may have been a restricted variety handed down from rune-master to apprentices, employing self-consciously archaic features. The carver or engraver may not have been literate in the runes in the modern sense. He may instead have been reproducing a pattern associated with a particular purpose, recognizing the words and structure while not employing them according to his own language. This apparent connection between North and West Germanic language has some further cultural and linguistic support. As we have seen, in Germania Tacitus mentioned the Ingaevones, associated with the northern parts of the river valleys of the German plain (the Rhine, Ems, Weser and Elbe), the Frisian islands, Schleswig-Holstein, Jutland and at least some of the Danish Islands. In the introduction to his History of the English Church and People (eighth century), Bede (1968: §. 15) identifies the Saxon homeland with ‘the country now known as the land of the Old Saxons’, while the Angles came from ‘the country known as Angulus, which lies between the provinces of the Jutes and Saxons and is said to remain unpopulated to this day’. Of course, this report is too neat for the Germanic settlements of southern Britain. Some truth underlies it, however. In the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf (seventh or eighth century), the Danes, by then living on the Danish islands, are often referred to as Ingwinas, the ‘friends of Ing [the God Frey]’, apparently the same title as that given by Tacitus to the linguistic ancestors of the continental Saxons, Frisians and English. In taking over their territory as these peoples moved south, west and onto Britain, the Danes appear to have taken on their names and attributes. Although the relationship between these peoples was soured in the Viking period, old connections and kinships were remembered before this. Indeed the Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk in England may provide evidence of connections between that English kingdom and Sweden.8 It is likely that, before the movements associated with the Roman collapse began, no absolute split between North and West Germanic existed; rather, a traditional dialect continuum was maintained.

5.2 Rome and the successor states The Roman world was by its nature settled and domesticated. Indeed, that was its attraction, compensation for the oppressive governmental policies and increasingly heavy taxation. In contrast, the Eurasian plain was always in a state of flux. At times when movement there increased,





the Roman frontiers were put under extreme stress. In the third century CE, attempts by Germani to cross the Danube or the Rhine, whether to plunder or to settle, were coupled with instability at the Roman centre. The Empire nearly collapsed, but was rebuilt as a largely military, practically totalitarian, state led normally by military emperors, generally from provincial (often Balkan) backgrounds, wrapped in a pious, authoritarian patriotism (Williams 1985).9 The Empire began to be divided into two sectors. Following the ‘revolution’, the administration increasingly abandoned Rome in favour of the new eastern capital, Constantinople, and cities closer to the western frontier, such as Milan, Trier and Ravenna. Many Germanic warriors now gained rank in the Roman military. In many ways the Imperial court and administration had become ‘barbarianized’ long before its ‘fall’. It is impossible to quantify the extent to which Germanic and other languages were used in the Imperial court. For instance, Stilicho, who led the western armies from 395 to 408 as Patrician, essentially dictator, was the son of a Vandal immigrant; a more Roman figure from the period is difficult to find, particularly in the Augustan iconography with which he presented himself and his (Roman) family. It is instructive to note, however, that he was rapidly executed when he ceased to be effective politically and militarily (admittedly often the fate of political generals). Stilicho would have used Latin in his working and personal life; but he would probably have used his native dialect when talking to his fellow Germani in the army. Romanization can occasionally be observed. Ammianus Marcellinus, discussing the Alemanni (who had begun to infiltrate Gaul in the late fourth century), comments on the unusual name of one of the Alemannic leaders: He owed his name to the fact that his father, who was initiated into certain Greek mysteries during a long period as a hostage in Gaul, changed his name to Serapio from that of Agenarich, which he had been given at birth. (Ammianus Marcellinus 1986: §.16:12.21) In relation to this kind of hybridization, Geary (1988: 23) comments: ... Germanic-Roman commanders were anything but illiterate and uncultured barbarians. They moved in the highest and most civilized circles of the Empire, some even comfortable with such people as Bishop Ambrose of Milan and corresponding with rhetoricians



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Long before entering Roman territory permanently, the world view and language use of at least the Germanic elite had been altered and conditioned by contact. For instance, according to Tacitus, the ‘turncoat’ Arminius, whose forces had annihilated a major Roman force in central Germany in 9 CE, later used Latin when speaking to his brother Flavus, who had remained loyal to Rome, presumably because they had a Roman audience (Murdoch 2006: 144–5). It should not be assumed that the barrier between ‘German’ and ‘Roman’ was static or permanent. This is important when we consider the termination of Roman central control and what followed. 5.2.1 Rome: ‘Decline and fall’ What happened in the Latin-speaking Europe during the period between 400 and 900 is much debated by historians. Some see this period as representing a fairly stable evolution from late antique political and economic organization into a culture which saw the early flowering of the feudal structures which would eventually crystallize as nation states. Others, such as Ward-Perkins (2005), have argued for a much more catastrophic transfer from Roman ‘civilization’ to Barbarian hegemony. The dichotomy between evolution and collapse during this period appears to be largely connected to place. Although nowhere in the west remained unaffected by the economic, cultural and political changes of the late and post-Imperial era, some places were more affected than others, a point made forcefully by Wickham (2005). Roman culture and educational practices survived the disappearance of central authority well in Hispania, southern Gaul and Italy (Riché 1976). It was later events, such as the war of attrition between invading East Roman and Gothic forces in Italy, particularly in the region around Rome, which fatally undermined the former ways. Yet even this collapse or survival is patchy; the promotion of Latin learning in the court of Charlemagne can be viewed as heir to the curricula (both civic and monastic) of the former Imperial territories. Certainly, the traditions of Roman rhetoric, taken to florid extremes, continued in Frankish Gaul (Wood 1990), even if the level of knowledge of Classical Latin structures was not always perfect.10 Nevertheless, the revival efforts – of religion primarily but also letters – carried out by Columbanus and his less well-known Gaelic contemporaries within the Merovingian world (Fletcher 1997: 141–60),



such as Libanus. They were pagans, it is true, but their paganism was that of the senatorial aristocracy ... rather than the religion of Free Germany.

discussed below, should not be downplayed. This does not mean that the baptismal formula Boniface was so concerned about in Merovingian Bavaria – baptizo te in nomine patria [for patris] et filia [for filii] et spiritus sancti – was representative of Francia as a whole, rather than a frontier province (Fletcher 1997: 277). All of this took place under rulers who, at least originally, did not speak Latin; Latin was the language of their chanceries, however. 5.2.2 Barbarian successor states Perhaps the Germanic grouping which made the greatest impression upon the collapsing Western Roman Empire was the Goths. At the high point of their success, both Hispania and Italy were under their direct rule, while the Gallic successor states were either allies or tributaries of Gothic Italy; Vandal North Africa was also an ally. The Roman west never came closer to reunification than it did in this period. But within two hundred years the Gothic kingdoms had been effaced, while other Barbarian groups, such as the Franks and the Langobardi, prospered. Nevertheless the same processes were essentially at work in all the Barbarian kingdoms. When Theodoric seized power in Italy around 492–3, his followers, not necessarily all Goths, did not have deep roots in Italian soil. But due to Theodoric’s character as much as anything else, Goths and Romans intermingled rapidly. Perhaps because Gothic was a written language, evidence exists for Romans learning it (Moorhead 1992: 86–7). As with other Barbarian languages, this attraction was particularly powerful for Romans interested in joining the Gothic army. Many upper-class Goths, both male and female, were also able to read and write Latin. Theodoric’s nephew Theodahad was the author of religious and philosophical works, as well as verse, in that language (Moorhead 1992: 87–9). Theodoric himself could speak (and probably write) both Greek and Latin. He is reported to have said that ‘a poor Roman plays the Goth, a rich Goth the Roman’ (Heather 1996: 257). It is likely, therefore, that even during his reign Romans and Barbarians were beginning to merge. There is some evidence, however, that the king wished to maintain a separate identity for the Goths. Partly this was through appearance (the retention of beards and longer hair); partly through separate legal codes; partly through the continued Gothic adherence to a non-Trinitarian Christianity (‘Arianism’), marking Theodoric’s followers off from the Catholic Romans (Abrams 2008: 107–8; Heather 1996: 245). Theodoric may have attempted towards the end of his reign to stop Gothic youths




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having a classical education (Heather 1996: 260), possibly to protect their manliness. To what extent this was rhetoric is difficult to tell; what can be said, however, is that it did not work. Although some writing of Gothic was maintained up to the kingdom’s collapse a generation or so after Theodoric’s death, and the reverence the Gothic scriptures received continued, Gothic speech would have disappeared from Italy even without Justinian’s ‘reconquest’. Visigothic Hispania provides an idea of what this end might have been like, since its collapse during the Moslem conquest of the peninsula was later in the cultural cycle than the end of Ostrogothic Italy. Heather (1996: 280) suggests that ... as the ‘strangeness’ of the intruding Goths disappeared ... it became increasingly impossible for either party to tolerate the existence of parallel and separate Churches. Thus, as the cultural and linguistic identity of the Goths collapsed in the face of Hispano-Latin models (Hispania was a major centre of Latin scholarship in the post-Imperial period), so did their other prop, ‘Arianism’. Indeed, this was demonstrated in the final act of the Hispanian non-Trinitarian bishops where, at the Third Council of Toledo (587), they signed their accession to Catholicism with Latin (not Latinized) names (Heather 1996: 296). But these territories and the peoples who lived in them did not become wholly Roman, even as their language became solely Latin. Gothic elements – names in particular, some traditions and a considerable amount of vocabulary – continued after the language shift in the now merged culture. But the language shift was final. The only region where Germanic languages were successfully maintained within the Empire was along the former Rhine and Danube frontiers, associated with the Franks, Alemanni and Bavarians and later ruled (directly or indirectly) by the Frankish Empire. Where previously Latin was the dominant language (with the probable exception of the area round the mouths of the Rhine), Germanic varieties were now spoken on the ‘Imperial’ side of the rivers for up to 200 kilometres (and, historically, were spoken somewhat further into the territory of Latin).11 Of course, the shift was not effortless or immediate. Roman cities in the new Germanic zone, including Cologne, Trier and Regensburg, had native Romance speakers for centuries; indeed, Latin grave inscriptions continued for a considerable period after the Germanic takeover (Fletcher 1997: 131). The boundary between the Romance and Germanic languages can still




be ragged, particularly in the Ardennes and Eifel hills (Millar 2004). Indeed, many of the dialects spoken in the new settlement areas demonstrate some Romance influence, the most striking of which being the use of the equivalent of what as a relative pronoun – natural in Romance languages, but not in Germanic:12 language contact must have been intimate and long-lasting. It is likely large-scale movement of peoples took place in the frontier zone with Germanic ‘toppling’ Romance, whether through weight of numbers or access to economic and political power. Moreover, proximity to Germanic speakers who had never been directly influenced by Latin culture would have encouraged the retention of the ancestral languages by those who had been partly Romanized. Beyond this Germanic pale, however, the Frankish world retained its Latin language and, to an extent, its Roman culture. Why was this the case? After all, Francia was the only really successful continental Germanic successor state. Despite an early flirtation with ‘Arianism’ (James 1988: 123), later airbrushed by the regime’s publicists, the Frankish ruling class had quickly entered the Catholic camp, unlike the more sophisticated Goths and Burgundians. Moreover, the Frankish kings, whether Merovingian or Carolingian, all appear, to a late date, to have been Germanic speakers – indeed, may have been considered royal because of this ability. The Carolingians came from an area – north-east Lorraine – which remains partly Germanic in language today and was almost entirely so in the recent past. Gaul also became Francia, France, from a very early period in its post-Imperial history. Nevertheless, the language of the Franks had little long-term success beyond the original Germanic frontier. Partly this is due to the intellectual and cultural force of Latin. Although the northern Gaul which Childeric and his son Clovis pacified in the late fifth and early sixth centuries was a power vacuum, a simplified form of the former Roman administrative structure survived, particularly at the urban level. There was considerable slippage in both directions, with ‘Romans’ becoming ‘Franks’ in name and warrior occupation, and vice versa. Although the Franks had largely maintained their mores, dress code and laws, Clovis’ Salic Franks were Romanized. They had lived within the Roman limes for at least fifty years before their expansion (James 1988: 57–8); this was also true for Frankish tribes in the Cologne area and elsewhere. Functional bilingualism was probably the norm under these circumstances; it certainly would have been among the higher-ranking Franks who interacted with Roman military officials on a daily basis.




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Moreover, the Frankish chieftains settled with their retinues across northern and central Gaul appear to have quickly adopted the local lifestyle. One generation or more after the seizure of power, close ties had developed between landholding families, no matter their origin. Intermarriage was common; inevitably, the local form of Latin would have displaced Frankish in almost all domains. In the Frankish retinues and guard units, similar developments happened; they would have been almost entirely unremarked. This happened very early with some individuals. The churchman and rhetorician Sidonius wrote to the Frankish Count of Trier, Arbogast, in 470, praising his written Latin, albeit with the sting, ‘If you extend these [abilities] by constant reading you will discover for yourself as each day passes that the educated are no less superior to the unlettered than men are to beasts’ (Cusack 1998: 67). In the highest nobility and the royal family, however, some bilingual ability was encouraged by their having properties in both Germanic and Romance-speaking areas. This is also true for the Langobardic conquerors of Italy, even though their relationship with local people was rarely as comfortable as that enjoyed by the Franks in Gaul or even the Ostrogoths a century earlier in Italy. Even after the collapse of the Lombard kingdom, Paul the Deacon reports, ruling-class Langobardi continued to use their own language on occasion, while using Latin as an everyday language (Christie 1995: 98). The Church was altered by this process, to the extent that some commentators speak of a ‘Germanization of Christianity’ (Russell 1994). A strong association developed between the Church and the local nobility, with local landowners taking a proprietorial view of the local Church, often staffing it with close relatives, a process leading to the Edelskirche ‘noble church’ or the Eigenkirche ‘personal church’. At higher levels, this tendency led to ties of kinship or region between magnate and bishop and monarch and archbishop. There must have been considerable crossfertilization between lay and religious cultures, leading to local cults of saints, but also an interest in secular culture – particularly, although not entirely, as the Anglo-Saxon riddles demonstrate, the heroic culture of the nobility. Of course factionalism has been endemic in the Church since the earliest times. This new system was different, however, primarily due to the Church’s near-monopoly on education. This noble-clergy symbiosis made certain the survival of a great deal of non-religious vernacular literature. This clerical interest in secular culture was not universally shared or loved, of course. Alcuin of York (died 804), a central figure in the




‘Carolingian Renaissance’, in particular in relation to the ‘new pronunciation’ of Latin, was shocked to hear that the monks in his home community, rather than listening to the Psalms or the Lives of Saints while eating, were hearing the native songs of their – largely aristocratic – culture. He fulminated: ‘Quid Hinieldus cum Christo?’: ‘what does Ingeld have to do with Christ?’, itself a development of the question of Tertullian (active in the late second and early third centuries), ‘what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ (Kennedy 1999: 167–8). For those of a Puritanical bent, the Eigenkirche symbiosis was, at the very least, not useful and could be harmful.13 To some extent they were successful in their prohibition. Through references from Beowulf and a few other poems we know that Ingeld was the main character of a tragic tale of love and revenge; we have no central text to give us the details, however. Some stories may well have remained oral not because there was a taboo about writing them down, but because they may not have been considered ideologically acceptable. There seems to have been a sliding scale in this, with Ireland (and, later, Iceland) having scribes who were the most relaxed about producing vernacular secular texts, through Anglo-Saxon England to the continental Germanic peoples. The same problems must regularly have cropped up everywhere, however. Nevertheless, writers like Ælfric (active in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries), while producing work only concerned with religious matters, made sure that the language of their homilies and sermons bore stylistic traces of the influence of vernacular literature.

5.3

Latin and Romance: Development and tension

It was not genetic descent but rather a commitment to Romanitas which marked off a ‘true Roman’; they were to be found everywhere in the Empire. This connection and broad-based homogeneity can be seen in the career of St Martin of Tours (died 397), raised in Pannonia but, eventually, a church leader in western Gaul. This degree of transferability would never be possible again in Europe. Naturally, with the spread of Christianity, this feature became a further indicator of Romanitas. The central feature of Romanitas was the use of Latin in speech and, particularly, writing. But when the ancestors of the present Romance languages were first written, they appear already to be at a considerable remove from each other. The first written realizations of, say, Ibero-Romance, ancestor of Portuguese, Castilian, Galician and (partly) Catalan, in the tenth century had already diverged from the common popular Latin of the Empire. This impression would be even greater




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if we factored out the overwhelming influence of classical Latin, the written norm in these communities (when Arabic had not assumed this role), over these stumbling attempts. The same was probably true for early writers of Gallo-Romance; it would have been even more the case for any potential writer of ItaloRomance. Indeed, the fact that Italian gained full written representation considerably later than French and Occitan probably illustrates the relationship between spoken and written languages in Italy. What makes the relationship between classical and local varieties difficult to analyse is the fact that many of the differences both between the various Romance varieties and between popular and classical Latin were already occasionally present in writing by the second century CE. There is, in fact, a long-standing debate over when the Romance language separated from Latin. The early bilingualism theory holds that, from around the end of the second century BCE, when classical Latin developed, a proto-Romance variety existed, always distinct from, and gradually becoming discrete in relation to, classical Latin; in other words, a form of diglossia existed, with classical Latin as the High variety, proto-Romance as the Low variety. Classical Latin was therefore maintained as a language of literacy, with, from the fourth century on, no native speakers. With the contraction of literacy in the post-Imperial period, knowledge of Latin became confined to a small part of the Romance-speaking population, so that, eventually, the need arose for the use of the previously only spoken variety in writing. In support of this view is the reference in a range of documents from the sixth century on to lingua romana rustica, ‘the Roman(ce) language of the countryside’, the language used by ‘rustic’ people (and also by missionaries and priests when preaching to them, suggesting a linguistic barrier between city and country people).14 Van Dam (1985: 225–6), describing Gregory of Tours’ own awareness of his limited Latinitas, comments: Gregory at least had the courage to make a virtue out of necessity. Others might mockingly claim that it was preferable for a deacon to be silent than to read the lessons rustice, in an uncultured manner; Gregory insisted instead that God preferred simplicity: ‘God has chosen ordinary people, not philosophers’. The opposing register continuum theory, supported with differences of emphasis by Wright (1982, 2002) and Banniard (1997), claims that, whilst there had inevitably been a distancing process between writing




and speech in the late Imperial period, native speakers interpreted this as a matter of register rather than shifting from one distinct variety to another. Since the breadth of the Latin continuum suggested by this viewpoint was considerable by the post-Imperial period, it is inevitable that, on occasion, more ‘Romance’ usages are regularly found in Latin texts. It is striking, however, that these usages are often found side by side with examples evincing classical grammar. If we subscribe to the view that there were no native speakers of ‘Latin’ by this period, then it follows that what we have here are examples of the tension felt by native speakers of the Romance varieties in writing a highly prestigious close relative, whose grammar is ‘foreign’ and can only be reproduced partially, and with concentration. This would be quite likely in a situation where Latin literacy did not define the governing elite to the extent that it had in the past. From this point of view, what is present would be an only partially understood grammar reproduced by a non-native speaker (or, perhaps, a speaker of a historically discrete variety of the same language). But even with this inability, classical Latin might not have been considered separate. All literate speakers would have been able to switch across a wide range of written and spoken registers. A fifth or sixth century scribe in Gaul, using features of classical Latin grammar such as the ablative or genitive cases which were no longer present in the spoken ‘Latin’ of the region in which he was born and that of where he lived (if different), would have learned these case markings, and normally reproduced them ‘correctly’ from an early age, not considering them ‘foreign’ (although ‘slips’, such as using prepositions in their modern, ‘Romance’, senses, reveal the presence of strikingly different spoken registers underlying the monolithic weight of ‘Latin’). This interpretation does not permit the phonological changes which we know were, by the seventh century at least, beginning to distinguish varieties of ‘Romance’. For instance, the ancestors of French, Spanish and Portuguese developed a rule that /s/ could not be used word initially. Thus Latin scola ‘school’ is escuela in Spanish and école (with an additional change) in French, but scuola in Italian. A scribe must have exercised considerable self-control to remember not to represent in writing such a central feature of his phonology. The register continuum hypothesis assumes that there was no direct connection between Latin pronunciation and orthography from an early period. There is nothing inherently unusual about pronunciation and orthographic representation taking different routes. Indeed, the connection between English or French orthography and how the




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language is pronounced is tenuous, to say the least. With French, this lack of correspondence slips over into inflectional morphology, with verb inflections in particular being learned which have no connection to their pronunciation. The register continuum model seems, therefore, a valid one. The world which the Germanic ethnic groups dominated politically and militarily must have appeared strikingly monolingual and culturally monolithic in comparison with their own, even when, as with the Goths, some speakers had vernacular literacy. Indeed, while the relative number of Romance speakers in relation to Germanic probably explains the eventual triumph of Latin-derived varieties in all but the Imperial extremities, the fact that literacy was associated almost totally with one variety of one language and that one culture to a very large extent was associated with a particular religious tradition which had the backing and prestige of what remained of the Imperial apparatus must explain the relative lack of vernacular literacy evinced for Germanic peoples in the former empire and, where Germanic varieties did begin to be written, their relative poverty both in terms of number of examples and subject matter. This must have been amplified after the conversion of the ‘Arian’ Germanic peoples to Catholicism in the sixth and seventh centuries, making their former vernacular literacy ideologically suspect. In fact, it is one of the central ironies of the separation of Romance from Latin that the earliest examples of Romance appear, as in the case of the Strasbourg Oaths, to be something approaching the pronunciation ‘cribs’ which modern politicians, bureaucrats and dignitaries employ when obliged to speak a variety not fully known to them. Throughout this period, therefore, we can see that both centripetal and centrifugal forces are at work in the development of language use. The authority of Latin continued, but was attenuated by the lack of a single central authority (with the exception of the Church). The new Germanic overlords of much of Latin Europe were placed in the strange situation of being both the guardians of their peoples’ cultures and the successors to Imperial homogenization. It was from this combination that new centripetal forces – in particular that of the Franks – would emerge.

5.4 Britannia after Rome In stark contrast to the Continent, near complete breakdown occurred in Roman Britannia. Given the murkiness of the period, we will probably never know what happened linguistically in Britannia during the





fifth and sixth centuries. According to contemporary records, the province was gradually set adrift from the Empire from the start of the fifth century.15 The legions in Britain, under attack from Ireland, Scotland and the Continent, were removed either because their leader planned a bid for central power or because the continental frontiers were considered more important than the integrity of Britannia, probably always a sideshow. The island which the legionaries left was strikingly different from that invaded and conquered in the first century. In the western and northern Highland Zone (Jackson 1953), more easily exploited for herding than agriculture, the Roman presence was largely military. As for the contemporary Rhine frontier, considerable connections existed between local people and soldiers. Without the local people’s acquiescence, the soldiers’ situation could become grim. Like other frontiers, the origins of the soldiers were cosmopolitan. Inevitably, the military lingua franca was Latin; this was probably also true for the locals. But soldiers stationed for decades surrounded by the same people must have learned some local language, particularly if they settled down with a local woman. Utilitarian, pidgin-like, varieties of a range of languages, principally Latin, would have been the norm for everyday communication. In the southern and eastern Lowland Zone, different linguistic ecologies existed, resembling contemporary Gaul, but less forcefully. The British cities – particularly London and York – were vibrant and cosmopolitan. Latin was the prestige language, although some knowledge of British must have been normal. In the smaller towns Latin would also have been known, perhaps largely as a formal language, by the leading citizens and merchants, primarily to demonstrate their Romanitas; the same would have been true for villa owners. The rural working people – free and unfree – would probably have had some Latin, since they would occasionally come into contact with monolingual visitors. British remained their primary language, however (although see Schrijver 2002 and 2007, where the claim is made that Latin was demographically dominant in at least the south-easternmost parts of the Lowland Zone). In 410, the story goes, the final legions were withdrawn and the Roman citizens of Britannia told to look to their own defences. In southwestern England, something approaching Roman provincial life continued, possibly under the protection of the private retinues of important citizens (now aristocrats and monarchs) and the remnants of regular and auxiliary Roman units who had adapted their employment negotiations



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to suit the new, cash-poor environment (Higham 1992). Elsewhere, however, change away from Imperial patterns was probably rapid. For a while at least the cities maintained some form of central government, as did some regions. When Germanus of Auxerre visited Britain in 429 and sometime in the 440s, he found something approaching Roman civic life – including knowledge of Latin – in the parts of the former province he visited. A hundred years later – perhaps even fifty years later – this would have been most unlikely, although it is still worth noting that the Latin of Gildas, the author of De Excidio Britanniae, ‘on the ruin of Britain’ (mid-sixth century), demonstrates knowledge of classical models (Jackson 1953: 119–21; see also Blair 2005: 15). He called Latin nostra lingua ‘our language’. In fact, Gildas may have had the equivalent of ‘tertiary level’ education from a rhetor (Lapidge 1984: 40–8). Even before the withdrawal, some Germanic speakers probably already lived around the estuaries of south-eastern Britannia. It would have been too difficult to trace every straggler; easier just to let a gradual, largely peaceful, infiltration take place. Moreover, considerable numbers of Germanic mercenaries were already in Britain by the fourth century; it is likely that some of these remained after the withdrawal, looking for employment from the small-scale successors. In the two to three generations following the Roman retreat, these Germanic settlers and their successors changed the course of British linguistic history. In the traditional account, given by Bede in the eighth century, a certain Hengest (along with his brother, Horsa) was invited into Britannia as a mercenary by the tyrant Vortigern in order to ‘pacify’ some of Vortigern’s (British) enemies, in return for the island of Thanet, off northern Kent. Hengest demanded more and, along with increasing numbers of his countrymen, took over Kent and the country around. The English conquest had begun. Moving beyond folk memories, the traditional account has it that the English settlers were derived from three Germanic nations: the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Procopius of Caesarea, active in the middle of the sixth century, maintained the ‘three nations’ schematization, while replacing the Jutes with the Frisians. The Jutes were said to have settled in Kent, the Isle of Wight and the surrounding Hampshire coast, while the Saxons settled everywhere else south of the Chiltern Hills. The Angles settled England north of this line, as well as the south-east of Scotland. When English history begins to be written by Bede and his successors, the seven or eight kingdoms left in England at the time fit this pattern; the evidence from the different dialects of Old English and later varieties of the language supports these divisions also. But most




of this analysis is ex post facto. We know little about the origins of the first settlers. It is unlikely that something quite as neat as the coming of Hengest actually happened; it is much more probable that, in origin, the English settlement was achieved by inexorable pressure from small-scale settlements along the south and east coasts. Nevertheless, relationships between local rulers and war bands did exist and lay behind many of the settlements. After all, Vortigern and his peers were only continuing late Imperial policy. As was the case on the Continent, the settler parties were probably a rather mixed bag linguistically. There are elements of English, a West Germanic language, which have cognates in the North Germanic but not the other West Germanic languages, such as the use of are rather than an equivalent to German sind (although forms such as sindon and synd do occur in Old English); some have even suggested similarities with Gothic (Nielsen 1989; Rösel 1962). What is likely is that the settlers’ dialects became more like each other during the next few generations, as settlements overlapped each other. New regional dialects would have developed. Kentish, in fact, even maintained its early distinctiveness. Its Middle English form (written Old Kentish was heavily influenced by other dialects) shares much with Frisian and some of the Frankish dialects of the Rhine delta and Holland. Interestingly, this connection is also demonstrated in archaeological finds, binding Kent much more closely to the Rhine than any other English territory. We cannot rule out the possibility that these similarities are a later importation from the Continent, however (Bennett 1969; Decamp 1969). 5.4.1 Fate of the Lowland Britons In the nineteenth century the view was taken that, with a few exceptions, most of what is now England south-east of the Severn, Trent and Humber, excepting Cornwall, Devon and probably other western counties, was denuded of its Celtic population during the English settlement. Disease, slaughter or emigrations were given as explanations. There is some evidence for the rise of infectious diseases in the period; the societal discord envisaged for post-Roman Britannia would certainly have encouraged their spread. No doubt small-scale warfare was endemic not only between Britons and English, but also within the two groups. Mass emigration did take place: the Breton language is a descendant of southwestern British dialects carried from Britannia during the period. But none of these ‘reasons’ gives a satisfactory explanation for the death of British in its heartland.




