Language Dynamics in the Early Modern Period

Karen Bennett, Angelo Cattaneo, Karen Bennett, Angelo Cattaneo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000574616
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the linguistic situation in Europe was one of remarkable fluidity. Latin, the great scholarly lingua franca of the medieval period, was beginning to crack as the tectonic plates shifted beneath it, but the vernaculars had not yet crystallized into the national languages that they would later become, and multilingualism was rife. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, languages were coming into contact with an intensity that they had never had before, influencing each other and throwing up all manner of hybrids and pidgins as peoples tried to communicate using the semiotic resources they had available. Of interest to linguists, literary scholars and historians, amongst others, this interdisciplinary volume explores the linguistic dynamics operating in Europe and beyond in the crucial centuries between 1400 and 1800. Assuming a state of individual, societal and functional multilingualism, when codeswitching was the norm, and languages themselves were fluid, unbounded and porous, it explores the shifting relationships that existed between various tongues in different geographical contexts, as well as some of the myths and theories that arose to make sense of them.

Part IMultilingualism and Its Discontents

1Multilingual Events in Late Medieval Personal Documentary Texts from the Winchester Diocese Collection in 1400–1525

Delia Schipor

DOI: 10.4324/​9781003092445-3

Introduction

The linguistic situation in late medieval England was characterised by societal multilingualism, meaning that Latin, French and English were used within one society. While English was the spoken language of the majority of the English population, Latin and French were used in official documents for different purposes. Textbooks on the history of English commonly present English as the language of official documents in England starting from the fifteenth century (Barber et al., 2009; Millward and Hayes, 2010: 147–149). According to Stenroos (2020: 40–41), this is based on an earlier claim made by Samuels (1963: 71), who noted that from 1430 English was regularly used in government documents. However, according to Dodd (2012), Latin was still the main language of the Privy Seal during the fifteenth century.

Similarly, Schipor (2018) found that in the period 1400–1525 Latin was the main language of official writing in manorial, local government and episcopal administration in Winchester and the surrounding areas. This is based on findings from her doctoral study, which investigated 7,070 texts from three collections: the Jervoise family, the Winchester city archives and the Winchester Diocese.¹ Of these texts, 6,847 were written in Latin (Schipor, 2018: 102), which is the dominant language in all of the three collections. However, the same study indicates that in this period, personal documentary texts, such as statements and testaments, were increasingly written in one of the vernaculars, namely English and, very rarely, French. In these texts, the vernaculars are almost always accompanied by Latin, resulting in the use of more than one language within a single text. The aim of the present study is to investigate the types and functions of such instances of multiple language use.

This chapter discusses multiple language use in personal documentary texts recorded in 12 bishops’ registers from the Winchester Diocese collection in the period 1400–1525 (Appendix, Table 1.2). The registers cover this period almost entirely, with a gap of 22 years corresponding to the second part of the register of Henry Beaufort, which has either been lost or destroyed.² These registers contain 5,359 texts,³ which represent 76% of the total number of texts collected and analysed in Schipor (2018).

Digital images of all the texts dated to 1400–1525 were collected from the three collections mentioned above. This was carried out in compliance with the archive’s copyright regulations. All of the texts were carefully examined and then registered into a database that contains both linguistic and extralinguistic information. To be more specific, the following details were noted: languages used, place and date of text production, text type, domain, and persons mentioned. For the aim of the present study, the instances of multiple language use in personal documentary texts were identified and a selection of multilingual events were thereafter analysed in detail from a sociolinguistic and philo-pragmatic perspective.

The chapter first presents an overview of the data, including clarifications regarding the types of texts constituting the material. The theoretical framework is then presented and explained. The following section contains an in-depth discussion of the types and functions of multiple language use in a selection of texts. Directly quoted examples from manuscripts are provided in italics and underlining is used to signal the presence of contractions in the manuscript. The ∼ sign indicates the final-word flourishes in the original and the & sign represents various manuscript abbreviations for “and”. The final section of the chapter is dedicated to conclusions.

The tables and figures in this chapter have been produced by the present author, based on her doctoral study.⁴

Materials

The texts here studied have survived as copies recorded in bishops’ registers. According to Smith (1981: ix), the main distinctive feature of a bishop’s register is the record of appointments of clergy to benefices. This would include material related to the appointment of parish clergy to rectories and vicarages, of chaplains to chantries and hospitals and of higher clergy to dignities and canonries in cathedral and collegiate churches. Coupled with these entries are the exchanges of livings, resignations and deprivations of incumbents, appointments of coadjutors, inquiries about the causes of vacancies and rights of patronage, and a host of similar business relating to benefices and the parochial clergy. Jacob (1953: 3) describes a bishop’s register as the official record of his administration. The two most salient characteristics of such a register are the eclectic character of contents and the extensive coverage across time (Jacob, 1953: 3).

The texts found in bishops’ registers may generally be referred to as documentary texts. Documentary texts are related to specific situations, places, persons and dates and have pragmatic functions, for example, they disseminate information, convey decisions and record transactions (Bergstrøm, 2017: 46). Even when the time and place of text production are not mentioned explicitly, they may often be inferred from references to specific persons and historical events. Of the 5,359 texts in the 12 bishops’ registers, 66% represent memoranda documenting a variety of parochial and episcopal business. Other frequent categories of texts are conveyances, directives, statements and correspondence. Such texts contain information about the socio-economic and legal-administrative aspects of daily life in late medieval England, thus facilitating a socio-pragmatic study of multilingualism.

The registers contain 5,288 texts in Latin, 23 in English and 48 written in more than one language (Figure 1.1). The Latin texts form a mega genre on the basis of their shared characteristics. Although they represent different categories, they have similar topics, such as the employment and retirement of clergy. They also represent top-down communication from the bishops and their representatives, addressed to members of the lower levels of ecclesiastical hierarchy. Such texts are largely monolingual, with the exception of English and French proper names and place names.

