Note 415 — APPENDIX.

One reason why the clergy did little to preserve the purity of the Latin, and much to corrupt it, in the South of Europe, was, that they were obliged to hold their intercourse with the common people in the degraded Latin. And this intercourse, which consisted chiefly of instructions given to the common people, was a large part of all the clergy did in the early ages of the Church. For the Christian clergy in Spain, as elsewhere, addressed themselves, for a long period, to the lower and more ignorant classes of society, because the refined and the powerful refused to listen to them. But the Latin spoken by those classes in Spain, whether it were what was called the “lingua rustica” or not, was undoubtedly different from the purer Latin spoken by the more cultivated and favored classes, just as it was in Italy, and even much more than it was there. In addressing the common people, their Christian teachers in Spain, therefore, very early found it expedient, and probably necessary, to use the degraded Latin, which the common people spoke. At last, as we learn, no other was intelligible to them; for the grammatical Latin, even of the office of the Mass, ceased to be so. In this way, Christianity must have contributed directly and materially to the degradation of the Latin, and to the formation of the new dialects, just as it contributed to form the modern character, as distinguished from the ancient. Indeed, without entering into the much vexed questions concerning the lingua rustica or quotidiana, its origin, character and prevalence, I cannot help saying, that I am persuaded the modern languages and their dialects in the South of Europe were, so far as the Latin was concerned, formed out of the popular and vulgar Latin found in the mouths of the common people; and that Christianity, more than any other single cause, was the medium and means by which this change from one to the other was brought about. For the lingua rustica, see Morhof, De Patavinitate Livianâ, capp. vi., vii., and ix.; and Du Cange, De Causis Corruptæ Latinitatis, §§ 13-25, prefixed to his Glossarium.