¶ 76 FOREIGN LANGUAGES
The first requirement for intelligent work with source
material is ability to read it, and to do this the student must necessarily
know the language in which it is written. IF he works in the medieval field, he
is lost without medieval Latin, just as he is list in the Hispanic-American
field without Spanish. What the indispensable language or languages are,
depends on the material dealt with. Classical Latin alone will not put one at
east among medieval texts. Medieval Latin has its own specific vocabularies
with which the student of medieval texts must become familiar. HE must know,
for example, that in the Middle Ages quia might mean “that,” and seu,
“and,” meanings that are foreign to classical usage of the same words. Even in
St. Augustine’s time, classical words were taking on new technical meanings.
His treatise, De rudibus catechezandis, is concerned with religious
instruction, not of illiterates (rudes, in classical Latin), but of “catechumens,”
persons, whether illiterate or not, who were being prepared for baptism. On the
other hand, in St. Augustine’s day sacramentum had not yet taken on its
later theological sense, and hence theological arguments based on his use of
the term are generally not to the point. To what grotesque results inadequate
acquaintance with a language will lead, is illustrated by the translation in an
American book of the Latin quatuor tempora as “four times” instead of “ember
days.” A certain cleric is represented as having been ordained “four times a
year,” whereas he was ordained once, and during one of the ecclesiastical
seasonal periods known as “ember days,” which occur four times a year.
¶ 77 How much the solution of a historical problem may
depend on the precise meaning to be attached to certain terms is illustrated in
an archaeologist’s answer to the question, “What was the population of ancient Rome?”
By using the Latin words, domus, insula and coenacula, in what he
contends are the only correct meanings to be attached to them, Jerome Carcopino
reaches the conclusion that the population of Rome at the time of the Antonies
was approximately 1,200,000.—See Daily Life in Ancient Rome: The People and
the City at the Height of the Empire, translated from the French By E. O.
Lorimer, edited with Bibliography and Notes by Henry T. Towell (New Haven,
1940), 16-20.
¶ 78 Apart from the necessity of knowing the pertinent
languages for the reading and criticism of documents, a knowledge of French and
German is virtually indispensable if the history student is to keep abreast of
the most recent scholarship in his field. He needs also an immense amount of
specialized study and research, the results of which are set out in
contemporary books, monographs, and learned reviewed in the principal Western
European languages. Contact with such secondary literature must be steadily
maintained, if one’s published product is not to fail in a recognized hallmark
of scholarly work: up-to-dateness. (Gilbert J. Garraghan, A Guide to
Historical Method, ed. Jean Delanglez [New York: Fordham University Press,
1946], 86-87)
¶ 317 LANGUAGE
The major approach to the meaning of a document lies in
its words taken singly or in groups. To explain the meaning of words and
sentences, to extract from them the ideas they were meant to convey, is the
task of verbal interpretation. Clearly, the task cannot be attempted without
knowledge of the language in which the document is written. Not only must the
interpreter be familiar with its language, he must be familiar with it in
precisely that stage of development which it had reached at the period to which
the document belongs. One who is expert in classical Latin only is not thereby
equipped for the correct verbal interpretation of sources in medieval Latin,
any more than one knowing only present-day English is thereby qualified to
grasp with ease Chaucer’s English, or even in full measure, Shakespeare’s. A
handicap often felt by students of medieval history is their inability to read
post-classical Latin, or for that matter, Latin of any kind. Scholarly
firsthand work in any field of historical research is impossible without at
least a working knowledge of the language or languages in which the pertinent
source material is found. (Gilbert J. Garraghan, A Guide to Historical
Method, ed. Jean Delanglez [New York: Fordham University Press, 1946], 323)
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