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One explanation is that, unlike France, there is no evidence for a British Romance language. As we have seen, outside the cities and towns it is likely that the use of spoken Latin was limited and uncommon. The archaeological record suggests that the Latin-speaking towns and villas fell into a state of collapse during the fifth century. Whether due to emigration or pauperization, the former ruling classes seem simply to disappear. There were, however, some centres, most notably Elmet in southern Yorkshire and St Albans to the north of London, where a Christian Celto-Roman culture continued well into the ‘English’ period. Even in early English settlement areas like East Anglia, small Christian communities remained, probably as subjects of the newcomers (see, for instance, Blair 2005: chapter 1 and many of the chapters in Higham 2007). The country people were left without effective rulers; the infiltrating Germanic chieftains could provide just such leadership.16 Over time, English speakers became dominant. Indeed, some organized territories, such as the land of the Hwicce at the mouth of the Severn (Yorke 1990: 9–15), undoubtedly Anglicized later, were probably Celtic in origin. But this still leaves us in a situation where Germanicspeaking settlers, peasant or warrior, were in a minority in relation to the British speakers. Why did English become the dominant, eventually the sole, language?17 English, despite being in intimate contact with British for at least two centuries, has surprisingly few British loan-words. Most are concerned with geographical features: coomb, ‘valley’, tor, ‘peak’, and a few others, mostly confined to South-West England, where British continued for much longer, along with brock, a rare word for a badger and bannock, a word used for a range of (often unleavened) breads, common in contemporary Scotland, probably reinforced by a similar Gaelic word. Many scholars have equated this lack to the English contempt for the Welsh they had conquered and their language. This was probably the case, of course: similar attitudes explain the lack of Native American vocabulary in American English. But Jackson (1953) presents another explanation. Often, when a population moves from one language to another, they carry a large part of their former language’s vocabulary with them, probably because they lack the lexical ability in their new language. Since this did not happen with British and English, there was probably a long period where British and English speakers lived side by side, with the subordinate British speakers becoming entirely bilingual. They therefore had a complete understanding of the differences between the two languages (Jackson 1953: 247–9).18




Thus the move from British to English was gradual and part of a process that made Britons Englishmen and women. How confused these distinctions became can be seen in the fact that the traditional founder of the West Saxon royal house was Cerdic, a Celtic name (Modern Welsh Caradog). Another early member of the West Saxon royal family, Cædwalla, also had a British name. There is a good chance that the family was originally British rather than English. 5.4.2 Resistance Although the English generally took over the valleys of rivers flowing east or south, they were held at the end of the fifth century on the watershed with rivers flowing west. Early commentators, in particular Gildas, make mention of an Ambrosius Aurelianus, ‘last of the Romans’, who won a great victory at Mons Badonicus against the ‘Saxons’. Tradition connects Mount Badon with Solsbury Hill above Bath in south-western England. While we will probably never be completely certain about this, the area centred on the Bristol Channel did have considerable trade with the Continent in wine and other luxury goods during the period (Higham 1992: 86–97). It is likely that at least some of the Romano-British aristocracy were able to maintain elements of their lifestyle into the post-Imperial period. This lifestyle would have included Christianity and some knowledge of Latin. St Patrick, a Briton born in the Highland Zone some time after the Roman withdrawal, was literate in Latin before he was seized, as a youth, by Irish pirates. Although his Latin is laboured, it still demonstrates that something approaching Roman education continued in Britain in the late fifth century. Indeed, his Epistola, an open letter condemning the action of a British pirate in abducting Irish catechumens during a baptism, demonstrates some command of Classical rhetorical traditions (Fear 2007). Eventually, of course, English speakers broke through into the valleys of the Severn and the Dee, thus sundering British territory into Cornwall, Wales and the northern British territories stretching up to the Scottish Highlands. But the society created in the period following the Roman withdrawal had profound implications for the later Celtic cultures of Britain.19 In the first instance, they were surprisingly Celtic. As we have seen, the Highland Zone was not ‘civilized’: the city-based life so central to Roman views of order and prosperity was practically unknown. With the Roman withdrawal, slipping back into the role of tribal chieftain, even if the tribes were not terribly ancient, must have been straightforward. Many of these worthies would have kept poets throughout the




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Roman occupation, using them to advertise their deeds and satirize their enemies. Doubtless Roman models had some influence, but the language of expression remained British. 20 Many elements of Romano-British culture in which the Lowland Zone had excelled were now found only in the Highland Zone. The extent to which they had penetrated the latter was lower; it remained nevertheless. Well into the seventh century we find Latin inscriptions on gravestones (although the Latin is often barely comprehensible [Jackson 1953: 120–1]); Welsh genealogies begin with Roman names. The petty Highland kingdoms obviously considered themselves legitimate Roman successor states. Part of this came from the Church, where Latin continued as the language of liturgy and scripture. It is unlikely that every priest was fluent in the liturgical language; nevertheless, there was a scholarly clerical tradition, with a number travelling to continental monasteries and cathedrals, returning with greater Latin skills and also manuscripts. It is unlikely that literacy existed much beyond the clergy; consciousness of its existence and its importance in legal and religious contexts was pervasive, however. Given the patronage provided by the ruling classes to poets and also to the Church (a British form of the Eigenkirche), it would be very surprising if, sooner or later, vernacular poetry had not begun to appear in writing; this will be discussed below.

5.5

Ireland and the Irish

But before that, we must consider what happened in Ireland. Although Rome would inevitably have had some effect on Ireland’s cultural development, this would not have proceeded as in Britannia, where Roman culture was a real and long-term presence. Although Irish traders – and possibly a few of the ruling class – probably learnt some Latin, this could not have been as widespread as in Britain. Indeed Ireland in the early Christian centuries would have been very frightening for those used to Roman order. A plethora of statelets existed in a constant state of normally small-scale warfare, connected with endemic cattle raiding. There were no cities, indeed few large settlements at all. To Roman sensibilities, it must have been the most Barbaric place imaginable. And yet there were elements in ancient Irish society which helped produce the first literate (and Christian) society entirely outside the former Empire. There was great respect for learning. Druids in Ireland, while having some relationship with ‘magic’ in traditional tales, seem to have been largely repositories of Irish tradition, its laws and history (Mytum




1992: chapter 3). A separate grouping was involved in the interpretation of law. Poets were greatly valued. The low-level structure of society meant there was considerable opportunity for poetic patronage. All these specializations demanded considerable memory skills. By the fourth century, memory was being supplemented by the use of ogam, a line-based writing system inspired by the Roman alphabet (McManus 1991: 1–18). But, like the Germanic runes, ogam appears only to have been used sparingly, largely for inscriptions on commemorative stones or ownership statements. The fact that it was a carved script may have discouraged casual use; ogam may also have had associations with ‘magic’, which kept its users from employing it for everyday purposes. Roman culture inevitably came to Ireland with Christianity. But it was a Roman culture mediated through other cultures and experiences. It was, for the first time, faced with a completely unRoman, but highly developed, civilization. On the Continent, most people whose Christianity was Roman were speakers of descendants of Latin. When they were not, Latin had been dominant in the area for centuries. In Ireland this was not the case. What would intelligent missionaries do? In the West, vernacular translation from biblical Latin and the liturgy was not normal by the fifth to sixth centuries. Although St Jerome’s Vulgate was itself a translation, it had become so canonized within a monolithic Latin-speaking environment that an alternative might not have occurred to missionaries (Lafferty 2003).21 Preaching, of course, was different. It was pointless without the listeners’ comprehension; Irish must have been the primary language of instruction. The new technologies the missionaries brought – in particular, the book – would have been both attractive and frightening to the native intellectuals, largely because the possibility then existed of transportable knowledge, transparent to everyone who could read. Reading between the lines, many Irish legends, not all of them favourable to the missionaries, describe the dissent and conflict caused by the coming of Christianity (Edel 2001: chapter 7). Nevertheless, it is likely that many early converts were members of the same class, who doubtless could see what their talents could produce, allied to new ideas and technologies. All, or practically all, of the scribes recording this literature were monks. Moreover, the decentralized nature of Irish life at the time meant that the nascent Church had to structure itself in a different way from elsewhere, adopting some Irish customs along with its structure.22 In the first place, monasticism became much more central to the Irish Church than elsewhere, with abbots often wielding more power than




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bishops, and monasteries either being sited close to royal enclosures or attracting incipient urbanization. At times, churchmen assumed the same roles as poets or lawyers in relation to chieftains or kings. They inevitably became a part, willingly or not, of the local vernacular culture.23 Eventually, the secular and religious literate and scholarly traditions had to become amicably disposed, as with other Eigenkirche situations (Hughes 1994). The representatives of the two traditions were often relatives or at least companions of long standing. Duffy (1997: 14) disagrees: most intellectual resources associated with pre-Christian Ireland were, in fact, in the hands of the Church. If he is correct in this, however, elements within the Church were still connected to the vernacular tradition. But the Irish went further. From at least the seventh century, monastic scribes began to record the native literature in Irish. This vernacular use occurs despite the feeling some scribes had that the end-product was difficult to read (Richter 2002: 29–30). Vernacular literature spanned a great range of genres, from religious poetry and meditations through to prose sagas, often with interspersed poetry associated with the same tradition. This last category is particularly interesting because the people described lived generally in a period set some six to four hundred years before Christianity came to Ireland. Although there are occasional references to the Faith, these are generally not judgemental on the people of the time; pagan practices and the culture of the period are normally recorded in a straightforward manner. The Christian recorders of these stories must have considered themselves part of the same culture as the people about whom they wrote. There appears to have been little sense of absolute change and rejection of the past as demonic which we find in the Roman tradition during conversion. Interestingly, however, this vernacular writing tradition, while encompassing genres such as grammatical description, along with more literary materials and the law, rarely records religious sermons and homilies. It is unlikely that anything other than Irish was ever used in preaching in Ireland (except to continental merchants and some slaves, perhaps). The very clerical and monastic writers who perpetuated the poetry and story of their people in their own language must have been averse to reducing vernacular preaching to writing, a situation not unlike most, but not all, of Europe in the early Middle Ages. More striking is the lack of non-literary prose – in particular charters in Irish. The tradition of marking land ownership might not have been fully developed (Charles-Edwards 1998: 62), although a few charters do survive.





Nevertheless, the tradition of recording native literature and tradition spread from Ireland to the British-speaking parts of Britain, becoming one spur towards vernacular writing in England. From the seventh century on, Welsh writers began to record poetry and stories in the vernacular (Charles-Edwards 2008: 94–5). With Welsh writing from the period it is difficult to say whether the relatively limited amount of material found is due to the unstable histories of parts of Wales, or that there genuinely was little early Welsh written down. Sims-Williams (1998b) makes a persuasive case for the former. A similar avoidance of the use of the written vernacular in religious contexts is apparent. In the sixth and seventh centuries Ireland and its Scottish colony became major centres of Latin scholarship, including the production of new texts (Edel 2001: 64–110; Mytum 1992: chapter 4); their monasteries were renowned for clear copying, striking illustration and dispersion of many monks. In popular histories, Irish monks during this period are portrayed as missionaries, remedying the corrupt practices of the continental church. But Irish monks probably did not see themselves so. Rather, they were on peregrinatio, a perpetual wandering, an exile from home, family and language. But no matter their original purpose, in contact with the people of the Frankish kingdom and in Italy, Irish monks did begin to teach what, to them, was a purer form of religion; certainly part of this ‘purity’ came from a belief in the importance of Latin knowledge. Essentially, Europe’s first Christian revival was taking place. To the country people with whom they lived the call to religion came from the monk’s saintliness; to many others, however, it came through their learning (CharlesEdwards 1998). This is unsurprising. Ireland was not part of the Roman linguistic continuum. In order to learn about religion, a new language had to be learned; the ideas expressed in this second language would actually be thought about in a way that native speakers could not do without forcing themselves. From the same source sprang their Latin pronunciation, a point to which we will return when we speak of the Carolingian reforms some one hundred years later. For the Irish, the native Romance speech patterns which affected most other people’s Latin did not exist. The British, also, although for a while surrounded by Latin, were not themselves native Latin speakers. When you learn a language with few native-speaker models readily available, you are likely to pronounce it as it is written. Your pronunciation of a particular spelling may be different from a native speaker’s, however. For example, an English speaker with no contact with French would pronounce French sang ‘blood’ as



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The same appears to be true of British Latin /sa/ rather than /sa/. where, for instance, Celtic lenition meant that medicus ‘doctor’ was /mis/, as modern Welsh pronunciation tells us (Stevenson 1990: 33–4). Nevertheless, British Latin pronunciation was probably closer to earlier forms of Latin than that found in the Romance world. When Latin was brought to Ireland with Christianity, it was largely this pronunciation that was taught. 24 This was the variety returned to Francia by the Irish.

5.6

English

The relationship between the English speakers of eastern Britain and the cultural and settlement patterns of the Romano-Celtic settlers who came before differed from place to place. In some areas, settlement continued in the same places – often on the same foundations – from postRoman Britain to English occupation; in others, Roman settlements were abandoned, with new settlements nearby. This is particularly well illustrated by St Albans, where the English settlement was not quite in the same place as the Roman city. The Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The Ruin’ suggests the early English developed a sense of dread for the work of prior ‘giants’. In many places, archaeological evidence suggests a slow build from the bottom up at a local level. In a few generations peasants who could maintain a surplus from year to year, thus acquiring more land (and labourers) than their neighbours, entered the ruling class (Wickham 2005: 8.4). Like their British contemporaries, poetry and song were prized, with many people composing and performing music. Indeed, extemporizing poetry to the music of the hearp (probably a form of lyre) was common even among the most lowly members of the population, as Bede’s story of the cowherd poet Cædmon demonstrates (Bede 1968: §. 4). As some Englishmen and women became richer and more powerful, therefore, they would naturally have employed a sceop themselves: a professional poetic class was created. The English-settled areas of Britain were overwhelmingly heathen. But, by the seventh century, Francia was developing interests all around its frontiers. Kent in particular, visible from the Continent, was slipping into the Frankish sphere of influence: Æthelberht of Kent (died 616), a heathen, married a Christian Frankish princess, Bertha, daughter of King Charibert. This made Æthelberht Charibert’s ‘man’. While the loss of autonomy the adoption of Christianity entailed for the Kentish ruling house was considerable, the prestige and economic and intellectual




authority this connection brought must have been overwhelming for all progressive rulers (Higham 1997). Thus Christianity and literacy were always visible to the English. Some were literate in their own runes; traders would have come across literacy. Although many were deeply suspicious of Christianity, perhaps seeing it (not without reason) as a Frankish Trojan Horse, no one could deny its power in creating order. Æthelberht himself would fuse literacy and Christianity to replace oral law with a written code which, strikingly, was written in the vernacular. England became a major intellectual centre, its monasteries and cathedrals renowned for learning, at a time when the decline of the Merovingian monarchy in Francia was matched by the perception of decline within its church, in particular in scholarship. The English scholarly tradition came from two sources – the Irish tradition, entering England largely from the north (but also from the west: Malmesbury was founded by Irishmen) and the Frankish/Roman, entering from the south-east along with Augustine of Canterbury and his successors. Although Bede practically ignores it, it is very likely that the Christian tradition of south-western England received some British Christian influence. What followed was a synthesis of all these traditions, with the Frankish/Roman dominant (Blair 2005: chapter 1). The Irish influence was important in one central point, however: ... the Irish ecclesiastics, like the English, but unlike the Frankish missionaries, spoke a vernacular which had no basis in Latin and were therefore accustomed to learning the literary language of the church as a foreign tongue. It is possible that this experience of bilingualism was of value to them in the training of Anglo-Saxon clerics in literary skills and the consequence of this could have been that literacy had a deeper foundation in the Northumbrian church. The Irish may also have had some influence on the early development of a tradition of vernacular writing in England, although there is no clear evidence to this effect. (Kelly 1990: 39)25 Early English vernacular writing appears to follow the same course as other insular traditions. The earliest texts are glosses – cribs for readers who could not follow the scriptural text. Uniquely, legal documents – deeds and laws – often had a vernacular element to them; they were sometimes even written entirely in English. A degree of lay vernacular literacy may have existed, particularly among landowners. This might not imply great proficiency: someone needed only to recognize the




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names of places on his or her land and the terms for particular acts and their penalties; nevertheless it suggests an active interest in literacy among the lay population. Unlike in Ireland and Wales, vernacular religious texts were common in England. An eleventh-century translation of the Gospels exists (Bede is also said to have been translating the Gospel of John at the time of his death) (Lobrichon 2008: 541–3); there are many texts of the Psalms. Many sermons and homilies exist, some, such as those written by Ælfric and Wulfstan of York, tapping into the native literary tradition. With the onset of the Vikings from 800 on, however, this scholarly tradition became disrupted. Learning in northern England contracted. As the English finally began to win back momentum from the beginning of the tenth century, scholars from the southern parts of the territory, least affected by the chaos, began to clamour for a reformation, partly based on the perception that knowledge of Latin was limited among the clergy. Something unusual then happened, particularly when compared with the Latin-centred actions of the Englishman Boniface and his successors in Germany a few generations before: Latin texts began to be systematically translated into English. At the heart of this enterprise was a scholar king, Alfred of Wessex, and his court. In the preface to his own translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, a work concerned with priestly duties in relation to their congregations, Alfred makes it plain that the primary reason for the translation effort is that insufficient priests can use enough Latin to go beyond reading the Gospel and Liturgy. Rather than unconsciously slipping into heresy, it is better that matters are understood in the mother tongue by all. This view underlies the controlled nature of the project – translations should be officially produced by the centre. The same idea supported the production of a considerable number of sermons and homilies during the tenth and eleventh centuries. It provided parish priests with a library of homilies for particular occasions given the seal of doctrinal approval. This was effective, because some tenth- and eleventh-century homilies were still being used in the twelfth century (Millar and Nicholls 1997). The enterprise was given considerable encouragement by reforms in Benedictine monasticism. All of this smacks somewhat of a pragmatic, second-best, solution. But Alfred also initiated an ongoing history of the English people, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Again, its production was centralized, with yearly entries being broadcast from Winchester (later, Westminster) to the monasteries and cathedrals which housed a copy. The Chronicle acted as propaganda, portraying the history of England as the rise of Wessex, its




resistance to the Danes, and its eventual ‘reconquest’ of England. This propaganda needed a lay and clerical audience literate in English (or participating as listeners). English was also used for literary purposes from an early period (although few early copies exist). Texts deal with heroic themes from the Germanic past, such as Beowulf and the Finnsburh fragment, or contemporary events, like The Battle of Maldon; others seem like poetic aidesmemoires, such as Deor. A Christian heroic tradition existed, including Cynewulf’s Andreas and Crist and the anonymous Dream of the Rood. Creative prose also exists, although this seems largely to be translation; we might see the Chronicle and some of the homilies as the beginning of a native creative prose tradition. In the tenth century, descendants of Alfred bound almost all of the English-speaking territories together. The effective royal chancery, along with the vernacular writing initiatives already mentioned, led to the centre’s dialect – West Saxon – being imitated in other dialect areas. In a sense, this represents a form of standardization – often termed the West Saxon Schriftsprache ‘written language’. The small numbers of literate people at the time makes this more likely to be a micro-standardization (Millar 2005).

5.7

Frankish reforms and the insular input

During the eighth century, the fragmented Frankish territories were united under a new Carolingian dynasty. By the time Charlemagne (742–814) gained complete control in 771, the Carolingians were already involved in Italy; he proceeded to exercise genuine authority over southern Germany as well as ‘liberating’ Catalonia from its Moslem rulers and brutally Christianizing the continental Saxons. At the height of Carolingian power, the entire Christian Latin world, with the exception of Hispania and the British Isles, was united, for the first time since the fifth century. One of the hallmarks of Carolingian rule was the desire for centralization and uniformity across their territories. Significantly, the Carolingian empire was nearly identical with the territory where Papal authority was recognized. It was in the interest of both the Papacy and the Carolingians to create a new empire, particularly because of the perception of people at the time of the danger of Moslem raiders (and settlers) in Italy and France and of Scandinavian, Magyar and Alan raiders to the north and east. Suspicion of the Greek world, particularly in the aftermath of the iconoclast controversy, inevitably resulted in the throwing together of temporal and spiritual powers. In this new




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alliance, uniformity and an entrenched orthodoxy – as well as orthopraxy – was central. Language use was an implicit part of this policy. As we will see, however, this homogeneity was merely an intensification of other Merovingian tendencies. Separate religious rites had developed throughout the Romance world, due to the loss of central control and communication difficulties. When central control re-emerged, it became evident that the forms of Latin used from place to place were divergent. Moreover, there was considerable anxiety over the literacy of the clergy. In the linguistically Germanic parts of the empire, these problems were exacerbated by most clergy being speakers of a Germanic language. While this had obvious and considerable advantages for their preaching, it meant that the leap to the Latin lingua franca of the Church was far greater than for those in Romance areas. Boniface (died 754) was not alone in being shocked by the mangling of Latin formulae in rural Germany. Indeed, Boniface himself can act as an exemplar for the endemic problems with Latin. His initial consultation with Pope Gregory II over his mission to Germany was conducted in writing because, while the Pope and Boniface could understand each other’s Latin sufficiently that they could conduct casual conversations, the nuances necessary for a theological discussion made the possibility of even temporary misunderstanding damaging to the standing of either (Wright 2002: chapter 7). Something obviously needed to be done to achieve greater uniformity. It is significant that many major church and educational figures of the time, including Boniface, were either English, including Willibrord (died 739) and Alcuin (died 804), or educated by Englishmen, such as Hrabanus Maurus (died 856). As we have seen, a Latin pronunciation, based on pronouncing every letter (albeit occasionally in ‘Celtic’ ways), developed in Ireland and was re-exported to England. Perhaps because Latin was solely a learned tongue, Latin literacy levels grew from fairly limited beginnings in St Patrick’s simple Latin to the near-classical Latin employed in Iona and elsewhere. Furthermore, the grammatical tradition developed during the Imperial period was elaborated for learners rather than transposers. Ironically, what acted as nemesis of the organic connection between the various points on the register continuum of ‘Latin’ was not the ‘declaration of independence’ of any of the Romance vernaculars, but rather the imposition of a ‘correct’ pronunciation of Latin through the Carolingian reforms of education and the Church, enacted by scholars, most famously Alcuin, whose mother tongue did not form part of the register continuum. In the school at Aachen, and in the schools which




his disciples and forebears (like Boniface) set up across both Romance western and Germanic eastern Francia, and beyond, the new insistence on Christian classical models and usage coupled to a uniform pronunciation of Latin does seem to have raised scholarly levels. But the Latin of the Church quickly became much less like the everyday speech of the people. It took time, but gradually the Romance languages came into being as separate written entities.

5.8

Continental vernacular literature

The move towards classical Latin models threw vernacular use into sharp relief; not merely with Romance varieties. In those continental territories outside the former Empire, but now within Latin Christendom, subtle variations to the Latin-centred model began to appear. The Germanic languages began to be used in writing. In a sense, this followed the Anglo-Saxon model; Englishmen were, of course, integral to the conversion of their continental relatives. How much of what happened on the Continent is due to English influence, how much to the similarity of the process, is impossible to judge: both processes were probably present. Naturally, glosses are common: aids to understanding Latin texts were vital during Christianization. Other religious works also existed, including a High German translation, produced at Fulda, of Tatian’s gospel harmony Diatesseron. Again, proselytization and orthodoxy must have been the translation’s primary purpose, although the translator did at times take pains to employ the oral culture of his own people to aesthetic effect. Interestingly, there are far fewer vernacular sermons and homilies recorded for the continental West Germanic languages than for English, although a German translation of the Benedictine Rule has survived. But there are also ‘vernacular baptismal vows, creeds, pater nosters, confessions, oaths, boundary clauses and magico-medical material ...’ (Abrams 2008: 126). Nevertheless, there is never the breadth and depth of materials found in England. What caused this? England was at the end of a chain of authority, stretching from Rome, through Francia to Canterbury and then to the various bishops and abbots beyond. This chain easily became endangered during periods of stress, such as the Viking raids and settlements. Some ecclesiastical centres had to stand alone, with little external contact, for considerable periods. It was much more important that priests had orthodox materials to hand than what these materials’ language was. It would be wrong




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to downplay some of the problems eastern Francia suffered, particularly from the Magyars. But the chain between centres of authority and the periphery was much shorter and denser. The need for vernacular materials to maintain orthodoxy was not as crucial. More importantly, the principal centres of authority for the Frankish church were, like Aachen or Liège, on the border between the Germanic and Romance worlds, with cultural sensibilities attuned to Imperial notions of Christianity. Even the Englishmen who worked within this system recognized the superiority of Latin; most people might never have thought of using any other language for religious purposes, no matter their mother tongue. Nevertheless, Charlemagne himself had a grammar (now lost) of his native language made up, which may well have been intended as part of a religious (and political) mission (Abrams 2008: 126–7). But other features of English vernacular use were replicated on the Continent. A number of religious poems were produced, such as Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch ‘Gospel book’; significantly, Otfrid was a disciple of Hrabanus Maurus at Fulda. The poem itself was composed according to Latin rather than native models; moreover, Otfrid apologizes in his preface for his ‘barbaric and uncultivated language’. The use of High German on these occasions was intended as a gateway to Latin (Murdoch 2004a: 21–2). Although the apologia is a topos of medieval literature, the vernacular may have been seen by most as a useful and homely vehicle while the intellect was employed in Latin. Against these views are the themes of the Heliand, ‘the saviour’, an epic life of Christ written in the ninth century in Old Saxon, probably by a monk at Fulda (Murphy 1989: 27). The Heliand must be read through our understanding of the continental Saxons’ history in the century before its composition. In the course of the eighth century the Saxons had been forcibly converted to Christianity; the Christianization was carried out to serve Frankish interests. The Saxon aristocracy’s traditions were largely destroyed. The violence peaked in Charlemagne’s campaigns of the 770s and 780s, where mass baptisms under threat of force were the norm and thousands of Saxons were killed by Frankish forces. The Christianized Saxons were demoralized, with their ruling classes either wiped out or branded as collaborators. Looking back from two generations later, the Heliand poet must have regretted the violence while welcoming the result, a not uncommon sensation, probably, among the descendants of converts who have benefited from the proselytizers’ technologies and insights.




Murphy (1989) suggests, therefore, that the Heliand attempts to explain the life of Christ in ways a Saxon aristocratic audience could understand, demonstrating the gentle nature of Jesus’ faith. Written in the traditional Germanic alliterative metre, it represents an acculturization of the Gospel to the people and place for which it was written. The guests drink perry, not wine, at Cana; Jesus is born in a princely room, not in a stable; the Wilderness is a forest. Like the English Dream of the Rood, Christ heroically embraces death. But this is not mere padding: the Saxons, Murphy claims, so badly treated when Christianized, are now at the heart of Christ’s salvatory mission. A new, peaceful and loving saviour is made known to them through their own language. This Christian heroic style cannot have come from nowhere. A large part of its effect derives from its connection to the heroic style with which it is interacting. Unlike its Anglo-Saxon equivalent, however, little continental Germanic poetry survives. We know that even Latinized noblemen, including Charlemagne, were interested in hearing, and sometimes learning, native songs. Again, the literate expression of native poetry was probably not welcomed. Nevertheless, some of what survives is of considerable quality; in particular, the fragments of the Hildebrandslied. The sole surviving manuscript has considerable linguistic interest: its dialect has Saxon features, but also Frankish and even Bavarian or Alemannic forms. The scribe also appears to have been affected by English models – unsurprising for a Fulda monk – using letters like otherwise largely unknown on the Continent. The scribe’s intention might have been to make it look as ‘old’ or as ‘strange’ as possible. This suggests, then, both an antiquarian interest already present and considerable awareness of linguistic variation (see, for instance, Weiß 2005). Like English poets, these poets also wrote heroic poems on contemporary and near-contemporary events. An informative example of this is the Ludwigslied. This is a poem in the German of the central Rhine and Mosel(le) area about a French king. Its surviving copy was produced in France in a manuscript which, along with Latin material, contains one other vernacular piece about a saint in (very Old) French (Murdoch 2004b: 130–1). Since entering a monastery involved considerable expenditure, we would expect the scribe to have been at least of a gentry background. His linguistic knowledge and interests demonstrate how interconnected the Frankish ruling classes were. 26 Its subject matter again suggests the Eigenkirche (as does the Hildebrandslied in terms of its subject matter).





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In the east, the Imperial system survived the fifth century crisis. This is surprising, since, in the aftermath of the arrival of Goths in considerable numbers on the lower Danube in 376, Thrace, Macedonia and Constantinople suffered most and came closest to collapse. Given the differences in wealth between east and west, the Barbarian peoples must have been more interested in Constantinople and what it ruled. Yet due to luck, capable rulers and manipulation of the newcomers in encouraging them west, the East survived. The Eastern Empire of Justinian (died 565) was largely still the Empire of Theodosius (died 395) in world view, if not extent. This had a linguistic dimension: although most Constantinopolitans had Greek as their mother tongue, Latin remained the language of army and government, at least up to the time of Justinian (Mango 1980: 130, 140). Even after this, many officials of the Byzantine state continued to be known by the Latin titles for their positions, albeit transliterated into Greek (Mango 2002b: 10). There were also, as shown in Chapter 4, many Latin speakers in the Balkan provinces. Nevertheless, the loss of a Latin-dominant governmental partner had considerable effects upon the linguistic environment of Constantinople’s ruling classes, particularly since the Church was practically monoglot Greek. In the sixth to eighth centuries, however, the Eastern Empire went through its own near-eclipse. Speakers of Slavonic dialects began to cross the lower Danube, possibly because, as with the Huns, disturbances were happening on the Eurasian plain, in particular associated with speakers of Turkic languages: the Avars and, later, the Bulgars. The peoples themselves were undoubtedly mixed ethnically and culturally. The Slavs, originally inhabitants of the northern foothills of the Carpathians in Ruthenia, Galicia and Bukovina, moved into areas from which the Germanic-speaking leadership and considerable parts of the inhabitants had moved: the lands between Oder and Elbe, Bohemia, Moravia, (temporarily) Pannonia and the Balkans. Unlike the Germanic peoples, however, the incoming Slavs were not encouraged to leave, perhaps because the attractions of rich pickings to the west had evaporated (Barford 2001: chapters 1 and 2). Rapidly only the cities of Thrace, Macedonia and Greece proper – in particular Thessaloniki, Philipopolis and Adrianople – were under direct Constantinopolitan control. Slavonic place names are found in the Peloponnese, although Greek quickly ‘reconquered’ the southern Balkans. 27 In Macedonia, however, a divide between urban Greek and rural Slavonic developed; bilingualism must have been common.



5.9 East

The wealth of the Empire was also drastically reduced by the explosion of Moslem power in the eastern Mediterranean. The revenues from the richest provinces of the Empire – Syria, Egypt, North Africa – were cut off, along with most Roman speakers of Aramaic, Coptic and Latin (Treadgold 2002: 142). Most Slavonic settlers in the Balkans were organized under a Bulgar khanate. The Empire looked like it was on its last legs. Yet it survived, as a very different entity: Byzantium. Many scholars (for instance, Mango 2002a) would see this as a successor state to the Roman Empire rather than a continuation, its urban civilization abandoned for a feudal and rural identity; its connection with the Latin language was abandoned almost entirely for Greek. Nonetheless the people continued to call themselves Romans. 5.9.1 Imperial ‘language policy’ This change in status brought with it the recognition that the Emperor, no matter his pretensions, could not claim universal monarchy; instead, he was the ‘elder brother’ of other monarchs, teaching by example (Stephenson 2000: 33, 38, 45, 271). This had inevitable linguistic consequences, for which we must reach back to the arrival of the Goths. In the late Roman West there was limited tolerance for literacy in the Barbarian languages, particularly with the scriptures and liturgy. The situation in the east was different. The Balkan languages were not (close) relatives of Greek. Moreover, the eastern Empire was polyglot. Unlike the rather intolerant stance taken towards other languages in the classical period by both Greek and Latin speakers, the late antique east was linguistically open-minded. The streets of Constantinople were much more cosmopolitan than those of Rome had become by the late fourth century. This remained the case for centuries (Mango 1980: 86). A number of the eastern Roman languages were fully literate and, indeed, had authorized (or accepted) Bible translations (Reynolds and Wilson 1991: 55–8). Considerable literatures also existed for these languages, although little non-literary or non-religious prose. The Empire and its hinterland were perceived as one in which the Emperor, like God, was at the centre, but that hymns of praise to earthly and heavenly lords could be sung in any language. The Empire and Emperor, while pre-eminent, had different relationships, in different languages, with different peoples and places (Fletcher 1997: 341; Nicol 1979: 3–5). Nevertheless, a minority viewpoint existed among Greek churchmen opposing vernacularization; on occasion, these voices became strident (Obolensky 1994: 250–1).





