Folia Theologica 17. (2006)
Uwe Michael Lang: Early Christian Latin as a Liturgical Language
134 U. M. LANG 'Sacred language' does not go as far glossolalia and mystical silence in excluding human communication completely, or at least attempting to do so. However, it reduces the element of comprehensibility in favour of other elements, notably that of expression. Mohrmann proposes to see in sacred language, and in particular in its vocabulary, a specific way of organising religious experience. We could even say that every form of belief in the supernatural, in the existence of a transcendent being, leads necessarily to a form of sacred language in worship - just as a consistent secularism leads to rejection of any form of sacred language. Languages do not exist in a vacuum, but in the context of a structured system that is determined by a variety of factor (social, cultural, psychological etc.). Modern linguistics speaks of 'contexts', 'situations', 'registers', 'language games', 'special languages', or 'group languages'. Religious or sacred language is the medium of expression not just of individuals, but also of a community living according to certain traditions - in our case, the Church - and it is formed by the community's traditions. Its linguistic forms are handed down from generation to generation; they are often deliberately 'stylised' and removed from contemporary language. We find similar phenomena in the field of literature, as with the 'Homerische Kunstsprache', the stylised language of the Homeric epics with its consciously archaic and colourful word forms. As classicists have remarked, the language of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which is also found in Hesiod and in later poetic inscriptions, was never a spoken language used in everyday life.22 Mohrmann names three characteristics of sacred or, as she also says, 'hieratic' language: 1. Sacred language is conservative; it shows tenacity in holding on to archaic linguistic forms. In the pagan Roman tradition, this characteristic was so pronounced that that for centuries prayers were used, while their meaning was not even understood by the priests who recited them.23 2. Foreign elements are introduced in order to associate with ancient religious tradition; a case in point is the Hebrew Biblical vo22 See MOHRMANN, Liturgical Latin, pp. 10-11. Cf. the seminal work by K. Meister. Die Homerische Kunstsprache. Leipzig: Jablonowski, 1921.
