Anglo-Latinity: The Lost Tradition

In Elizabethan England, there were some 360 Grammar schools (higher than primary or elementary schools) teaching Latin to 9-12 year olds, about one school for every 12,000 persons. On this basis, we can estimate between 40,000 to 400,000 Latinate individuals at the height of the "Northern Re-nascance", perhaps 10% of the population at the high, but reasonable end of 10,000 graduates a year for the whole school system, for a whole generation. Of books and other published materials, Latin comprises about 10% in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods (this is indeed compared to 90%+ of all available manuscript materials from earlier ages, the balance being the various vernacular tongues). Considering how much printed material is ephemeral, we can see that most of what we would assign to the realm of "Education" today would have been Latinate.

Latin speakers had an important minority status in Tudor and Early Stuart Britain, perhaps not unlike German-speakers in 19th century America, or Welsh-speakers today. Latin (and some Greek) was expected for anyone who could call himself a Gentleman, a member not only of the aristocratic nobility, but of the gentry as well. Anyone, of course, who had in mind a clerical or academic career would find himself in an environment where knowledge of Latin was taken for granted.

Connection with Latinate culture was also increasingly suspect, from the mid 16th century on.
The three crucial events for Anglo-Latinity, for the privileged but Latin-speaking minority of England and the rest of Britain, were: the Dissolution, the Gunpowder plot, and the Regicide of King Charles I. Taking the last first, we see, after 1649, the writing of Latin drops off markedly. We are left with an impression that the Latin-speaking minority was suddenly dispossessed, or went underground, or could no longer get their work published. This alone should indicate the political, ethnic, and racial (family-genetic-class) dimensions of Latinity.
Latin-speakers were not dispersed in the population. The supression of Latin, by the Commonwealth, has something of the air of ethnic cleansing about it.

Not all Commonwealth men were anti-Latinate. On the contrary, they were the first Conservatives. In overthrowing and dispossession the clerks, the prelates, the loyal gentry, and the monarchy, they took care to "save and preserve" what they respected. The lawyers who led the revolution continued to wish the barrier to entry that a reading and writing knowledge of Latin would present. Disputations at Oxford were conducted in Greek rather than Latin, since Greek was the language of the Bible, not the language of hated Rome. Thus, we get that curious mixture of pedantry and revolution, the hallmark of post-revolutionary Academia today.

It was also important to have a few expert Latinists about to carry on correspondence with the Enemy, who still occupied Europe. Thus, John Milton was put in charge of foreign correspondence. Even if one kills or locks up all the Latin-speakers and other linguists, you still need a few sound ones about to run the CIA and what not.

Thus, the critical phase of destroying the bilingual Anglo-Latin peoples and replacing them with an English-only commisarat did not do much to Latinate Education--except undermine its living basis. Where before there was a freshness and spontaneity about Latin, and strong connections looking further back for a millenium, after 1649 we have mere survivals, and a rising curve of academic excellence to fill in the void left by life, rather like formaldehyde in a dead corpse.

The other two turning points are easily related: the Dissolution destroyed the medieval school system. The founding of St. Paul's school and the King Edward Grammar schools were a partial remedy and a topic for another post.

The Gunpowder plot seems to have driven much of Latin literature underground for a decade--the beginning of the end, so to speak, as many Latinists must have gotten a foretaste of what was coming. If one plots the dates of Latinate drama in Elizabethan England, for example those available in the Library of Humanistic Texts, the production is quite robust up to 1605. Suddenly, everything is "anonymous Jesuit drama". One supposes the usual suspects were rounded up. The chilling effect is palpable. One suspects as well, just like the German-speaking communities in the Great War, or the Japanese Americans in the Second, that to be Latinate in the early Jacobean period was to come under instant suspicion.

In any event, these Anglo-Latinity posts will trace the history of the Anglo-Latins, from first beginnings up to the Age of Johnson or a bit beyond, and any survivals into the contemporary period.