Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur

"Whatever is said in Latin, sounds important"

X-URL: http://fh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/20/3/354?rss=1

* French History Volume 20, Number 3 * Pp. 354

French History Advance Access originally published online on August 4,
2006
French History 2006 20(3):354; doi:10.1093/fh/crl014

Latin or the Empire of a Sign

Latin or the Empire of a Sign. By Fran?oise Waquet (trans. John Howe).
London: Verso. 2003. 400 pp. ?13.00 ISBN 1 85984 402 2.

`He'll never make captain' comments a US serviceman^ in `South
Pacific' about a junior officer who cannot^ translate verses of
Horace. Fran?oise Waquet's^ book studies and illustrates the uses to
which Latin has been^ put from the fifteenth century to the 1960s, for
certain careers,^ as an essential part of a gentleman's education, an
attribute^ of social class, as a vehicle (or filter) for the
dissemination^ of religion and learning, and thereby as an emblem,
badge, sign^ or standard. When curricula that included Latin were
classified^ as fee-paying in early-nineteenth-century France, the
position,^ and certainly the perception, of `having Latin'^ as a
reinforcement of social class could be seen clearly. Although,^ over
the centuries, the standard of Latinity achieved seldom^ rose very
high, its inclusion in schooling was always energetically^ advocated;
the author highlights the national controversy (not^ all of it
cerebral) resulting from the edict issued in the 1960s^ by the then
Minister of National Education in France, Edgar^ Faure, setting a
sixth-grade curriculum that excluded Latin.^

She maps the move to vernacular languages in the western churches^ and
in learned writings. The reader is reminded that it is never^ too late
for a schism to develop, as the organization Una Voce^ was formed in
France in the 1960s `for the safeguard of^ Latin, Gregorian chant, and
sacred polyphony in the public prayer^ of the Church'. The active
development of the use of Latin^ to fortify professional mystique in
medicine, law and religion^ is well illustrated, as is the obsolete
fashion of leaving (conspicuously!)^ in the `obscurity of a learned
language' texts which^ might corrupt the vulnerable.^

In John Howe's translation, this work is likely to be^ a remarkably
easy read for the non-specialist and a useful overview^ for others.
Now and again, this reviewer found some of the bon^ mots (there are
lots of subsection titles and lots of inverted^ commas in this book)
arresting but not catchy--a translation^ matter or a symptom of
cultural difference? The concentration^ (far from exclusively) on
examples from France should not detract^ from this work's value, still
less its interest (to, say,^ British readers).^

The title does not do this work justice: it is neither arcane^ nor
evangelical--erudite and entertaining, rather. The^ author leaves the
reader to consider the case for fostering^ Latin and its study as a
specialism, lest records (in Latin)^ of history, law, religion and
culture cease to be accessible^ to us all.^

John M. Taylor University of Stirling