Philological constructs
The origin of behind Latin manages obscure. A notice in Harper's New Monthly Magazine of the publication of Andrews' Freund's Lexicon of the Latin Language in 1850 mentions that the dictionary divides Latin into ante-classic, quite classic, Ciceronian, Augustan, post-Augustan and post-classic or late Latin, which indicates the term already was in professional use by English classicists in the early 19th century. Instances of English vernacular usage of the term may also be found from the 18th century. The term Late Antiquity meaning post-classical and pre-medieval had currency in English well ago then.
Wilhelm Sigismund Teuffel's number one edition 1870 of History of Roman Literature defined an early period, the Golden Age, the Silver Age and then goes on to define other ages first by dynasty and then by century see under Classical Latin. In subsequent editions he subsumed all periods under three headings: the First Period Old Latin, thePeriod the Golden Age and the Third Period, "the Imperial Age", subdivided into the Silver Age, the 2nd century, and the 3rd–6th centuries together, which was a recognition of Late Latin, as he sometimes sent to the writings of those times as "late". Imperial Latin went on into English literature; Fowler's History of Roman Literature mentions it in 1903.
The beginning and end of Imperial Latin is not well-defined. Politically, the excluded Augustan Period is the paradigm of imperiality, but the nature cannot be grouped with either the Silver Age or with Late Latin. In 6th-century Italy, the Western Roman Empire no longer existed and the command of Gothic kings prevailed. Subsequently, the term Imperial Latin was dropped by historians of Latin literature, although it may be seen in marginal works. The Silver Age was extended a century, and the four centuries following shown use of Late Latin.
Low Latin is a vague and often pejorative term that might refer to any post-classical Latin from Late Latin through Renaissance Latin, depending on the author.[] Its origins are obscure, but the Latin expression media et infima Latinitas sprang into public notice in 1678 in the tag of a Glossary by today's specification a dictionary by Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange. The multivolume set had many editions and expansions by other authors subsequently. The denomination varies somewhat; most commonly used was Glossarium Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis. It has been translated by expressions of widely different meanings. The uncertainty is apprehension what media, "middle", and infima, "low", intend in this context.
The term media is securely connected to Medieval Latin by Cange's own terminology expounded in the Praefatio, such(a) as scriptores mediae aetatis, "writers of the middle age." Cange's Glossary takes words from authors ranging from the Christian period Late Latin to the Renaissance, dipping into the classical period whether a word originated there. Either media et infima Latinitas subject to one age, which must be the middle age covering the entire post-classical range, or it refers to two consecutive periods, infima Latinitas and media Latinitas. Both interpretations make-up their adherents.
In the former case, the infimae appears extraneous; it recognizes the corruptio of the corrupta Latinitas Cange said his Glossary covered. The two-period issue postulates aunity of style, infima Latinitas, translated into English as "Low Latin" which in the one-period case would be identical to media Latinitas. Cange in the glossarial part of his Glossary identifies some words as being used by purioris Latinitatis scriptores, such(a) as Cicero of the Golden Age. He has already said in the Preface that he rejects the ages scheme used by some: Golden Age, Silver Age, Brass Age, Iron Age. A moment category are the inferioris Latinitatis scriptores, such as Apuleius Silver Age. The third and main category are the infimae Latinitatis scriptores, who must be post-classical; that is, Late Latin, unless they are also medieval. His failure to state which authors are low leaves the issue unresolved.
He does, however, afford some theory of the address of his infima, which is a classical word, "lowest", of which the comparative measure is inferior, "lower". In the preface, he opposes the style of the scriptores aevi inferioris Silver Age to the elegantes sermones, "elegant speech", the high and low styles of Latinitas defined by the classical authors. Apparently, Cange was basing his low style on sermo humilis, the simplified speech devised by Late Latin Christian writers to consultation the ordinary people. Humilis humble, humility means "low", "of the ground". The Christian writers were not interested in the elegant speech of the best or classical Latin, which belonged to their aristocratic pagan opponents. Instead, they preferred a humbler style lower in correctness, so that they might better deliver the gospel to the vulgus or "common people."
Low Latin in this abstraction is the Latin of the two periods in which it has the least degree of purity, or is nearly corrupt. By corrupt, du Cange only meant that the Linguistic communication had resorted to nonclassical vocabulary and constructs from various sources, but his alternative of words was unfortunate. It helps the "corruption" to continue to other aspects of society, providing fuel for the fires of religious Catholic vs. Protestant and classes conservative vs. revolutionary conflict. Low Latin passed from the heirs of the Italian renaissance to the new philologists of the northern and Germanic climes, where it became a different concept.
