Folia Theologica 17. (2006)

Uwe Michael Lang: Early Christian Latin as a Liturgical Language

EARLY CHRISTIAN LATIN AS A LITURGICAL LANGUAGE 141

Milevis, writing in the 360s, there were more than forty churches in Rome already before the Constantinian settlement.37 If this information is accurate, it would be reasonable to assume that there were Latin-speaking communities in the third century, if not before. Parts of the liturgy were already in Latin before the second half of the fourth century, notably the readings from Holy Scripture and preaching. Psalms had been sung in Latin from early on, and the ancient version used in the liturgy had acquired such a sacrosanct status that Jerome only revised it with caution. Later he translated the Psalter translation from the Hebrew, as he said, to for liturgical purposes, but to provide a text for scholarship and debate.38 It is also likely that the baptismal liturgy was translated into Latin at an early stage; Mohrmann suggests the second century. No certainty can be obtained on these points, but it is clear that there was a period of transition, and that it was a long one.

Mohrmann introduces a useful distinction between, first, 'purely prayer texts', where language is above all a medium of expressions, secondly, texts that are 'destined to be read, the Epistle and Gospel', and, thirdly, 'confessional texts', such as the creed. In 'prayer texts we are concerned with expressional form; in the others, primarily with forms of communication'.39 Recent research on language and ritual, such as the work of Catherine Bell, confirms Mohrmann's insight that language has different functions in different parts of the liturgy, which go beyond mere communication or information.40 These theoretical reflections help us to understand the development of the early Roman liturgy: those parts where the element of communication was prevalent, such the Scripture readings, were translated earlier, whereas the Eucharistic prayer continued to be said in Greek for a much longer period.

37 OPTATUS, Contra Parmenidem, 11,4: CSEL 26,39.

38 See Jerome’s two prefaces to the Psalter in Biblia sacra iuxta Vulgatam versionéin, ed. R. WEBER and R. GRYSON, Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 41994, pp. 767-769; cf. C. Mohrmann, ‘The New Latin Psalter: Its Diction and Style’, Tome II, pp. 109-131 (originally published in The American Benedictine Review 4 [1953], pp. 7-33), at pp. 110-111.

39 MOHRMANN, Liturgical Latin, p. 75. Mohrmann detects this distinction already in Christian antiquity.

40 C. BELL, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.