story of creation and of redemption. Hymns were written for use in the highly developed ritual of the church. Religious drama came into vogue. But churchmen did not confine themselves always to religious writing, nor to that connected with the story of the progress and triumph of Christianity; and as the centuries passed, literature was not restricted to the church, nor even to the school. Popular tales, folk songs, fables, partly European and partly Oriental in their origin, appeared in many forms from all sorts of sources. The primitive and universal tastes and appetites of mankind found expression in prose and verse, and the follies and weaknesses of humanity, whether in church or society, were often the object of keen satire. The great movement commonly called the Revival of Learning, and the rediscovery, it might almost be said, of the ancient classics, produced a new and brilliant Latin literature of every kind, closely imitative of classical Latin models. This continued in active growth until the new vernacular literatures in the various European nations, literature inspired by the Latin writings of the Renaissance, displaced it, hardly more than three hundred years ago. It is a remarkable proof of the vitality of the Latin language that thus for more than a thousand years after it ceased to be the current speech of any people it continued to be the literary language of civilization. More than that, during those many centuries the form of the language changed less than the forms of its vernacular contemporary tongues. There is far greater uniformity in the Latin of the whole period than between old French and modern French, or between early English and the English of the present. Yet it is not strange that, considering the multiplicity of elements involved, the Roman, MEDIAEVAL LATIN SILVIAE VEL POTIUS AETHERIAE This fragment, preserved in a manuscript written at Monte Cassino in the eleventh century, describes a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and adjacent regions, undertaken about 380 A.D. by a holy woman of the western church. The author, long supposed to be Silvia Aquitana, of distinguished connections in Gaul, is now generally believed to be rather the Spanish nun Etheria (Aetheria). The document is of surpassing interest to historians and linguists. That a woman should have undertaken such a journey in those times is in itself sufficiently remarkable. That she should have been able to visit so wide a circle of sacred places, and should have been so delightfully credulous as to sites like the home of Job, the burning bush, the pillar of salt that represented Lot's wife, the well where Jacob watered the flocks for Rachel, and similar localities, adds fascination for the reader. The Latin, presumably representing the speech of a comparatively uneducated provincial towards the close of the fourth century, exhibits already in diction, signification of words, syntax, and style, numerous features of the decadence of the language and its progress towards the Romance dialects which were its heirs. Note e.g. in the following passage the words, deductores, traversare, plecaremus; the expressions, esse appellabant, his diebus quod, traversare habebamus; the constructions, in eo loco cum venitur, quam dixi ingens, usque in hodie, per giro; the form, passos; the repetitions, confusions, vacillation between words or constructions; and yet the extreme simplicity of sentence structure, in which as a rule a succession of short clauses shows also an approximation to the word order of modern languages. The charm of the simple narrative is enhanced by the naïveté, enthusiasm and deeply religious spirit of the writer. The text edition of Wilhelm Heraeus (Heidelberg, 1908) contains a valuable bibliography. E. A. Bechtel (Chicago, 1907) has published an edition (in Vol. 4 of the Chicago Studies in Classical Philology) with an exhaustive analysis of the language and style. Cf. also Glover: Life and Letters in the Fourth Century, pp. 133 sqq.; and Einar Löfstedt: Philologischer Kommentar zur Peregrinatio Aetheriae (Upsala, 1911); also a German translation, published at Essen in 1911, by Hermann Richter, with introduction, bibliography, illustrations and appendices. A SPANISH NUN MAKES A PILGRIMAGE TO REGIONS FAMOUS IN SACRED HISTORY In eo ergo loco cum venitur, ut tamen commonuerunt deductores sancti illi qui nobiscum erant, dicentes: "Consuetudo est ut fiat hic oratio ab his qui veniunt, quando de eo loco primitus videtur mons Dei"; sicut et nos feci5 mus. Habebat autem de eo loco ad montem Dei forsitan quattuor milia totum per valle illa quam dixi ingens. Vallis autem ipsa ingens est valde, iacens subter latus montis Dei, quae habet forsitan, quantum potuimus videntes estimare aut ipsi dicebant, in longo milia passos 10 forsitan sedecim, in lato autem quattuor milia esse appellabant. Ipsam ergo vallem nos traversare habebamus, [In the notes the numbers, except initial line references, refer to sections of the Introduction.] 1. In eo... loco: 3A (1). 3. oratio: 'prayer.' 4. sicut et: the sentence ends with an anacoluthon. - 5. habebat. milia: 3E (1). montem Dei: i.e. Sinai. 6. totum used adverbially (= omnino). per valle illa: 3A (1). — quam dixi ingens: 3C (1). · 9. milia passos: 2(9); 3A (1). - 10. appellabant dicebant. 11. traversare habebamus: 3E (3) (a). = |