Folia Theologica 17. (2006)

Uwe Michael Lang: Early Christian Latin as a Liturgical Language

EARLY CHRISTIAN LATIN AS A LITURGICAL LANGUAGE 133

that 'for every Jerome there was a Sidonius Apollinaris who eagerly embraced both Christianity and classical culture'.19

3. Liturgical Language

Before looking at Christian Latin as a liturgical language, I should like to comment on sacred language in general. Following Ferdinand de Saussure and the Geneva school of linguistics, Christine Mohrmann emphasises that language is more than just a means of communication; it is also a medium of expression. Human speech is not just a utilitarian instrument that serves to communicate facts, and should do so in the most simple and efficient manner. It is also the means of expressing the workings of our mind in a way that involves our whole personality.20

Language is also the medium in which we express religious thoughts and experiences. Prayer in particular, whether personal or public, belongs to the domain of language as expression rather than communication. Prayer strives to articulate the difference that is experienced between common everyday life and the world of the supernatural. We are conscious of the transcendence of the divine and, at the same time, of its presence - a presence that is both real and incomprehensible. There are extreme forms of expressing this experience: speaking in tongues and 'mystical silence'. Speaking in tongues, or 'glossolalia' a phenomenon familiar to us from St Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians and has had an astonishing revival for the last hundred years in the charismatic movements; it also known also from other religions (Oracle of Delphi, shamanism). Glossolalia makes human communication impossible; the person who speaks 'in tongues' can only be understood with the help of an interpreter. St Paul clearly has reservations about glossolia and prefers 'prophecy', because it is in the service of charity and builds up the church (1 Cor 14). In 'mystical silence', human communication is excluded as well, as in the experience Augustine and his mother St Monica shared at Ostia, described in book nine of the Confessions.21

19 E. J. WATTS, City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria (The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, 41), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, p. 15; cf. pp. 14-21.

20 See MOHRMANN, Liturgical Latin, pp. 1-26.

21 Augustine, Confessions IX, 10,25.