153 



ROMANCE LANGUAGE. 



ROMANCE LANGUAGE. 



154 



the chief ingredients. 9, The comic romances, which were written 

 chiefly as parodies of the heroic and chivalrous romances. Such were 

 those of Rabelais, Cervantes, Mendoza, and Scan-on. 10, The political 

 romances, such as Te'le'maque, Sethos, &c. 11, The supernatural 

 romance, like the ' Castle of Otranto,' ' The Old English Baron ;' in 

 which may be included those of Mrs. Radcliffe, where a supernatural 

 impression is given by inadequate natural causes. 12, Lastly comes 

 the modern novel, which forms a distinct species, as it does not deal in 

 the marvellous and supernatural, but represents men conformably to the 

 manners of the age in which they lived. 



ROMANCE LANGUAGE (' Langue Romane' or 'Romande,' in 

 French) is the came given to a kind of bastard Latin, which came into 

 common use in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, 

 among the populations formerly subject to Rome, while the Northern 

 conquerors, the Goths, Franks, Burgundians, Langobards, &c., spoke 



wn language or dialects, which are called by chroniclers of the 

 times " lingua Teutonica," or " Teutisca." The conquered people were 

 called by the general name of Romans, from whence came the name of 

 the language, which was also called " vulgaris." In course of time 

 however the conquerors adopted the language of the' conquered, who 

 being more instructed, furnished most of the priests and scholars of 

 the age. But the language thus adopted by both the conquering and 

 the conquered races, although essentially formed of Latin elements, 

 differed according to the various localities and the greater or leaser 

 degree of admixture of the northern people with the Roman popula- 

 tion. For instance, king Dagobert in the 7th century published a 

 statute, styled, " Lex Alamaunorum," for the use of the German tribes 

 who hail crossed the Rhine, the language of which differs from that of 

 the " Lex Ripuariorum," which the same king published for the use of 

 the people situated between the Lower Rhine and the Mosa, wLo were 

 mostly of old Roman extraction. The former employs the ilk as an 

 article before substantives, in imitation of the articles $a and tier used 

 ly the Goths and Franks in their own language; but the Lex 



'in does not employ ille for the same purpose. In the old 

 charters of Italy and Spain of the 8th and 9th centuries, we find ills 

 and /> employed likewise as articles, I/MO ecdesia, ilia alia, itlat casat, 

 Ula tlrada, ilto rio, Ac. ; but these charters are not so old by a centxtry 

 or two as the Franco Latin documents, in which those pronouns are 

 introduced for a similar purpose. The oldest documents in the 

 ' Espaha Sagrada ' in which the ille appears as an article is A.U. 775 ; 

 and the oldest of those of Italy quoted by Muratori are of the years 

 713 and 736. 



Of the various dialects thus formed, that of the south of France, 



afterwards Langue d'Oc, became a refined language sooner than 

 the others, and retained it superiority from the 10th to the 13th 

 century, when the Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish languages assumed 

 a regular grammatical and literary form, which they have retained ; 



the romance of the south of France has gradually fallen into 



disuse, having given way to the Northern French Langue d'Oil or 



The latter appears to have originally differed little from the 



1C d'Oc, but it gradually changed its terminations, and assumed 



1-vcuharities of form, which have been retained by the modern 



i. It is demonstrated by Raynouard that the inhabitants of 

 Northern France in the 9th century spoke the same language as those 

 of the south. The text of the oath taken at Strasburg in the year 

 812, by Louis, called the Germanic, before the French people, would 

 alone bo a sufficient proof of thi.. The text of this curious document 

 is as follows : " Pro Deo amur et pro Christian poplo, et nostro 



in salvainent, dist di en avant, in quant Dcus savir ct podir me 

 iluuat, si salvara jeo cUt mcon fradre Karlo, et in adjiulha, ct in 

 i .I'lli'ina cosa, si cum om per dreit eon fradre salvar dist, in o quid il 

 mi altre si fazet, et ab Ludher mil plaid nuiK|imm prindrai, qui meon 

 vol cist meon fradre Karle in dnmno sit." (Roquefort, ' Glossaire de 

 la Langue Romane,' Paris, 1808, Introduction.) 



The gradual process by which the corrupt Latin spoken in the 

 provinces of Western and Southern Europe in the 6th, 7th and 8th 



ies was transformed into the Romance languages of the Sth and 



very clearly exhibited by Raynouard, in his ' El^mens 



nairecle la Langue Romano avant Tan 1000.' The Latin 



cases had become neglected or confused, and to supply their place the 



de served to denote the genitive and ml the dative. The 



< to cut off the final syllable of the noun, and so to make 



Unable. Thus the accusative abbatem became abbat; majcs- 



tatem, majcstat; ardent* m, ardent; amantem, araant ; and so forth. 



The accusatives in ionem were reduced to ion, religioncm, religion, &c. 



When the suppression of the Latin termination left two harsh-sounding 



consonants at the end of the word, a euphonic vowel was added, 



" arliitr-um," " ar-bitr-c." The pronouns ille and ipie had been used in 



the corrupt Latin as auxiliary to substantives : " Dono illas vineas 



quomodo ille rivulus ccirrit ; " " Ilia medietate de ipsa porcione," 4c. 