Figure 1.1 Distribution of texts in the bishops’ registers of the Winchester Diocese collection (1400–1525) according to language

Source: © Delia Schipor

Of the 48 texts written in more than one language, three show the use of French together with Latin. It may be noted that French, as opposed to English, is always accompanied by Latin in the register texts. One of the three texts with French and Latin is an assignation of pensions, representing the only instance where this text type shows the use of French in the registers (Schipor, 2018: 217). The remaining two texts with French and Latin are statements (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1 Genres of personal documentary texts in the bishops’ registers of the Winchester Diocese collection (1400–1525)

	English	French	Latin	Multilingual events
Abjurations	7	0	0	4 – English, Latin
Allegiances	0	0	0	1 – Latin, French; 1 – English, Latin
Juraments	0	0	0	1 – French, Latin; 1 – English, Latin
Testamentary texts	12	0	41	25 – English, Latin
Total	19	0	41	33
Source: © Delia Schipor

The 23 texts written in English represent testamentary texts and abjurations. In 45 texts, English is used together with Latin in various text types, such as testaments, abjurations, agreements, court proceedings, and religious rules. The two languages are used in different ways and proportions across the text types. In the religious rule, for example, Latin is used to refer to the names of the prayers in the English body text (Schipor, 2018: 178–179). In some of the court proceedings, English and Latin appear to be used in almost equal proportions. By contrast, in abjurations and testaments, Latin is most commonly used in marginal and text-final notes (see examples 1 and 6).

Of the 48 texts, 33 are personal documentary texts, belonging to seven of the 12 bishops’ registers (see Appendix, Table 1.2). Documentary texts written in the first person are here referred to as personal documentary texts. There are four types of personal documentary texts in the material here studied: abjurations, allegiances, juraments and testamentary texts (Table 1.1). Abjurations, allegiances and juraments are legally binding statements, while testamentary texts are conveyances concerning transactions of a spiritual and material nature (Schipor, 2018: 9). Abjurations represent renunciations of religious beliefs, given on oath, usually in an ecclesiastical court. Allegiances are statements of service and loyalty to a sovereign or feudal lord. Juraments are oaths made on entering an office or monastic rule.

The term testamentary texts is used to refer to wills and testaments collectively, based on their similarities. Traditionally, the main difference between the two text types is that wills typically cover unmovable goods, while testaments refer to movable goods, spiritual matters, funeral arrangements and alms. However, this distinction is often blurred. For example, certain fifteenth-century female testators from St Albans refer to their testaments as “wills”, even when they bequeath movable goods (Schiølde, 2019: 57).

There are several similarities between statements and testamentary texts in terms of structure and form. First of all, they are written in the first person. Secondly, they begin with the name of the person making the statement or testamentary text, often accompanied by a formulaic opening phrase. In the case of abjurations and testaments, for example, this is almost always represented by the divine invocation In the name of God amen or its Latin equivalent In dei nomine amen in testaments. Wills, on the other hand, usually begin with the standard phrase This is my last will. Thirdly, statements and testamentary texts commonly end with providing contextual information such as the date, place and names of witnesses.

Another important aspect shared by statements and testamentary texts is that they are in some ways closely connected to oral statements. For example, defendants would read aloud or repeat their abjurations in court, depending on their level of literacy (Stretton, 1998: 31–33). The copies of abjurations found in bishops’ registers would most likely have been made after this stage. Testamentary texts were generally drawn on the basis of dictation or information provided orally by testators when they were not written by the testators themselves (Wright, 2015: 36). The resulting documents were thereafter proved by a probate court and recorded in a bishop’s register after validation (Schipor, 2018: 157).

The complex nature of textual processing results in structural and linguistic multi-layering. The process of copying documentary texts in large volumes such as bishops’ registers has led to the occurrence of textual elements which were most likely not found in the previous versions of the documents. In certain cases, elements such as titles, headings and marginalia are written in a different language than the copied text. The lasting character of episcopal collections allowed the different scribes who accessed them to insert their own notes at different points in time (Schipor, 2018: 161), which contributes to the visual complexity of the manuscript page. The study of multiple language use in this context requires a tailored theoretical framework that accounts for the visual fluidity of historical manuscripts.

Theoretical framework

Studies of multilingualism have traditionally employed the term code-switching, which may be defined as the “change from one language to another within one act of communication” (Schendl, 2000: 77). This concept was initially used for investigating multilingualism in spoken communication and thereafter commonly adopted in studies of written communication, including historical texts. While code-switching may be successfully applied to certain instances of multilingualism in manuscripts, attempting to employ it for all types of multiple language use may prove challenging. Written language is less linear than spoken language in the sense that its permanence allows for alternating sequences of reading and writing. In other words, different visual elements of texts may not necessarily be read or written in a specific order, especially when they have different pragmatic functions. For example, a reader with limited time may look first at the title of a text and then at the concluding paragraph to find the needed information. Similarly, a scribe may copy a text and return to it at a later stage to add marginal notes. In such contexts, it may be problematic to establish where and if switching occurs.

Pahta et al. (2017: 11–12) have previously noted that studies of historical multilingualism may benefit from the adoption of a general term, such as multilingual practices, to cover all types of multiple language use. In the present study, multilingual pract...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Great Upheaval – Multilingualism and Lingua Francas in the Early Modern Period
• PART I Multilingualism and Its Discontents
• PART II The Defence of Latin
• PART III Pidgins, Jargons, Lingua Francas
• Epilogue: Developing Historical Linguistic Awareness in a Multilingual World
• Contributors
• Index