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Gothic, which became a literate language in the fourth century, had, strikingly, its first literary expression in Wulfila’s Bible translation, written in a unique, Greek-derived, script (Cusack 1998: 41–2; Fletcher 1997: 76–7). This Bible, associated with an iconically Germanic ‘Arian’ theology, was carried to other East Germanic peoples – the Gepids, the Vandals and the Burgundians (Cusack 1998: 45–6; Russell 1994: 140–3). Indeed, biblical Gothic probably became the standard for these peoples. The translation is in Visigothic, but the surviving version was rescued from the collapse of Ostrogothic Italy. The language was used in letters and wills throughout Italy. What is lacking is high literature, even though the Goths were renowned as poets and singers. It may be that Gothic literacy was associated with heresy, with most manuscripts being destroyed when Orthodoxy was re-established. But while this is obviously the primary explanation for this lack, might non-religious and non-governmental use for the written language have run against the Gothic cultural grain? Or is it the other way round: did the Goths believe their native culture would literally be reduced to writing, in contrast to what seems to have been felt later by their West and North Germanic-speaking cousins? To answer this, we need to look at a later example of the literacy process in similar conditions: Slavonic. 5.9.3 Slavonic Unlike the Goths, the Slavs actually overwhelmed the Imperial frontiers; moreover, the Bulgar khanate – a Turkic elite conquered linguistically by a Slavonic population – was a potential alternative Balkan empire. But even the Bulgars, rarely friendly to Constantinople, admired its culture. Most of all, they desired the literacy which obviously lay at the centre of Byzantium’s success. Possibly for tactical reasons, Byzantine church and state was not averse to this type of transfer, even though it contradicted what had happened in the Empire, where Greek remained the sole authorized language of literacy. Yet strangely when literacy came to the Slavs, it was on the middle rather than the lower Danube. The developing state of Great Moravia, covering a large part of Bohemia, Moravia, eastern Austria, western Slovakia and Hungary, made overtures to Constantinople for missionaries, probably to maintain its integrity against the agents of the Archbishopric of Salzburg/ Passau, associated with incorporation in the Frankish Empire.28 The story is well-known. Two brothers, Constantine (known by his monastic



5.9.2 Gothic

name, Cyril) and Methodius, speakers of both Greek and Slavonic from Thessaloniki, were engaged to translate the Scriptures into Slavonic, for which language Cyril devised a new script, since Slavonic is obviously ill-suited to the Greek Alphabet (as already discovered in Bulgarian experiments with vernacular writing in that alphabet). The brothers, along with a number of disciples, took their writing system and first translations to Moravia. Although largely successful, their mission was always off balance due to the interference of the ‘Franks’ of Salzburg and Passau, who seized upon their vernacular Bible and liturgy as examples of doctrinal dubiousness. In this, Cyril and Methodius were supported by Pope Adrian II in 867–8; his successor, John VIII, was rather more lukewarm. Cyril died on his way to another hearing and Methodius was expelled from Great Moravia following a change in leadership, although elements of their mission survived, especially in Bohemia.29 Methodius and the surviving disciples sought refuge in Bulgaria (Fletcher 1997: 361–3), where their mission bore great fruit in subsequent years, spreading Old Church Slavonic as the written language of all Orthodox Slavs. But the vernacular-based culture of Great Moravia was obliterated by the Magyars over the next two centuries. When written culture returned to West Slav lands it was in a Roman alphabet. Only Latin was permitted in ecclesiastical contexts. But this account leaves out some important points. The script Cyril invented was not Cyrillic. His new alphabet, Glagolithic, was certainly based upon Greek; but no literate Greek (or Latin) speaker would have been able to tease out what the letters stood for. Did Cyril have separatist, perhaps even ethnic, reasons for choosing this divergent script – like Wulfila? Was this why it was abandoned when the mission moved closer to Constantinople and central control? The possibility is intriguing, even if we accept that, if you need a number of priests, all already literate in Greek, to use a new script for their native language, it makes sense to employ a script – Cyrillic – which resembles the script they are used to reading. Nevertheless, the only place where Glagolithic script survived for any time in Orthodox Europe – the Macedonian see of Ohrid – was associated with a resurgent Bulgarian state (Vlasto 1970a: 183). Moreover, the idea that the west became opposed to Slavonic ecclesiastical use, while generally correct, is not entirely so. Glagolithic manuscripts continued to be written in Bohemian monasteries until well after 1000 (Vlasto 1970a and 1970b). These manuscripts contain Slavonic versions of Latin, not Greek, liturgies and were taken as far as Rus’. Furthermore, priests on the Dalmatian islands continued to use Glagolithic script and Old Church Slavonic versions of Latin liturgy




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into living memory (although this illustrates tolerance rather than acceptance on the authorities’ part: there were numerous attempts to stamp out the practice in the Middle Ages and later).30 As we will see in Chapter 7, late medieval Bosnian writers went so far as to produce a distinctive script which fused Cyrillic and Glagolithic forms. Finally – and most surprisingly – although the Bulgarian authorities were generally supportive of the Slavonic mission, Greek remained the favoured (although not sole) language of public worship in Slavdominant regions (Shephard 2008: 134–5). The spread to other Slavonic languages may have had a pleasingly underground feel. Old Church Slavonic and Cyrillic spread through Bulgaria and, from there, to other Slav polities within the Orthodox zone, such as Serbia and, pre-eminently, Rus’. This can even be seen linguistically, where the east Bulgarian varieties of Preslav, then dominant intellectually, influenced the development of Old Church Slavonic well beyond this region. But there is little evidence for vernacular and secular culture underlying literacy anywhere other than Rus’. Where vernacular writing moves much beyond the purely religious sphere, as it did, for instance, in Bulgaria, what was produced was culturally Byzantine – translations of Chronicles and Encyclopedic ventures. This is surprising when we place it beside our knowledge that Serbian culture, for instance, has a long-standing epic poetry tradition (Foley 2000; Lord 1960). Nor are vernacular governmental documents recorded, as in England. This is surprising since Bulgaria in particular was often a centralized state. Was the barrier between particularly monastic clergy and the nobility who would normally have commissioned creative work so great that an independent literary culture never developed? Or is it more that the Byzantine reconquest of Bulgaria in the ninth and tenth centuries, the loss of the Bulgarian church’s autonomy and the Byzantinization of ecclesiastical and state language policies during this period led to the submersion of what had been a promising literacy venture, what was left being ossified into acceptable genres? In Dinekov (1985)’s analysis of ‘old Bulgarian literature’, he suggests that it was only in the Bulgarian Apocryphal writings and the output of the Bogomils (a Dualist sect) that a ‘democratic’ spirit prevailed. How far this viewpoint holds when stripped of its ideological basis is difficult to tell. The actual number of these ‘democratic’ texts is small. 5.9.4 Rus’ It is instructive to compare this situation to early Rus’. Kiev and Novgorod were distant from either Constantinople or Rome. Rus’ was surrounded





by heathens and grew up, except for a lifeline to Constantinople and, for a time, Bulgaria, as a largely isolated area at the end of long and sometimes perilous trade routes, even if contacts with Moslems and the Turkic Khazars, both literate cultures, are borne in mind. The written culture of Rus’ early on develops a unique flavour. Literacy, like Christianity, spread from the major urban centres eventually out into the countryside (Miller 2007: 239). But although ecclesiastical written materials predominate, often derived from elsewhere, particularly in the early literate period, chronicles, law codes and some high literature are found in Russian Old Church Slavonic. There is, in fact, some evidence of a koine developing during the period of conversion and expansion with features not found in any one East Slav linguistic unit combined with Church Slavonic features: a textbook example of new dialect formation under pressure of political and societal changes (Plokhy 2006: 31–3, 44–5).31 Nevertheless, popular understanding of scripture and liturgy, part of Cyril and Methodius’ programme, was quickly smothered by tradition. Unusually for any period before the modern, the preserved pieces of birch bark used for writing in Kiev and, in particular, Novgorod give us copious evidence of literacy among almost all levels of (urban) society.32 These may have been written by scribes, although the subject matter of some of them – shopping lists, sexual advances, and so on – count against this view. They also demonstrate considerable social variation – not something regularly found in surviving early medieval writing. 5.9.5 Greek Within the Empire itself, writers were faced with an ever-increasing problem. The twin poles of mainstream literary choice, the Attic of the Greek ‘golden age’ and the koine of the New Testament, were rapidly becoming incomprehensible through linguistic change to the non-literate (and often many of the literate). Nevertheless, their prestige in a society which revered the unchanging and the ancestral meant regular attempts at imitation of both or either of these models. Their educational system’s extreme conservatism encouraged this (Mango 1980: 126–7, 147). During times of reconstruction, such as the ninth and tenth centuries, the Comnenian restoration in the later eleventh century or the final flowering of Byzantine letters under the Palaeologae, many attempted to express a Hellenic rather than Roman (or Christian) identity.33 The Attic rhetoric employed by writers during these periods may have established a triumphalism belied by the facts (Stephenson 2000: 12). This choice was not without its perils, however (Nicol 1979: 50).



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Most extant medieval vernacular literature, whether from the Latin or Greek spheres, demonstrates understanding of learned discourse and language: literacy was, after all, a minority accomplishment (Ševčenko 1974: 77–8). But no trace of the vernacular patriotism evident in western European vernacular writing appears in Greek until the sixteenth century: the ancient is given precedence (Ševčenko 1978: 78–9). In the Romance world, the separation between Latin and the vernacular was, as we saw, gradual. On all occasions, however, a time came when, no matter how disparaged, the vernacular had to be treated as a separate entity. In the Byzantine world this did not happen. Greek inevitably changed considerably from the first alphabetic literacies of the seventh century BCE until 1453 CE. A sense of continuity was nevertheless maintained, rather as the Arabic dialects today are considered by most speakers as connected through the Classical variety. While longevity has many advantages, it does not encourage a close connection between speech and the written form, particularly when ancient works are accorded authority. An alternative did exist, however, in particular in the aftermath of the reconnection of the Byzantine world with the Frankish during the crusading era. A more vernacular style, associated with Romance ideals, led to a more contemporary Greek being employed (Jeffreys and Mango 2002). This was in many ways the culmination of an earlier Chronicle register.34

5.10 Conclusion This chapter has covered a considerable period during which many contradictory processes have been observed, on a social and sociolinguistic level. But although similar developments did not take place at the same time in different places, nevertheless a number of sociolinguistic processes can be seen at work throughout the Continent. In the first place, the near-total linguistic homogeneity – in Latin and Greek – achieved within the Roman Empire was replaced both by the intrusion of ‘Barbarian’ languages and the ‘liberation’ of the Romance languages. In the west, Germanic languages did not survive as well inside the Empire as did the Slavonic languages in the east. Nonetheless, the presence of culturally distinct speakers of languages other than Latin or Greek, often in positions of (temporal) authority, altered the selfperception of everyone in the new kingdoms. At the very least, this can be seen as an expression of the equalization of pressure in Europe, with the linguistic diversity found outside the Empire altering and lessening





the homogeneity inside, with the linguistic ecologies of both spheres being altered by the experience. Nevertheless, the centrifugal forces at work throughout the period were eventually countered by new centripetal forces. For a start, the homogenizing force of Latin and Greek, though lessened, was still considerable. Users of other languages had also learned from the ways the classical languages were maintained in their prestigious position. Moreover, a number of languages, in achieving full literacy, were also beginning to move towards standardization and thus hegemonic force. These tendencies would gain ever greater momentum in the next few centuries.



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6

6.1

Introduction

The period from around 1000–1250 is generally represented as a major shift in European culture, trade and the construction of the self. The Carolingians notwithstanding, the period 500–1000 can be analysed as one dominated by centrifugal forces, with previously connected units becoming increasingly dissimilar. In this new period tendencies of cultural and political homogenization, associated with centripetal forces, became dominant. Although much recent scholarship (for instance, Reynolds 1994) has shied away from seeing the full-blown development of feudalism as the primary cause for homogenization, there is no doubt that, in much of western Europe, power and land tenure did become concentrated. Moore (2000) goes so far as to describe the period as the ‘first European revolution’. But while the primary political and cultural units of western Europe north of the Alps became larger, they did not merge (except into the rather hazy Christendom). Indeed the distinctions that they represented gradually solidified around not merely allegiance but also language and culture. More than one centrifugal force was at work. Moreover, the new European culture which these centuries produced was still capable of considerable regional variation. And while Latin remained dominant in most written domains in the west, broadening its use through the extension of literacy, the literate expression of previously oral domains and of a new scholarly culture, the vernaculars continued to be used and, in the case of the Romance languages, approached full Ausbau status. Additionally, in the defeat of the Magyars and the Scandinavians lay the future success of western Europe. The ability of the Church and 143



Competing Hegemonies: The High Middle Ages


other large-scale organizations to popularize homogenization had led rapidly to the incorporation of the former ‘barbarian’ ruling classes into a system of interlocking loyalties across the continent. Indeed, the Normans were so successfully incorporated that they became among the new system’s greatest exploiters (although the Normans were more interested in the new arts of warfare than any other part of the new Carolingian learning).

6.2

The heartland

Francia had already been through a homogenization process under the early Carolingians, so that what happened from around 1000 on was not without precedent. Those who were taught to write were educated in a similar manner, both mechanically (in terms of script) and linguistically (in terms of the ‘reformed’ Latin diffusing from the court schools). Similar tendencies, with greater use of the vernacular, were at work in other polities, such as Anglo-Saxon England. Reforms within the Benedictine tradition from around 900 (Lawrence 2001: chapter 6) helped spread similar religious practice across large areas. But the scale of homogenization was much lower than was true later. The following sections will offer an explanation of why this was the case, and describe some of its linguistic results. 6.2.1

The Church

The early medieval Latin Church was united in liturgical language and largely in liturgy. The Roman Church was pre-eminent in the communion as the principal Christian congregation. The Pope acted as Church arbiter; his courts had primary authority. But there were practical limitations to his ability to exercise monarchical power over the Church. Ecclesiastical appointments were normally made by local civil powers following the Eigenkirche system. This made for a rather cosy relationship between church and lay authorities, leading to ecclesiastical worldliness, if not actual corruption. This connection between family allegiance and high ecclesiastical office even affected the Papacy in the early eleventh century, to the institution’s detriment. But it also encouraged an interest in vernacular culture among clerics. Radicals within the Church began to call for reform (Moore 2000; Robinson 1990). From around 1050 on, these clerics began to assume powerful positions in the Church, a process which reached its first climax in the Papacy of Gregory VII (1073–85). Power achieved, the reformers attempted to root out corruption – from venal to gross. The



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Church would be separated from the local secular power; in theory – although rarely in practice – all church appointments were to be made from Rome. The buying and selling of church offices and the descent of church offices from father to son (or ‘nephew’) would cease due to the imposition of celibacy. Naturally, the programme’s more idealistic elements were rarely completely fulfilled. Papal anti-corruption measures quickly became embroiled in the politics of particularly southern Italy and central Europe. Nevertheless, reform was itself very popular with both clerical and lay. Reformers within the Church were not averse to harnessing popular discontent in a threatening, sometimes violent, manner, a tendency which had unforeseen linguistic consequences in the development of new heretical movements. Moore (2007: 18) observes that ‘Heresy did not disappear in those years, as is sometimes said: the goals of the “heretics” became those of the church’. Part of the reform process was the creation of highly ascetic monastic orders, notably the Cistercians and Carthusians. Both orders, founded in the borderlands between France and the Empire, were specifically dedicated to the conversion of both new souls and new land: highly necessary as Christendom spread east and north. The orders themselves, however, were closely tied to their mother houses and generally recruited from similar aristocratic backgrounds (Lawrence 2001: chapters 8 and 9). The Cistercians in particular were responsible for breaking land on the boundaries of Christendom, often closely tied to local landowners as patrons (Lawrence 2001: 175). These developments had a number of contrary, often unpredictable, linguistic effects. All encouraged greater use of a centralized Latin-based system as part of a greater structure. On the other hand, the deeds of the aristocracy of whom the reformers were often members were necessarily lay, and were eventually recorded in the vernacular. 6.2.2 Centralization of education and literacy The centralization of education and literacy these changes caused cannot be overstressed. As with Boniface three centuries before, the eleventh-century reformers were not content to maintain high levels of literacy in the Church’s upper echelons; instead, all priests were taught relatively advanced Latin as a spoken and written language. The enforcement (or near-enforcement) of clerical celibacy within the Latin world, while regularly ignored on the margins, nonetheless encouraged the separation between the secular and clerical life the reformers intended. When combined with the early entry into the Church now envisaged,



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the placement of priests far from their native country and the intellectual elitism of the new monastic orders, where Latin was the sole lingua franca, never mind Latin’s cultural primacy, the celebration of a clerical culture of separateness is unsurprising. Moreover, the ‘gap’ between local Romance varieties and Latin had grown to such an extent that even partial comprehension by native speakers could not be assumed; Latin was now a foreign language to all who heard it in church. In addition, the extent to which Romance speakers numerically dominated Christendom began to wear away: a priest could be a native speaker of Icelandic, Finnish, Polish or Magyar by 1200. Latin became a language apart. Christendom had been re-centred. 6.2.3

The rise of universities

The intellectual rigour felt necessary to acquire Latin and the officially sanctioned teaching was combined among the elite with intellectual curiosity. Simplifying somewhat, the learned of the early medieval period, living in a harsh environment, were inclined to restate and protect existing knowledge rather than develop new lines of thinking based upon it. The succeeding era developed new philosophical and scientific insights, based primarily on the findings of the ancients. The Moslem influence was considerable; many of the works which inspired this new inventiveness, whether originally Greek, such as the works of Aristotle, or Arabic, such as the works of Avicenna, were translated from Arabic into Latin. The undoubted progressiveness of Moslem science and culture also entered Europe through this Latinized prism. By the twelfth and thirteenth centuries some of the cathedral and other schools began to attract scholars from beyond their hinterlands, largely through the fame of their teachers. At the same time, specialization meant that no scholar could hope to teach all arts and sciences; larger institutions were necessary. Over time, and often only semi-consciously, these prestigious schools became universities, starting in Italy and France, but quickly spreading to the richer parts of Latin Europe (Pedersen 1997). Although for long resolutely clerical, their curricula quickly transcended the purely religious, with philosophy, mathematics and law in particular being concentrated on, different universities having different specializations. Because of the religious basis of Scholasticism, the dominant progressive philosophical school, the lapsed nature of man – a barrier to understanding – had to be recognized. Southern (1995: 23) suggests, however, that the ‘new humanism’ had as one of its primary goals the preservation and interpretation of all



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that had survived the end of antiquity. This ‘new’ learning was treated as bedrock to their new science. This obeisance to the past was mocked by later scholars (Southern 1995: 24), but was essential to their world view and still allowed new, often empirical, ideas to develop. Respect for auctoritas could become a cult, nonetheless. Naturally, all formal teaching in all western European institutions was in Latin, a sensible decision, since both students and academics were from mixed backgrounds, particularly in prestigious institutions like the Sorbonne (in Paris) or Bologna. But it probably did not occur to anyone to use any other languages. Then as now, university authorities were more interested in attracting ‘stars’ than considering local linguistic and cultural requirements. Indeed, very quickly the universities developed a separate culture which was at least partly linguistic: the elitist Latin ‘gown’ stood regularly at variance to the vernacular ‘town’. Southern (1995: 140–1) suggests that the growing number of Latin-reading and writing scholars rendered earlier traditions of written vernacular use redundant. Generally, only Latin was now considered accurate enough to represent trained thought. This new, often rigorous, scholarship attracted a particular kind of young man. While doubtless most considered it enough to attend one institution to achieve appropriate worldly rewards, many chose to move from institution to institution, in theory seeking out great scholars and ideas, in practice often novelty. These goliards (Cobban 1975: 166–7) were particularly indebted to the Latin culture of Church and University, since they must regularly have strayed beyond their own dialect continuum. Without Latin, they would have been lost. This very indebtedness to the learned language inevitably further immured the scholarly world from the vernacular. Indeed it is quite possible that some scholars (and also monks placed far away from their birthplaces) ceased eventually to be native speakers of their childhood languages.

6.3 Heresy and language There were forces within society which worked against the centripetal power of the Church. Few records exist for early medieval heretical movements. Naturally, this need not mean that no heretical doctrines were espoused; nevertheless, the crisis Christendom passed through during the post-Roman period was unlikely to permit the time and energy necessary to develop active heresy (or combat it, for that matter). Preaching, in Latin and the vernacular, concentrated on the fundamentals of the faith, avoiding deep metaphysical enquiry. Gurevich





(1988) perhaps exaggerates in saying that this simplification was always present, representing the control wielded by the clergy. When we consider the complexity (in style and in the knowledge necessary for understanding) of some vernacular literature during the period, this seems unlikely. Nevertheless, the expanding Christendom of the eleventh century onwards encouraged different intellectual habits from those preceding it. Included in these developments were new forms of heresy. High medieval heretical movements can be divided into two types: intellectual (or esoteric) and populist heresy. This division cannot be applied too rigidly. Local unlettered people in areas where there was much heterodox activity, such as southern France, often did not distinguish between the two even though conceptually they were very different. Both groups were seen as ‘the poor in Christ’. Many supporters of one grouping went on to support the other, so the practice of incorruptibility and poverty may have ranked as more important than their underlying ideas (Lambert 2002). Nevertheless, differences existed and had linguistic repercussions. 6.3.1

Intellectual (esoteric) heresy

From the eleventh century on, western Europe – particularly affluent southern France and northern Italy – demonstrated a considerable increase in heterodoxy. Many intellectual heresies were home-grown, matched the questioning nature of the age and centred on issues such as what happened in the mass and what becoming one of the elect meant in relation to your own behaviour and the status of the sacraments for those not chosen. Very quickly, however, ideas emanating from the east produced the most distinctive element of their faith. European Dualism envisaged life as a struggle between two forces, generally a Good God and his evil counterpart (Widengren 1977). In its weaker forms, Dualism was not that different from Christianity in its darker moments, when the believer is required to deny ‘the World, the Flesh and the Devil’: evil is secondary to good and will eventually be conquered. The primary difference between moderate Dualism and Christianity is that no orthodox Christian would ever claim that matter was inherently evil; God said that his creation was ‘good’. Most Dualists, however, saw the world as a construction of the evil counterpart to God. Creation itself became dubious, with the God of Genesis becoming an evil (or, at best, ignorant) artisan at odds with the anti-materialist creed of God and his chosen. In its more strident forms in high medieval southern France, Dualists took these concerns to their logical extreme. In particular, absolute



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celibacy, coupled with veganism and other ascetic practices, became seen as the ideals. Dark rumours of infanticide abounded. The world and its fruits were feared. Unlike many earlier forms of Dualism,1 whose adherents were unconcerned with proselytization beyond a select few, the Dualists of the Midi were much more evangelical. The cathari, the ‘pure’, actually saw their religion as a viable alternative to the Church; a long-lasting church structure mirrored the latter organization, with equivalents to bishops, priests and the lay majority (Roach 2005: chapter 5). Elitism remained central, however. The perfecti, who had renounced all material things, were inevitably in a tiny minority in comparison with the rest of the believers (although many became perfecti as they approached death). Special knowledge was kept in the hands of the perfecti, who were perceived as separate and more godly. While this is not the Christian view, it may have been how the priesthood was perceived by some, however. The hierarchical order of the Cathars explains their use of language. While the perfecti, like the orthodox, preached in the local vernaculars if they knew them, the vast majority of their writings were in Latin and they primarily used a Latin Bible (differently selected from the canonical one), although at least some Languedoc Cathars had parts of the scriptures in Occitan (Biller 1994; Hamilton 1994); some Catholic and Cathar disputants were also more comfortable using the vernacular (Roach 2005: 72). While the Cathars obviously wanted to expand their support, they wished more deeply to keep interpretation of the holy texts and the creed in the hands of the few who not only could but were also permitted to understand. 6.3.2

Populist heresy

The contrast with the populist movements is striking. Although both forms of heresy were largely products of the disillusion many Christians felt with the established Church, populist reactions to the need for reform tended to have more in common in their beginning with the Church reform party, rather than planning an entirely new organization anchored in a new theology. Indeed, it was sometimes difficult to distinguish orthodox reformers from heterodox leaders; they worked together occasionally. Difference was of degree, therefore, rather than nature. In pockets around the Alps – especially the upper Rhône valley and Piedmont – congregations formed whose leaders found accepting either the hierarchy and sacraments of the Church or the idea of communal routes towards salvation increasingly difficult. Instead, personal salvation became central; the unjust should not preside ecclesiastically





over the just. These groups, often termed Waldensians, were essentially the first proto-Protestants (Audisio 1999; Cameron 2001). In a linguistic sense this was also the case. The Waldensians taught that believers should have direct access, in their own languages, to the Scriptures, the only necessary witness, in their view, for faith (Patschovsky 1994).2 But despite what was said and happened later, the Church itself was not necessarily against vernacular Bible translations. As we have seen, partial translations of the Bible existed for some of the Germanic languages; the distaste German ecclesiastics felt towards the use of Old Church Slavonic in Great Moravia was probably as much to do with ‘turf’ as with any ideological issue about the vernacular. What worried many orthodox thinkers were the interpretations individual reading of the Bible might produce in any language. Whether this was a fair view or not, it was honestly held. The evidence the behaviour of the Waldensian hardcore gave tended to stiffen orthodox resolve; the use of vernacular translations by heterodox groups inevitably led to the institutionalization of the Latin Vulgate as the sole acceptable version of the Bible in the West. The act of acquiring Latin was seen, therefore, as a gating mechanism for orthodoxy. For the first time the tension felt between Latin, as a classical language, and the vernacular languages took on an ideological flavour. Centrifugal identity and authority could stem from centripetal acts. The same was true, although the results were different, for the expansion of language and culture from the Frankish centre.

6.4 The expansion of the Frankish centre The other primary force for homogenization in western Europe was much less intellectually driven; rather, it was the result of technological developments coupled with the exportation of the mores, traditions and even personnel from the Carolingian centre to an expanding periphery, a point illustrated forcefully by Bartlett (1993). In many ways comparable to modern globalization, in the sense that previous cultural, political and economic diversity was replaced by a homogenized system based upon the norms of an economically dominant centre, this expansion inevitably had linguistic consequences. Even at the height of Carolingian power, Christendom was bounded to the east by the Elbe and Saale, the Carpathian Mountains and the Morava, with Orthodox and Catholic spheres of influence meeting between Croatia and Serbia. To the south, only the lands north of the Ebro and Douro in Hispania were permanently under Christian



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control; Sicily and parts of southern Italy, along with the Balearic Islands and (occasionally) Sardinia were partly incorporated in the Moslem world; as far as we can tell, this process had been completed in Malta. Moslem infiltration into coastal areas around the Rhône was also considerable. Parts of southern Italy still looked towards Constantinople for leadership. The British Isles were incorporated into Christendom, but its inhabitants had not been fully included into the political and economic system of the centre. This was particularly the case with Ireland and (to a lesser extent) Scotland. The Carolingian centre was narrow and embattled. When threatened on more than one front, as happened in the ninth and tenth centuries when the centre was attacked perennially by the Scandinavians and the Magyars, the heartland was endangered. That these crises were successfully defused by military victory and political manoeuvring should not blind us to how dangerous these threats to the established order then appeared. But this narrowness also had advantages for consolidation. Particularly north of the Massif Central and the Alps, and west of the Elbe, cultural homogeneity was considerable, even though there was linguistic diversity. Similar soils were tilled in similar ways using similar technologies. A Gallo-Romance-speaking peasant from the Seine basin would not have understood the Low German-speaking peasants of the Weser valley; he would certainly have understood what they were doing, however. This similarity extended to the Frankish nobility. As we saw in Chapter 5, the linguistic barrier between Romance and Germanic was highly permeable. Although their holdings and traditions were tied to people and place, the nobility were interrelated across considerable distances. These connections inevitably meant that noble culture became remarkably homogenized across space; again, this inevitably had linguistic consequences, not least because a critical mass of similarity led to a hegemonic understanding of what was ‘normal’ or ‘correct’. At the same time, the population of western Europe was growing. Although new technologies allowed for some growth before famine became a threat, the situation was becoming critical. Territorial expansion became a necessity. Experienced by the peasantry, this crowding was also felt in noble families, particularly since the old tradition of dividing property between sons (or, on occasion, all children), so ruinous to centralization in the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, was being replaced by primogeniture (Moore 2000). While this meant that the fissiparous nature of family landholding was replaced – in theory – by a family anchored to a solid unit, many young noblemen (and





women) were left with little hope of anything more than token inheritance. Thus many of the more elevated members of European society, along with many of the ‘lower orders’, had considerable motivation for movement. The Crusading outburst can be examined in this light. A number of technical innovations gave the Frankish centre an edge in relation to the periphery. Much of this was military, such as improved techniques of fortification and the effective use of horse; eventually this would be supplemented by advanced weapons technology and the means of conducting and withstanding a siege. But agricultural technology also played its part, not least the development of stronger ploughs to break heavy soils. Finally, the written tradition the centre inherited included a sense of the rule of law and the means by which groups could incorporate themselves. As Clanchy (1993) demonstrates, this awareness of written rights and obligations, not just for the governed but also the governors, percolated to the lowest levels of society as literacy spread. The rulers of those areas outside the centre coveted these innovations at the same time as they feared them. In the Scandinavian territories, as in Poland and Hungary, centralized polities were already forming before complete integration into the western system took place. In general, these territories’ ruling dynasties were able to maintain control for a considerable period; in those areas where central control was not fully exerted, however, such as the Slavonic-speaking lands between Poland and the Elbe, or the Slovene and Croat-speaking lands, native rulers were generally incapable of maintaining their territories’ integrity, although the linguistic consequences of this vacuum were strikingly different: the latter territories largely retained their languages, despite their domination by speakers of other languages well into the twentieth century, while there are now only two small pockets of Slavonic speech between the Elbe and Oder-Odra (the inhabitants of the Baltic coast and its hinterland and the banks of the Oder-Odra up to its confluence with the eastern Neisse were also predominantly German speaking from the late middle ages until 1944–5).3 6.4.1 Homogenization of leadership Where rulers came from altered over the period 1000–1200 (Bartlett 1993: chapter 2). By its end, ‘Frankish’ rulers – people whose ancestors came from the valleys of the Seine, northern Loire, Meuse, Mosel(le) and Rhine – held power in England, Scotland, Portugal, Castile, much of southern Italy, Sicily and Malta, parts of Greece, the Crusader states of Outremer ‘across the sea’4 and the marches of Germany east of the



