Quote:
Originally Posted by kindlekitten
which Latin? the vulgur died out with the empire. then it evolved into several different dialects some of which eventually became modern languages. eccleastical latin became more or less an entity of its own. classical latin was the language of statesman and scholars and useful as a common written language.
so given all of these what do you think the poor farmer spoke that was being preached at in a formal and stylized language used and developed by the church and certainly not taught to anyone below a small educated minority
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Perhaps we are talking about different periods when we refer to "the early church"? When I hear that term, I think of the first few centuries of the church when it used Latin simply because that was the language of the Empire.
I entirely agree with you that by, say, medieval times, the church really had very little to do with the lives of the everyday people; it was a state organ of power, pure and simple. People led such wretched lives that one of its primary purposes was to preach the message "we know your life is awful here, but obey your lord and master and you'll store up brownie points in heaven and live really nice lives in heaven".