Dénesi Tamás - Dejcsics Konrád (szerk.): Collectanea Sancti Martini - A Pannonhalmi Főapátság Gyűjteményeinek Értesítője 2. (Pannonhalma, 2014)
I.Tanulmányok
66 VULGÁRIS LATIN ELEMEK... Bánk Szita OSB: Vulgar Latin phrases in the Roman, Gallican and Hebrew Psalters It has completely been accepted that Neo-Latin languages do not come from classical Latin but from a later spoken version, known as low or Vulgar Latin. Since this is the spoken version of Latin, few written sources are available. These include the first Latin translations of the Bible. The plural form is deliberately used because they represent the works of many authors. These translators were not officially commissioned; they started translating the gospels, the psalms, the letters by Saint Paul and the other books of the Bible for a local community, primarily with their liturgical use in mind. One of the most important aspects was that the texts should be understood by simple believers, as well, therefore these translations are close to the spoken language of the age. The first texts were most likely translated in North Africa at the end of the 2nd century. They were followed by the Italian and other European translations, which were characterized by a greater degree of improvement. Reading Latin Christian authors, one can state that while the phraseology of the early translations of the Bible had carefully been avoided in the 2nd and 3 rd centuries, these expressions became established in Latin by the time of Saint Augustine at the beginning of the 5th century. The early translations of the Bible influenced Latin: what had been regarded as vulgar in the 2nd and 3 rd centuries became a set of constituent parts of Christian Latin in the 5th century since they had been refined by the biblical use. The present paper examines the Vulgar Latin phrases in three translations of the Psalms. The comparison of the Roman, Gallican and Hebrew Psalters is not a new invention; they were set down in parallel columns in the abbeys of Reichenau and Sankt Gallen as early as the 9th century. The Roman Psalter is a true thesaurus of Vulgar Latin phrases. The assumed identity of its translator gave rise to diverse opinions. For a long time, it was attributed to Saint Jerome who – in his later works – mentions a translation of the Psalms made in haste. However, since the 1930s, due to the numerous Vulgar Latin phrases in the text, many experts have deemed it to be inferior to Saint Jerome, and proposed an earlier date of translation. On the other hand, the Gallican Psalter is unanimously Jerome’s work. Actually, it is the corrected version of the Roman Psalter. This fact renders the examination of those linguistic particles possible which were systematically altered, so to say, corrected by Jerome. The third Psalter is also Jerome’s work. This translation is linguistically the most improved, and it is the closest to classical Latin. It is an irony that it has never been adapted for the use in liturgy. The last part of the paper enumerates and analyzes the most characteristic Vulgar Latin phrases in the three translations of the Psalms. The most significant of these examples are those ones which live on in some forms in any of the Neo-Latin languages. Thus, this paper demonstrates that the Vulgar Latin phraseology of the early Church contributed to the formation of the Neo-Latin languages.
