The Etymology of " Church^ 183 



et a circo kirck nostrum esse, quia veterum templa instar circi 

 rotunda." He was followed by J. Grimm who, in his G. Gr., 

 proposed likewise circus (circulus), which is found very early 

 under the form of chirih and chirch ; in his preface to E. 

 Schulze's Goth. Glossar (p. XI), he proposed the Gothic 

 Icelikn^^avcoyatov^ the upper floor of a house {rc'jfjyoz), in which 

 he sees the Alemannic c/ii7icAa = tempi um, "as the oldest 

 churches were not without spires." The kelikn^ he says, 

 would be an allied word to the Albanian xohXXe^ Lith. Koras 

 or Koryczia^ which come very near the Anglo-Saxon and Old 

 High German words. But in the German Dictionary, edited 

 by Hildebrand, \^ol. V, he abandons these etymologies and 

 returns to xupcaxov, still not without objections. First he men- 

 tions the change in the grammatical gender; but it has been 

 shown that Latin (Greek) neutra become feminine, not only in 

 the Romanic, but also in the Germanic dialects. Another, 

 more important diflSculty lies in the loss of a, which could not 

 be accounted for. Still the difficulty of which the derivation 

 from xufnaxov presents, is little compared with the difficulty of 

 wanting historical probability. We must be able to answer, 

 how did the Germanic nations receive the word, or how did 

 it happen, that they agree in this one word with the Greek 

 church, but differ from the Latin church, which held sway 

 among them in all other respects ? From Rome they ought 

 to have received ecclesia, perhaps basilica, as the Latin nations : 

 French, eglise (iglise, esglise); Prov., gleisa ; Italian, chiesa ^ 

 Spanish, iglesia ; Port., igreja ; only in Roumansch, haselgia 

 and Wall., hiseric i. e. basilica. But chilihha, cyrice, etc., 

 must have been rooted so deeply among the Germanic nations, 

 when they came under the influence of the Latin church- 

 language, that it could no longer be supplanted by the word 

 ecclesia. It must have become a national word, which, like 

 the Germanic Ostara, could not be dispossessed by pascha of 

 the Latin church. Now if we stop at the etymology of church 

 as is generally adopted, Philology cannot inform us, how ths 