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Elbe. If we extend this time period to 1400, the rulers of Hungary and Bohemia would also be included in this list. Naturally, when a ‘Frankish’ ruler inherited or conquered a new territory, he and his followers would eventually be influenced by the cultures and languages of the ruled; nevertheless, the technological and cultural patterns they created shared much with their home; indeed, sometimes we can even talk about the wholesale transfer of patterns from one area to another without much thought of the match with the new territory. Germanspeaking towns in Baltic and Slavonic-speaking territories can appear mass-produced, with their constitutions and organizations of their guilds copied from a successful colony (such as Magdeburg) or even a town in ‘old’ territory. Indeed, even when native rulers remained, the cultural (and to a degree linguistic) homogenization process continued. We can see this in the naming practices of native (and non-native) dynasties. At first contact with the Frankish model, most names are native; within three generations, it would be very difficult to distinguish between native and non-native dynasties by their names. Frankish names (such as William, Matilda or Henry) or biblical or canonical saintly names replaced local names unless that name was particularly holy. Of course full homogenization was never achieved. No matter their origin, noblemen in southern France were more likely to be called Raymond, in Scotland, Robert, in Bohemia, Wenceslas, than they were elsewhere; but in almost all of Latin Christendom it was no longer possible to tell a nobleman’s (or, eventually, anyone’s) ethnicity from his name (Bartlett 1993: 24–31). This influence was not confined to names. Many native rulers became firm supporters of homogenization; inevitably this had linguistic repercussions. In some places Slavonic territories eventually became monolingually German without a change in rulers; on other occasions, the hegemonic language did not overcome the native, but its results can be seen to this day, as in the Low German influence on all of the continental Scandinavian languages considered in Chapter 7. In order to illustrate how these processes worked, two contrastive Gaelic countries – Ireland and Scotland – and the German marches east of the Elbe will be considered. 6.4.1.1

Ireland

Gaelic Ireland had weathered its contact with Scandinavian raiders and settlers fairly well. In a few eastern and southern towns the Ostmen continued to live, and often to thrive, as the conduits whereby Irish merchants could meet their British and Continental equivalents (de Paor 1994). Norse dialects probably continued to be used there; certainly,





Icelandic and Orcadian saga contacts with Dublin and elsewhere suggest this. To survive round the edges of Ireland there must have been some bilingualism, however. As Duffy (1997: 36) points out, the battle of Clontarf (1034), although often portrayed as a straightforward Irish vs Norse conflict, had Irish Christians fighting on the ‘Norse’ side and Scandinavian heathens beside Brian Bóruma, ‘king of Ireland’: identities were fluid. Among the Gaelic-speaking natives of the rest of Ireland, something like the previous political situation prevailed. There were many kings (often, in documents, reguli ‘kinglets’ rather than reges ‘kings’), regularly governing confusingly small units. On occasion, as with the Uí Néill High Kings’ efforts to make their possession of Tara perpetual and universal in the ninth and tenth centuries (Duffy 1997: 32) or with Brian Bóruma in the early eleventh (Duffy 1997: 36), dominant personalities and groupings could achieve hegemony on the island. This was the exception rather than the rule: Ireland, uniquely for Christendom, remained a country of petty autonomous lordships (Ó Cuív 1994). The Church in Ireland, although affected by the currents of European thought, remained married to the social and political situation, although generally attempting to remain separate from the low-level violence which affected the island. Its continuing connection to a monastically centred view of the Church was increasingly distant from the episcopally centred and hierarchical models now normal in the Frankish heartlands. Ireland was therefore dangerously out of step with the rest of Christendom. It was only a matter of time before someone took advantage of its disunity. When this happened, it was freelance ‘Normans’ from south-west Wales, leading speakers of Flemish, English and probably Welsh, who became profitably involved in the faction fighting of south-eastern Ireland in the late 1160s. Within a matter of years the embryo colony had achieved sufficient success to be taken over by Henry II of England as Lord of Ireland (Martin 1994). A large part of Ireland came under at least the nominal rule of Anglo-Norman noblemen, although it was really only on the east coast, from Carrickfergus south, and along the south coast as far as Cork, that sufficient ‘English’ people settled and maintained control of their linguistic and cultural behaviour leading to a permanently English colony (Duffy 1997: 27). Martin (1994: 142–3) suggests that the ‘tragedy’ of the Anglo-Norman invasions was that they were successful to a limited extent, leaving large parts of Ireland unaffected by the change. Despite almost gaining control of the whole of Ireland in the 1220s and 1230s, despite there being



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descendants of English speakers practically everywhere, the Gaelic Irish eventually recovered power over large parts of the island, with the English population caught between two differently powerful cultural units. The linguistic results of these contacts were considerable, particularly since cultural attitudes and behaviour also came into play. In the first place, the English of Ireland who lived far beyond the Pale around Dublin had to adapt to a situation where the majority of people in their neighbourhood spoke only Irish.5 Moreover, the ways in which the native Irish dressed, behaved in church and even had their hair cut was a marker of difference. It did not take long before the English began to acculturate. As early as 1297, the Irish Parliament condemned English settlers who attire themselves in Irish garments and having their heads halfshaved, grow and extend the hairs from the back of the head and call them Culan, conforming themselves to the Irish as well in garb as in countenance. (Lydon 1984a: 18) Two to three generations later, the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366) command (Crowley 2005: 4) that Also, it is ordained and established, that every Englishman do use the English language, and be named by an English name, leaving off entirely the manner of naming used by the Irish; and that every Englishman use the English custom, fashion, mode of riding and apparel, according to his estate; and if any English, or Irish living amongst the English, use the Irish language amongst themselves, contrary to this ordinance, and thereof be attainted, his lands and tenements, if he have any, shall be seized into the hands of his immediate lord. That these regulations existed suggests that there has been considerable slippage towards the ‘savage’ tongue. The draconian nature of the punishments for using Irish smacks of frustration. Use – perhaps even first language use – of Irish by the English of Ireland was socially widespread. A considerable number of Old English magnates were patrons of Gaelic poets; some were actually poets in that language themselves. Across the social continuum, many ‘English’ people were primarily known by the Irish form of their names (Lydon 1984a). Nevertheless, at least until the Reformation, the English of Ireland were loyal to the English crown (no matter how much they





disliked the English of England) and were practically guaranteed to support the English interest over that of their neighbours. Partly this loyalty despite language shift was due to differences in ecclesiastical practice. Unlike later colonists, there was no doctrinal barrier between ‘Englishmen’ and the natives. But a form of spiritual apartheid prevailed in medieval Ireland, with many dioceses having two forms of government for two congregations. Although liturgy and gospel remained in Latin, preaching would have been in Irish or English in the two sub-divisions (Watt 1984). Along with other factors – not least the use of English in statutes and town council minutes – this suggests that, except for the most Gaelicized Englishmen of Ireland, all saw English as the language of record and authority, even when Irish was their default language. Indeed, so prestigious was English that Ireland developed a considerable literature in that language (Bliss 1984: 31–4), written in a new, koine-like, dialect (Bliss 1984: 39; Samuels 1968). English survived as the primary language in the towns – Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Wexford in particular – as well as in rural pockets in the Pale. Bliss (1984: 44) suggests that the urban varieties were more mainstream than the rural. Although there is little evidence for this at the time, the presence of unique dialects in rural south-eastern Ireland well into the modern era supports this view (see, for instance, Poole 1996). If someone had been asked in 1400 to predict whether Irish would remain dominant in Ireland, it would have been very difficult not to say ‘yes’. The disastrous modern decline of Irish speakers was largely due to developments in the early modern period and later. Nevertheless, the poisonous relationship – or lack of relationship – between native Irish and ethnic English was a basis upon which later linguistic and cultural developments worked. 6.4.1.2

Scotland6

In Scotland very different outcomes stemmed from a similar starting point. Only the area of Scotland up to the Forth-Clyde line was briefly included in the Roman Empire; that does not mean that Roman political, economic and cultural influence were not felt much further north. Nevertheless, pre-Roman Celtic culture probably continued to evolve north of Hadrian’s Wall. Large parts of the population spoke northern British dialects, which some commentators believe developed into a language, Cumbric, separate from, but similar to, the Welsh developing to the south (Jackson 1953: 9–10). Its presence can be felt in southern Scottish place names. Speakers of these dialects are commemorated in probably



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the oldest extant Welsh poem, ‘The Ride of the Gododdin’, dealing, significantly, with warfare between natives and Anglian invaders. To their north were speakers of Pictish. A very sketchy corpus of inscriptions from the sixth to tenth centuries exists, written in both ogam and Roman scripts, along with a number of place name elements found only in the north of Scotland, such as pett-, apparently meaning ‘place’, as in Pitlochry and Pitskelly. Forsyth (1997) has successfully demonstrated that Pictish is a rather conservative form of British, although some pre-Celtic substratum influences may be present. This British connection is supported by the name ancient Irish authorities gave the Picts – Cruithni: the same word as Briton. The Picts must have been part of a linguistic and cultural continuum with the Britons rather than a separate entity. What created Scotland as a discrete unit, however, were two groups who entered the country at about the same time (fifth-sixth centuries on) from opposite directions: the Gaelic-speaking Scots from the north of Ireland and the Anglian-speaking Bernicians from north-eastern England. The languages of these immigrant groups would eventually overwhelm the local varieties. Scottish unification is complex and controversial in its details, but the basic scholarly understanding is that the Gaelic kingdom of Dalriada united with the Pictish kingdom of Alba, with the new unit assuming the latter’s name and power centre to the south and east of the Grampian Mountains and in the northern province of Moray. Strangely, however, Gaelic gradually overwhelmed Pictish. Significantly, Christianity and its accompanying technologies were associated with the former. This cannot explain everything. Some ethnic groups appear willing to die for their language. But there are also groups who happily exchange one language for another (Fasold 1987: 18). By 1000, Alba had incorporated the British kingdom of Strathclyde7; the Anglian-speaking areas to the east down to the Tweed were also taken over, largely because the kingdom of Northumbria had collapsed under the Scandinavian onslaught. Northern Bernicia, least affected by this destabilization, gradually gravitated to Alba. The kings of Alba coveted the south-east of Scotland: the weather is drier, the summers warmer and the soil better than almost anywhere else in the country. In both Strathclyde and the south-east there was considerable Gaelicization of the aristocracy; in Strathclyde, British eventually died out; in the southeast, however, the Anglian dialects survived and, in an altered form, eventually displaced Gaelic from large parts of Scotland. Practically none of this would have been predictable.





The Scottish kingdom of 1000 was barely connected to the Frankish centre. Although Christian and with some clerical literacy, Scotland was essentially an unstable federation; the higher nobility often acted like kings rather than powerful liegemen. Land ownership was tribal rather than individual in nature. A market-based economy, never mind a currency-based one, barely existed. Decentralized and almost wretchedly poor, Scotland should have proved easy pickings for the Frankish centre. If this occurred at all, however, it was not as straightforward as in Ireland. In the middle of the eleventh century, Scotland was ruled by a remarkably Anglophile king, Malcolm IV. He had spent his formative years in England in exile during Macbeth’s reign, a king more associated with Gaelic traditions. Indeed, his ‘restoration’ was accomplished largely through force of English arms. It is understandable, therefore, that in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 (itself part of the homogenization processes described here) many noble exiles should make their way to Malcolm’s court. One of these, the sister of the legitimate claimant to the English throne, Edgar Atheling, became Malcolm’s queen. St Margaret and her sons (most of whom became king) set in train the processes which would bring Scottish society – including its linguistic make-up – much closer to the European centre. It may seem ironic that this family, so closely connected to the AngloSaxon past, should have been responsible for the (partial) Normanization of Scotland. But a forward-thinking ruler would have been attracted by the centralized English monarchy, in theory fully feudalized, with all power radiating from the king and being upheld at all levels by his supporters, protected by new defence technologies, filled with productive and peaceful farmland and fortified market towns where specialized crafts flourished and regular markets were backed up by coin deposits. The semi-independent Scottish nobility, often nearly as powerful as the king and, from the royal viewpoint, mired in a tradition which kept the country poor, must have become unattractive. The standard European technique at this time was to bring in specialists from elsewhere to develop the desired Frankish model. Inevitably this had linguistic repercussions. Malcolm and Margaret’s children and grandchildren would have been able to speak Gaelic. They probably did not think much of it, however. Their names are nearly all non-Celtic. Some, such as Ethelbert, reflect Margaret’s Anglo-Saxon background8; most, such as Emma and David, could be from anywhere in the new Europe. It is not surprising that the preferred Royal seat moved towards the south-east of the country. The people of the Edinburgh area



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must largely have spoken an Anglian dialect, perfectly comprehensible to speakers of West Saxon like Margaret and her family. Although a Norman gloss would cover the Canmore family, this Anglian dialect remained at the heart of their conception of the kingdom. While some later Scottish kings and queens knew Gaelic, this was always seen as an accomplishment (or even an aberration) rather than an integral part of the ruler’s identity and role. In the early twelfth century, an attempt was made to change the social and economic structures of all of Scotland except for the western Highlands. The success of this attempt depended on local conditions, as well as on both the original and incomer populations. But the basic blueprint remained the same. ‘Norman’ noblemen, many of whom had previously been settled on marginal northern English or, to a lesser extent, Welsh lands, capable of working difficult territory (and people), received incentives to settle in Scotland; many of them married into the local nobility. The most successful of these, such as the Bruces, Balliols and Stewarts, rapidly amassed power (all eventually produced kings). Most of them brought retainers to set up the burghs, the fortified market towns which would form the economic basis of this ‘revolution’. The native leaders who were left in these areas quickly followed suit, willingly or not, culturally and linguistically. The noblemen themselves would mostly have spoken French as their cradle tongue, although practically all had competence in English. Their followers, however, mainly spoke various northern English dialects. When these dialects came into contact with the native Anglian dialects, a new variety, Scots (at the time called Inglis), was created. The prestige of Scots during these changes cannot be overstressed. In the burghs themselves, some settlers, in certain areas most, would have known some Gaelic in order to trade with the hinterland and, very likely, to give orders to servants and other ‘lessers’; the Gaelic used, however, would have resembled the ‘kitchen Spanish’ and ‘pidgin Hindustani’ of later imperialisms. Scots would have been default. This type of attitude quickly rubs off onto non-native speakers, particularly those who are ambitious to replicate the good fortune of the settlers. It is difficult to date exactly, but Gaelic may have been practically moribund in the richer lands of southern Scotland by the beginning of the thirteenth century. In the more marginal agricultural lands of the south and in Scotland east of the mountains and north of the Tay, the process was slower, with the burghs only barely surviving in some places, living at the subsistence levels of the surrounding peasantry, with partial Gaelicization





taking place. This may explain certain features Northern Scots dialects do not share with Central and Southern, such as the use of that and this with plural nouns, which have Gaelic analogues. Indeed, Gaelic probably did not die out in upland Galloway until the eighteenth century; the last speaker of Deeside Gaelic, less than seventy kilometres away from the ‘Norman’ burgh of Old Aberdeen, died in 1982. Yet the associations with ‘progress’ which Scots had could not be denied in receptive areas; although there were probably equal numbers of Scots and Gaelic speakers in Scotland well into the early modern era, economic and cultural power was in the hands – for the moment – of Scots speakers (Millar 2007: chapter 5; 2009). But in the Highlands proper, and in the Western Isles, monolingual Gaelic speakers remained. Indeed, attempts at ‘Normanization’ on the Highland fringes of the North-East resembled the Gaelicization of some of the contemporary English of Ireland: the clans Grant, Gordon and Fraser all descend from ‘Norman’ immigrants. Only marginally tied to the new system and, indeed, to the centralized monarchy, these areas were too impenetrable, too extensive and too populous to reduce; as later events would show, however, this did not happen because the ruling class did not want it to. 6.4.1.3

Transolbia

Since at least Carolingian times tensions had existed between German speakers and Slavonic speakers along the Elbe and elsewhere. This can be seen in the general Slavonic word for ‘German’, niemiecki in Polish, literally ‘non-speaker, without language, mute one’; on the other side, slav quickly took on a second meaning of ‘slave’ and wendisch, the normal Germanic word for these peoples, was rarely complimentary. Of course we can make too much of this. The Polish polity crystallizing in the Vistula and Warta valleys generally kept on good terms with the Empire. But this polity did not share borders with centres of German settlement until much later. It was the Slavonic tribes who lived between the Elbe (‘Transolbia’) and the Poles – the Polabians, Sorbs and Kashubians, among others – who, coming into contact with both Frankish and Polish cultural and political centres, had to make difficult choices about the direction their future development would take; many must also have recognized that, given their numbers, this future would have to be carried out under the tutelage of one of the surrounding powers. But while Poland could, with few difficulties, incorporate itself as an independent element in Latin Christendom (a choice informed by their rivalry with Orthodox Rus’), this option was not as attainable for other western Slavs.



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In the tenth-century attempts at the Christianization of the ‘Wends’, Christianity was strongly associated with German ways of life and language and, often, German superiority. Force was regularly used; culturally sensitive sites which may not have had true religious significance were destroyed in attacks on ‘idolatry’ (Christiansen 1997: 27–35; chapter 2; Fletcher 1997: 425–50). Local resources were distributed among incomers. This is depressingly similar to other failed conversions both before and since: elements of a particular culture which are unrelated to the actual religion are considered central to Christianization for another people with different traditions; what is merely strange may be interpreted as blasphemous by the proselytizer. Tension and, eventually, violence often follows. The Slavs were also the first grouping brought to Christianity in the West who were not part of the ‘old mix’, where centuries of experience in cultural translation existed. That this should have happened in Transolbia is particularly poignant, since the Christianizers were often Saxons whose recent ancestors had themselves gone through a brutal ‘conversion’. But while the Saxon rebellion against forced Christianization was unsuccessful, the Transolbian Wends were able to throw off the yoke, at least temporarily. Leaving a power vacuum between the Empire and Poland, this collapse did not help them establish how they would relate in future to their politically, economically and technologically rich neighbours. Some of the rulers were able to keep power in their own hands by observing and copying the procedures and technologies of their German neighbours to the west. A central point was the acceptance of Christianity as an inherent part of integration into the Frankish world. On this occasion, Christianization took place in part on their terms. Nevertheless, the German ‘takeover’ was described as a ‘crusade’. One of the quickest ways to import the new economic ideas and agricultural technologies was to bring in people who understood it. Thus, from a very early period, speakers of the dialects of central and northern Germany were invited, often with incentives, to settle on Transolbian land, often land they were to clear themselves. Similar processes were also developing in Poland proper: the king could see the economic advantages to such settlement. This was coupled with the movement of German tradespeople into pre-existing or newly created towns to kick-start a money economy. Similar processes took place in Bohemia and many other places in eastern central Europe. But with the exception of Silesia, Pomerania and Prussia, it was only in the Slavonic lands between Elbe and Oder that this migration altered the linguistic and cultural orientations of the majority.





This was particularly marked in those areas where local aristocracies were not able, or did not try, to ‘modernize’ themselves (Bartlett 1993: 132). German rulers on the other side of the Elbe began to establish marks on the east bank, where settlers broke the best land, often removing pre-existing inhabitants. When one mark became fully included in the German system, other marks were then ‘cloned’ from it. In a matter of one or two centuries this process had incorporated almost all of the land north of the Bohemian mountains between the Elbe and Oder-Odra. Although Slavonic speakers continued to live there in considerable numbers for centuries, their language was always a subservient presence in an area where German was default. But not all the German speakers in the ‘new lands’ were descendants of ethnic Germans. Most were Slavonic in background. As we saw for Ireland, medieval European cultural identity could be very fluid. Although German xenophobia (and Slavonic exclusiveness) certainly existed, racism based upon ancestry was not active until quite late. To be German, somebody had to dress in a German manner, work in a German way, live in a German settlement and speak German. That someone might also be able to speak Polish and recognize certain Slavonic cultural traits as native within other contexts did not necessarily detract from his being German in that context. Politics and economics meant that German culture and language would triumph over Slavonic (although altered by the contact) in most places; the hybridity of many inhabitants over a lengthy period must be recognized, however. The ‘German’ that these hybridized Brandenburgers, Saxons or Mecklenburgers spoke was also different from those varieties spoken by the initial settlers. A striking feature of both modern and historical Transolbian dialects is that they are not as diverse as those on the west bank of the Elbe (Stellmacher 2004). While differences between dialects exist across relatively short distances, this is nothing like the variety found in the ‘old’ part of Germany. Dialect units are much larger. Many of the dialects also have features which, west of the Elbe, would be considered anomalous. Features associated with the Low Frankish dialects of Holland and Brabant, for instance, are found in largely Low Saxon dialects. These anomalies are regularly found in more modern colonial dialects, as we have seen. The relative homogeneity of dialects east of the Elbe is comparable to the English dialects of North America: on the Atlantic seaboard there is considerable linguistic diversity because of relatively lengthy settlement; the further west you travel, however, the greater the distances between significant linguistic boundaries, due to the relative novelty of English speakers.



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Discussion

Cultural, political and social homogenization was practically inevitable in the high middle ages. The results of its adoption by cultures which had previously espoused different value systems and structures were varied, however; never more so than with language. On the three occasions analysed here, significant shifts took place over what languages were used by given populations. At times these choices appear to have been made through identification with the authority (and language) of the ruling classes; sometimes, however, it was the language of the masses which won out; at others, the language of immigrants was favoured because of its technological associations. On all of these occasions it could be argued – without overstressing the point – that the strains felt between the expressions of authority and identity also represent the tensions between global, local and perhaps ‘glocal’ interests.

6.5 Vernacular literacy In the early middle ages, almost all vernacular European literature was written in the Celtic or Germanic languages. For a variety of reasons – including not being fully separated from Latin at the time – the Romance languages were rather slower in development. Perhaps inevitably, northern French dialects were first to appear in writing. They are the Romance dialects least like Latin in the west; moreover, they were spoken in the Frankish heartland, where the ‘new’ pronunciation of Latin had its greatest effects. Yet even here vernacular writing had a slow start; saints’ lives or other pious writings, possibly intended for women, make up practically all of the first two centuries of French letters. Significantly, the use of French in official writing is practically unknown for hundreds of years. Something like diglossia existed in northern France, with Latin being used in all official functions and the vernacular only in a few creative written domains and practically all spoken. It was in southern France that new developments in how and where the vernacular could be used began to make themselves felt. 6.5.1 Occitan9 France south of the Massif Central has always been different from the north. In the post-Roman period the Mediterranean littoral was ruled by Visigoths, often along with Spain, but its Roman culture remained largely untouched. A large Jewish population was also present, although sometimes persecuted. Linguistically, the local dialects shared more



6.4.1.4


with those of Catalonia across the Pyrenees or with those of northern Italy than with the northern Gallo-Romance dialects. In the aftermath of the Moslem conquest of Spain, large parts of south-western France also came under Moslem control. Although these occupations were rarely secure or lengthy, cultural flow from the highly developed Moslem world was ongoing. It was inevitable that the dominant Mediterranean culture should have had considerable influence upon that of the Midi, religious differences notwithstanding. Perhaps because of the rugged terrain of much of the region, perhaps because of the lack of central government, feudalism did not coalesce in southern France until quite late. Many landholders had absolute property rights and, while recognizing higher authorities, did not believe themselves to be anybody’s ‘man’ in the way someone from the north did. Many independent courts existed at which different poets – or ‘finders’, troubadours – touted for patronage. Unlike in many other parts of Europe, a number of noblemen turned to this creative life themselves – it was obviously considered a mark of cultivation.10 We should not be naïve about what was happening in Occitania. Small-scale independent baronies tended to encourage poverty and exploitation of the peasantry (indeed, courtly patronage of the arts might even have increased it); violence was inevitably endemic. But the independence of mind and openness to outside influences which encouraged a predilection for heterodox ideas (the eventual reason for the downfall of the system) created a cultural form of great interest to other Europeans, commonly termed courtly love. We can tell this in a variety of ways. The Occitan language in which these poems were written was actually used by writers in northern Spain and Italy, writers who would have naturally used another, albeit closely related, language. Moreover, troubadours from Occitania were guaranteed a welcome at almost any court within the Romance world and beyond. Many audients in Paris (or even London) must have been able to follow what was said; those who could not must have been willing to participate in a cultural event of great importance. From this limited viewpoint Occitan can be seen as the first internationalized vernacular language. Indeed, even when other varieties were used to represent the courtly ideas, the style and conceptual framework of Occitan was aped. But the Occitan literary culture never produced Sachprosa: ‘non-literary prose’. Potential reasons for this must wait for our discussion of what was happening elsewhere in Latin Europe.



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To begin with, contemporary writings in the northern French dialects – the langue d’oïl – seem to represent Occitan’s older and dowdier sister. Yet the dourer north eventually produced materials which were influenced by, but not the same as, the south; most importantly, perhaps, prose began to be used for literature. When northern French writers began to move away from purely religious subjects, they inevitably started to write about heroic ones, given the aristocratic patronage poets depended upon. In those texts which have come down to us – most notably the Song of Roland, probably written in Norman England (Howlett 1996) – a strong religious subtext is apparent, not least because Roland is portrayed as dying at the hands of Moslems. In the climate of Church reform, crusading ideals were never far below the surface, even before the First Crusade was preached. When this heroic imagination was harnessed to the southern literary genres, new forms began to appear. Historical or semi-historical figures, such as Charlemagne or Arthur, along with the subject matter of the surviving classical texts, most notably the Iliad and the Aeneid, were developed into large story cycles by a range of authors. In keeping with the era’s intellectual map and its considerable selfconfidence, these stories speak at a range of levels, both literal and metaphorical. Although they were intended as entertainment, they were also of some seriousness. Moreover, while many would have been read aloud or recited, mainly in part, they were self-consciously literary creations. Obviously, again, aristocratic ideals affected vernacular use (Fox 1974: chapter 3). But then something unexpected happened. In the centre of Frankish territory prose literature was practically unknown. The oral nature of the vernacular was perpetuated in the use of poetry and its techniques, originally intended for mnemonic purposes, but now valued as much for their perceived aesthetic qualities. Nevertheless, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, works of imagination began to be written in prose: albeit heightened and ‘poetic’ prose. The prose style of Latin chronicles may have been their inspiration; for whatever reason, it added to the gravitas of the work, which was now being taken, and taking itself, very seriously indeed. Poetic literature continued to develop; the uses of the vernacular were undoubtedly broadened by this change, however. Significantly, this changeover did not happen with Occitan (Kay, Cave and Bowie 2003: 53–64).



6.5.2 Northern French

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Literature in the various West Germanic dialects of mainland Europe goes back to the early medieval period, although not necessarily in large quantities. This vernacular impetus had wound down significantly by the eleventh century. Influence from the Romance half of the Frankish world then became powerful (although not omnipotent) in the rebirth of Germanic letters. As with Romance literature, a primary impulse for German literature in the high middle ages was heroic. Narrative verse, produced in an epic form, was obviously designed for an aristocratic audience (although not necessarily written by people from that background). In the first instance their sources appear to be Germanic legend, as with Nibelungenlied and Kudrun, whose subject matter mainly derives from the fifth to seventh century ‘heroic age’ (Gibbs and Johnson 2000: 205–22). The way the stories are told, however, is often strikingly different from what earlier Germanic writers produced (Robertson 1970: 66). The wealth of detail in relation to precedence, clothes and the life of the court – and the focus on romantic love – were at least downplayed in earlier heroic writings. Other influences – most notably what was being produced in France – were now strong. This is demonstrated particularly forcefully in the use and development of Arthurian legend. Mainly originally from Celtic sources filtered through French interpretations, German writers remained indebted to their Romance models in terms of plot and poetic device, but were able to increase the myths’ profundity, possibly through drawing upon their own native poetic tradition (Gibbs and Johnson 2000: part VI). Occitan traditions encouraged reactions in the German-speaking world, where a tradition of wandering Minnesänger ‘love singers’ grew in strength during the period; again, as was the case in the Midi, many poets in this genre were of noble birth (Gibbs and Johnson 2000: 224–303). The native prose tradition continued. Largely didactic, often religious, in nature, it derived from similar traditions in poetry, self-consciously uncourtly and occasionally with a satirical edge. What is striking about the prose material is that at least some of it was written by and for the expanding urban middle classes. Some of the religious literature stems from the work of Franciscans such as David von Augsburg, whose mission brought them close to urbanization. Perhaps most striking of all is the Sachsenspiegel, a Low German compilation of Saxon laws written by Eike von Repgow in the early thirteenth century; this text encouraged High German translations and adaptations. The first German prose chronicle, the Sachsenchronik, again in Low German, was produced at



6.5.3 Continental West Germanic literature


around the same time. Thus a tradition of non-literary prose developed which was not paralleled in France (Gibbs and Johnson 2000: 416–27); it should be noted, however, that the vast majority of such material continued to be written in Latin.