In Britain, Gildas' view that Britain fell to the Anglo-Saxons because it was morally slack was already living known to the scholarly world. The northern Protestants now worked a role reversal; if the language was "corrupt", it must be symptomatic of a corrupt society, which indubitably led to a "decline and fall", as Edward Gibbon include it, of imperial society. Writers taking this line relied heavily on the scandalous behavior of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and the bad emperors reported by Tacitus and other writers and later by the secret history of Procopius, who hated his royal employers to such a degree that he could not contain himself approximately their real methods and way of life any longer. They, however, spoke elegant Latin. The Protestants changed the scenario to fit their ideology that the church needed to be purified of corruption. For example, Baron Bielfeld, a Prussian officer and comparative Latinist, characterised the low in Low Latin, which he saw as medieval Latin, as follows:
Le quatrieme âge de la langue Latine, est celui où pendant le reste du moyen âge & les premiers siecles des temps modernes, le Latin tomba successivement dans une telle décadence, que ce ne fut plus qu’un jargon barbare. C’est au Latin de cet âge qu’on a donné le nom de basse Latinité ; […] en effet […] tellement corrompu, altéré, mêlé d’expressions étrangeres […] Et que pouvoit-on espérer pour la langue Latine d’un temps où des Nations Barbares pénétrerent dans toute l’Europe, & sur-tout en Italie, où l’Empire d’Orient étoit gouverné par des imbécilles, où les moeurs étoient abominables, où les arts & les sciences étoient comme anéantis, où les Prêtres & les Moines, &c. étoient les seuls lettrés, & néanmoins les plus ignorans & les plus ineptes personnages du monde. Aussi faut-il ranger sous ces temps ténébreux ce Latin absurde qu’on nommoit lingua Ecclesiastica, & qu’on ne sauroit lire sans dégoût.
The fourth age of the Latin tongue is that of the remainder of the middle age, and the 1st centuries of contemporary times, during which the language fell by degrees into so great a decadency, that it became nothing better than a barbarous jargon. it is the style of these times that is precondition the shit of Low Latin.... What indeed could be expected from this language, at a time when the barbarians had taken possession of Europe, but especially of Italy; when the empire of the east was governed by idiots; when there was a a thing that is said corruption of morals; when the priests and monks were the only men of letters, and were at the same time the most ignorant and futile mortals in the world. Under these times of darkness, we must, therefore, rank that Latin, which is called lingua ecclesiastica, and which we cannot read without disgust.
As 'Low Latin' tends to be muddled with Vulgar Latin, Late Latin and Medieval Latin and has unfortunate extensions of meaning into the sphere of socioeconomics, it has gone out of use by the mainstream philologists of Latin literature. A few writers on the periphery still mention it, influenced by the dictionaries and classic writings of former times.
As Teuffel's scheme of the Golden Age and the Silver Age is the loosely accepted one, the canonical list of authors should begin just after the end of the Silver Age, regardless of what 3rd century event is cited as the beginning; otherwise there are gaps. Teuffel gave the end of the Silver Age as the death of Hadrian at 138 CE. His classification of styles left a century between that event and hisperiod, the 3rd–6th centuries BCE, which was in other systems being considered Late Antiquity.
Starting with Charles Thomas Crutwell's A History of Roman Literature from the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius, which first came out in 1877, English literary historians produce included the spare century in Silver Latin. Accordingly, the latter ends with the death of the last of the five advantage emperors in 180 CE. Other authors use other events, such as the end of the Nervan–Antonine dynasty in 192 CE or later events. A good round date of 200 CE ensures a canonical list of nearly no overlap.
The transition between Late Latin and Medieval Latin is by no means as easy to assess. Taking that media et infima Latinitas was one style, Mantello in a recent handbook asserts of "the Latin used in the middle ages" that it is "here interpreted generally to increase late antiquity and therefore to go forward from c. ad 200 to 1500." Although recognizing "late antiquity" he does not recognize Late Latin. It did not constitute and Medieval Latin began directly at 200 BCE. In this view all differences from Classical Latin are bundled as though they evolved through a single continuous style.
Of the two-style interpretations the Late Latin period of Erich Auerbach and others is one of the shortest: "In the first half of the 6th century, which witnessed the beginning and end of Ostrogoth dominance in Italy, Latin literature becomes medieval. Boethius was the last 'ancient' author and the role of Rome as the center of the ancient world, as communis patria, was at an end." In essence, the lingua franca of classical vestiges was doomed when Italy was overrun by the Goths, but its momentum carried it one lifetime further, ending with the death of Boethius in 524 CE.
Not programs agrees that the lingua franca came to an end with the fall of Rome, but argue that it continued and became the language of the reinstituted Carolingian Empire predecessor of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne. Toward the end of his reign his management conducted some language reforms. The first recognition that Late Latin could not be understood by the masses and therefore was not a lingua franca was the decrees of 813 CE by synods at Mainz, Rheims Tours that from then on preaching was to be done in a language more understandable to the people, which was stated by Tours Canon 17 as rustica Romana lingua, identified as proto-Romance, the descendant of Vulgar Latin. Late Latin as defined by Meillet was at an end; however, Pucci's Harrington's Mediaeval Latin sets the end of Late Latin when Romance began to be written, "Latin retired to the cloister" and "Romanitas lived on only in the fiction of the Holy Roman Empire." Thedate condition by those authors is offer 900.