Multilingualism in the middle ages and early modern age: communication and miscommunication in the premodern world PDF
Preview Multilingualism in the middle ages and early modern age: communication and miscommunication in the premodern world
Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture Edited by Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge Volume 17 Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age Communication and Miscommunication in the Premodern World Edited by Albrecht Classen . ISBN 978-3-11-047096-3 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-047144-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-047090-1 ISSN 1864-3396 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Table of Contents Albrecht Classen Multilingualism in the Middle Ages Theoretical and Historical Reflections. An Introduction 1 Ken Mondschein “Victor Victus” Bilingualism, Biculturalism, and the Medieval Frontier 47 Gregory B. Kaplan The Impact of Bilingualism and Diglossia in Cantabria (Spain) during Late Antiquity 65 Diane Peters Auslander “The Walling of New Ross,” 1265 Multilingualism, Ethnicity, and Urban Politics in Post-Invasion Ireland 85 Charles W. Connell The Power of Multilingualism in the Voices of Hildegard of Bingen 103 Yasmine Beale-Rivaya At the Crossroads of Languages The Linguistics Choices along Border Communities of the Reconquista in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries 127 Richard Ingham and Imogen Marcus Vernacular Bilingualism in Professional Spaces, 1200 to 1400 145 János M. Bak A Kingdom of Many Languages Linguistic Pluralism in Medieval Hungary 165 K. A. Tuley Multilingualism and Power in the Latin East 177 VI TableofContents Susanna Niiranen Apothecary’s Art as a Contact Zone in Late Medieval Southern France 207 Christine Cooper-Rompato Xenoglossia and Multilingualism in Middle English Sermons on Pentecost 233 Michael Ingham Bi- and Multilingualism in the Early English Ballad Francophone Influencesin the Development of the Ballad Genre in Medieval England 249 Albrecht Classen Multilingualism in Medieval Europe Pilgrimage, Travel, Diplomacy, and Linguistic Challenges. The Case of Felix Fabri and His Contemporaries 279 Helena Halmari and Timothy Regetz Language Switching and Alliteration in Oxford, MS Bodley 649 313 Kimberly A. Eherenman The Devil Is in the Details How Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s Trilingualism Missed the Mark in New Spain 329 Thomas Willard Hard Places Paracelsian Neologisms and Early Modern Guides 355 Index 395 Albrecht Classen (The University of Arizona) Multilingualism in the Middle Ages Theoretical and Historical Reflections. An Introduction Throughout human history two issues have always stood out as fundamental, supporting and promoting society at large: languages and communication.¹ Therearemanycriteriatodefinehumanexistenceandculture,butthereisuni- versal agreement that language provides us with more specific characteristics than any other phenomenon in order to interact with our social environment and context. It would probably be more accurate to talk in plural here, since no language simply stands alone by itself, being completely free from external influences. Even rigid language control cannot prevent a strong impact by sur- roundingorneighboringlanguages,althoughsomeexceptions,likethelanguage oftheBasques,Euskara,seemtoconfirmthisrule,sinceitwasneverinfluenced by the Latin spoken by the colonizing Romans who were in full control of the Iberian Peninsula since ca.19 B.C.E. All languages serve individuals to communicate with others and hence to create a human community. We would probably not be able to survive as human beings without our ability to express our thoughts and feelings and to exchange them with our fellow-beings. In other words, we must convey our needs,fears,desires,ourhappinessandjoyinonewayortheother.Notsurpris- ingly,oneoftheworstformsofpunishment,apartfromtortureandexecution,is total isolation, the denial of the human contact, especially total silence,which hasbeentragicallypracticedbothinthepastandalsointhepresent.