The other Germanic languages which had developed literate expression were also, to a lesser or greater extent, influenced by French models. Icelandic and Norwegian literature, for instance, although going through its saga ‘golden age’, redolent of the heroic tradition, was also producing many works which demonstrate continental influence, often transmitted via German writing (Haefs 2004). Thus the native traditions about the fall of the Niflungar and the death of Attila in Ætlakviða was partially overlaid by the German version of the same story (as found in the Nibelungenlied) in works like Þiðreks saga (Colbert 1992; Mitchell 1996). The taste for sophisticated, ‘Gothic’, literature was considerable. Nevertheless the Norwegian chancery continued to conduct a large part of its business in the vernacular. In Sweden and Denmark native written traditions are also evident; interestingly, while creative and descriptive writing is found, non-literary materials such as laws and history (of a kind) are prevalent. It is probably not coincidence that similar traditions are evidenced for their near-neighbours to the south in northern Germany and that Denmark during the period produced considerable historians, such as Saxo Grammaticus, who employed local traditions while writing in Latin. 6.5.5 English This is in marked contrast to England. As we saw in the previous chapter, English was the most developed Germanic language in the early medieval period. In the decades after the Norman Conquest, this native tradition shrivelled through the loss of large parts of the native nobility and their replacement by a French-speaking ruling class with little interest in insular traditions. It never died entirely, however. The great Anglo-Saxon tradition of chronicle composition only finished in the 1150s, when the last continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle was completed. Antiquarian interest in Anglo-Saxon materials is also occasionally evidenced, not least in the work of the ‘Tremulous Hand of Worcester’ (Franzen 1991). Fashionable writing in the kingdom was concerned with the development of the French literary tradition. Indeed, a number of the greatest northern French works of the period were written in England or



6.5.4 North Germanic


associated with patrons there. These include the Song of Roland and Robert Wace’s Brut (Howlett 1996). The southern tradition was also powerful, particularly after Aquitaine was added to the Plantagenet patrimony in 1154. Most of the aristocracy must, from early on, have been bilingual in French and English, particularly after 1204, when the loss of Normandy meant that landholders in both the Duchy and England had to choose which territories to forfeit. The Royal family, who remained largely francophone, were something of an anomaly. The first king of England to be born in England since the Conquest was Henry IV, usurper of the crown in 1400. From at least 1150 on, therefore, noble support for English writing was available. Something of this can be seen in the existence (in two manuscripts) of the epic Brut, written by a priest from Worcestershire called Laamon around 1200. It therefore counts as the first example of Arthurian literature in English. Although largely inspired by the Anglo-Norman Brut of Robert Wace (itself a verse redaction of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Latin History of the Kings of Britain), and therefore indebted to continental models, Laamon also obviously reveres and is influenced by the Anglo-Saxon models he knows well; indeed he regularly archaises his language, basing this on Anglo-Saxon models. Occasionally this leads to hypercorrection (Stanley 1969, 1988). This focus on older language is found in other texts (Jack 1979). Less eccentric chronicle and history texts can also be found from the thirteenth century, many of them clustered around the South-West and South-West Midlands of England. It is from this same area that a strong religious prose tradition, often apparently intended for women, appeared around 1200. This includes the Ancrene Wisse, ‘knowledge for anchorites’, regularly copied in the next hundred years, dealing with how an anchorite should live, saints’ lives such as Þe liflade ant te passiun of Seinte Iuliene ‘the life and passion of Saint Juliana’ and treatises such as Hali Meiðhad ‘Holy Virginity’. Although composed by different authors, they largely adhere to a ‘house style’ – as part of the ‘AB group’ (Tolkien 1929) – which includes the selfconscious use of some features of Anglo-Saxon prose style (although the subject matter is largely concerned with contemporary fashionable religious practices) and an often consistent spelling practice. We might term this movement a form of micro-standardization, particularly since some scribes who obviously spoke a different dialect attempted to ape the prestige style when copying. Although there are a few instances of the Royal court using English for proclamations (Mackenzie 1977 [1928]), the written language of



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6.5.6

Discussion

In brief, then, the cultural homogenization which undoubtedly happened in the high middle ages in western Europe was not necessarily detrimental to the use of at least some vernacular languages. French influence – north and south – was omnipresent; this influence was generally felt more in terms of subject matter and style than language (with the exception of a few, largely ephemeral, borrowings). If anything, the literature of Germany became more varied under this influence. Two major points need to be made, however. In the first place, while Occitan literature appears to have been more ‘modern’ and certainly more vital, it was the northern French dialects which achieved the breakthrough of using literary prose. In terms of the core Frankish lands, this implied that the vernacular could now regularly be used in contexts of ‘truth’ associated with the language of perpetuity, Latin. Second, while literary prose in the German dialects lagged behind that of France, the beginnings of a trend towards using vernacular prose in documents concerned not only with religious matters but also with law and history is discernible. In Scandinavia and its colonies the prose tradition was also strong, both in literary and non-literary contexts. Each of these developments represents the jumping off point for later and more powerful tendencies. But it was in England, possibly due to its Schriftsprache tradition, that experimental micro-standardizations began. In the Latin ‘new world’, however, literate expression of the vernacular was highly limited. In Hungary, for instance, its expression was confined to a few boundary descriptors in Latin charters (Engel 2001: 39); Polish has a very limited pre-1300 literature, but cannot be compared with German or French (Milosz 1983: 12).11

6.6 Contrary homogenization12 In the post-Imperial period, Hispania was a major centre of learning. Briefly partly reincorporated into the (Eastern) Roman Empire during Justinian’s western Mediterranean expansion, the Iberian Peninsula was largely ruled by a Visigothic aristocracy itself conquered by its subjects’ culture and language (although all Ibero-Romance languages



court and chancery quickly became Latin not long after the conquest, with French acting as supplementary language in less elevated contexts. Written English would return with considerable force in the fourteenth century; it would be the following century before it regained a central position in official contexts, however.

demonstrate some influence from the Germanic languages, albeit largely on their lexis) (Collins 2004). It would be tempting to describe what followed the Visigothic period as a major diversion from the expected: the continued importance of Hispania as a Romanized centre for western Christendom. But what actually happened – the conquest of a large part of the peninsula by North Africans, the development of a number of Hispanian cities into major centres of Moslem and Arabic culture, the conversion of the majority of those living under Moslem rule to Islam and their abandonment of Romance for Arabic – could also be analysed as maintaining a common Mediterranean culture which had existed in the Roman era, but which was under severe strain because of the placing of the northern and southern shores of the sea in opposing religious camps. 6.6.1 The conquest When Islamic forces invaded Hispania in 711, the Berbers who made up the majority would probably not have spoken much Arabic and were perhaps little more than lip-service Moslems. Somewhat later, a number of Berber bands existed in the more lawless parts of Iberia who were Christian rather than Moslem (they were also at least bilingual in Romance; the latter attribute must have been acquired in the peninsula; whether they had reverted to their original faith or been converted is impossible to say). It could even be argued that the use of so many Berbers in the army was a way of making sure that rebellion did not break out behind the lines. Interestingly, Berber had practically no influence upon the Romance languages of the Iberian Peninsula. 6.6.2 Contact phenomena The influence of Arabic is unmistakeable, however. Taking Castilian Spanish as an example,13 we can see that borrowing affects a wide range of semantic fields. These include terms relating to government and the military, such as almirante ‘admiral’, alcalde ‘mayor’, aduana ‘customs’ and tarifa ‘tariff’. Al-Andalus was celebrated for its urban culture; in particular that of Cordoba. It is fitting therefore that Castilian words like barrio ‘district of a town’, arrabal ‘suburb’ and alarife ‘architect’ should be originally Arabic. How buildings were decorated and furnished also contributed to the Castilian debt to Arabic, with borrowings such as azulejo ‘ceramic tile’ and almohada ‘pillow’. Many terms for food and drink now used in Castilian are also of Arabic derivation. These include aceite ‘olive oil’ and albaricoque ‘apricot’ (originally a Latin word borrowed via Greek into Arabic). Finally, there were many learned words




borrowed not only into Castilian but also into other European languages, with particular concentration on mathematics, astronomy and chemistry. These include (in their Castilian form): cénit ‘zenith’, algebra, alcohol and almanaque ‘almanac’ (Penny 1991: 217–23). The Arabic of al-Andalus did borrow words from local Romance varieties. For instance, when we consider cereal cultivation, many Arabic words have been borrowed into Romance, such as: Arabic original

Borrowed as Castilian

daqsa ‘sorghum’

adaza

darmaqa ‘hard wheat’

adárgama

dhura ‘sorghum’

aldora

sam d ‘white flour’

acemite

On the other hand, Romance terms did pass into the local Arabic: Romance original

al-Andalus Arabic

álaga ‘spelt’

araka

centeno ‘rye’

shantiyya

rubíon ‘red wheat’

ruym

New environmental conditions unlike those where Arabic and Berber were natively spoken made these borrowings desirable (Glick 1979: 81). Despite these high levels of influence on lexical patterns, however, there is very little evidence of Arabic influence upon either the sound patterns or the structures of any of the peninsular Romance languages. How do we interpret this apparent distinction? 6.6.3 Convivencia The Arabic culture of al-Andalus must have been considered prestigious by the inhabitants of the Christian principalities of the north. This would not, of course, have been difficult. At its height, Cordoba was one of the pre-eminent cities of the world: remarkably disease free, with many amenities not replicated in Europe until the modern era. It was the only truly great western European city. Its culture, under the Umayyad Caliphate, was admired throughout the Arab world and beyond, producing an amalgam of Greek, Persian, Jewish and Arabic science and philosophy, envied in the rest of Europe. Indeed, from





the twelfth century on, Christian scholars came to Spain in order to transmit this knowledge into Christendom: many of the scientific Arabic words now used in English and other western languages were borrowed during this period, often directly from Arabic rather than via Spanish. Al-Andalus was also a generally tolerant place. Moslems, Jews and Christians lived together with little tension for a large part of the time. Jewish science and philosophy flourished, often written in a Jewish variety of Arabic (Myhill 2004: 118–22; Scheindlin 1992). Although the majority of those of Christian descent converted to Islam about three to four generations after the conquest, a Christian minority remained and, from what we can tell, generally appeared quite satisfied with their lot. By the tenth to eleventh centuries, most if not all of the remaining Christians no longer used their Romance dialects, instead turning to Arabic as their first language.14 Indeed, even their connection to Latin, their liturgical language, became tenuous: the Gospels were translated into Arabic in Spain not to attempt conversion of Moslems but for the native Christians. Christian tombstones from al-Andalus are largely produced in Arabic script (and language), including dates according to the Moslem calendar; often the Latin and Latin writing employed is inexpert. Interestingly, the name they are commonly referred to by – Mozarab ‘Arabized’ – was, although originally Arabic, not one much used by their Moslem rulers; it must originally have been a less than complimentary epithet given by northern, Romance-speaking Christians (de Epalza 1992).15 Generally, the northern Christian principalities were also tolerant towards Moslems or Jews, although Christian intolerance, particularly as crusading became an admired trait, was rarely far below the surface.16 Nevertheless, religious minorities in the north were seen as a valuable asset – a tool for bargaining and perhaps a potential fifth column – rather than as a dangerous resource of heresy and back-sliding. It was also recognized that Moslems had advanced knowledge of certain types of cultivation in what had been, until recently, marginal lands (Harvey 1992). These Mudejars, overwhelmingly rural, maintained their religion in Christian territories for centuries. Their ancestral language did not fare as well, however. Indeed, it was only in the surroundings of Valencia, where many thousands of Moslems lived, that Arabic survived as a community language into the fifteenth century. While the Qur’an remained officially untranslated, many books on Moslem faith and particularly practice (especially difficult where the dominant population’s practice was so different) were produced in Romance, sometimes in Arabic, more



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often in Roman, script. The northern Jewish communities also adapted to their new reality, developing their own forms of Romance as part of the process (Myhill 2004: 122–6). Thus Romance speakers came into contact with Arabic in three ways: directly from Moslem Arabic speakers in the south; Christian Arabic speakers; subject Moslems in the Christian north. All three brought some Arabic elements into Romance; some appear to have been more dominant than others. I used the word tolerant above; this is not, perhaps, the best way of describing the situation. Much is made of the conviviencia, living together in mutual respect, which is supposed to have been the norm. Actually, moments when the various communities made common cause were limited. Strict rules applied about the extent to which communities could interact; this was limited, except in some elements of the public sphere (and even then, what could happen was generally preordained). Private relationships, in particular between Moslems and Christians, were often severely frowned upon. Thus, although the Mozarabs spoke Arabic and obviously interacted in the public sphere with their Moslem neighbours, what little they knew about Islam was derived from France and the northern principalities. The Mudejars seem to have been only slightly more in contact with the Christian culture surrounding them, despite speaking Romance. This type of behaviour is not, of course, unusual among embattled minorities; the length of time it lingered in Iberia is very striking nonetheless. Direct contacts between the northern Christian ruling classes and the Moslem urban elite were rarely lengthy. Contact with Arabic appears second hand. We can see this in the number of words borrowed from Arabic with its definite article – al – treated as an element of the following word (alcalde ‘mayor’, for instance, is derived from Arabic qādi ‘judge’). This resembles the partial understanding many people demonstrate who speak only one language but have some contact through family or community ties with another. Reanalysis of word boundaries regularly happens in these contexts. We might even suggest that the Mozarabic community in the generations after its ‘liberation’, while losing its Arabic and conforming to the northern dialects from which all modern Ibero-Romance dialects descend, along with the Mudejar community as it adopted Romance, were the main conduits by which Arabic flowed into Romance. It is likely that the words associated with prestige concepts came largely via the urbanized and literate Mozarabs, while those dealing with agriculture came via the Mudejars; this would be very difficult to prove, however.




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Thus we can see that in western Europe, the high middle ages marked a period of expansion, consolidation and homogenization derived from a variety of different sources – learned, vernacular and Moslem – all acting as representatives of the Zeitgeist. Naturally, different people – and different ethnic and cultural groups – reacted to these forces in different ways; their effects were inexorable. But some Europeans remained outside the new structures, whether by choice or not. Their exclusion would have considerable effects on their language use.

6.8 Outsiders The gradual marginalization and growing persecution of Hispania’s Moslem and Jewish communities represents a process found throughout Latin Europe; in a sense, it is the flip-side of homogenization. The suspicion – indeed fear – of the other felt in high medieval society was considerable and became increasingly violent (Moore 2007; Nirenberg 1996). With some of the minorities treated, little or no linguistic distinction can be made between them and the orthodox (although the spread of northern French as the language of order, orthodoxy and authority in southern France as part of the crushing of the Cathars could be interpreted in this way). With Jewish Europeans, however, cultural distinctiveness was matched by linguistic divergence. The age and origin of the European Jewish communities is much debated. Certainly, there were Jews in Europe considerably before the Common Era. The extent to which these communities were the ancestors of the Jewish communities of the high middle ages is difficult to answer. The well-documented Jewish communities of the south-west of France probably descended from similar communities in the Roman period; this would be much more difficult to prove for the large medieval communities of the German Rhineland, although continuity is a possibility. With central and eastern European Jews, a large part of the genepool which made up that community was possibly contributed by people of Khazar descent, whose ancestors converted to Judaism in the ninth and tenth centuries.17 This possibility is strengthened by the presence of small communities of Karaim, Turkic-speaking, heterodox, Jews, in east central Europe today (Zajączkowski 1961). But the Ashkenazim generally remember only a forced migration from Ashkenaz, the Rhine valley, eastward, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The language of the community – Yiddish, in origin a German dialect – supports this view.



6.7 Centripetal forces revisited

Since the diaspora, Jews have always taken on a version of the local language wherever they were in exile (Myhill 2004). Indeed, the first of these languages, Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires, was a close relative of Hebrew, actually supplanting the ethnic language in Palestine. Because it was used in classic Talmudic commentary across the near-eastern Jewish communities, Aramaic came in time to be seen as the ultimate language of study by all Jews. This is particularly important for a society where study and discussion of holy texts was considered to be a task of greater importance than any other except the keeping of God’s law, as tradition and scripture demanded. It also demonstrates how an originally non-Jewish language can gain extraordinary prestige within the community because of its users and the material they produced. Not all Jewish vehicular varieties reached these heights; almost all of them developed beyond being mere use-languages, however (Wexler 2006). It is only from the tenth and eleventh centuries on that we begin to have evidence for quite large-scale Jewish communities in the Rhineland. As Katz (2004) explains, most of these new settlers came from the south and west – in other words, from the Frankish heartland. There is every chance that many of the settlers spoke Romance dialects (Yentl, for instance, the stereotypical Ashkenazi female name, is Romance in origin: gentil ‘well-bred, genteel’ [Katz 2004: 37]). Quickly, however, they were perceived as part of a ‘German’ Jewish entity which they termed Ashkenaz. 6.8.1 The birth of Yiddish Given the persecutions the Ashkenazim suffered in the Rhineland (in particular during the Crusading period but also during the Church reforms discussed above), it is ironic that the spread of the Ashkenazim, first into western Germany and then further east, exactly mirrors the Frankish expansion and homogenization about which this chapter has been concerned. Very quickly, the Jewish High German dialects began to coalesce. Although originally derived from the discrete dialects of the towns of the Rhineland and also of the upper reaches of the Danube valley (most notably, Regensburg), Yiddish as it stands today and throughout its recorded history demonstrates a mixed origin, with features derived from more than one dialect being found in the same variety. In other words, the close mercantile and scholarly relationships between the towns had created a koine, representing the beginning of the split between German and Yiddish.




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Yiddish

Hebrew

Aramaic

Everybody’s Spoken native language

Nobody’s native language

Nobody’s native language

Study of reading and writing as part of elementary Studied education (everybody)

Study of parts of the Bible and recitation of prayers (nearly everybody)

Study of the Talmud as part of higher education (a small minority) and of the Kabbalah (an even smaller minority)

Popular literature (written by and Written for all social groups)

Formal, legal and communal writing (written by and for an educated minority)

Talmudic and Kabbalistic literature (written by and for an even smaller minority)

2

3

Figure 6.1 Language use of the Ashkenazim Source: Katz 2004: 47.

Figure 6.1 represents Katz’s view of how the languages of the high medieval Ashkenazim interrelated. Yiddish was used by everyone for everyday matters. Hebrew, on the other hand, as the language of revealed religion and holiness, was used by far fewer people (although male literacy was higher than in most other contemporary communities). Aramaic was used by even fewer people: largely the scholarly elite. Despite the lack of active users, however, it was Hebrew and Aramaic which had at least the overt social prestige. It might even be claimed that Yiddish was the language of the womenfolk, since literacy was rather less widespread among them than among the menfolk. This would be misleading, however: everyone used Yiddish. Secular literature appears to have been common (Katz 2004: 58–9); religious writing in Yiddish, although frowned on by rabbinical sources, must have appeared regularly (Katz 2004: 55–8). Indeed, elements of all sources can be found in sometimes playful co-existence as near-synonyms. Katz (2004: 28) comments that German-derived nar is any kind of fool. Hebrew-derived tipesh is a specifically Jewish kind of fool, and a notch higher is a shóyte, a



Social Prestige 1


The distance between the original Germanic contacts became greater as Yiddish speakers began to move into Slavonic-speaking regions, whether in families or in considerable numbers. A new, homogenizing, language was born.

6.9 The Orthodox world Unlike western Europe, which went through a period of expansion in the high middle ages, Orthodox Europe became increasingly fragmented and threatened. In a combination of disasters, such as the defeat at Manzikert (1071) or the Latin seizure of Constantinople (1204), combined with periods of Bulgarian and Serb irredentism in the Balkans, Byzantium became financially (and, to a degree, culturally) poor. For the last three hundred years of its existence, the Empire generally consisted of the capital and three or four other cities and their hinterlands (although its influence was more widespread). Although ancient Greek texts continued to be copied and new, often Atticist, literature produced, although the imperial administration continued to issue new material, the audience for these activities must nonetheless have become increasingly limited. The ecclesiastical Greek of the Church would have reached more people; a majority of Greek speakers (never mind Orthodox believers) would not have understood it. Of course it is quite likely that the unpleasantness of modern realities drove writers to return to an idealized linguistic past. 6.9.1 The Orthodox Slavs Much the same tendencies dominated the writing of the Orthodox Slavs in the Balkans, with the added difficulty that a literate tradition was not as deep rooted for the Slavs as for the Greeks. Some writing in Old Church Slavonic continued, particularly when a south Slav ‘nation’ was in the ascendant. Conversely, when Byzantium (or, later, Hungary) was able to exert central control, the loss of ecclesiastical autonomy led to vernacular writing being discouraged (although, particularly in Bulgaria, it continued and was capable of producing literature of some quality in the later middle ages). Nevertheless, there is considerable evidence, as pointed out regularly by Fine (1983) for language shift in the Balkans from Romance varieties to Slavonic.



Jewish fool who goes ahead and actually does something stupid. Finally, péyte, also from the Hebrew, has a certain humor, implying that the speaker feels sorry for someone who was not endowed with more intelligence.


Rus’ also passed through a ‘time of troubles’ in the thirteenth century, primarily connected to the Mongol invasions. Although this lessened the literary activity of Rus’ in comparison to the rather rich material produced in the centuries before, it did not halt it altogether (Børtnes 1989). Writing continued in a Russified Church Slavonic, rather than the vernacular; the distance between the two continued to grow. The Mongol invasions, along with Polish and Lithuanian expansion, led to a re-centring of Rus’, to the east and north of its original Kievan focus, eventually settling on the upper Volga – in particular, Moscow. This movement would have profound cultural and linguistic effects over the next few centuries.

6.10 Conclusion At least in western Europe, linguistic homogenization was a considerable element of the general centripetal tendencies of the age. Of course, there were paradoxes inherent in this. Latin’s position became increasingly monolithic at a time when a number of vernaculars also developed into fully fledged literary languages. Tension, if not conflict, was omnipresent. It is also worth noting that the majority of western Europeans were illiterate, although we see the world as viewed by the literate minority. Yet the presence of writing in people’s lives, whether literate or not, was growing considerably, as it had under the Roman hegemony. Law, for instance, became increasingly written rather than perceived as embodied in a particular person or object (Clanchy 1993). It should also be recognized that those vernaculars which began to move towards Ausbau during this period appear to have had advantages over those only beginning to move in this direction. In the late middle ages, some vernaculars, such as Polish, were able to catch up. This success was not general, however.



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The Birth of the Modern?: The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries

7.1 The crisis of the fourteenth century Since the end of large-scale movement of northern and steppe peoples into the Frankish centre of Christendom in the period 1000–1100, that centre had been expanding. This influence could be largely cultural or actually involve the movement of considerable numbers of people; linguistic consequences were considerable on both occasions, however, as we have seen. Because of these expanding horizons, because of the lack of major epidemics through the period 1000–1300 and because of the lack of major wars in which the civilian population became involved, whether they wished or not, no large-scale checks were in place to control population growth. This growth was not without its problems. High medieval society, due to uneconomic farming methods, needed much more space to feed the same number of people than is necessary now. Feeding everyone was a major undertaking, involving the overwhelming majority of the population, who themselves lived barely above subsistence level. Despite the ongoing cultivation of new and marginal land throughout the Continent, the early fourteenth century saw more dearths – major shortages which did not result in significant mortality – and a few famines, where crops failed for two years or more, causing considerable mortality (Jordan 1996). Although the Scottish Wars of Independence finished in the early decades of the fourteenth century, the Hundred Years War involved England and France in a vicious conflict which claimed many civilian victims, right at the heart of the Frankish Centre. Indeed, the truces 179



7


Bergen


Stockholm Reval

Visby North Sea

Oxford

Baltic Sea

Lübeck Bruges Hamburg Rh Bremen

ine MeuseMaas

Riga Memel

Königsberg Danzig

Prague BOHEMIA

Constance

BOSNIA

0

200 km

Map 7.1

KOSOVO

Physical features and places mentioned in this chapter

which intermittently halted the fighting were often worse than the war for civilians, since the mercenary soldiers used by both sides turned to brigandage when payment dried up. While wars of this intensity were not found elsewhere in Europe, unrest was general. The internal strife of Italian city states like Florence, for instance, was bitter and apparently never-ending. These and many other conflicts are discussed in several essays in Brady, Oberman and Tracy (1996). These problems worsened throughout the century and were exacerbated by the arrival of plague in the late 1340s and early 1350s (Benediktow 2004). It is difficult to establish how many people died: contemporary accounts of the death toll appear insupportable in relation to the size of the population as a whole. But in some places at least between a third and a half of the population died; in more ‘fortunate’ places, the population was at least decimated. Moreover, the Black Death, while destructive because it was the first epidemic to affect Europe for centuries – and psychologically devastating because so unexpected – was only the first of a series of outbreaks recurring every generation or so. Thus, although you might have survived the first outbreak,



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you could well die in the second outbreak or – worse – your offspring might die, making your progenitive activities worthless. Throughout Europe, the effects of plague were quickly felt. There were far fewer people, meaning that there was less demand for agricultural produce. In the countryside, this drop in demand and the fall in population meant that much marginal land was abandoned. Second, surviving agricultural workers quickly discovered that their scarcity meant they could renegotiate their relationships with landholders, encouraging an already growing tendency towards a money – rather than service – based relationship, but with roles reversed. The landowner now paid the labourer for service rather than the labourer giving service or produce to pay for his right to reside on the landholder’s land. The supporters of the status quo quickly attempted to clamp down on these changes; inevitably they were rarely wholly successful. Bad feeling continued to grow between the propertied and unpropertied, leading to a range of peasants’ revolts across the Continent well into the early modern period. Economic relationships would never be the same again.

7.2 Vernacular standardization It is striking, therefore, that it was not during a growth period but rather during this period of uncertainty and strife that the first major linguistic standardizations in western Europe since antiquity began. The desire for homogeneity appears to have grown out of discord. It should be noted nonetheless that, following Joseph (1987), the three standardizations I will discuss in the following were primarily circumstantial, since no fully conscious actors were involved in the language planning. 7.2.1

Italian

Standard Italian is a case in point. Until the nineteenth century, no centralized Italian state existed and the peninsula was splintered by regionalism and factionalism. Yet Italian developed from Tuscan dialects – particularly Florentine – quickly became the primary written medium in that territory. Although there had been experiments in Sicily and elsewhere to establish a vernacular for the Italian territories,1 it is striking how many Italians, particularly in the north, used French rather than a native vernacular (Vitullo 2000). These included the amanuensis of Marco Polo and St Francis of Assisi, who recited his visions not in his native tongue, but the language of the literature he had consumed before his



The Birth of the Modern? 181


conversion (although his great hymns were defiantly vernacular). With this lack in mind, Dante Alighieri, in a Latin treatise entitled De Vulgari Eloquentia ‘of eloquence in the vulgar tongue’, discussed how a ‘noble’ Latin (his word for Italian) variety could be constructed. Dante analysed Romance varieties spoken inside and outside Italy, comparing them to Latin and showing how – he believed – they all fell short, including his own Tuscan. He called for an – engineered – planning process, taking the best points of each. This programme was unlikely to be successful for a variety of reasons; not least the lack of political unity. But Dante had already, through his own writing, rendered his suggestion moribund. In a number of works, most notably his Divine Comedy, he stretched and developed the expressive powers of his native dialect beyond anything ever carried out in Italy (or, indeed, in medieval Europe) before (Pertile 1996: in particular, 58). While it would be wrong to say that he had single-handedly created standard Italian, he certainly made that possible. Both his own linguistic awareness and the cult that developed around his work – most notably in Boccaccio’s vernacular writing – spread his Tuscan as a potential Italian language (Migliorini 1965), along with the willingness of other Italians to accept it as a viable written form (Migliorini and Griffith 1984: chapter 5). In the decades that followed, the fame of Dante’s work, and the work of his fellow Tuscans, Boccaccio and Petrarch, spread throughout Italy. The prominence of Tuscan in Italian letters did not stop other writers using other varieties, but it certainly encouraged perceptions of its centrality, even if all three writers – particularly Petrarch – were also committed to the use and development of Latin (Mann 1996: 8–14; Reeve 1996: 20–7). More importantly, the use of Tuscan outside Tuscany in non-literary activities, such as governance, inevitably increased the variety’s prestige and ubiquity (Botterill 1996). Although Italian Humanists were, as we will see, rather more disparaging about vernacular writing than we might expect,2 the greatest achievements of Italian poetry in the quatrecentro and cinquecento were created through the tension between vernacular and classical (McLaughlin 1996). 7.2.2

French

With French, a rather different standardization took place, as works such as Chaurand (1999) demonstrate. The chaotic politics of Italy were not, in theory, present in France. On the other hand, the sense of unity was only really skin-deep there. The provinces of the kingdom often had different legal systems and governmental traditions. Travelling



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from one province to another often felt like moving between sovereign states. Although the power of the king was much increased in comparison to the period before 1150, assembling power blocs within this kingdom still took considerable amounts of time and negotiation. Moreover, although much of the independence of southern France had been crushed by the Albigensian crusade of the early thirteenth century, the south’s vernacular culture remained in place. These reservations were true even before the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, which at times left large parts of France outside central governmental control. The dialect of the Ile-de-France was not necessarily first among equals. The literary achievements of the surrounding dialects were probably greater; its compatibility to other dialects, so that it could stand for all of them, was, particularly in terms of its phonological system, questionable. What it did have, however, was the Royal court and incipient bureaucracy. As the Hundred Years War turned in favour of the French monarchy in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, much French patriotism was aimed at the monarchy and its institutions, perhaps for the first time. Of course, during the period of English hegemony, the Dauphin’s establishment had basically become the court, especially after Joan of Arc’s rise and the victories that followed. This sense of a small, but concentrated, unit was carried forward into France as a whole; while it is true that many regional particularisms remained in place until the 1788–92 revolution, Paris was unquestionably in control. This had a linguistic dimension, naturally. In order to bind the provinces closer to the centre, the Paris variety was imposed either by legal sanction (as was the case with the south) or through practice. This involved not only the use of Parisian when writing to Paris. Eventually, administrators (and others who dealt with them) in another region were also expected to – and did – use the standard variety. To begin with, this would have involved a desire for prestige (and continued employment); eventually, however, hegemony, the belief that a particular variety is the preferred norm because ‘everyone does it’, prevailed (as discussed in Chapter 8). In the centre, elaboration was also being carried out because of the need, as in all Romance varieties, to prove the worthiness of your variety in comparison to Latin. The fact that French was a descendant of Latin made this tension much more visceral than between Latin and English. 7.2.3

English

It is no surprise that cultured London English became Standard English. London was England’s chief city, intrinsically connected with the royal





government. As Joseph (1987) predicts, the power of the prior H variety, Anglo-Norman French, weakening due to the loss of native speakers by the fourteenth century, was gradually circumvented by the development of a strong English writing tradition – Chaucer and Gower only being the most famous south-eastern writers (see the essays in Schaefer 2006) – and by the use, from 1390–1400 on, of English as the primary means of early education, rather than French. The fact that the king – Henry IV – was the first English monarch since 1066 to be born in England and tended to play the national card to rid himself of the taint of usurpation may have had some effect on the growth of the status of London English (Fisher 1996). More importantly, the generation who came to prominence from around 1425 on were the product of this change in education policy. To them, English was the norm; specifically their English. Thus a synecdochic dialect developed, broadcast by the Royal bureaucracy and imitated by those who wished favours. During the next 100–200 years, this Chancery standard became acculturated and elaborated, used in high literature and in non-literary prose. It also became the default form of written English throughout England (undoubtedly aided by the advent of printing in the fifteenth century’s third quarter) and had begun to affect the way people spoke, to the extent that comments on individuals who spoke other dialects in formal circumstances became common (see, for instance, Fox 2000: 61). 7.2.4 Other standardizations and attempted standardizations Italian, French and English, although only now approaching standardization, had a long history of written use. In other parts of Europe, however, previously unrepresented varieties were beginning to make themselves felt. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, for instance, the main written language (beyond Latin and Old Church Slavonic) in the Chancery was what some scholars term Ruthenian, a variety of East Slavonic which is not entirely Belorussian or Ukrainian and may be seen as an ‘umbrella’ language (Pugh 1996). What is striking about this is that, as on a number of other occasions in this book, the Chancery language was not the native language of the ruling class, who apparently continued to speak Lithuanian with each other for some time (Rowell 1994: 295, 299). The fact that the dominant class remained pagan when ruling Christians probably encouraged this compartmentalization. In the early modern period this East Slavonic Chancery language was replaced by Polish and, eventually, Russian, largely due to changes in the power politics of the region.



