Hiberno-Latin

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Hiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a learned style of

Vocabulary and influence

Hiberno-Latin was notable for its curiously learned vocabulary. While neither Hebrew nor Greek was widely known in Europe during this period^{[citation needed]}, odd words from these sources, as well as from Irish and British sources, were added to Latin vocabulary by these authors. It has been suggested that the unusual vocabulary of the poems was the result of the monks learning Latin words from dictionaries and glossaries which did not distinguish between obscure and common words; unlike many others in Western Europe at the time, the Irish monks did not speak a language descended from Latin. During the sixth and seventh centuries AD, Irish monasticism spread through Christian Europe; Irish monks who founded these monasteries often brought Hiberno-Latin literary styles with them.

Notable authors whose works contain something of the Hiberno-Latin spirit include St

One usage of Hesperia in classical times was as a synonym for Italy, and it is noticeable that some of the vocabulary and stylistic devices of these pieces originated not among the Irish, but with the priestly and rhetorical poets who flourished within the world dominated ecclesiastically by Rome (especially in Italy, Gaul, Spain and Africa) between the fourth and the sixth centuries, such as Juvencus, Avitus of Vienne, Dracontius, Ennodius and Venantius Fortunatus. (Thus the very word famen, plural famina – a pseudo-archaic coinage from the classical verb fari, 'to speak' – is first recorded in the metrical Gospels Evangeliorum libri of Juvencus. Similarly, the word-arrangement often follows the sequence adjective 1 - adjective 2 - verb - noun 1 - noun 2, known as the "golden line", a pattern used to excess in the too-regular prosody of these poets; the first line quoted above is an example.) The underlying idea, then, would be to cast ridicule on these Roman-oriented writers by blending their stylistic tricks with incompetent scansion and applying them to unworthy subjects.^{[citation needed]}

Altus Prosator

On a much more intelligible level, the sixth-century

• In Italian, Francesco Colonna created a similar style (in prose), packed with neologisms drawn from Hebrew, Greek and Latin, for his allegory Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499).
• The Spanish
  Golden Century poet Luis de Góngora was the champion of culteranismo (sometimes called gongorism in English), a style that subjected Spanish to abstruse Latinate neologism, obscure allusions to Classical mythology and violent hyperbaton
  .
• In English, euphuism – a 16th-century tendency named after the character Euphues who appears in two works by its chief practitioner John Lyly – shows similar qualities.

See also

• Hermeneutic style

References

Bibliography

• James Carney
  , Medieval Irish Lyrics Berkeley, 1967.
• Thomas Owen Clancy and Gilbert Márkus, Iona: the Earliest Poetry of a Celtic Monastery Edinburgh, 1995.
• Michael Herren, editor, The Hisperica Famina. (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto)
  • Volume 1, 1974.
    ISBN 0-88844-031-6
  • Volume 2, 1987.
    ISBN 0-88844-085-5
• Andy Orchard, "The Hisperica famina as Literature" University of Toronto, 2000.
• Harris, Jason (2009). Making Ireland Roman: Irish Neo-Latin Writers and the Republic of Letters. Cork University Press.
  ISBN 978-1859184530
  .

• Clavis Litterarum Hibernensium: Medieval Irish Books & Textss, c. 400 - c. 1600, http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503548579-1
• Stevenson, Jane (1999). "Altus Prosator" (PDF). Celtica. 23. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 October 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2021.