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Unit Three KA The Death of Latin and the Rise of the Vernacular Marshall High School Western Civilization II Mr. Cline Unit TWO KA * The Reformation • Introduction: Latin is Magic • If you've ever read or watched the Harry Potter series, you might have noticed they use some funny words when casting a spell, like 'Accio!' or 'Expecto Patronum!' • If you were curious, you might have looked up some of these phrases and realized that a lot of these words are Latin. • 'Accio' means 'I summon,' and 'Expecto Patronum' means 'I look for a protector.' • From this, you might get the mistaken impression that Latin is magic. • As someone who has dabbled in Latin for a couple of decades, I can assure you that simply speaking Latin and waving around a stick does not make any magic happen. Believe me, I've tried. Though maybe I just need to work on my flick and swish. • However, the idea that Latin is magic is very old indeed. It stems from a time when most important business, whether it be writing a law or getting to heaven, was conducted in Latin. * The Reformation • Introduction: Latin is Magic • At the same time, the vast majority of common people did not understand Latin at all. We call this time the Dark Ages. • In fact, during communion, the Catholic priest at this time would say “Hoc Est Corpus Meum”, meaning this is my body. Of course, an illiterate public would simply mumble the words, and if you mumble this phrase what do you get? • And indeed, it IS where the phrase “HOCUS POCUS!” originates • See, Latin is magic! • Why Latin Lingered • The persistence of Latin into the Dark Ages might seem strange to us. After all, the Dark Ages occurred after the collapse of the Roman Empire. So why was anyone still speaking Latin? • Well, for starters, the Roman Catholic Church had been tightly bound to the Roman Empire ever since the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine around 312 CE. * The Reformation • Why Latin Lingered • When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Church stepped in and assumed many of the trappings of the empire. • They usurped the Imperial Seat of Rome. • They borrowed Roman vestments and symbols of authority. • They copied the Roman hierarchy and bureaucracy. • Considering all the distinctly Roman things the Church held onto, it is not surprising that they held onto Latin as well, even after the rest of Europe had stopped speaking it. • All Church business, from decrees by the Pope in the Vatican to mass at the humblest parish, was conducted in Latin. • Yet the Church did not simply hold onto Latin out of habit. There were several other good reasons to keep using Latin. * The Reformation • Why Latin Lingered • First of all, Latin was the international language of the time. • Though commoners could not read Latin, the elite could. • Latin allowed educated people to communicate across borders and language boundaries. • Second, Latin lends authority. It does this in two ways: • (1) by being incredibly old and • (2) by sounding awesome. • Don't believe me? Tell me, which sounds cooler? In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, or In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti? • You may doubt that this idea influenced the choices of the Church, but just imagine you're the head of a religion. * The Reformation • Why Latin Lingered • As such, your authority lies not in strength of arms but in peoples' imaginations. • You hold authority only so long as people believe you hold authority. • So what can you do to maintain this authority? • You might deck yourself out in grand vestments or build grand buildings with impressive works of art. • But even after that, you're just a bunch of people in silly hats standing around in a fancy building. • To hide this fact, you need to add some mystery. • What better way to mystify the day-to-day rituals of reciting prayers and eating crackers and drinking wine than to conduct the whole affair in an ancient, awesome-sounding language? * The Reformation • Why Latin Lingered • Latin made even the most mundane prayer mystical, momentous and magical. • Yet perhaps the most compelling reason the Church held onto Latin was that the common people could not read Latin. • This might seem like a reason not to use Latin, but think of it this way: • People only showed the Church such reverence because they thought the Church held the keys to heaven. • If people began to think that they could get to heaven on their own, they would not need the Church, and the Church would lose its power. • What better way to maintain a stranglehold on salvation than to make the path to salvation accessible only through a language that only you speak? * The Reformation • Why Latin Lingered • By establishing a language barrier to heaven, the Church ensured that anyone trying to get to heaven would have to come through them. • Thus we've seen why the Church held onto Latin for so long: 1. It was an international language. 2. It lent the Church authority. 3. It kept the common people dependent on the Church for salvation. • The Rise of the Vernacular • These factors alone would have been enough to keep the Church using Latin. Yet over the years, some Church leaders began to realize that this language barrier provided an opportunity. • If only priests could read the Bible, then the Church wasn't necessarily obligated to follow the Bible's teachings. After all, if they changed a thing or two, who would know? * The Reformation • The Rise of the Vernacular • And, even if someone caught them red-handed, who would dare call down the Roman Catholic Church? • Yet in 1517, someone did just that. His name was Martin Luther. He was a German priest and theologian. And he was mad as hell. • What got Luther so upset was the Church's practice of selling indulgences. • An indulgence is a remission of the penalties of sin. • Basically you could sin your face off, but if you had an indulgence, you could still go to heaven. • The idea was that the Church had some leftover forgiveness lying around, and it would part with that forgiveness for a sum of money. • One could even buy an indulgence for the deceased. • The indulgence became, essentially, a ticket out of purgatory. * The Reformation • The Rise of the Vernacular • From the Church's perspective, they were simply making forgiveness more accessible and allowing the living to help out the dead. • From Luther's perspective, the Church was engaged in extortion. • It was amassing wealth by holding peoples' souls, and the souls of their loved ones, hostage. • As an ordained priest and theologian, Luther could read the Latin Bible and its Greek counterpart. • But no matter how hard he looked, he could not find anything in the Bible that granted the Church this power. • Nor did he think it right that the Church should be making money off of the business of salvation. • Luther wanted these abuses to stop * The Reformation • The Rise of the Vernacular • So, in 1517, he wrote his 95 Theses, in which he called down the Pope himself for selling phony 'Get out purgatory free' passes, and amassing wealth in exchange for forgiveness of sins. • If Luther had stopped there, with writing his complaint, he probably would never have accomplished much. He would have just been an obscure monk from a backwater part of Europe, challenging the authority of the Pope, God's representative on Earth. • But Luther did not stop with just telling people what was and what wasn't in the Bible. • After all, that's what the Church was doing, and they had a lot more practice and authority. • Instead, Luther translated the original Greek Bible into the vernacular, or the native language of his people - in this case, German. * The Reformation • The Rise of the Vernacular • Thanks to the recent advances in printing made possible by Gutenberg, Luther was able to publish his translated Bible cheaply in 1522, making it available to the common man. • Luther's Bible was not the first vernacular Bible to be published, but it was certainly the most popular. • In the words of Johann Cochlaeus, a contemporary of Luther's: 'Luther's New Testament was so much multiplied and spread by printers that even tailors and shoemakers, yea, even women and ignorant persons who had accepted this new Lutheran gospel, and could read a little German, studied it with the greatest avidity as the fountain of all truth. Some committed it to memory, and carried it about in their bosom. In a few months, such people deemed themselves so learned that they were not ashamed to dispute faith and the gospel not only with Catholic laymen, but even with priests and monks and doctors of divinity.' * The Reformation • The Rise of the Vernacular • With the mass distribution of vernacular bibles, Luther didn't need to tell people what the Bible said; they could read it and find out for themselves. • The result was nothing short of earth-shattering. • Before the spread of the vernacular Bible, if people wanted to know the will of God, they would have to ask a priest. • Once people had a vernacular Bible at their disposal, they could read it for themselves and determine what God wanted without the Church's intervention. • Suddenly, for more and more people, the Church was no longer the only way to access heaven. • Instead, the Church was an obstruction, a middleman trying to make money off of people's quest for salvation.
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