Use of the Latin Tongue in the Service. 92
Use of the Latin Tongue in the Service 1. In the purest churches, for the space of 800 years at least, the duties of Christianity, or divine prayers, etc., were never performed in a tongue unknown to the people. "Both the priest and the people," says Chrysostom, hom. 18, in 2 Cor., "say the same common prayers, and all do say one "It behooves," says Isidore (De eccle. offic., lib. 1, c. 10), "that when we sing, we sing altogether, and when we pray, that we pray altogether, and when the lesson is read, that silence be made, and that all do hearken to it with attention. And therefore, the deacon, with a clear voice, warns silence, that there be a unity kept among all, as well when they sing, as when the lesson is read, that whatsoever is preached unto all, may be equally heard of all." "Let everyone pray," says Origen (Against Celsus, lib. 8), "unto the Lord in his native and mother tongue." "Here is a dissonance of voice," says Jerome (Tom.
1, epist. 17), "but a unity of religion, and almost as many choirs of singers, as there is diversity of nations." "Let the only Trinity," says
Augustine (epist. 178), "be prayed unto for mercy of all, both Latins and barbarians; let no tongue how barbarous soever, be made an alien from praising one God." And the Ruthenians, Armenians,
Egyptians, and Ethiopians, had all their divine service in their vulgar tongue; and the Moravians, in that Slavonic tongue by a grant from the pope. And the celebration of divine service was, in the year 1215, granted by Innocent III in Council Lateran (c. 9) unto divers places according to the diversity of the tongues. This is also confirmed out of the decretals of Gregory (l. 1, titul. 31, ca. Quoniam plerisq., etc.).
"In the primitive church," says Lyra (in 1 Cor. 14), "benedictions, and all other common devotions were performed in the vulgar tongue."
And in the Council of Mentz (cap. 45, about the year 813) it is
permitted unto him that cannot otherwise learn the Catholic faith, and the Lord's prayers, to learn them in his mother tongue.
2. If a strange tongue at any time were used in divine service, yet it was understood of the hearers. For so was the Latin tongue; and although it was not the mother tongue in all places and provinces of the Roman Empire, yet it was understood generally in them all for the space of 700 years and more. In the provinces of Africa they spoke Latin. And the French men generally did all understand this tongue. In the 3rd Council of Terwin (about the year 770, cap. 17), the homilies are commanded to be translated into the more barbarous Roman or Dutch tongue, that they might be the easier to be understood. And it is credible that the Britons understood this tongue also. For mark what Bede (hist. Anglic. lib. 1, c. 1) says:
"Britany," quotes he, "at this present searches out, and professes one and the same knowledge of highest truth, and true highness, in five several tongues: the English, British, Scottish, Pictish, and Latin, which now through the meditation of the Scriptures is grown common to all other." And Valerius Maximus (lib. 2, cap. 1) testifies that the Roman magistrates did seriously endeavor to have their language diffused abroad, because it was not lawful for the Greeks to deal with the Romans concerning anything but in the Latin tongue, though they did it in Greece or Asia. And Camden, that most excellent antiquarian, in his Britannia says thus: "If there be any man that will not believe that our Britons used the provincial tongue of the Romans, surely he knows not how earnestly the Romans labored to have all the provinces speak Latin, nor does he mark what a sway the Latin has already in our vulgar tongue, to let pass the authority of Cornelius Tacitus, who says that in Domitian's time the Britons studied for the eloquence of the Latin tongue." Now afterward when the empire began to decline, and the Latin became corrupted by the Goths in Italy, yet the use thereof remained in matters of religion, as