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Similar processes were occurring elsewhere on the fringes of Europe. In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Scots, the Germanic vernacular of Scotland, began to move towards becoming the national language. Associated with literature of considerable ability, including John Barbour’s Brus, an epic poem dedicated to the life of the liberator, written in the 1370s, strong ties were present between the use of the language and a national agenda. Towards the end of the fifteenth century the language began to focus as the variety normally employed in state documents (alongside Latin), as well as continuing to be employed in world-class literature. A sociologist of language writing at the time would have suggested that Scots would soon occupy the same linguistic place as English or French. This did not happen, of course. But although most of the reasons for this failure are outside the time limits of this book, it is nevertheless noteworthy that higher register writing in Scots, even at the height of its autonomy, was heavily influenced, particularly orthographically, by southern English models. Indeed, the modern period was not kind to languages which were close relatives of languages with considerably higher prestige and numbers of speakers. One of the first of those to go into decline was Norwegian (although not on this occasion permanently) in the face of Danish, a side effect of the ever closer union between Denmark and Norway. Although some Norwegian elements remained in the writing emanating from Norway during the ongoing union of the two countries from the early fifteenth century on (Hagland 2005; Haugen 1966: 320–32), Danish models almost inevitably won out. Catalan, at the time a language associated with expansion across the western Mediterranean basin, was also to suffer from legal discrimination in the modern period, but survived to regain its status as a major Mediterranean language in the late twentieth century.3 Other languages of this type which were less successful include, of course, Low German and Occitan. At the same time, some kin-tongues (Kloss 1984), such as the Frankish dialects of the flood plain of the Rivers Rhine and Maas, which could easily have become subsumed into German, began to move towards autonomy as Dutch. While there may be reasons why some language varieties fare better than others in the competition to achieve full language status, neither this nor its opposite, the failure to achieve full language status, is predictable: the variables involved in its development are complex. 7.2.5

Discussion

All of these standardizations, whether successful or not, were tied to the centralization associated so closely with the homogenization processes





of the Frankish centre. Nevertheless, the centralization involved was relatively limited, both geographically and socially. The region concerned was rarely, if ever, envisaged as Christendom: smaller units, largely associated with the ‘horizontal integration’ of dynastic states (Gellner 1983) were the norm. Moreover, the written standard was rarely, if ever, intended for mass use. New technologies which were coming into being during this period, along with social and political changes which were only beginning to make themselves felt, would change this. Yet despite standardization, Latin still claimed H status across western Europe.

7.3 The revival and retreat of Latin In the previous chapter, the Latin language in the high middle ages was treated as a monolithic entity in opposition to the vernaculars. This was not the case, of course. It is unlikely ever to be the case for a language; in particular, for a living language which Latin, in a somewhat peculiar way, was during the period. Those who used it confidently – probably always a minority among those who knew Latin – had been introduced to the language during the critical period when language learning is generally straightforward. Inevitably the linguistic inputs beyond Latin – the learner’s mother tongue and the dominant language of the state (if these were different) – would also have had an effect upon the language as perceived and assimilated by the learner. These effects meant that individuals from different mother tongue backgrounds, although proficient in Latin, might each produce versions of Latin strongly affected by the mother tongue. More often than not, of course, this would not necessarily have caused intelligibility problems; on occasion it did. Certainly, it would often be possible to tell where someone else came from in relation to the Latin that he (occasionally, she) produced. This appears to have been particularly the case with pronunciation, where the phonemic structure of the mother tongue affected the Latin of someone from that background. For instance, Latin before a front vowel was regularly palatalized in medieval Latin; in Italy, the result was normally /t/, as in Italian; in France and England, it was /s/; in Germany, it was /ts/. This even went as far as the actual spelling of words. For instance, Classical Latin ignis ‘flame’ was sometimes (not always) spelt inis in southern France and Italy, but as ingnis in northern France and England, representing the pronunciations which had developed in the daughter languages (Rigg 1996: 75). Moreover, Medieval Latin’s most conspicuous feature is its astonishingly rich mixture of old and new Latin words and of old Latin words



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with new meanings, which reflects the extent to which it resisted lexical purism and the rigid classical distinction between prose and poetic vocabulary (Mantello 1996: 4). Following Mantello, this can be seen as a good thing, representing creative developments within a living language tradition. It is very easy to see, however, that phenomena like this might be interpreted as nonhistorical and corrupt. They certainly could cause considerable problems of intelligibility between different ‘Latins’. Most medieval scholarship – in other words, the upper end of ability with Latin – was not text based. Simplifying a little, authors were not considered for the text they produced, but rather as an authority who produced sententiae ‘sentences’: statements used by commentators to support their argument. Quite often, at least as their critics would have it, arguments based upon these short passages took no interest in the overall logic and meaning of the text. Moreover, there was no sense that something written five hundred years earlier than another text would by its nature present a different world view. Again, there was little sense of historical change. In the course of the fourteenth century, Italian scholars and writers began to rebel against the medieval instrumental use of Latin texts, instead calling for a return to the sources (a trend within scholarly circles which has since become commonplace). Critical apparati were set up, of increasing accuracy, which helped scholars to decide on the age of texts and, with common sources, the descent from the original. Individual scholars and informal groups went to considerable lengths to find versions of texts and locate manuscripts of otherwise unknown texts.4 It would not be an exaggeration to say that a large part of what classical texts we have was preserved in the period 1350–1600. In general, this new scholarship has been termed humanism (a term occasionally used by the perpetrators of the new way). It is these scholars who developed the idea that the age which preceded them was a ‘middle age’ of barbarism and corruption which they were rolling back to achieve a union with the classical age. Inevitably, a central part of this effort was an attempt to recreate classically appropriate forms of Latin, forms appropriate to genres. Words derived from, for instance, a fourth century CE Christian source should not be used alongside words and structures particular to a first century BCE expression of stoicism. While early practitioners were erratic in their use of ‘correct’ Latin, knowledge of these matters quickly became a shibboleth of the movement (Jensen 1996). Return to the sources inevitably led to a return to Greek, at least for some scholars. As we have seen, medieval western Europeans largely





knew Greek works through Latin translations of Arabic translations. Remarkable though some of these translations were, misrepresentations of the original were inevitable. But at the same time as textual scholarship was developing in Italy, events in south-eastern Europe were opening up a direct route to Greek again. In the final centuries of Byzantium, many Greek-speaking scholars found themselves in Italy for extended periods. Some came initially as part of attempts to heal the schism between the Latin and Greek churches; some chose union with the western church and could not return to their monasteries or posts; no doubt, as Byzantium became increasingly impoverished, the attraction of scholarly posts in the thriving Italian economy would have increased. In any event, the opportunity to learn Greek – and also to develop a diachronic sense of the development of the language – became a possibility for many Italian scholars. What is striking, however, is that the primary products of this contact and learning process were not normally editions of the Greek texts (although these would come); instead, more authoritative Latin translations were made available to the large scholarly mass who were unable to learn Greek. Predictably, textual criticism began to turn to religious texts; most notably, of course, the Bible. The Vulgate, St Jerome’s translation of both the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew (and, on a few occasions, Aramaic) scriptures, for long the authorized version of the Church, now came under scrutiny. This came from two fundamental angles. In the first event, Jerome’s Latin, Christian and from late antiquity, was found to be wanting in relation to the Classical models now interpreted as ‘pure’ Latin. Second, the accuracy of his translation from the Greek – and occasionally Hebrew – original was also questioned. As humanism spread, in particular into northern Europe, scholars of the calibre of Erasmus (died 1536) produced editions and translations of both Old and New Testaments which cast doubt on Jerome’s accuracy, even if phrased in a respectful manner (Hamilton 1996). Almost inevitably, these doubts spread into a wider community. Given the rhetorical force which humanism and the Renaissance have achieved in European culture, it is important to note that not all of their achievements were necessarily healthy. From a linguistic point of view, the historically inaccurate, but living, tradition of medieval Latin was in many ways dislocated by the ‘return to the sources’. Latin became something apart, not fully incorporated in the individual and his linguistic reality. The thousand-year development of Latin as a quasi-native language was attenuated by the preference for a historical variety separate from this evolution. While we can make too much of



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7.4 Religious discontent and the vernacular As we have regularly observed, there was an ongoing debate among medieval intellectuals over the appropriateness of vernacular translation of the Bible. Would this lead, as its opponents suggested, to a religious free-for-all, with the uneducated inevitably making improper life choices by reading the Old Testament in particular without proper instruction? Or would immediate access to holy writ lead to a new enlightenment for readers? These two questions came into stark relief in intellectually charged developments in England and the Czech lands on either side of 1400. On both occasions, the men who lit the spark – John Wyclif (died 1384) and Jan Hus (1372–1415) – were intellectuals, and Hus in particular was an excellent public speaker. Their followers had the ability to speak to the many, subverting the status quo. Part of their deep attraction was their vernacularization programmes.5 7.4.1

Wycliffitism

The question of vernacularization for aspects of public and private religious experience was one which had considerable prehistory in medieval England; indeed, throughout Christendom (Rex 2002: 11–2). From the late thirteenth century on, it became standard practice for the clergy to make available ‘simple’ texts in the vernacular, such as the Creed and the Pater Noster, to lay people. Lay people also had considerable access to more sophisticated devotional reading, such as The Ladder of Perfection by Walter Hilton and Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love. The popularity of Books of Hours (Rex 2002: 12) demonstrates the highly orthodox vernacular piety of the time. What Wyclif and his, in some ways, followers, the Lollards did was to push this point further, by including Holy Writ.6 The translation produced by these reformers, traditionally ascribed to Wyclif himself, although now considered more likely to be a committee production (Martin 2003: 249), was ... [not] in itself heretical: it was for the most part a faithful, even stilted, rendering of the Latin Vulgate. Its only plainly heretical aspect



this – few Latin speakers ever attained the ‘pure’ classical humanist standard – the ideal had still altered. In a sense, it was the vernacular languages which eventually benefited from the change in emphasis; not least from the new vocabulary based upon new ideas which flowed into them from humanism.

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At the same time, a large and apparently popular tract literature, mainly from the same sources, pushed the Wycliffite line with considerable success. In the same market place as the orthodox vernacular devotional literature already mentioned, it is likely that not all readers noticed the difference. This may have been part of the Lollard programme (Steiner 2003: 173). Despite the rapid condemnation of the central views of Wyclif and the Lollards, it is noteworthy that the translated scriptures did not attract censorship so quickly. Although vernacular biblical translations were generally condemned in the Oxford translation debate of 1409 and banned the following year (Rex 2002: 75), copies continued to be made. Copies of the vernacular scriptures were even being made and used by the most orthodox of divines (Hanna 2003: 150–1). Apparently the usefulness of a vernacular Bible outweighed its dubious origins. This is a major development. Nevertheless, literacy levels were low in England and Lollards few and far between. The Christianity embraced by the Lollards, with its lack of liturgy, ceremony or symbolism, was unlikely to attract a mass following (Rex 2002: 73). Moreover, there was no real national or linguistic cause with which Lollardy could be associated. Thus the tradition survived until the Protestant Reformation; how much Lollardy actually affected the development of English Protestantism, beyond its Bible translation’s influence on later translators, is impossible to say. 7.4.2

Hussitism

This cannot be said for the attempted reformation and political revolution, partly based on Wycliffite models, in the Czech lands (Spinka 1968 and Macek 1958). Here the mainstream Hussite tradition retained many Catholic liturgical traits, while at the same time emphasizing the use of the vernacular. Beyond this, the Hussite reformation also had a cause: the re-establishment of the Czech nature of Bohemia. In the cities of Bohemia, there were many German-speaking burghers, their presence a result of the German spread to the east discussed in Chapter 6. Indeed, the German language was often more useful in Prague than was the Czech of the surrounding peasantry (Klassen 1978: 17). This was also true of Prague’s Charles University (Klassen 1978: 45). Understandably, this dominance caused considerable discontent among



was the so-called ‘general prologue’, which explicitly challenged official church teaching on transubstantiation. But this prologue is found in only 11 copies [out of 250 surviving]. (Rex 2002: 75)

Czech speakers. New religious thought rode this early wave of nationalism in a way that Lollardy never could, since English speakers were in most positions of power in England by the start of the fourteenth century. It is likely, in fact, that many Czechs who remained orthodox in thinking, to a lesser or greater degree, chose to ignore the heterodox nature of Hussitism because of its Czech vernacularization agenda. Being a Czech speaker came first. Repeatedly during the early decades of the fifteenth century, the concepts of ‘Czech nation’ and ‘Czech language’ elided into each other. In 1412 the Czech nobility protested to the Council of Constance for its actions against both ‘the Czech crown and language’ and ‘the Czech crown and people’ (Klassen 1978: 8). Closer to a purely linguistic analysis is the protest Diviš Bořek made to the Bohemian Diet in 1437 at the actions of the Emperor Sigismund (also King of Bohemia), about which Bartoš (1986: 146) notes: [Sigismund] had introduced foreigners to office, courts and to the archdiocese, to the detriment of Czech language, God’s truth and the agreements into which he had entered ... The Hussites themselves adhered strongly to vernacularization. Like the Lollards, they produced vernacular tracts on a range of different topics – some beyond religious issues. They went further, however, demonstrating an ethnographic, populist form of language planning in use, regularly setting their hymns to well-known airs, often with rather racy associations (Fudge 1998: 213–5). So effective was the process that it was spread into territories, such as modern Slovakia, where the vernacular production could be both understood and admired (Fudge 1998: 163). Again it is worth considering how far it was the Hussites’ vernacular experiments, rather than their teaching, which aided this spread. Despite the eventual defeat of both the Lollard and Hussite causes (although in the case of Bohemia this took centuries), the Bohemian vernacular experiment in particular bore fruit in the following years, often with people of impeccable orthodoxy. In the end, the cause of the language effectively countered the fear of heresy.

7.5 A linguistic area: Low German and Scandinavian Perhaps because of the unstable political situation across Europe (and particularly in the Empire) in the later middle ages, it became increasingly common for cities and territories to come together as leagues





promising mutual protection and, often, guaranteed trading rights. The most successful of these leagues is what is now Switzerland, originally designed to protect its members from the depredations of feudal superiors and to maintain a form of monopoly over a number of important mountain passes (Im Hof 2007: chapter 3). Other leagues were much more ephemeral and never capable of delivering for their members the advantages which were promised. One conglomeration, although not particularly long-lived, stands out as being particularly successful, however: the Hanseatic League. Largely a trading institution, founded upon the great cities of the southern North and Baltic Seas, such as Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck and Danzig (Gdańsk), the Hanse (literally ‘the company’) became so powerful that it could set up its kontors (literally ‘counters’ but quickly ‘trading posts’) in almost every city round the coasts of these seas and developed what became a near-monopoly over trade for many countries, both internally and externally. The League often acted as if it were a country, sending embassies and having what amounted to a foreign policy, often at odds with its supposed superiors in the Empire, Poland and elsewhere (Stoob 1995; Cordes 1998 for an analysis of the smaller-scale trading patterns of the partners in the Hanse). It was by any accounting an organization of considerable importance. Partly this was because the largely German merchants of the Hanse were following up gains already made by the largely German military orders along the southern and eastern coast of the Baltic (Christiansen 1997). Cities like Königsberg (Kaliningrad), Memel (Klajpeda), Riga and Reval (Tallinn) had, at the very least, a (Low) German-speaking ruling class7, with considerable numbers of originally Slavonic, Baltic or Finnic-speaking subjects switching towards the dominant language. This point is made particularly strongly in the later evidence for reduced forms of German – Halbdeutsch – found in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury Estonia, and probably descended from varieties imported in the late middle ages (Kala 2006; Stammler 1954). In a sense, the spread of Hanseatic institutions across the North and Baltic Sea world is a continuation of the ‘cloning’ of German towns found earlier in the Drang nach Osten: the Hanseatic quarters of cities from Bruges to Bergen to Stockholm were often interchangeable. As we have already seen, this mass production had considerable linguistic effects. This influence can be found throughout the area in which the Hanse worked. It was particularly powerful in Scandinavia, for instance. In medieval Scandinavia the influence of Low German upon the native vernaculars was considerable at all levels of the linguistic system. 8 Even



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before the Hanse was founded, in fact, much of the shipping trade of Scandinavia was barred to anyone except German seamen and traders (Sawyer and Sawyer 1993: 155–7); with the advent of the League, therefore, an intensification in this control happened, leading to the domination of coastal towns like Bergen, Stockholm and Visby (the main town of the Swedish island of Gotland). Most people must have been bilingual in these settlements (Sawyer and Sawyer 1993: 161–3). The effects of plague – particularly intense in Scandinavia – only encouraged the influence of outsiders on the internal running of the kingdoms. In a sense, Low German is to the Scandinavian varieties what French is to English. It is very difficult to construct a complex sentence only using native vocabulary; even with the advent of linguistic purism in the nineteenth century – particularly in Norway – most native speakers have as little sense of native and non-native vocabulary after all these centuries as English speakers have with French lexis in their language. But Low German and the Scandinavian North Germanic varieties are related to each other and share a core of common vocabulary, structures and sounds. Even though they are no longer mutually intelligible, it is entirely possible to find the common features very quickly. The Scandinavian languages have altered considerably in relation to both their common ancestor (well recorded in its western form) and its insular descendants, Icelandic and Faeroese, when it comes to inflectional morphology. Old Norse had a rich inflectional morphology: in the noun phrase, four cases and three grammatical genders (in both singular and plural) were marked; with the adjective, a distinction, based on levels of grammatical information carried by other parts of the noun phrase (generally termed ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’ inflections), was made; there was also a strongly marked set of noun classes, each possessing their own morphological means of relating to the larger structures of case and gender; with the verb phrase, a fully functioning distinction was made between indicative, imperative and subjunctive moods; discrete forms were also realized for all three persons in both singular and plural (and, residually, the dual number); a medio-passive also existed, uniquely for the Germanic languages. In the modern Scandinavian varieties, much of this no longer exists. Except in some western Norwegian dialects, only residual case features have been retained; in Swedish, Danish and some eastern Norwegian dialects, only two genders have survived; most Norwegian varieties have retained three; Swedish and some Norwegian varieties have retained more elements of the inherited noun class systems than have Danish and other Norwegian varieties. All have retained some features





of the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ adjective declensions, although the lack of case means that the paradigms are much denuded. With the verb, almost all dialects in Scandinavia mark neither number nor person in either present or past; moreover, the subjunctive mood has, with a few fossilized exceptions, such as Norwegian Gud forsigne deg, ‘God bless you’, been replaced largely with the use of modal verbs (as was also the case in English). The medio-passive, on the other hand, has been retained and fully grammaticalized in the system; another passive construction, based upon the use of an auxiliary verb, normally borrowed from Low German, represented in Danish by blive and in Norwegian by bli, with the meaning ‘remain, become’ (Modern High German bleiben), along with a past participle, has been introduced, however. None of these features needs to be due to language contact, of course. If anything, some of the typological changes – from synthetic to largely analytic – appear to have started somewhat before the Low German influence began to be felt. Moreover, there has been a general move towards analytic type by all the Germanic languages, thereby making these developments a particularly sound example of what Sapir (1921: 144 ff.) termed drift, the tendency for languages to take a similar route of change, even when they are not in contact with each other. But this misses the point somewhat. Some languages – most notably English, Afrikaans and the Scandinavian varieties – have gone much further than others – Icelandic and German in particular – in a short time. It seems as if some other factor must be used to explain this phenomenon. Trudgill (1986) suggested that those languages which showed ‘accelerated drift’ could be classified as creoloid. In other words, they resembled many of the developments that take place in the formation of creoles, without going through a pidgin state. Elsewhere (Millar 2000: chapter 2) I have argued that the collation of Afrikaans with English and continental Scandinavian dialects was an unhappy one, since the language contacts involved in the creation of Afrikaans – Dutch, varieties of French and (to a lesser extent) English, Portuguese and High German, along with the largely Austronesian languages of slaves and coolie labourers and the Khoisan languages of the natives of the Cape – represent a far greater typological spread than that for either English – Norse (and to a degree French) and Scandinavian or Low German. For these two developments, we might even begin to talk about a form of intelligibility (semi-communication) being possible. It is most unlikely that speakers of Middle Scandinavian and Middle Low German could immediately communicate with each other. The



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thousand years of independent development would have made this very nearly impossible. Nevertheless, the possibility of limited communication was present because of common words making up a considerable part of the vocabulary of both languages. The morphological systems, on the other hand, although largely marking similar features, were constructed in strikingly different ways. During the attempts at communication between speakers of Low German and Scandinavian, those features which were markedly North or West Germanic and whose use discouraged communication were jettisoned. This would not have been carried out uniformly, since the towns and open lands of southern and eastern Scandinavia (along with the coastal provinces) would have been more open to influence of this type than the isolated valleys and upper ends of fjords in Norway. Moreover, the experiments carried out would have differed from place to place. The latter point goes a long way to explaining why some varieties were more affected by particular developments than others: the particular innovations involved were likely to have been initiated in places where the development is most carried through. With the first point, it is still worth noting that, even in the most cut-off parts of Norway, the contact features we have identified are still present – albeit sometimes in a less developed way. This suggests that one of the reasons why the spread of the contact features was so complete was because they represented a somewhat advanced form of the drift phenomena already percolating through the dialects.

7.6 The East 7.6.1

The Balkans in eclipse

In south-eastern Europe a further decline in the use of literacy took place, beyond the purely ecclesiastical. As we have seen, there were occasional Attic ‘revivals’ in Byzantium, particularly when a centralized state was in place, as under the Palaeologae in the fourteenth century. How far this self-conscious Hellenism reached into the everyday lives of late medieval Greek speakers is a matter for conjecture. In the Slavonic Balkans, Old Church Slavonic, often with a local flavour, continued to be used in ecclesiastical domains. In Bosnia, particularly rich forms of vernacular expression made themselves felt. As Lovrenović (2001: chapter 5) points out, the peculiar status of the Bosnian kingdom meant that cultural particularity was maintained, especially in the use of the unique Bosančica script, employed by both Catholics and Bosnian Christians, where Cyrillic and Glagolithic




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7.6.2

The linguistic aftermath of Byzantium

Despite the disastrous end of the Byzantine state in 1453, the power of Byzantine ideas and language remained forceful in Orthodox culture. Whenever there was the possibility, albeit short-lived, for patronage, writers and scribes would accumulate, as happened after 1453 in the Serbian principality based around Kosovo (Malcolm 2002: 85). Moving beyond the period of this book (although still describing a culture which remained an intellectual part of it), we find that, in the late seventeenth century, when debate raged over whether Latin (the language of a west becoming increasingly attractive to progressives in Russia and elsewhere) should replace Greek as the language of instruction in Muscovite schools, the Patriarch of Jerusalem wrote to a Russian: To the person who told you that children should not be taught in Greek but in Latin, answer: first, the Old Testament was translated by the Holy Ghost into Greek and not into another language ... [I]n matters politic, secular, rhetorical, logical, poetical, philosophical, arithmetical, geometrical, and astronomical, the Hellenes are the teachers of the Latins. (Ševčenko 1978: 18) Certainly, as Ševčenko (1978) points out, Orthodox East Slavs were enthusiastic in deploying arguments from Byzantine sources. As he also points out, however, for many writers, Greek texts were largely available – whether in the original or Latin translation – from western sources. The technology of the printing press and its early western harnessing was impossible to gainsay.

7.7 Printing In the course of the second half of the fifteenth century, the wealthier parts of Europe became the recipient of a new and, as it turned out, utterly transformative technology: movable type printing. Following Eisenstein (1983), it can be shown that, in the matter of a generation, printing changed the intellectual climate and culture of Europe.



elements were combined. Nevertheless, the subject matter of Bosnian manuscripts rarely goes beyond the Byzantine norms. In the aftermath of the Turkish conquest, however, Bosnian Slavonic texts in Arabic script, dealing with a far wider range of topics, did begin to appear. This lies beyond our period, however. Elsewhere, Slavonic literacy remained the possession of a small number of clerics.

Of course, not all early printed texts were entirely free from error – indeed, ‘bad’ printed texts multiplied error in ways that manuscripts never could. Nevertheless, uniform texts, distributed across time and space, had become possible. The work of one set of workers in a print shop replaced the labour of scribes who did not work together so much as beside each other. Cross-reference and indexing suddenly became straightforward. Due to this and other developments, textual (and with it authorial) authority inevitably grew. The effect on the sociology of language of Europe was, of course, considerable. Those language varieties associated with population centres and economic and political power were already heading towards standardization; printing encouraged this process (printers desired uniformity in usage for economic reasons), increased the standardized variety’s visibility and helped broadcast it to the ‘provinces’. If your language variety was not so blessed, however, it meant that the chances of its becoming a fully fledged standardized language were considerably lessened. Scotland, for instance, did not have a permanent print shop until almost a century after England.

7.8 Conclusion Even more than at the end of the previous chapter we can see the late middle ages as producing contradictory sociolinguistic developments. Both Latin and the major vernaculars were being developed and awarded further prestige at the same time. Greater levels of contact were also causing what might be seen as homogenizing tendencies between languages. The printing press encouraged these developments. Yet at the same time new vernaculars were beginning to go through Ausbau; on occasion the status of other vernaculars was becoming threatened by this. Moreover, the exaltation of classical Latin was beginning to separate the language from its speakers. Although it is certainly true that centripetal forces were at work throughout Europe, even the development of printing could not entirely hold back the vernacularization process. The question then is: to what extent do these tendencies coincide with what we know about the sociology of language in the modern era?




8

8.1 Modern vs pre-modern To what extent was the pre-modern period sociolinguistically similar to the modern era? In a sense, it would be easy both to assume likelihood and lack of likelihood for this supposition. In the first instance, human beings have not changed much in the period since writing was first employed in Europe. Social structures and belief systems may well have come and gone, but the ways in which humans interact with each other, as well as the nature of their desires and fears, probably remained largely static. On the other hand, the political and economic relationships which exist in any given culture have altered greatly. On occasion, a particular society has become more complex and hierarchical; at other times, societies have become more egalitarian. In the modern age, the move towards casual discourse has been particularly marked (although it is probably naïve to think that this change has inevitably led to greater equality). Most of these social changes must inevitably have had linguistic repercussions. Many of the developments associated with the modern age are, of course, unprecedented. The ease and speed of travel has no equivalent in earlier periods. The growth in size and power of the middle classes, so much a feature of modern European politics and culture, was only patchily observed before 1500 – in ancient Greece and Rome, in particular. The classic ‘sociolinguistic pyramid’ must be reinvented in the more structurally sophisticated societies of the past as something like a two or three storey Mesopotamian stepped ziggurat, with estates taking the place of classes and there being, in theory, little social mobility. In less hierarchical societies, the idea of socially based linguistic distinctiveness may be misleading or perhaps even socially nonexist198



Conclusions

ent. It is certainly true that, well into the modern era, many (upper) middle-class people spoke with a (probably attenuated) accent from their home region. This does not mean that there were no social distinctions expressed in speech; centripetal forces would have been far less powerful, however. Moreover, the number of people in the pre-modern age who were educated was relatively limited in comparison with that present from the eighteenth century on in western and central Europe. That does not mean that complete illiteracy was the norm. As we have seen on a number of occasions in this book, many people who could not read were able to participate in public readings – and often chose to do so. Many people who had not been educated were still able to distinguish certain words and phrases in a document. There is no doubt, nonetheless, that a technology like writing, carried forward by a relatively small elite and demanding laborious copying for reproduction, was fundamentally different from the mass-production-based literacy of the late fifteenth century on. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that this change, more perhaps than any other, altered the nature of both literacy and what constituted a language.

