Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sic transit gloria, 25 Jul 2008
I found the first chapter of this book rather tedious. It is about the teaching of Latin in schools and universities, and shows, by way of innumerable examples (a trait of the book as a whole - the author's range of research is truly amazing), the dominance that Latin had in the secondary school syllabus even for a decade or so after the end of the Second World War. In the 16th century, where this book begins, teaching was often done in Latin; at Oxford a statute of 1636 even required students to converse with each other in Latin, and in Prussian schools Latin was still spoken between pupils and between them and their teachers in the middle of the 19th century. Oxford and Cambridge required Latin as a condition for entry until the 1960s and 1970s, and therefore many schools had perforce to continue teaching it. (In a later entertaining section we learn how the young would compensate for the tedium of their instruction by inventing skits - sometimes scabrous ones - on the language.) But from the 18th century onwards teaching in the vernacular made more and more headway; and this, too, is illustrated with many examples. What is completely missing in this chapter is an account of the arguments in defence and (except for one or to examples) in opposition to compulsory Latin, or indeed of the sociological forces that were at play on both sides. For that kind of analysis we have to wait till Part III, the last two-fifths of the book. Before we get there, we are given a devastating picture of how, right back to at least the 17th century, only a very small proportion of pupils benefitted from - let alone enjoyed - their studies in Latin: the great majority, after 10 or more years of study, could scarcely understand a Latin text.
It is odd that the Latin of the Catholic Church should be the subject of only the second chapter; for surely the commanding position of Latin has its origin in the Church. This chapter is much better, for it gives explanations together with the exposition. The Catholic Church was suspicious of lay people being able to read the scriptures for themselves and interpreting it in a `heretical' sense; and it did its best to oppose translations into the vernacular; and though it accepted sermons in the vernacular and eventually even sanctioned translations of the scriptures, it insisted until Vatican II in 1963 that the liturgy must be in a language that even some of the lower clergy often mouthed without really understanding it. (Waquet does not mention the origin of the words `hocus pocus' - which is what laymen heard when the words `hoc est corpus meum' were gabbled by the clergy during the `magical' transformation of the wafer into the body of Christ.) The Catholic Church believed that a language which was no longer changing was appropriate for liturgies that expressed unchanging truths and for uniting Catholics all over the world.
The fact that Latin was read all over the world also made it for a long time the language of scientists, or indeed of any scholarly text that hoped for international distribution. Many works, originally written in the vernacular, were translated for this purpose into Latin. Even today, new words used in medicine are being concocted in Latin; Linnaeus' Latin or Latinized botanical descriptions are still in use, as are the symbols for elements in chemistry. In the multilingual Habsburg Empire Latin was widely used in administration (and in Hungarian Diet as the language of debate until 1840). The Treaty of Rastadt in 1714 was the first to be written in French; but until then Latin was the language of international treaties and frequently of diplomatic correspondence. However, when people spoke to each other in Latin, they often could hardly understand each other because each country, and often each region, pronounced Latin (even Church Latin) quite differently. (When I was at prep school myself, I was taught to pronounce `veni, vidi, vici' like `veenigh, veedigh, vighkigh', and had to unlearn this at later stages of my education.)
In Part III we at last come to the barrage of fiercely maintained arguments in favour of compulsory Latin: through Latin grammar one gets a better understanding of vernacular grammar; its study is a unique mental discipline in logic and its difficulties are good for the soul; it connects you with the loftiest part of the European inheritance; the moral qualities it conveys stand in contrast to the materialism taught by the sciences; some even claimed that it was a defence against Marxism as well as against Americanization; a Tsarist minister of education praised it for `inhibit[ing] the formation of independent opinions'.
And of course the knowledge of Latin was associated with class, status and power. In England successful entrepreneurs who had had no Latin and were not `gentlemen' would send their children to schools where they were taught the classics and so would become gentlemen. On the continent, the children of the poor were often deliberately kept away from Latin lest it encourage them to aspirations beyond their station. The medical and legal professions often used Latinity to bemuse and intimidate the laity. Latin was also used euphemistically to avoid the use of `coarse' and embarrassing vernacular words, usually to protect the modesty of women, only a tiny proportion of whom knew any Latin at all.
It is easy to understand why the modern world has abandoned Latin as any kind of staple. It is perhaps a miracle is that it survived as a staple for as long as it did; its defenders often went to quite absurd lengths; but this book explains what gave it its long-lasting sway. Although much of the material in it is very repetitive, it is very readable (and well translated by John Howe), and often entertaining.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
European history through a different prism, 22 Jul 2005
A most interesting book. By focusing on the evolving role of Latin in many of Western Europe's most important institutions; the education system, the Catholic and Protestant churches, universities, diplomatic circles and the public service, Ms Waquet offers a fascinating perspective on European history from 1500 to the present day. As a non-specialist in Latin and the Classics, I found some of the detail wearisome, but not enough to stop me reading. And if sometimes the ideas do seem to spiral around certain themes, that served, in my case, to reiterate those themes. It is a fascinating insight into
how the study and practice of a dead language, Latin, affected and was affected by the major events of the past few centuries, such as the Reformation and French Revolution.I would recommend the book to anyone curious about Latin and the culture surrounding its study and practice, and anyone interested in the Western European history since 1500.
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