²TheAus- ThepresentvolumearoseoutofthreesessionsthatIhadorganizedandchairedattheth InternationalCongressonMedievalStudiesatWesternMichiganUniversity,Kalamazoo,MI,May .Unfortunately,severalspeakerslatercouldnotcontributetothevolume,butthenIcould attractseveralothersinthecourseoftime.Thetopicofmultilingualismcancertainlycountas anotherfundamentaloneforourunderstandingoftheMiddleAgesandthepre-modernworld. I am most thankful to all contributors for their great work, and am very grateful for their patiencewithmyeditorialinquiriesandrequests.Mysincerethanksalsogototheeditorialstaff at Walter de Gruyter in Berlin for their valuable assistance in getting this volume to print. BruceA.Arrigo,HeatherY.Bersot,andBrianG.Sellers,TheEthicsofTotalConfinement:ACri- tiqueofMadness,Citizenship,andSocialJustice.AmericanPsychology-LawSocietySeries(Ox- ford:OxfordUniversityPress,);LisaGuenther,SolitaryConfinement:SocialDeathandIts Afterlives (Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota Press, ); Derek S.Jeffreys, Spirituality in Dark Places: The Ethics of Solitary Confinement. Content and Context in Theological Ethics (NewYork:PalgraveMacmillan,).Forastrongstatementevensupportingsolitaryconfine- mentintheeighteenthcentury,seeJosiahDornford,Esq,NineLetterstotheRightHonorablethe DOI10.1515/9783110470963-001 2 AlbrechtClassen trianwriter StefanZweig (1881–1942) providesan excruciatingexamplefor this topic in his famous novella“Chess Story” (1942),³ but we can go much further back in order to learn more about the dangers and conflicts involved in human language and,vice versa, its absence, which we might identify simply with silence, hence death. Of course, there can be a type of spiritual silence, such as in monasteries, but that silence then is supposed to supplant the usual communication with other people with a communication with God.⁴ However, before we proceed further, let us make clear that human ideas, feelings, or concerns can be formulated in many different ways, hence not only by means of spoken or written words and sentences. ‘Language’ or rather communication can consist of gestures, mimicry, images, sounds, knots, or music, as long as any of those media allows the individual to communicate in an efficient manner. This requires, of course, a mutual agreement that any of those signs, gestures, images,or words really mean what they are supposed to convey,andthat the receivers understandthosesignalsaccordingly.⁵The Span- ish medieval poet Juan Ruiz, author of the famous fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor, which I will discuss at the end of this essay, explicitly indicated LordMayorandAldermenoftheCityofLondon,OntheStateofthePrisonsandPrisonersWithin TheirJurisdictionShewingtheNecessityofaReformofThem:UrgingtheGreatAdvantageofSoli- taryConfinement,andtheTreatingofPrisonerswithHumanity:WithObservationsontheBuilding oftheNewCompters,andSomeExtractsofMr.Howard’sProposedImprovements:ToWhichis Added anAccount of theDeathsofRob. May, Eliz.Gurney&T.Trimer, Who“DiedforWant in thePoultryCompter”(London:PrintedbyJ.Andrews,);seealsoThePrisoner’sCompanion ContainingReligiousandMoralAdvice,AdaptedtoPersonsinSolitaryConfinement(London:Sold byDodsley,andSewell,[]). AlbrechtClassen,“ChessinMedievalGermanLiterature:AMirrorofSocial-HistoricalandCul- tural,Religious,Ethical,andMoralConditions,”ChessintheMiddleAgesandEarlyModernAge: AFundamentalThoughtParadigmofthePremodernWorld,ed.DanielE.O’Sullivan.Fundamen- talsofMedievalandEarlyModernCulture,(BerlinandNewYork:DeGruyter,),–; seealsotheveryusefularticle,providingaplotsummaryandhistoricalbackgroundathttps:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Game(lastaccessedonAug.,). ScottG.Bruce,SilenceandSignLanguageinMedievalMonasticism:TheCluniacTraditionc. –. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, th ser., (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Cf. also Volker Roloff, Reden und Schweigen: zurTraditionundGestaltungeinesmittelalterlichenThemasinderfranzösischenLiteratur.Münch- enerromanistischeArbeiten,(Munich:Fink,);UweRuberg,BeredtesSchweigeninlehrh- afterunderzählenderdeutscherLiteraturdesMittelalters:mitkommentierterErsteditionspätmit- telalterlicherLehrtexteüberdasSchweigen.MünsterscheMittelalter-Schriften,(Munich:Fink, ). SeetheintroductiontoWordsofLoveandLoveofWordsintheMiddleAgesandtheRenais- sance,ed.AlbrechtClassen.MedievalandRenaissanceTextsandStudies,(Tempe:Arizona CenterforMedievalandRenaissanceStudies,). MultilingualismintheMiddleAges 3 that this very form of agreement could be lacking,which hence could lead to major misunderstanding.⁶ TurningtoGenesisintheOldTestament,wefindthefamousexampleofThe TowerofBabel,in11:1–9.