8.2 Trends in the pre-modern period This argument could go on indefinitely. There are obviously both profound similarities and dissimilarities between the sociolinguistics of pre-modern and modern Europe. We will return to this comparison later in this chapter. But before we do so, we need to ask whether we are justified in considering the European cultures of the pre-modern era as being of a piece sociolinguistically. Although there were indeed some trends which are constant throughout the period, the manners in which they developed differed greatly. 8.2.1

Homogenization patterns: Expansion and contraction

The most striking of these is the move towards greater homogenization evidenced whenever literacy (and prosperity) was on the increase. The same developments which led to the gradual victory of Attic (or its koine variant) over the other Greek dialects, or of Latin over the other languages of central Italy (and, eventually, almost all of the languages of the western and central Empire) can be seen in the spread of ‘Frankish’ culture and language from western Europe in the high middle ages. But in the latter set of developments, it was only in the field of high culture that full homogeneity, in the use of Latin, was



Conclusions 199

achieved. Otherwise, the centripetal forces exerted on a large part of the continent led to the privileging of particular dialects over others within a dialect continuum. It also led to the older members of the literate ‘club’ having some advantages over those languages more recently recorded. The cultural capital which languages like German or French had accrued was difficult to equal by ‘new’ languages, even when that language had an impressive number of speakers, such as Czech. This inequality continues to have repercussions. But it was not merely age of literacy that affected the long-term success of a variety. The political and economic status of the speakers of such ancient languages of literacy as Welsh and, in particular, Irish led to their near-eclipse in the face of ‘younger’ languages. The corollary to this is that shrinkage (or even complete disappearance) of written languages has been endured at least twice in Europe. The earliest European literacy in the Aegean basin collapsed entirely towards the end of the third millennium BCE; the use of written language contracted (along with the number of users) in the period immediately following the collapse of the western Roman Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries CE and the contraction of the Byzantine Empire in the eighth and ninth centuries. Its survival in the latter examples can be attributed both to there being many more literate and semi-literate people in those contexts than was the case with the former, where literacy, as was the overwhelming case in civilizations at that time, was confined to a clerical elite. Moreover, the ongoing presences of administrations and bureaucracies which either mimicked the preceding era (as in the case of south-east Europe) or were independent from the ‘secular arm’, as with the Church in western Europe in the early medieval period, encouraged continuing literacy (as did the book-based nature of the Church).1 These contractions should not be taken as necessarily entirely negative. During periods where hegemony is uncontested and expanding, the likelihood of new varieties reaching full expression as literate languages is limited. Thus the hegemonic force of Latin under the Roman Empire was so great that previously literate languages succumbed. But in the contested linguistic sphere of the post-Roman world, new vernaculars began to encroach on some of the literate contexts previously confined almost entirely to Latin. This growth in western written vernacular use may also represent a shift from a society controlled in the main from towns, with a considerable bureaucracy, to one where order rests in a military aristocracy for whom literacy was not a central necessity. The spread of German into central Europe (and also of English into the Celtic territories of the British Isles) can be interpreted as an




example of vernaculars beginning to act in a hegemonic manner. The fact that no one vernacular developed full hegemonic force can probably be attributed to the similarities in the extent of power enjoyed by three or four of these languages, coupled to the dialects which underlay them (although this did not always stop their spread, as can be seen both for French in Germanic-speaking Luxembourg and Lorraine and for German in Ostolbia). There is nothing deterministic about which variety becomes standardized, however, a point to which we will return in our discussion of Myhill’s views on language and politics in the history of Europe. But while the growth in Slavonic literacy associated with the ministry of Cyril, Methodius and their successors exhibits the same vernacular impulses associated with a native aristocracy as those to the west – both Great Moravia and Bulgaria were already developing an Eigenkirche system – much more important in this vernacular expansion was the impulse towards comprehension associated with conversion. 8.2.2 Religious conversion and language All of Europe had, by 1500, abandoned one set of beliefs for another. In the period following around 400, the conversion impulse for the first time in Europe left the Roman Empire and encountered cultures which were not only unRomanized but also did not use a variety of Latin or Greek.2 Everywhere this happened, proselytizers had to find some way to get across their new teaching. While there is evidence, particularly in the early days of a mission, for missionaries using interpreters, this did not help either the process itself – which was inevitably slowed and where possible ambiguities abounded – or the image of the proselytizer in the eyes of those to be converted. Everywhere they went, Christian missionaries attempted either (preferably) to use the native language of those listening or (where necessary) a lingua franca which all potential converts knew. It would have been self-defeating under almost all circumstances to use Latin or Greek. Recognition of the need for comprehension can sometimes be felt: a good example is the prominence of English speakers in the conversion of northern Germany and the Netherlands. The Low Saxon, Frankish and, particularly, Frisian dialects of potential converts were sufficiently close to the Anglo-Saxon dialects of the missionaries to make mutual comprehension relatively straightforward (indeed an Old Saxon poem, Genesis A, was transliterated into Old English). Yet it is striking that missionaries working in different places and different times seem to have held different views about what language



Conclusions 201

could be used in written documents dealing with religion. In the Latin world, the general position was for long that speakers of what were becoming the Romance languages did not need materials translated (or, perhaps better, transliterated) from Latin. The authority of the language of the Bible (albeit a translation) combined with the authority of the Roman state and its successors took a very long time to overcome (indeed, some might argue that this was not fully achieved until 1965 when the Second Vatican Council officially removed the Latin Bible and Liturgy from Roman Catholic churches). An increasing part of the Latin world was populated by speakers of Basque, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonic or Finno-Ugric languages; for them Latin was an entirely foreign language. Yet the Church’s tradition meant that Latin assumed almost the same position in this context as in the Romance centre. Nevertheless, in almost all contexts where there were sufficient numbers of speakers to make publication worthwhile, vernacular materials began to appear relatively early on in the conversion project. The extent to which this happened appears to have been dependent upon other features within the cultural and linguistic traditions of the host culture. Probably the least provocative airing of written vernacular language in religious contexts was the production of word-for-word glosses. By their nature these were largely ad hoc creations, intended to be tools rather than separate documents. In a period in which the coherence of the church was sometimes in question and Latin knowledge was less than guaranteed among the lesser clergy, glosses could be taken as a ‘better than nothing’ attempt to maintain clerical orthodoxy on the margins. The recording of sermons and homilies represented a rather more overt expression of vernacular religious identity. While a functional intention – an attempt to preserve didactic orthodoxy and homogeneity – is inherent in their preservation, there can be no doubt that writers such as Ælfric and Wulfstan treated their writing as an art project of sorts, even if their stylistic patterns existed largely to sugar the pill of teaching. This form of writing was particularly significant in, although not unique to, pre-Conquest England. Even more obviously aesthetic in intention is the use of religious stories as the basis for literature. On this occasion, most of the West Germanic languages written during the early medieval period had at least one example of a poem (or, more rarely, a piece of prose) on a biblical or religious subject. Some of these works are primarily intended for personal devotional work and perhaps as a crib – Otfrid’s Evangelienbuch




is an example of this – while others, as we saw in Chapter 5, were much more ambitious in their intentions, acting as a means to connect vernacular and religious traditions. Finally, we have translations and adaptations of holy writ. Here, only English produced a translation of the Gospels, while Old High German produced a translation of a Gospel Harmony. The purpose of either of these translations is not entirely clear. Were they intended purely for personal use or was a more public purpose intended? While the former seems the more likely, the presence of vernacular translations of major theological works into English would suggest a more social purpose, albeit largely confined to the clergy. In the area where religious policy was made largely by Constantinople, a somewhat different religious language tradition existed, with the vernacular being used in liturgy and gospel by both Goths and Slavs. But while this precocious religious literacy had both immediate and long-term effects, it is striking that the use of the vernacular for nonreligious purposes (strong, for instance, in Ireland, England and, eventually, Iceland) is a minor element in the surviving writings, with the exception of those of Rus’. In the west, the split between clergy and lay people was expressed through the use of Latin. In Orthodox Slav territories, the craft of literacy itself appears to have been closely guarded by the clergy; eventually Old Church Slavonic would itself become a learned tongue rather than the vernacular. 8.2.3 Competing homogenizations Thus the second eclipse of centralized homogeneity led to a situation where essentially two centripetal forces were in evidence: one associated with the surviving force of the earlier hegemony, the other with the growing secular units, units which would eventually overcome other vernacular varieties – written or not – within their power zone. Unlike the earlier hegemony of Rome, however, the new pre-hegemonic languages do not appear to have been as successful in absolutely overwhelming other varieties within their area. In part, this was due to the rather more circumscribed nature of state power during the period; no doubt, also, lower literacy rates meant that many people had little or no contact with the primary language of the state, particularly since their primary political relationship was with a local lord (and his officials) rather than with the centre. Moreover, given the presence of Latin in many high functions, it was impossible to enforce a single language over other varieties in the way possible for earlier hegemonies. This tension began to shift in favour of the



Conclusions 203


vernaculars in the late middle ages; it was by no means over, however. It might be argued that the survival of smaller vernaculars as written languages, particularly close relatives of more populous languages associated with political and economic power, such as Scots (in relation to English), Occitan (in relation to French) and Low German (in relation to High German), was due to this tension and limitation of powers in a situation where the attributes of authority and identity were shared by ideologically and linguistically discrete forces. The new technologies of the fifteenth century were not kind to the integrity of these varieties. The same was true of varieties which were not close relatives of the hegemonic language – the Celtic languages, Basque and the Transolbian Slavonic varieties. In some senses, their distance from the language of state guaranteed their autonomy. Unlike the kin-tongues, however, they could not expect to have the protection partly offered by the dialectalization process. When, as happened in the modern era, far more powerful states began to seek homogenization, these Abstand languages could not keep their heads beneath the parapet. While many are still spoken, few could be said to be in good health. Although most of the damage against most of these varieties (the Transolbian varieties are in many ways an exception to this rule) was carried out after the period considered in this book, the initial seeds were sown in the middle ages. A central feature of this is the fact that those languages which began the process of standardization earlier than others were more likely to achieve fully hegemonic status in the modern era.

8.3 Myhill (2006) These interpretations are almost exactly counter to the gloss put on language use and development in Europe by Myhill (2006). To him, French and Italian (among others, including Arabic) are large languages, where considerable differences exist between the ‘dialects’ which underlie a single standard variety. These are often associated with religious groups with global membership and aspirations – on this occasion, (Roman) Catholicism and Islam. Myhill considers such language and nation combinations inherently dangerous; in modern times, by his analysis, these varieties have been given to totalitarianism with a tendency towards fascism. English and Norwegian, on the other hand, along with other varieties (including Hebrew), are seen as small languages, where the standard variety presides over a smaller level of variation in the dialects, where there can be little question that each dialect is genuinely represented in the standard variety. Moreover, he claims, Norwegians



204

and English people have for long been associated with a national church group where cultural identity (including linguistic identity) is the primary reason for inclusion. These groups, Myhill suggests, are less given to aggressive and destructive forms of nationalism. Of course, many of these analyses appear to carry some weight. It would be difficult to argue, for instance, that the language policy adopted by the French state since at least the Revolution has been beneficial to users of most of the languages spoken within France. Other elements are more dubious, however. For instance, Norwegian is at least as sundered into often mutually unintelligible varieties as is Italian. The mountainous terrains of both countries assure this level of variation. It is true that the range of written varieties produced in Italy was never equalled in Norway; this probably has as much to do with population size and level of connection with the primary cultural developments of the Middle Ages. The association of the (Roman) Catholic Church and large, authoritarian linguistic polities and policies is probably misleading. As has been pointed out on a number of occasions in this book, the language policy of the Church was largely a result of the homogenization of western Europe carried out under the Roman Empire; in this sense, Myhill and I are in agreement. But there is no particular reason to see this commitment to Latin as being one-sided and monolithic; as we have seen, the Church regularly discussed the use of vernacular varieties and was aware of the problems of enforcing Latin as the sole language of religious experience. It could also be argued that some of the polities he associates with national churches and small languages – Hebrew in Israel springs to mind – have gone through periods of aggressive, ideologically driven, expansion. Moreover, Myhill’s argument, despite the intelligent historical scenesetting of his book, is strangely ahistorical in its analysis. In the first instance, if there is one thing this research has taught me is that there is very little which can be taken as pre-determined in linguistic history. While strong likelihoods for success or failure can be teased out, history regularly demonstrates that pre-eminence does not necessarily lead to long-term dominance: the fate of Occitan is a case in point. Moreover, the policies and views associated with a particular language and ethnic identity construct may change over time. Until perhaps three hundred years ago, France would have been considered a much more diverse and linguistically plural and liberal polity than England. As Crowley (1996: chapter 3) has pointed out, the liberal rhetoric of language policy in the English-speaking world in the eighteenth century masked an



Conclusions 205

authoritarianism at least as illiberal as that of the Académie Française. As we have seen, the linguistic developments visible in late medieval Europe are just as likely to represent the final throes of the contest between vernacular and Latin than evidence of linguistic authoritarianism by one vernacular over another. Tensions were certainly there, but they would only come fully into effect in the modern era. It seems, therefore, that Myhill’s extrapolation backwards from the present is fundamentally damaged by his attempt to see contemporary features as having considerable historical depth. This may be true on occasion; but an in-depth analysis of the historical record suggests that most cultures, while working within particular parameters, regularly alter views about language use.

8.4 Why do some varieties prosper when others so not? Instead of Myhill’s deterministic and rather static model, I would like to introduce a new model (see Figure 8.1) to plot the sociolinguistic development of Europe both before 1500 and (it is to be hoped) in the modern era. Literacies tend to grow when there is economic or political expansion (or at the very least stability)3; by the same token, literacies may be abandoned during a period of economic downsizing and societal simplification. Societies which are able to support a class which records and analyses rather than producing primary items are likely to develop literacy, albeit of an elite type. The use of alphabetic systems for the languages of Europe over the past 3000 years may have encouraged the Civic literacy

Use varieties

Elite literacy

Intimate standardization

Use varieties

Political and economic power

Mass standardization

Hegemony

Figure 8.1 A new model




spread of literacy, although the speed and extent of this is, naturally, open to interpretation. While some of the written traditions of Europe have demonstrated considerable originality – ogam being a striking example, but the syllabic construction of some of the Iberian scripts also demonstrates this – all modern literacies are descended from one set of events in Greece in the ninth or eighth centuries BCE. With the exception of the early Cretan scripts and their Cypriot descendant, all European scripts past and present descend from the first Semitic abjad. This underlines the point that absolutely autonomous development of writing technology is practically unknown: it has occurred perhaps two or three times in world history. Nevertheless, successful acquisition of this technology is generally associated with particular sociocultural patterns within a given society. One thing is apparent from the narrative of this book: not all language varieties have the same chance of success in the ‘linguistic marketplace’. Some varieties never achieve literate status: we often know considerably less than we might wish about these, if at all. More interesting, perhaps, are those varieties which do achieve literate expression, often, before the first hegemonies, in a unique script, but which do not have any longevity. Since considerable time and energy must be involved in the creation of a distinct(ive) written identity, what causes people to abandon this aspect of their lives in favour of either the literate expression of another language or even of no written language at all? The first, obvious, answer is that changing political and economic relationships led to this abandonment. It made sense to use the written variety that would achieve the largest possible exposure. A first century BCE literate Gaul had no reason to love the Romans. Yet the use of Roman language and script meant that he could be more attuned to the developing globalized economy. Myhill might be inclined to interpret this as being the result of duress on the part of the hegemonic authorities. On occasion, this would indeed have been the case. The slightly unpleasant flavour of these developments, however, is due rather less to force and more to something rather like Bourdieu (1991)’s concept of habitus. After the pioneers, most people used the written form of a language other than their own not to make a point, or through a fully conscious choice. Instead, it seems the commonsensical thing to do. This is, according to Gramsci, the central point of hegemony (Crowley 1996: chapter 2). It is maintained without force largely because everyone agrees (probably due to indoctrination) it to be the sensible and obvious outcome. But more than political and economic clout lies behind the success or failure of a particular literacy. When we consider again the various



Conclusions 207

early Mediterranean literacies, it is apparent that the diversity of topics described in a particular written form might affect the longevity of that literacy. For example, none of the literacies of central Italy had much in the way of creative expression with the exception of Latin; all the rest largely employed the new technology for functional purposes, to express legal precepts, ownership and prescribed rituals. In the middle ages, there were literate expressions of language which were almost solely associated with creative expression – Occitan being a particularly apposite example. The point is that some literacies only express a civic literacy associated with the good running of the city or polity; others exemplify elite (creative) literacy. By its nature, the written recording of literary work is elitist; not because only a limited number of people are interested (the opposite would appear to be the case, as the story of Cædmon shows); rather, the recording served a purpose at odds with the original oral intentions of poetry. The fact is that only some literacies develop both elite and civic literacy; these are often those which survive longest in the competition between language varieties. Both Latin and Greek exemplify this. The ‘mixture’ is different, however: the Italian BCE literacies had civic hearts, with Latin alone blending this with creative domains; Greek began with a strong creative and elite bent but gradually assumed civic roles. It is the focusing caused by the bringing together of the two which practically guarantees longevity. The objection can be made, however, that this is ex post facto argumentation. The primary reason why Latin and Greek were so successful for so long was because of the political and economic clout associated with them; indeed, it is this very clout which guaranteed that both civic and elite forms of literacy survive. While this is a reasonable objection, it ignores one point. The dual literacies of Greece and Latium were achieved before the actors involved were anything more than regional powers. This is particularly the case with Greece, where practically no prior models existed for most of the uses to which writing was put. For this reason, I would term the initial product of the combination intimate standardization. The number of people using the written form was highly circumscribed; the literate culture was capable of considerable dynamism, however. Thus Anglo-Saxon England had a highly vibrant literate culture which involved both creative discourse and the vernacular administration of elements of rule, despite the high status of Latin. It never developed into a mass standardization, however. It was when this successful literacy was combined with political and economic force (itself creating




political and cultural hegemony) that mass standardization can take place, often during a period of great economic optimism and phenomena which we would now analyse as globalization. Literacies of this type – French and English in the modern age being good examples – tend to grow, spread and maintain their status. But the drawback exists that they can, in Joseph (1987)’s terms, become absolute standards. For those intimate standardizations which do not go through mass standardization, the chances for survival are greater than for other literacies; nevertheless, as the case of Scots shows, language varieties will eventually decline in use if hegemonic forces are arrayed against them. In Chapter 1 we discussed the differences in viewpoint over standardization held by Kloss and Joseph. In the analysis I suggested that Kloss’ view – that languages derive strength from their use in non-literary prose – and Joseph’s – that use in literary contexts was central to a language variety’s development – might be due to the fact that many of Joseph’s examples derive from the period before around 1800, while almost all of Kloss’ were from after that date. From this it was supposed that literary use was a more important demonstration of language status before the development of mass education. It would be difficult to argue against this. But what this book has demonstrated is that the use of a variety in both creative and functional written contexts was and is necessary for the survival, development and expansion of that literacy, no matter when these events happened. Throughout the period, moreover, authority and identity worked together, but often in contradictory ways. Authority generally radiates from the centre; identity from the personal and societal construction of worth. Yet there have been times when two authorities have been in conflict with each other, as with Latin and some of the more powerful vernaculars in the later middle ages; conversely, the use of Latin throughout the western Roman Empire was probably at least partly due to the existence of two potential identities for all residents: one local, the other central. These tensions would only grow in the modern era; but the types and levels of authority and identity were more diffuse and multimodal before the nation state and mass literacy, however.



Conclusions 209

Notes

1. The following discussion has derived a great deal of information from Unwin (1998), with additional analyses from Jönsson, Tägil and Törnqvist (2000). 2. Culturally and linguistically, contemporary Denmark is generally placed in Scandinavia, although geographically part of the mainland.

1

Sociology of language: An introduction

1. The classic, although by no means universally accepted, discussion of these matters is Fishman (1991). Sasse (1992) provides a provisional but convincing theoretical analysis of the linguistic and sociolinguistic developments involved in language shift.

2 Linguistic prehistory 1. Mallory 1989; see also Beekes 1995: chapter 3, Campanile 1998 and Fortson 2004: chapter 2. 2. Mallory 1989: 87–94; Clackson 2008; Fortson 2004: chapter 13; Wallace 2008. 3. Bojtár (1999) suggests on a number of occasions that the eastern Baltic peoples – roughly, the Lithuanians and Latvians – moved from what is now western Belarus, northern Poland and eastern Lithuania into their present homes in the later centuries of the first Christian millennium, assimilating both Baltic-Finnic and (in the case of the Couronians) west Baltic speakers.

3

The first European literacies

1. The Archanes Script may be an exception. It is associated overwhelmingly with burial inscriptions (Schoep 2006: 44–8). Bennet (2008) suggests that this may be due to chance. 2. Popham (1994) gives a nuanced discussion; Castleden (2005) presents a more culture-internal view of Mycenaean contraction. 3. Harris (1989: 46) states, following Jeffery (1961: 22), that the Phoenician system copied and developed by the Greeks did have the ability to represent some vowels; these would not be sufficient for any Greek dialect, however. 4. Skafte Jensen (2000) provides an alternative explanation: the reciters of ‘Homer’ maintained their memory-based performances (possibly as a marker of guild pride). Literacy-dominant outsiders standardized the living tradition, probably in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE, as the city states began to assert their identities. These two theories are not mutually exclusive.

210



Prologue

5. See, for instance, Lejeune (1971) and (1988), as well as Tibiletti Bruno (1981). 6. Charanis (1946) considers it likely that these ancient speech islands were guaranteed survival only through the immigration of many Peloponnesian Greeks during the Slav invasions of the sixth and seventh Christian centuries. 7. The Hellenization of central Italy is discussed by Grant (1980: Chapter 3). 8. Although there are references in the classical period to the existence of something approaching imaginative literature (Cornell 1995: 37). 9. Roman relationships with Greek culture were inevitably contradictory, however, with the supposed superiority of Roman ‘virtue’ over Greek ‘vice’ regularly being emphasized in writings from the late Republic (Wardman 1976). 10. Clackson and Horrocks (2007: 132–8) present highly persuasive evidence that prosodic changes also encouraged this adoption. 11. Many of the ideas expressed in this later, more purist, language had, of course, been derived from Greek, as the discussion in Clackson and Horrocks 2007: 185–7 and elsewhere suggests.

4

The first hegemonies

1. Frösén (1974)’s claim that Greek koine was the product of pidginization and creolization is given short shrift by Horrocks (1997: 33). Attic and koine cannot be treated as anything other than variants. There is no sense of the linguistic trauma all pidgins go through, in terms of loss of vocabulary, ‘simplification’ of morphology and phonology, and so on. 2. For a discussion of the history of the era and its cultural effects, see Green (1990). 3. There were unsuccessful attempts to produce a Doric koine (Horrocks 1997: 40–1); at one point, the foothold the Ptolemies had in Greece – in Rhodes and other Doric islands – used a Doric variety in its Chancery. 4. These suggestions are in line with the pompous and hypercorristic Latin spoken by the plutocratic freedman Trimalchio in Petronius’ Satyricon (mid first century CE). Trimalchio obviously has a slavery-derived form of Popular Latin as the basis of his idiolect; his literacy and social climbing have produced its grotesque features. 5. This naturally ceased to be associated with voting rights in the Imperial period and was therefore a matter of legal rights and obligations easily administered in the provinces (Gardner 1993). 6. Although not all soldiers spoke this way: the Latin of most of the Vindolanda tablets is very close to the literary norms; it is likely, however, that these writers do not represent the majority of soldiers. 7. These translations are not, however, the earliest Christian writing in Latin. In a text whose events occurred around 180 CE, a north African Christian named Speratus is compelled to tell the proconsul Saturninus that he possesses ‘books and letters of Paul, a just man’ (Mitchell 2006: 177). 8. For a discussion of Christian literacy, see Clark (2004: chapter 5); for the Vulgate, Dihle (1994: 508–9).



Notes 211

212 Notes

5 Centrifugal and centripetal forces. Late antiquity and the early medieval period 1. Such a process is possible. Bojtár (1999: 217–8 and elsewhere) demonstrates that the East Baltic-speaking inhabitants of the Couronian spit in Prussia in modern times called themselves by the same name as the west Baltic Couronians of the Middle Ages. 2. Pohl (1980) and Heather (2005: 357–8). Thompson (1996: 15) claims that Edeco was an ethnic Hun, however. 3. Indeed this was Roman policy from early on. A friendly Germanic tribe, the Ubii, were moved onto the west bank of the Rhine in the 30s BCE. Their settlement evolved into Cologne (Gechter 1990). 4. Those periods the frontiers were breached might be associated with movement and change taking place in the rear. The Marcomannic War may have been due to the culture transfers and migrations which eventually produced a Pontic Steppe Gothic culture (Heather 1996: 31–8). 5. Although Runic graffiti is extant. There is also some medieval Scandinavian evidence of runes being used in correspondence (Liestøl 1968). 6. It might be different if more wooden inscriptions had survived: the pagan Germani treated particular trees as totems. 7. Page (1963: 30) notes that ... the Anglo-Saxon evidence for rune-magic, though not negligible, is slight. The only certain point is Aelfric’s unambiguous reference. Without it the existence of rune-magic would hardly have been deduced from the English material alone. ... Those who argue that OE runes were commonly used for magical purposes must rely on supporting evidence from outside this country [i.e., England], in particular from Scandinavia. They should remember the differences in cultural development between Dark Age Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England, especially the early date of the conversion to Christianity and the introduction of Roman script into this country. 8. As discussed by Yorke (1990: 61), Bruce-Mitford (1986) and O’Loughlin (1964). 9. Although, even so, civil war remained the norm for the remainder of the existence of the Empire, as Goldsworthy (2009) emphasizes. 10. Even this last point is debatable: see Goffart (1987) and Mathisen and Shanzer (2001). 11. See James (1988: 118) and Fletcher (1997: 130). 12. Although non-standard English varieties exhibit the same phenomenon; this is unlikely to be due to Romance influence.



9. Although she probably exaggerates the potential for vernacular liturgy and Gospel in the western Empire; Gothic vernacular traditions derive from a very different climate, as we will see in Chapter 5. 10. Although there is a good case for many of the ‘Christian idioms’ so noteworthy in late imperial Latin to have first developed from around the first century CE on in Stoic and other ‘personal’ philosophical and religious traditions (Löfstedt 1959: chapter 5).

13. Gurevich (1988: 6–8) suggests that Alcuin’s primary objection to the use of vernacular traditions was the context: there was always tension between the Latin-centred scholarly tradition and vernacular folk tradition in the Church’s attempt to reach all listeners, literate and non-literate. 14. MacHarris (1990: 88) gives a relatively late example of this type of distinction. 15. Britannia was also, for long periods during the late fourth and early fifth centuries, ruled by usurpers based either there or in Gaul: Rome had got out of the habit of ruling the province much earlier than the final retreat. 16. Wickham (2005) suggests that a new ruling class developed from the richer peasants over a period of two to three generations; both tendencies were probably at work in this territory. 17. For a recent discussion of these problems, see Schrijver (2002). 18. This view appears to have remained scholarly consensus, as a number of essays in Higham (2007) demonstrate. That does not mean that scholars are entirely confident in explaining and describing the ways in which the language of – we assume – a minority replaced the language of a majority (whether that be British in the main, or, following Schrijver 2002 and 2007, Latin). Recent work (for instance, Schrijver 2007 and 2009) suggests that there may be some Celtic influence on the Old English phonological system. Surprisingly, Schrijver (2009) makes a case for this influence coming from a Q-Celtic (Gaelic) variety still spoken in Britain at the time. 19. Jackson (1953: 118–20) believes that Latin carried on among the higher ranks of British society. This may, however, have been learned Latin. 20. For a discussion of the range of words borrowed into British from Latin, see Jackson (1953: 78–80). 21. In a nuanced analysis, Abrams (2008: 125) observes that this tradition of translation can be traced back to the first movements away from Greek in the Church – both to Syriac and Coptic in the east and Latin in the west, with an accompanying desire for literalism in order to avoid ambiguating the original text. Over time, users of the Latin version gradually lost that sense of subsidiarity. In the east, as we will see, matters were more complex. 22. Charles-Edwards (2008: 96) suggests that there may have been an attempt to keep the vernacular and profane apart from the holy, even when the same writer was producing both. Just as Boethius does not discuss theology in The Consolation of Philosophy, because it is a work concerned with philosophy, an Irish scribe, writing about heroic vernacular matters, would not have presented the story in a Christian context. 23. Charles-Edwards (2008: 97–102); see also Corning (2006) and Byrne (1994: 60). 24. For a discussion of the British aspects of the early Irish Church, see Jackson (1973–4) and Dumville (1984). 25. For perhaps the most thorough discussions of these and other literacy matters, see Kelly (1990) and Keynes (1990). 26. This connection was later perpetuated through immersion in another language and culture. As a young child, Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, engaged to the Emperor, was taken into the household of Bruno,



Notes 213

27.

28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34.

6

Archbishop of Trier, to learn German and the local mores (van Houts 2000: 97). For a discussion of the process, see Pohl (2002, in particular chapter 4), Charanis (1949) and Obolensky (1971, chapter 2 and 1994, chapter 2); Vlasto (1970a: 10) points out that Peloponnesian place names like Anastasova suggest Christianization of the local Slavs before Hellenization. Their preaching would also have been in the vernacular; indeed, some early West Slavonic religious vocabulary may have come from missionary activities from the Frankish West prior to the mission of Cyril and Methodius (Vlasto 1970a: 16, 25). Fletcher (1997: 353–6); Vlasto (1970a) and (1970b); Obolensky (1971: 138–9); (1994, chapters 7 and 9). Vlasto (1970a: 196–207); see also Magdalino (2002: 173). Miller (2007: 256) makes the point, however, that the concept of Rus’ was primarily an elite one. It rarely, if ever, was used in more demotic written styles. Franklin (2002); see also Shepard (2002: 246–7). Mango (1980: chapter 13); Mango (2002c: 101); Mango (2002d: 214–5, 226); Šev enko (2002); Nicol (1979: 23). Horrocks (1997: section 2) describes the linguistic evidence for this particularly broad register variation in some depth.

Competing hegemonies: The high middle ages

1. From which they may have derived some of their scriptural and liturgical traditions (Hamilton 1994). 2. Although it is worth noting that the mores of the time still appears to have demanded that written disputation – both within the Waldensian community and with Catholics – took place in Latin. Brenon (1994) discusses the surviving Waldensian materials in Occitan. 3. Davies and Moorhouse (2002) give a particularly striking example of the processes at work in Wrocław. 4. It is significant that the Arabic word for ‘European’, ferengi, is literally ‘Frank’ and that the use language of the medieval Mediterranean, lingua franca, means ‘language of the Franks’. 5. Lydon (1984a), Bliss (1984) and Crowley (2005: chapters 1 and 2). 6. The following is based, in the main, upon the interpretations found in Barrell (2000). I follow Macafee (2002) in the discussion of Scots. 7. James (2008) suggests that speakers of Cumbric were not necessarily from Cumbria originally; they may have been refugees/emigrants from Strathclyde who followed the rich pickings of the Scandinavian invaders. 8. Too much can be made of Margaret’s Anglo-Saxon identity. For various political reasons, she had spent much of her life in continental Europe; especially in Hungary. It was her English identity which assured her power. 9. Much of the following is based upon the analysis of Bull and Léglu (2005) and Paterson (1993). 10. For a discussion of the cultural development of Occitan literature during this period, see Lafont and Anatole 1970, vol. I; Rostaing and Jouveau 1972 and Bec 1995.



214 Notes

11. Mikoś (1992) provides a sample of these in English translation; although few in number, their themes are very much of the contemporary European mainstream. 12. The following section is based primarily on Glick (1979), Harvey (1990) and Kennedy (1996). 13. While recognizing that similar processes were at work on Catalan and Portuguese: Basque exhibits far less Arabic influence. Northern dialects of Catalan, such as that of Barcelona, do not have anything like the level of Arabic influence that Valencian dialects have. 14. Although there is some evidence from Jewish traditional songs of al-Andalus for the survival of the southern Romance varieties (Stern 1953). 15. This viewpoint can be found elsewhere. St John Damascene was called Sarakenophil ‘Arab lover’ by his enemies. 16. Nirenberg (1996) presents a nuanced analysis of the nature of relationships between people of different faiths. 17. For a radical version of this view, see Wexler (1993).

7 The birth of the modern?: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 1. Migliorini and Griffith (1984: chapters 3 and 4); Usher (1996). 2. Especially when these views were held by Petrarch and Boccaccio, who could be surprisingly dismissive about Dante in their Latin writing (McLaughlin 1996: 226–9). 3. For a discussion of the rise of Catalan, see Nadal and Prats (1982). The ‘rise’, ‘fall’ and ‘rise’ of the language is illustrated in Guarner (1980). 4. Nauert (2006: chapter 1), Mann (1996) and Reeve (1996). 5. For a discussion of the two groups’ levels and use of literacy, see Hudson (1994) and Šmahel (1994). 6. Although, as Hargreaves (1965) points out, there had been biblical translations into English for centuries before; not only in the Anglo-Saxon period. The Wycliffite scriptures differ in scale of production and purpose, however (Rex 2002: 75). In the Romance world (particularly northern France), at that time largely free of heresy, Bible translations (or excerpts) were often found in the richly decorated bibles moralisées. The cost of the volumes (along with their obviously personal nature) may, however, have been the chief gating mechanism on this occasion: at the very least, users would have had to be rich members of the middle classes, not the more impressionable members of the lower orders (Berger 1977). 7. Christiansen (1997: 93) notes that, while the burghers and merchants of the new territories were Low German speakers, their ‘protectors’ in the military orders were often High German speakers. Thus linguistic tensions and relations were more complex than sometimes reported. 8. For a discussion of many of these points, see the papers in Jahr (1995b); in particular Jahr (1995a) and Braunmüller (1995). Many earlier treatments are referred to in this volume’s bibliographies. It should be noted, however, that most contributors tend, most of the time, to see contact phenomena largely as a matter of the spread of features peculiar to one language to



Notes 215

216 Notes another. This undoubtedly happened in this context. It is likely, however, that such close relatives affected each other by means of interference rather than borrowing.

Conclusions

1. Although there is no doubt that this organization did assume some of the trappings and duties of the departed civil administration and also probably attracted a number of men who might otherwise have become public servants. 2. To some extent the earlier Latinization of western Europe, including some cultural Romanization, could be seen as a form of ‘cultural conversion’. 3. The standardizations which took place during the late medieval crisis appear to buck this trend. But although the ill effects of the crisis were real enough, economic growth was sufficient, particularly in the centres around which standardization was focusing.



