New Latin

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New Latin (or Neo-Latin) is a post-medieval version of Latin, used approximately in the period 1600-1900.

[edit] Extent

Classicists use the term "Neo-Latin" to describe the use of the Latin language for any purpose, scientific or literary, after the Renaissance (for which purpose they often use the date 1600), although, for example, the editors of the I Tatti Renaissance Library call their Renaissance Latin language texts Neo-Latin as well. The end of the New Latin period is unspecified, but Latin as a regular vehicle of communicating ideas became rare after the first few decades of the 19th century, and by 1900 it survived primarily in International Scientific Vocabulary cladistics and systematics. The term "New Latin" came into widespread use towards the end of the 1890s among linguists and scientists.

At the beginning of the period, Latin was a universal school subject, and indeed, the pre-eminent subject for elementary education in Western Europe and those places which shared its culture. All universities required Latin proficiency (obtained in local grammar schools) to obtain admittance as a student.

New Latin was, at the beginning of this period, an international language used throughout Catholic and Protestant Europe, as well as in the colonies of the major European powers. As an auxiliary language to the local vernaculars, it appeared in a wide variety of documents, ecclesiastical, legal, diplomatic, academic, and scientific. While a text written in English, French, or Spanish at this time might be understood by a significant cross section of the learned, only a Latin text could be certain of finding someone to interpret it anywhere between Lisbon and Helsinki.

Notable scientific works in New Latin written since 1600 include:

1600. De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus et de Magno Magnete Tellure by William Gilbert.
1609. Astronomia nova by Johannes Kepler.
1610. Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei.
1620. Novum Organum by Francis Bacon.[1]
1628. Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus by William Harvey. [2]
1659. Systema Saturnium by Christiaan Huygens.
1673. Horologium Oscillatorium by Christiaan Huygens. Also at Gallica.
1687. Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. [3]
1735. Systema Naturae by Carolus Linnaeus.
1737. Mechanica sive motus scientia analytice exposita by Leonhard Euler.
1738. Hydrodynamica, sive de viribus et motibus fluidorum commentarii by Daniel Bernoulli.
1753. Species Plantarum by Carolus Linnaeus.
1810. Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen by Robert Brown.[4]
1840. Flora Brasiliensis by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius.[5]

Other notable works in Neo-Latin include:

1602. Cenodoxus, a play by Jacob Bidermann.
1621. Argenis, a novel by John Barclay
1625. De Jure Belli ac Pacis by Hugo Grotius. (Posner Collection facsimile; Gallica facsimile)
1642-1658. Elementa Philosophica by Thomas Hobbes.
1670. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus by Baruch Spinoza.
1767. Apollo et Hyacinthus, intermezzo by Rufinus Widl (with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart).

Latin in this period came to be regarded as a medium for "serious" and learned expression; this view left little room for the use of Latin as a literary medium, for poetry, or for creative fiction (outside of translations made by ethnographers and folklorists). One of the last writers of any significant literary reputation to have written a large body of purely literary work in Latin was John Milton, better known for his English poetry. However, some lighter pieces were produced in Neo-Latin, for instance Johannes Kepler's scientific fantasy Somnium (1634) and Ludvig Holberg's satire Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) [6].

Other, later, authors, including Max Beerbohm and Arthur Rimbaud, have written Latin verse, but these texts have been either school exercises or occasional pieces.

[edit] Abandonment

The reasons for the abandonment of Latin as a primary vehicle of intellectual discussion are varied, and it is difficult to pinpoint a single cause, especially as there was no sharp cutoff, but rather a slow diminuendo occupying the greater part of the 19th century. Latin held a place of educational pre-eminence until the second half of the nineteenth century, when its value was increasingly questioned; in the twentieth century, educational philosophies such as that of John Dewey dismissed its relevance.

Among the possible causes of the abandonment of Latin are:

The growth of romantic nationalism in the aftermath of the French Revolution, and the consequent increase in emphasis on local traditions and languages.
The greater prominence given to scientific over humanistic subjects, including Latin (despite the fact that many of the foundational scientific texts were written in Latin).
The growth of a feeling that Latin was esoteric and irrelevant, and that international communication would be better served by learning foreign languages directly, than by using an auxiliary medium such as Latin. The later 19th century, however, felt the absence of Latin as an auxiliary language, and such languages as Volapük and Esperanto were invented to fill the gap.
The increasing classical emphasis of Latin classes, whose texts, vocabulary, and grammar were (and are) drawn almost exclusively from the Roman period, and which placed little value on the ability to write about contemporary subjects in Latin.

With attempts to bring non-classical vocabulary into Latin condemned as barbarous, and the natural tendency of amateur Latin writers to approximate the syntax and style of their native tongue condemned as solecism, it was easier for writers to use their own languages and avoid condemnation for imperfect Latin. Disappointment with the levels of proficiency achieved in Latin by education was a frequently expressed theme. This perceived level of failure was in fact related to the exclusive teaching of classical Latin as an object of antiquarian study, and the use of classical norms rather than looser or contemporary usage as the standard to which written and spoken Latin should aspire. As Latin came to be less used outside the schoolroom, many Latin students went on to forget most of the Latin they had once known.

[edit] Relics

Among the lasting inheritances of New Latin is the system of binomial nomenclature and classification of living organisms devised by Carolus Linnaeus; the need for apt names within an (at least superficially) Latin structure continues to drive the development of new Latin or quasi-Latin vocabulary today^[1]. (It should be noted, however, that new taxonomic names are increasingly borrowed from non-Latin sources, not even superficially Latinized, whose only remaining concession to Latin is that they use the Roman alphabet.)

[edit] References

IJsewijn, Jozef with Dirk Sacré. Companion to Neo-Latin Studies. 2 vols. Leuven University Press, 1990-1998.
Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1-85984-402-2; translated from the French by John Howe.

[edit] Footnotes

^ . For instance, the scientific name of the shearwater genus Puffinus is a New Latin loanword derived from the English term "puffin" for some entirely unrelated seabirds. Puffinus shearwaters were usually called mergus in Classical Latin. This was a catchall term for seabirds, which in New Latin became the genus name for another unrelated group of birds.

[edit] See also

Recent Latin

[edit] External links

An Analytic Bibliography of On-line Neo-Latin Titles — Bibliography of Renaissance Latin and Neo-Latin literature on the web.
Database of Nordic Neo-Latin Literature
Heinsius collection: Dutch Neo-Latin poetry
Latin Abbreviations used in modern language.
Glossary of Latin Roots of Botanical Terms
A Lost Continent of Literature: The rise and fall of Neo-Latin, the universal language of the Renaissance. - An essay on Neo-Latin literature on the I Tatti Renaissance Library website.

Ages of Latin v • d • e
—75 BC	75 BC – 200	300 – 1300	1300 – 1600	1600 – 1900	1900 – present
Old Latin	Classical Latin	Medieval Latin	Renaissance Latin	New Latin	Recent Latin
See also: History of Latin, Latin literature, Vulgar Latin, Ecclesiastical Latin, Romance languages