From ille so used originated the romance articles el, to, la, and from 



ip' the demonstrative pronouns, it, o or tu, and in, which the 



Sardinian dialect has retained to this day as an article. These art !!- 



were declined with the prepositions de and a. "Ego Hugo della 



Roca ; " " Fossatum de la vite ; " " Villam nostram quto vocatur al la 



1.1," Ac. These and other examples taken from documents of 



i century show the introduction of articles even in the written 

 language which affected to preierre in some degree the Lathi form ; 



the change must have been more rapid and complete iu the spoken or 

 popular idiom. Other changes took place in the pronouns and the 

 verbs, for which we refer to Raynouard's ' Elt5mens.' The use of the 

 auxiliary verb arer, " habere," already existed in the Latin, in a certaiu 

 form : " De Caesare satis hoc tempore dictum habebo " (Cicero, 

 ' Philip. V.' 23) ; " Si habes jam statutum quod tibi agendum pates " 

 (' Epist. ad Fanu'l.', iv. 2). The Latin also used the auxiliary " esse " 

 hi some tenses of the passive. The Romance language only made the 

 use of these auxiliaries more general. 



After A.D. 1000 the Romance language may be considered as having 

 become duly formed, and the age of the Troubadours began. William", 

 count of Poictiers, is one of the earliest whose works have beeii pre- 

 served. In the 12th century the institution of the Courts of Love was 

 established. That century was the brilliant age of Romance poetry, 

 and in the same Wace wrote iu North or Norman French his ' Roman 

 du Rou.' In the 13th century the war and massacre of the Albigenses, 

 and the establishment of the Inquisition, frightened away many of the 

 adepts of " la gaya ciencia ; " and afterwards several other events, such 

 as the accession of the house of Aujou or Provence to the throne of 

 Naples, and the encroachments of the Northern French, contributed to 

 the decline of the troubadour poetry, and at the same time of the 

 Romance language. The Italian or Tuscan rose upon its decay. 

 When Dante appeared, the decline had already begun, and it was com- 

 pleted during the first part of the 14th century. (Raynouard, ' Choix 

 4es Originates des Troubadours ; ' Professor Diez, ' Leben und 

 Werke der Troubadours,' Zwickau, 1829.) Ill the 15th century king 

 Renu made some attempts at reviving the poetry of the Laugue d'Oc, 

 but the race of the Troubadours was now extinct, and the only result 

 of his endeavours was the collecting and compiling the lives of the old 

 Troubadours by the monk of the isles of Hyeres, " Le Monge ties Isles 

 d'Or." In Eastern Spain also the Inquisition destroyed many manu- 

 scripts in the Limosin or Valencian language, as being suspected of 

 containing heresy. In 1434 the library of the Marquis de Villena at 

 Barcelona was burnt on suspicion of containing sorcery. (Ferrario, 

 ' Storia ed Analisi degli antichi Rouianzi,' 4c.) 



Various political and social circumstances had contributed to give to 

 the Langue d'Oc that early refinement in an age of comparative- 

 ignorance and barbarism which is still a matter of surprise to philo- 

 logists and hi.storicnl inquirers. The provinces of Southern r'ninee. 

 had not, like Italy and the northern parts of France, been overrun by 

 a succession of barbarians ; they had not been exposed to the ravages 

 of the Slavonians, the Huns, and the Danes. The Burgundians and 

 the Visigoths, who had settled there neurly about the same time, 

 were more civilised than the other German races ; they amalgamated 

 gradually and quietly with the old inhabitants, and they applied them- 

 "i agricultural pursuits, which a fertile soil and a happy climate 

 rendered pleasant and productive. The country suffered no subsequent 

 invasion from the northern tribes, and the victory of Charles Martel in 

 the plains of Tours arrested the advance of the Saracens from the west. 

 Southern France was, it is true, subjugated by the Franks, who had 

 occupied the countries north of the Loire, but the Franks had by that 

 time formed themselves into a regular monarchy under I'epin and 

 Charlemagne, and were no longer unruly, barbarians. During the 

 decline and imbecility of the latter princes of the Carlovingian dynasty, 

 Southern France became a separate and independent state, of which 

 duke Bozon, an active and vigorous man, became monarch, and the 

 kingdom of Aries or Provence extended over the whole south of France. 

 The descendants of Bozon retained t "ignty for more than two 



hundred years; and when the male line ended in ]0!I2, in the person 

 of (.'mint Gillibert, his states became the dowry of his daughters, of 

 whom the elder, Douce, heiress of Provence, was married in tin- \rar 

 111 '2 to llnymond Uerenger, count of Barcelona, and her sister Stephanie 

 married the count of Toulouse. A treaty, concluded in 1125, between 

 the counts of Barcelona anil Toulouse, fixed the division of the states 

 of Gillibert between them. Another powerful baron, the count of 

 Poitiers, became duke of Aquitaine or Guyenne, which afterwards 

 came by marriage into the possession of Henry II. of England. These 

 three states, Barcelona, Toulouse, and Ciiiicnnc included the whole 

 country in which the Langue d'Oc was spoken. The union of Provence 

 with Catalonia introduced into the former country a taste for poetry 

 and chivalry, which was fostered in Spain by the Moors. The maritime 

 towns of Catalonia and Provence carried on a lucrative trade all over 

 the Mediterranean, and Catalonian armaments took an active part in 

 the Eastern wars between the Greeks, the Normans, and the Saracens. 

 All these circumstances contributed to refine the manners of the 

 people as well as their language, and the singular institution of the 

 Courts of Love gave a peculiar turn to their poetry. [TBOtnUDOUM.] 



The Langue d'Oil, or Northern French, also called sometimes Nor- 

 man French, having become the language of the court and capital of 

 the kingdom of France, gradually encroached upon the Langue d'Oc, 

 as the various provinces south of the Loire became incorporated with 

 the monarchy. From the 13th century downwards, the edicts and 

 ordinances of the French kings being issued in the Langue d'Oil, were 

 forwarded, either in the original or translated into Latin, to the pro- 

 vinces of the south. The writers of Northern France, the Trouveres, 

 refined then- own language, and found encouragement at court, which 

 was not extended to the writers in the Langue d'Oc. Ronsard, who 

 was a native of the south, iu his ' Abregc de 1'Art 1'oe'tique,' complains 