8

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236

Aachen, 131, 133 Aberdeen, Old, 161 abstand, 12–13 acculturation, 13 Acts of the Apostles, 96 Adrian II, Pope, 137 Adrianople, 135 Adriatic Sea, 6, 37, 79 Aegean Sea, 6, 40–1 Ælfric of Eynsham, 114, 129, 202 Aeneid, The Old French literature, 165 Æthelberht, King of Kent, 127–8 vernacular law code, 128 ‘Ætlakviða’, 167 Africa, North, 71, 136 Latin, 93 Vandal conquest, 105 Africa, sub-Saharan, 14, 19 Afro-Asiatic languages, 28, 33 spoken in ancient Europe?, 40 Afrikaans, 193 Akkadian, 15–16 Alanic, 85 Alans, 105, 130 Alba, see Scotland Albania, 21, 24, 79, 80–1 connection to Arumanian, 81 descendant of Illyrian?, 38 Alcuin of York, 113–14, 131–2 Alemanni, 102, 103, 108 Alemannic, 103 Alexander the Great, 69 Alfred, King of Wessex vernacular initiatives, 129–30 Alpine alphabets, 106 Alpine languages, ancient, 55–6 Alps, The, 3, 7, 40, 78, 87, 143, 149, 151 Altaic languages, 32, 33 Amazonia, 14 Ambrose, St, 97, 107 Ambrosius Aurelianus, 122

Americas European discovery, 3, 6 ‘Amerind’ construct of mass comparison, 34 Ammianus Marcellinus, 108 Anatolia, 29, 39, 44 Anatolian languages, 23, 28, 29 relationship to Eteo-Cretan, 39 Ancrene Riwle, 168 al-Andalus, see Spain, Moslem Andreas, 130 Angles, 99; see also Anglo-Saxons, English Anglo-Saxons, 100, 102 influence on continental Germanic peoples, 133 settlement in Britain, 118–19, 127 Anglesey, 5 Anglo-Norman, 167–8 Antiquity, Late, 107–14, 135–41 Antium (Anzio), 56 Apennine mountains, 55 Appian, 94 Aquitanian, ancestor of Basque, 33 Arabic, 13, 45, 172 influence on Ibero-Romance, 170–1 translated into Latin, 146 Aragon, 53 Aramaic, 136, early Christianity, 96 Jewish vehicular language, 173–5, 176–7 Palmyrean, inscription at Hadrian’s Wall, 92 Arbogast, Count of Trier, 113 Archanes script ancestor of Linear A, 43 Ardennes hills, 3, 112 ‘Arianism’, Germanic, 104–5, 110–11, 117 Frankish interest in, 112 Aristophanes, 65 237



Index

Index

Aristotle, 69, 81–2, 146 Armenian, common ancestry with Greek and Phrygian?, 23, 39 Arminius, use of Latin, 109 Arno, River, 56 Aromanian, connection to Albanian, 81 history of speakers, 79–81 medieval shift to Slavonic, 177 ‘Transylvanian question’, 83–4 Arpinum (Arpino), 65 Arthur, King German literature, 166 Old French literature, 165 Ashkenazim, 174–7 Asia Minor, 43–4, 69, 71 Asia, South-East, 14 Athens, 50, 52, 68–70 literate culture, 49–52 Atticism, 95, 177, 195, 198; see also Greek Attila, 101, 105 Germanic literature, 167 auctoritas, medieval cult of, 147 Augsburg, David von, 166 Augustine of Canterbury, St, 128 Augustine of Hippo, St, 97 Augustus (Octavian), 71, 79 ausbau, 12–13, 143, 178 Austria, 12, 37–8 Austronesian languages, 194 avant garde, linguistic, 12 Avars, 135 Avicenna, 146 Azores, 3–4, 6 Balearic islands, 6, 40 Balkan mountains, 3 Balkan peninsula, 3, 24, 38, 79–81, 135, 136, 195–6 Byzantine collapse, 177 Baltic Finnic languages, 24; see also Estonian, Finnic, Finnish Baltic languages, 21–4, 38, 192 Baltic Sea, 1, 4, 40 Balto-Slavonic, 23, 24 a genuine group?, 38

barbarian successor states to Rome, 110–14 Barbour, John, 185 Basque, 15, 33–6, 39, 78, 202, 204 descendant of Aquitainian, 33 unrelated to Iberian, 39 ‘Battle of Maldon’, 130 Bath, 122 Bavaria, 110 Bavarian, 103 Bede, St, 128 Belarus, 38 Belfast Lough, 6 Belorussian, 184 Beowulf, 107, 114, 130 Berber, 170 Berbers, 170 Bergen, 192 Bernicia incorporation into Scotland, 157–8 Bible Vulgate, 150 Black Forest, 3 Black Sea, 1, 4, 5, 7, 57, 103 Boccaccio, 182 Bohemia, 102, 135, 137, 190–1 German speakers, 161 Bologna, University of, 147 Boniface, St, 129 educational mission, 110 Latin, 131 Bořek, Diviš, 191 Bornholm, 6 Bosnia, 46 script, 139, 195–6 Bosnian language, 14 Bothnia, Gulf of, 5 Brabant, 162 Bremen, 192 Brian Borúma, ‘King of Ireland’, 154 Britain, Island of, 5–7 Anglo-Saxon invasion, 107 Britannia, Roman, 83, fate of inhabitants during English settlement, 120–2 Highland zone, 118, 156 Lowland zone, 118–19 Britannia, post-Roman, 117–25



238

British, 126 influence on English Christianity, 128 lack of influence on English, 121 British Isles, 3, 5–6, 20, 37, 40, 130, 151 Latin tradition, 131–2 Bruges, 192 Brus, The, 185 Brut, Laʒamon, 168 Brut, Robert Wace, 168 (southern) Bug, River, 4 Bukovina, 135 Bulgaria, 39, 138–9, 177, 201 Bulgars, Turkic people, 135–6 Burebista, 82 Burgundian, 103 Burgundians, 104, 137 Byzantium, 135–6, 177, 188 education, 70 ‘language policy’, 136–9 literary conservatism, 46, 119; see also Atticism Cadmus, 45 Cædmon, 127 Caesar, Julius, 87 California, 3 Caliphate, Ummayad, 171 Campania, 40, 55–6 Canaan, 45 Canary islands, 3–4, 6 Cantabrian mountains, 3, 7, 40 Canterbury, 132 Capua, 56 Caribbean sea, 3 Carolingian dynasty, 130–2, 150 Carpathian mountains, 3, 38, 82–4, 104, 150, 155 Carrickfergus, 154 Carthage, 58, 71, 76; see also Punic influence on Iberia, 42–3 Carthusian Order, 145 Caspian sea, 4, 28 Cassius Dio, 94 Castile, 152 Catalan, 114, 185 Catalonia, 53, 130 Catharism, 149

239

Cato the Elder, 65, 86 Caucasus mountains, 1 Celtic languages, 23, 24, 37, 54, 72, 77–9, 82, 126–7, 202, 204 Charibert, King of the Franks, 127 Charlemagne, 130–2, 133–5 educational reforms, 109 Old French literature, 165 Charles University, Prague, 190 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 184 Cherusci, 99 Childeric, King of the Franks, 112 Chiltern Hills, 119 China, 14 Christianity, 200 Bosnian, 195 eastern, 140, 150 ‘Germanization’, 113, 127–8, 201–3; see also Eigenkirche Irish, 124–5 western, 95–7, 110–1, 131–2, 144–5, 146, 150 Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, 129–30 Cicero, 61, 65–6, 76 provincial origin, 72 Cistercian order, 145 classical language, 13 Clodius (Publius Claudius Pulcher), 63 Clontarf, Battle of, 154 Clovis, King of the Franks, 112 Cologne, 111 Columbanus, St, 109, 126 Comneni, Byzantine dynasty, 140 Confederation, Swiss, 192 Conquest of England, Norman, 158 Conquest of Ireland, ‘Norman’, 154–5 Constantinople, 94, 108, 135, 151, 177, 203 convergence, linguistic, 25–6, 34–5, 120 Coptic, 136 Cordoba, 171 Corinth, 50 Cork, 154, 156 Corsica, 6 Council, Second Vatican, 202 creolization, 74 creoloid, 194



Index

Index

Cretan hieroglyphic script, 41–3 Crete, 41–4, 207 Crimea, 6 crisis, fourteenth century, 179–81 Crist, 130 Croatia, 150 Croatian, 14 Crusades, 152 First, 165 Northern, 161 persecution of minorities, 175 Cumbric, 158–9 Cyclades, 41 Cynewulf, 106 Cyprus, 6 Cyril, St, 201 Cyril and Methodius, Sts, 137–9 Cyrillic, 138–9 Czech, 13, 22, 191, 200 Dacia, 82–3, 99 ‘Transylvanian question’, 83–4 Dacian, 39 Dalmatian islands, 138–9 Dalmatian, Romance language, 79 Dalriada, Kingdom of, 157 Danish, 185 Dante Alighieri, 16, 182 Danube, River, 4, 5, 8, 20, 38, 78–9, 82–3, 94, 102, 105, 111, 175 Danzig (Gdańsk), 192 Decebal, Dacian leader, 82–3 Dee, River (England and Wales), 122 Dee, River (Scotland), 160 Delphi, Oracle, 61 Denmark, 37, 103, 107 centre for early runic writing, 106 ‘Deor’, 130 De Vulgari Eloquentia, 182 dialect, synecdochic, 12–13; see also standardization dialectalization, 72–3 diglossia, 10, 12, 17, 91 Diocletian, 80 discontent, religious, 189–92; see also heresy divergence, linguistic, 21, 24–5 Dnieper, River, 4 Dniester, River, 4

Don, River (Scotland), 20 Don, River (Ukraine), 4, 6, 20, 28 Douro, River, 150 Drava, River, 4, 38 Dravidian languages, 33 ‘Dream of the Rood’, 134, 150 drift, 194–5 druids Gaul, 86 Ireland, 123–4 dualism; see heresy, intellectual Dublin, 6, 154–6 Dutch, 12, 103, 185, 194 Dvina-Daugava, River, 4 early bilingualism theory, 115 East Anglia, 121 Ebro, River, 4, 53 Edeco, father of Odovacer, 100 Edgar Atheling, 158 Edinburgh, 158–9 Egypt, 41, 43–4, 46, 51, 93, 136 contact with Mycenaean Greece, 44 Ptolemaic, 71 Eifel hills, 3, 112 eigenkirche, 113–14, 123, 125, 134 connection to vernacular literature, 125–6 elaboration, 13 Elbe, River, 4, 100, 102, 150, 151, 152, 153, 162 Elmet, Kingdom of, 121 Ems, River, 99, 107 England, 127–30, 152, 197, 203 Anglo-Saxon, 99, 114, 132–3, 144; see also Anglo-Saxons Norman Conquest, 10 Plantagenet, 168 English, 13, 14, 93, 103, 116–17, 120, 127, 193, 200–1, 204 African American Vernacular English, 75 High Medieval, 167–9 Irish, 156 North American, 162 Old, 29, 128–30, 203 Standard, 12, 75, 184 English Channel-North Sea-Baltic Sea conglomeration, 1



240

Ennius, Quintus, 65 Erasmus, 188 Estonia, 38, 192 Estonian, 30; see also Baltic Finnic, Finnic Eteo-Cretan, 32, 39; see also Pelasgian relationship to Anatolian?, 39 Etruria, 60 Etruscan, 32, 40, 55, 56, 58–9 ‘Eurasiatic’, construct of mass comparison, 34 Evangelienbuch, 202 Faeroes, 5 fascism, 204 Faliscan, 25–6; see also LatinoFaliscan family tree model, 21–6 ‘Fertile Crescent’, 28 feudalism, 143 Finland, 5, 17 Gulf of, 5 Finnic languages, 30–2, 40, 192 contact with Baltic, Germanic and Iranian speakers, 38, 40 Finnish, 17, 30 Finnish Shield, 5, 8 Finno-Ugric, 30–2, 202 contact with proto-Indo-Iranian, 30 suggestions for homeland, 30 Flavus, brother of Arminius use of Latin, 109 Flemish ‘Norman’ conquerors of Ireland, 154 Florence, 180 Forest, 7 steppe, 7 Forth-Clyde line, 156 France, 182–3, 205 South, 148–9, 162–4 Francia, 112, 127–8, 132; see also France, Franks Francis of Assisi, St, 181–2 Franciscan order, 166 ‘Frankish’ expansion and homogenization, 144–7, 150–62, 199

241

Frankish, 201 Low, 162; see also German, Low Franks, 102–3, 105, 110, 112–14, 151–2; see also Carolingians, Merovingians education reforms, 130–2 Salic, 112 French, 13, 91–3, 115, 116–17, 169, 194, 200–1, 204; see also Occitan Anglo-Norman, 184 Ile-de-France, 183 Northern, 165 Frisian islands, 7 Frisians, 99–100, 119–20, 201 Fyn, island of, 6 Gaelic ‘missions’ to the continent, 109–10 Gaelic, Scottish, 15, 17, 157–8 Galicia (Iberia), 20 Galicia (Ukraine), 135 Galician (Iberia), 114 Gaul, 55, 71, 85–91, 92, 109–10, 207 Latin, 77, 89–90 Genesis A, 201 Georgia, 85 Gepids, 104, 137 German, 12–13, 22, 93, 152–3, 160–3, 200–1 High, 204 Low, 12, 72, 103, 162, 166–7, 185, 191–5, 204 Middle, 103 Upper, 103 Germanic peoples, 99–104 Romanization of leaders, 108–9 Germanic languages, 22–4, 27, 37–8, 77, 80–1, 132–4, 202 contacts with Finnic languages, 40 East, 103 North, 167 North-West, 106–7 West, 103, 104, 166–7 Germanus of Auxerre, St, 119 Germany, 6, 12, 37, 103 Getic, 39, 103; see also Dacian Gildas, 119 Gironde, River, 4



Index

Index

Glagolithic script, 138–9 globalization, 71, 88–9, 150 glocalization, 89–90 Gododdin, Ride of the, 157 Goliadi, 38 goliards, 147 Gothic, 103–4, 137 Goths, 83, 100, 103–5, 109, 110–11, 117, 135, Gotland, 6 Gower, John, 184 Greece, 4, 41–4, 50, 152, 207 Greek, 24, 39–9, 44–53, 54–5, 61, 70–1, 77, 93, 95–6, 136–7, 140–1, 187–8, 196, 201, 208 Arcadian, 47 Attic, 50, 68–70, 199 Atticism, 140, 177 Doric, 68 influence from Pelasgian, 38–9 Ionian, 47, 50, 68–70 Italian, 71 koine, 68–70, 94–5 Mycenaean, 28, 43 relationship with Armenian and Phrygian, 23, 39 Gregory the Great, St, 129 Gregory, II, Pope, 131 Gregory VII, Pope, 144–5 Gregory of Tours, 115 habitus, 207 Hadrian’s Wall, 92, 156 Halbdeutsch, 192 Hali Meiðhad, 168 Hallstatt, 6 Hamburg, 192 Hannibal, 3 Hanseatic League, 192–5 Harz mountains, 3 Hebrew, 96, 176–7 Hebrides, The, 5 hegemony, 71–98, 207 Heliand, The, 133–4 Heligoland, 6 Hellenism, 70, 74, 95 Hengest and Horsa, 119 Henry II, King of England, 154 Henry IV, King of England, 184

heresy, 147–50; see also Catharism, discontent, religious, Waldensians Herodian, 95 Herodotus, 45 ‘Hildebrandslied’, 134 Hilton, Walter, 189 Hispania, 65, 77–8, 92, 104–5, 109–10, 130–1, 151, 169–70; see also Iberia Hittite, 28 Holland, 6, 162 Homer, 47, 70 homogenization, 143, 203–4 humanism, 187–9 humanitas, 76 Hundred Year’s War, 179–80, 183 Hungary, 85, 137, 152 Huns, 83, 85, 103, 104–5 Hus, Jan, 189 Hussitism, 190–1 Hwicce, 121 Iazyges, 85 Iberia, 20, 37, 40 Roman conquest, 33, 71 Iberian language, 32, 40, 53–5 Iceland, 3, 4, 5, 114 Icelandic, 106, 154, 203 iconoclasm, 130–1 Ile-de-France, 183 Iliad, The, 44, 46 French literature, 165 Illyria, 94 Ilyrian, 38, 77–8, 100 Incas, 105 Indo-Aryan languages, 22 Indo-European, 19–20, 21–30, 35, 36, 37–9, 45 homeland, 27–30 Indo-Iranian, 22, 23, 24 contact with Uralic languages, 30 Ingaevones, 103, 106–7; see also German, Low, Anglo-Saxon Ingeld, 114 Ingwinas, 106–7 Inn, River, 4 Iona, Island of, 131 Iranian, 20, 22, 38, 40, 78, 80, 84–5, 99, 100



242

Ireland, 5–6, 114, 123–7, 128, 151, 153–4, 203 Irish, 124–6 Iron Gates, 94 Islam, 204; see also Spain, Moslem, al-Andalus Italian, 16, 55–67, 93, 205 Italic languages, 22, 23, 37 common descent?, 25–6 literacy, 59–60 Italy, 3–4, 37, 38, 41, 71–5, 100, 109, 137, 152, 164 use of French, 181 Iuliene, Þe liflade ant te passion of Seinte, 168 Jaen, 53 Jerome, St, 97, 188 Jesus, 96 Jews, 172–3, 174–5; see also Yiddish Jireček line, 79–81 Joan of Arc, 83 John VIII, Pope, 137 Joseph, John E., 12–3, 209 Julian of Norwich, 189 Jura mountains, 3 Jutes, 107, 119; see also Anglo-Saxons Jutland, 37 Kashubians, 160–1 Kent, 120, 127–8 Kentish, 120 Khanty (Ostyak), 30 Khazars, 164 Khoisan languages, 194 Kiev, 139–40 Kilkenny, Statutes of, 155 kin-tongues, 185 Kloss, Heinz, 13–14, 209 Königberg (Kaliningrad), 192 Kosovo, 196 Ladder of Perfection, The, 189 Langobardi, 100, 105, 113 Arianism, 104 Languedoc, 149; see also France, Occitan language isolates, 32–3

243

Latin, 16, 25–6, 55–6, 60–7, 73–5, 91–4, 109, 114–7, 120–7, 135, 185–6, 196, 199–200, 201–4, 208, 209 African, 93, 136 Balkan, 94, 108 British, 118–19, 121–3 Camp, 90, 92–3 Christian, 96–7 Classical, 13, 16, 22 Medieval, 65, 143, 146, 149, 169, 183, 186–9, 188–9 Popular, 11–12 Latinitas, 115 Latino-Faliscan, 25–6, 55–6 Latium (Lazio), 56 Latvian, 22 lenition, 92 Lepontic, 55 Liège, 133 Linear A script, 39, 43 Linear B script, 43 linguistic prehistory, 19–40 Lipari islands, 6 literacy, civic, 208 literacy, elite, 208 Lithuania, Grand Duchy of, 184 Lithuanian, 184 Livy, 72 Loire, River, 4, 152 Lollards, 189–90 London, 164 Lorraine, 7, 112, 201 Lough Neagh, 6 Lübeck, 192 Lucian, 94 Ludwigslied, 134 Lusitanian, 37, 54 Luxembourg, 201 Luxembourgish, 12 Lyon, 96 Maas, River; see Meuse-Maas, River Macbeth, 158 Macedon, Kingdom of, 69–71 Macedonia, 78, 135, 138 macrosociolinguistics; see sociology of language Macedonian, ancient, 69



Index

244 Index Moscow, 38 Mosel(le), River, 4, 134, 152 Moslems, 130, 150–1 Mozarabs, 172 Mudejars, 172–3 Muscovy, 196 Myhill (2006), 201, 204–6 Naples, 40, 55, 57 Bay of, 55 Narvik, 3 (eastern) Neisse, River, 152 Nero, Roman Emperor, 87 Netherlands, The, 6; see also Dutch, Holland Neva-Volkhov river complex, 4 new model, a, 206–9 ‘New Zealand model’, 23–4 Nibelungenlied, 166, 167 Niemen, River, 4 Noricum, 78–81; see also Pannonia North Atlantic Drift (Gulf Stream), 3 North European Plain, 3, 4, 7 North Sea, 1, 3 Northumbria, 157 Norway, 3, 5, 195 Norwegian, 14, 185, 204–5 ‘Nostratic’, 33–4 Novgorod, 139–40 Occitan, 115, 149, 164, 166, 168, 169, 185, 204, 205 Oder-Odra, River, 4, 104, 135, 152 Odin, 106 Odovacer, 100–1 Odrysian kingdom, 82 Odyssey, The, 44, 46 ogam, 124 Ohrid, See of, 138 Olbia, 82 Old European, 20–1, 40 Orkney, 5 Oscan, 25–6, 55–6, 61, 63, 91 Ossetic, 85 Ostrogoths; see Goths, Gothic Otfrid, 202–3 Outremer, Crusader states of, 152 Ovid, 82 Oxford debates (1409), 190



Magdeburg, 153 Magna Graecia, 55–7 Magyar, 30, 32, 90, 169 Magyars, 130, 134, 143 ‘Transylvanian question’, 83–4 Malcolm IV, 158 Malmesbury, 128 Malta, 6, 150, 152 Man, Isle of, 5 Mansi (Vogul), 30 Marcomanni, 99, 102 Marcus Aurelius, 80 Margaret, St, 158–9 Marius, Gaius, 72 Marseille, 96 Martin of Tours, St, 114 Massif Central, 3, 151 Massilia (Marseille), 57, 87 mass comparison, 34 Mediterranean-Black Sea conglomeration, 1 Mediterranean Sea, 1, 3–5, 6, 41 Memel (Klajpeda), 192 Menander, 65 Merovingian dynasty, 127–8 Mesopotamia, ancient, 15–16, 41, 46 contact with Mycenaean Greece, 44 Messapic, 38 Methodius, St, 201; see also Sts Cyril and Methodius Meuse-Maas, River, 4, 152, 185 Milan, 87, 108 Middle Ages High, 143–78 Late, 179–97 Minnesänger, 166 Minoan and Mycenean civilizations, 41–4 Minoan language; see Eteo-Cretan Moesia, 78–81, 82, 85 monasticism, 4, 124–5 Mongols, 178 Mons Badonicus, 122 Montenegrin, 14 Morava, River, 150 Moravia, 102, 135, 137 Moravia, Great, 137–9, 150, 201 Moray, 157 Mordva (Mordvin), 30

Index punctuated equilibrium model, 34–5 Punic, 45, 54, 57–8; see also Carthaginian Pyramid, 3, 33, 40, 53 Pyrrhus of Epirus, 72 Quechua, 105

Ravenna, 108 Regensburg, 111, 175 register continuum theory, 115–17, 131–2 Repgow, Eike von, 166 Reval (Tallinn), 192 Revelation of John non-native speaker Greek, 77 Revelations of Divine Love, 189 Rhine, River, 4, 78, 99–100, 102, 107, 111, 120, 134, 152, 185 Rhineland, 175 Rhône, River, 4, 86, 149, 151 Riga, 192 Romance languages, 22, 23, 114–17, 143 Gallo-Romance, 115 Ibero-Romance, 171 Italo-Romance, 114 Romance-Germanic frontier, 112 Romania, 39 Romanian connections to Albanian, 81 ‘Transylvanian question’, 83–4 Romanitas, 72–3, 114 Romanticism, national, 17 Rome, 56, 60, 61–7, 117 army, 92–3 imperialism, 87–8, 107–8 script, 54, 55, 60, 207 Ruhr valley, 7 ‘Ruin, The’, 127 runes, 103, 196, 107–8, 124 Rus’, 139–40, 178, 203 Russian, 38, 184 Russian Federation, 1, 7, 85 Ruthenia, 135 Ruthenian, 184 Saale, River, 150 Sabellian languages, 25–6, 55–6



Paeonian, 81–2 palaeontology, linguistic, 27–8 Palaeologae, 140, 195 Pannonia, 78–81, 82, 117, 135 Paris, 164, 183 University of (Sorbonne), 147 Parma, 6 Pastoral Care, 129 Patrick, St, 122, 131 Paul, St, 96 Pelasgian influence on Greek, 38–9 relationship to Anatolian?, 39 relationship to Eteo-Cretan, 39 Peloponnese, 135 ‘Pennsylvania model’, 24–6 Permian, 30 persecution, religious, 174–5 Peterborough Chronicle, The, 167 Petrarch, 182 Phillip II of Macedon, 69 Philipopolis, 135 Phoenician; see Punic Phrygian, 39 Picenian, 71 Pictish, 157 pidginization, 74 Piedmont, 148 Plato, 51 Plautus, 65 Pliny the Younger, 93–4 Po, River, 4, 56, 86–7 Polabians, 160–1 Poland, 37, 38, 152, 160–1, 192 Polish, 13, 169, 184 Polo, Marco, amanuensis’ use of French, 181 Pomerania, 161 Pontic Steppe, 5, 28, 85 Portugal, 3, 152 Portuguese, 114, 192, pre-Albanian, 81; see also Albanian, Arumanian Preslav, 139 primogeniture, 151–2 printing, 196–7 Procopius of Caesarea, 119 ‘Proto-World’, 34 Prussia, 161

245

Index

Sabine, 56, 60, 63 Sachsenchronik, 166–7 Sachsenspiegel, 166 salt, 6–7 Salzburg-Passau, Archbishopric of, 137–8 Sámi, 30 Samnite; see Oscan Samoyedic languages, 30–2 Sanskrit, 13, 16 Saône, 4 Sardinia, 6, 39, 76, 151 Sarmatians, 84–5 Sava, River, 4, 38 Saxo Grammaticus, 167 Saxons Continental, 102, 130, 133–4, Insular, 107; see also Anglo-Saxons Saxon, Low, 162, 201; see also German, Low Saxon, Old, 133–4, 201; see also German, Low Saxon, West, 122; see also English Scandinavia, 5, 6, 106, 152, 169, 191–5 Scheldt, River, 4 Schleswig-Holstein, 107 scholasticism, 146–7, 187 Sciri, 100 Scotland, 20, 21, 72, 151, 152, 156–60, 179, 197, 204 Scots, 17, 157–9, 185, Scythians, 38, 84, ‘Sea peoples’, 44 Seine, River, 4, 150, 152 Semitic languages, 15–16, 45, 207 influence on early Indo-European, 28 Seneca, 65 Serbia, 46, 139, 150, 177 Serbian, 14 Serbo-Croat, 14 Severn, River, 122 Shannon, River, 6 Shetland, 5 Sicel, 39 Sicily, 6, 39, 151, 152, 181 Sidonius, 113 Sigismund, Emperor, 191

Silesia, 7, 161 Sjælland, 6 Slavonic languages, 1, 22, 23, 24, 38, 79–80, 137–40, 162, 192, 202 Iranian influence, 38 Old Church, 131, 137–40, 150, 195, 203 Transolbian, 160–1, 204 Slavs, 135–6, 152 Slovak, 13, 14 Slovakia, 137, 191 Slovenia, 38 Social Wars, 72 sociology of language, 10–18 Solsbury Hill, 122 Song of Roland, 165, 168 Sorbs, 160–1 Spain, 3, 15, 37, 164, 169–70; see also Hispania, Iberia, Moslem, 170–3; see also al-Andalus Spanish, Castilian, 15, 114, 170 Sparta, 50, 52 Spey, River, 21 Sprachbund, 32 Spurius Carvilius Rufa, 62–3 St Albans, 121, 127 standardization, linguistic, 10, 13, 16 absolute, 13, 209 circumstantial, 16 engineered, 16, 182 English, 183–4 French, 182–3 intimate, 208 Italian, 181–2 mass, 208–9 Ruthenian, 184 Scots, 185 steppe, 6, 7–8; see also Pontic Steppe Stilicho, 108 Strasbourg oaths, 117 Strathclyde, Kingdom of, 157 Suevi, 104, 105 Suffolk, 107 Sulpicius Severus, 90 Sumerian, 156 Sutton Hoo, 107 Svalbard (Spitzbergen), 7 Sweden, 5, 6, 17, 103, 107 Swedish, 17, 22



246

Index

Tacitus, 93–4, 109 Germania, 99–100, 103, 107 taiga, 5, 7, 40 Tarquinius Superbus, King of Rome, 61 Tartessians, 54, 55 Tatian, 132 Tay, River, 159 Terrence, 65 Tertullian, 114 Thanet, Isle of, 119 Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, 110–11 Thessaloniki, 81, 135 Þiðreks saga, 167 Thira (Santorini), 44 Thrace, 70–1, 81–2, 135 Thracian, 39, 77, 78, 80 Thuringians, 100 Tiber, River, 55, 56, 60 Tiberius, 79 Tocharian languages, 23, 27 Trajan, 83 Transolbia, 161–2; see also Slavonic, Transolbian Transylvania, 82 Trier, 108, 111–12 Tromsø, 3 troubadours, 164 Tsakonian, 70 Tundra, 5–7, 40 Turkey, European, 39, 196 Turkic languages, 32, 40, 79, 104, 135 Tuscany, 40 Tweed, River, 157 Ugric languages, 30–2, 40 Ukraine, 1, 7, 38, 103 Ukrainian, 184 Umbrian, 25–6, 61, 63, 71

Universities, medieval, 146–7 Ural mountains, 30 Uralic languages, 30–2, 35 Valencia, 53 Vandalic, 103 Vandals, 100, 104, 105, 108, 137 Hasding, 105 Siling, 105 Venetic, 38 Vikings, 107, 129, 130, 132–3, 143, 157 Vindolanda, 92 Virgil, 65, 76, 80 Visigoths; see Gothic, Goths Vistula, River, 4, 38 Vlach; see Aromanian Volga, River, 4, 28, 30, 38, 40 Vortigern, 119–20 Vosges hills, 3 Vulgate, The, 97, 188, 189 Waldensians, 150; see also heresy Wallonia, 7 Waterford, 156 Welsh, 11, 200; see also British ‘Norman’ conquerors of Ireland, 154 Weser, River, 4, 99, 102, 107, 15 Wessex, 129–30 Westminster, 130 Wexford, 156 Wight, Isle of, 120 Willibrord, St, 131 Winchester, 130 Worcester, Tremulous Hand of, 167 Wulfila, 106, 137 Wulfstan of York, 129, 202 Wycliffe, John, 189 Wycliffitism, 189–90 Yassic, Ossetic variety recorded in medieval Hungary, 85 Yiddish, 174–7 Zeeland, 6



Switzerland, 12 Sybaris, 57 Sybilline prophecies, 61 Syracuse (Sicily), 57 Syria, 136

247

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