⁷Theoriginofalllanguagesisassumedtohavebeena universal medium of communication, and this in conformity with ancient, Pla- tonic,philosophyaccordingtowhichallphenomenainthisworldaretheresult of an evolutionary process, moving from the one harmonious origin to an end- lessplethoraoffutureentities,thatis,fromtheseedtotheflower,forinstance, ortotheGoodbeingtheoriginandalsogoalofallthingsandbeings(Boethius, d.525). However,asthebiblicalauthorinformsus:“Theysaidtoeachother,‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city,with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’” Once God re- alized the danger of global hubris involved in erecting the tower for mankind, which was possible because all people spoke just one language, He confused their languages and thus broke them all apart: “So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the Foradiscussionofgestures,signs,andsymbolicobjects,seeMarinaMünklerandMatthias Standke, “Freundschaftszeichen: Einige systematische Überlegungen zu Gesten, Gaben und Symbolen von Freundschaft,” Freundschaftszeichen: Gesten, Gaben und Symbole von Freund- schaftimMittelalter,ed.MarinaMünkler,AntjeSablotny,andMatthiasStandke.Beiheftezum Euphorion,(Heidelberg:UniversitätsverlagWinter,),–.Theydonotdiscuss,how- ever,multilingualfeatures.SeealsoJ.A.Burrow,GesturesandLooksinMedievalNarrative.Cam- bridgeStudiesinMedievalLiterature,(CambridgeandNewYork:CambridgeUniversityPress, );Gestures,Behaviors,andEmotionsintheMiddleAges,ed.AllenJ.Frantzen.EssaysinMe- dievalStudies,(Chicago,IL:IllinoisMedievalAssociation,). HolyBible,NewInternationalVersion®,NIV®Copyright©,,,byBibli- ca, Inc.®: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%:- (last accessed onAug.,).Cf.alsoTheVulgateBible.Vol.:ThePentateuch.Douay-RheimsTranslation, ed.SwiftEdgar.DumbartonOaksMedievalLibrary(Cambridge,MA,andLondon:HarvardUni- versityPress, ). See now Phillip MichaelSherman,Babel’s Tower Translated:Genesis andAncient JewishInterpretation.BiblicalInterpretationSeries, (Boston: Brill,);for theongoingpoliticalimplicationsofthistopic,seeLanguageandTechnology:FromtheTower ofBabeltotheGlobalVillage(Brussels:OfficeforOfficialPubl.oftheEuropeanCommunities, ).Foradiscussionofthemedievalperspective,seeArnoBorst,DerTurmbauvonBabel: GeschichtederMeinungenüberUrsprungundVielfaltderSprachenundVölker.vols.(Stuttgart: Hiersemann,–). 4 AlbrechtClassen whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth” (Gen.11:8–9). Sincethattime,asthismythological,ordivinelyinspired,accountindicates, peoplespokedifferentlanguages,and,asaresultofthat,problemsandconflicts emerged that continue to dominate even the modern world. In other words, as the biblical author clearly recognized, language and languages prove to be the criticalbenchmarkofallhumanexistence.Thepersonorinstitutionthatcontrols languages,thatis,thatcanspeakmanylanguages,oremploystheminatleasta mechanicalfashion,alsocontrolstheworld.Today,ofcourse,wehaveavailable anevergrowingnumberofcomputer-basedgadgetsandsoftwareprogramsthat allow us to have our words and sentences translated mechanically into almost anylanguage,but this does not mean at all that most people have the commu- nicativemeansavailabletobuildbridgestoanyothersocialcommunity—onthe contrary. In one sense,the European Middle Ages were blessed in having Latin availableasthelinguafrancaatleastforallintellectuals.Frenchenjoyedafairly similarstatusfromtheseventeenththroughthenineteenthcentury,andEnglish, today specifically American English, does the same. But in another sense, as manyliteraryworksfromthepre-moderneraalreadyindicatetous,thisspecific situation did not make communication anyeasier.⁸ Allthis pertains totheissueofcommunication,butnot tobi-andmultilin- gualism,whichcontinuestomattergreatly,andseemstogaininimportanceall the time in our present world considering the massive number of immigrants from the south to the north and the west, which creates a challenging mix of Indo-EuropeanwithArabicandmanyotherlanguages.Thesemillionsofpeople mostlyarriveasmonolinguals,orasspeakersofseverallanguagesnotrelatedto Indo-European,buttheyarequicklyforcedtoacquirethenewlanguageinorder to communicate with the new social environment, whether they achieve true mastery in the new language/s or not. Thehugenumberofdistinctlanguages(atleastca.6000)andofdialects(at leastca.24,000)spokenallovertheworldismind-boggling,allofthemconfirm- ing the virtually endless capacities of the human brain, ever creating new lan- guages and evolving old ones.⁹ Every language is exposed to a constantly on- Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung: Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemein- schaftinderdeutschenLiteraturdesMittelalters.BeiheftezurMediaevistik,(Frankfurta.M., Berlin,etal.:PeterLang,). OliverM.Traxel,“Languages,”HandbookofMedievalCulture:FundamentalAspectsandCon- ditionsoftheEuropeanMiddleAges,ed.AlbrechtClassen(BerlinandBoston:WalterdeGruyter, ),vol. , –. Cf. also the very useful Metzler Lexikon Sprache, ed. Helmut Glück (StuttgartandWeimar:J.B.Metzler,).
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