Roman period[edit source]
Latin was quickly adopted by the Gaulish aristocracy after the
Roman conquest to maintain their elite power and influence,
[19] trilingualism in southern Gaul being noted as early as the 1st century BC.
[20]
Early references to Gaulish in Gaul tend to be made in the context of problems with Greek or Latin fluency until around
400, whereas after c.
450, Gaulish begins to be mentioned in contexts where Latin has replaced "Gaulish" or "Celtic" (whatever the authors meant by those terms). For
Galatia (Anatolia), there is no source explicitly indicating a
5th century language replacement:
- During the last quarter of the 2nd century, Irenaeus, bishop of Lugdunum (present-day Lyon), apologises for his inadequate Greek, being "resident among the Keltae and accustomed for the most part to use a barbarous dialect".[21]
- According to the Vita Sancti Symphoriani, Symphorian of Augustodunum (present-day Autun) was executed on 22 August 178 for his Christian faith. While he was being led to his execution, "his venerable mother admonished him from the wall assiduously and notable to all (?), saying in the Gaulish speech: Son, son, Symphorianus, think of your God!" (uenerabilis mater sua de muro sedula et nota illum uoce Gallica monuit dicens: 'nate, nate Synforiane, mentobeto to diuo' [22]). The Gaulish sentence has been transmitted in a corrupt state in the various manuscripts; as it stands, it has been reconstructed by Thurneysen. According to David Stifter (2012), *mentobeto looks like a Proto-Romance verb derived from Latin mens, mentis ‘mind’ and habere ‘to have’, and it cannot be excluded that the whole utterance is an early variant of Romance, or a mixture of Romance and Gaulish, instead of being an instance of pure Gaulish. On the other hand, nate is attested in Gaulish (for example in Endlicher's Glossary[23]), and the author of the Vita Sancti Symphoriani, whether or not fluent in Gaulish, evidently expects a non-Latin language to have been spoken at the time.
- The Latin author Aulus Gellius (c. 180) mentions Gaulish alongside the Etruscan language in one anecdote, indicating that (North Italian?) Gaulish is alive at the time of writing.[24]
- The Roman History by Cassius Dio (written AD 207-229) may imply that Cis- and Transalpine Gauls spoke the same language, as can be deduced from the following passages: (1) Book XIII mentions the principle that named tribes have a common government and a common speech, otherwise the population of a region is summarised by a geographic term, as in the case of the Spanish/Iberians.[25] (2) In Books XII and XIV, Gauls between the Pyrenees and the River Po are stated to consider themselves kinsmen.[26][27] (3) In Book XLVI, Cassius Dio explains that the defining difference between Cis- and Transalpine Gauls is the length of hair and the style of clothes (i.e., he does not mention any language difference), the Cisalpine Gauls having adopted shorter hair and the Roman toga at an early date (Gallia Togata).[28] Potentially in contrast, Caesar described the river Rhone as a frontier between the Celts and provincia nostra.[15]
- In the Digesta XXXII, 11 of Ulpian (AD 222–228) it is decreed that fideicommissa (testamentary provisions) may also be composed in Gaulish.[29]
- Writing at some point between c. AD 378 and AD 395, the Latin poet and scholar Decimus Magnus Ausonius, from Burdigala (present-day Bordeaux), characterizes his deceased father Iulius's ability to speak Latin as inpromptus, "halting, not fluent"; in Attic Greek, Iulius felt sufficiently eloquent.[30] This remark is sometimes taken as an indication that the first language of Iulius Ausonius (c. AD 290-378) was Gaulish,[31] but may alternatively mean that his first language was Greek. As a physician, he would have cultivated Greek as part of his professional proficiency.
- In the Dialogi de Vita Martini I, 26 by Sulpicius Seuerus (AD 363–425), one of the partners in the dialogue utters the rhetorical commonplace that his deficient Latin might insult the ears of his partners. One of them answers: uel Celtice aut si mauis Gallice loquere dummodo Martinum loquaris ‘speak Celtic or, if you prefer, Gaulish, as long as you speak about Martin’.[32]
- Saint Jerome (writing in AD 386/387) remarked in a commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians that the Belgic Treveri spoke almost the same language as the Galatians, rather than Latin.[33] This agrees with an earlier report in AD180 by Lucian.[34]
- In a letter of AD 474 to his brother-in-law, Sidonius Apollinaris, bishop of Clermont in the Auvergne, states that in his younger years, "our nobles... resolved to forsake the barbarous Celtic dialect", evidently in favour of eloquent Latin.[35]
Medieval period[edit source]
- Cassiodorus (ca. 490–585) cites in his book Variae VIII, 12, 7 (dated 526) from a letter to king Athalaric: Romanum denique eloquium non suis regionibus inuenisti et ibi te Tulliana lectio disertum reddidit, ubi quondam Gallica lingua resonauit ‘Finally you found Roman eloquence in regions that were not originally its own; and there the reading of Cicero rendered you eloquent where once the Gaulish language resounded’[36]
- In the 6th century Cyril of Scythopolis (AD 525-559) tells a story about a Galatian monk who was possessed by an evil spirit and was unable to speak, but if forced to, could speak only in Galatian.[37]
- Gregory of Tours wrote in the 6th century (c. 560-575) that a shrine in Auvergne which "is called Vasso Galatae in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground[38]. This quote has been held by historical linguistic scholarship to attest that Gaulish was indeed still spoken as late as the mid to late 6th century in France.[8]
Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and had coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul.
[8] The exact time of the final extinction of Gaulish is unknown, but it is estimated to have been around or shortly after the middle of the
1st millennium, in the late 5th or early 6th century.
[39]
