Lectures on the Science of Language

by F. Max Müller

But let us see now how far the genealogical classification of languages has advanced, how many families of human speech have been satisfactorily established. Let us remember what suggested to us the necessity of a genealogical classification. We wished to know the original intention of certain words and grammatical forms in English, and we saw that before we could attempt to fathom the origin of such words as “I love,” and “I loved,” we should have to trace them back to their most primitive state. We likewise found, by a reference to the history of the Romance dialects, that words existing in one dialect had frequently been preserved in a more primitive form in another, and that, therefore, it was of the highest importance to bring ancient languages into the same genealogical connection by which French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese are held together as the members of one family.

Beginning, therefore, with the living language of England, we traced it, without difficulty, to Anglo-Saxon. This carries us back to the seventh century after Christ, for it is to that date that Kemble and Thorpe refer the ancient English epic, the Beowulf. Beyond this we cannot go on English soil. But we know that the Saxons, the Angles, and Jutes came from the continent, and there their descendants, along the northern coast of Germany, still speak Low-German, or Nieder-Deutsch, which in the harbors of Antwerp, Bremen, and Hamburg, has been mistaken by many an English sailor for a corrupt English dialect. The Low-German comprehends many dialects in the north or the lowlands of Germany; but in Germany proper they are hardly ever used for literary purposes. The Friesian dialects are Low-German, so are the [pg 178] Dutch and Flemish. The Friesian had a literature of its own as early at least as the twelfth century, if not earlier.[167] The Dutch, which is still a national and literary language, though confined to a small area, can be traced back to literary documents of the sixteenth century. The Flemish, too, was at that time the language of the court of Flanders and Brabant, but has since been considerably encroached upon, though not yet extinguished, by the official languages of the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. The oldest literary document of Low-German on the Continent is the Christian epic, the Heljand (Heljand = Heiland, the Healer or Saviour), which is preserved to us in two MSS. of the ninth century, and was written at that time for the benefit of the newly converted Saxons. We have traces of a certain amount of literature in Saxon or Low-German from that time onward through the Middle Ages up to the seventeenth century. But little only of that literature has been preserved; and, after the translation of the Bible by Luther into High-German, the fate of Low-German literature was sealed.

The literary language of Germany is, and has been ever since the days of Charlemagne, the High-German. It is spoken in various dialects all over Germany.[168] [pg 179] Its history may be traced through three periods. The present, or New High-German period dates from Luther; the Middle High-German period extends from Luther backwards to the twelfth century; the Old High-German period extends from thence to the seventh century.

Thus we see that we can follow the High-German, as well as the Low-German branch of Teutonic speech, back to about the seventh century after Christ. We must not suppose that before that time there was one common Teutonic language spoken by all German tribes, and that it afterwards diverged into two streams,—the High and Low. There never was a common, uniform, Teutonic language; nor is there any evidence to show that there existed at any time a uniform High-German or Low-German language, from which all High-German and Low-German dialects are respectively derived. We cannot derive Anglo-Saxon, Friesian, Flemish, Dutch, and Platt-Deutsch from the ancient Low-German, which is preserved in the continental Saxon of the ninth century. All we can say is this, that these various Low-German dialects in England, Holland, Friesia, and Lower Germany, passed at different times through the same stages, or, so to say, the same latitudes of grammatical growth. We may add that, with every century that we go back, the convergence of these dialects becomes more and more decided; but there is no evidence to justify us in admitting the historical reality of one primitive and uniform Low-German language from which they were all derived. This is a mere creation of grammarians who cannot understand a multiplicity of dialects without a common type. They would likewise demand the admission of a primitive [pg 180] High-German language, as the source, not only of the literary Old, Middle, and Modern High-German, but likewise of all the local dialects of Austria, Bavaria, Swabia, and Franconia. And they would wish us to believe that, previous to the separation into High and Low German, there existed one complete Teutonic language, as yet neither High nor Low, but containing the germs of both. Such a system may be convenient for the purposes of grammatical analysis, but it becomes mischievous as soon as these grammatical abstractions are invested with an historical reality. As there were families, clans, confederacies, and tribes, before there was a nation; so there were dialects before there was a language. The grammarian who postulates an historical reality for the one primitive type of Teutonic speech, is no better than the historian who believes in a Francus, the grandson of Hector, and the supposed ancestor of all the Franks, or in a Brutus, the mythical father of all the Britons. When the German races descended, one after the other, from the Danube and from the Baltic, to take possession of Italy and the Roman provinces,—when the Goths, the Lombards, the Vandals, the Franks, the Burgundians, each under their own kings, and with their own laws and customs, settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain, to act their several parts in the last scene of the Roman tragedy,—we have no reason to suppose that they all spoke one and the same dialect. If we possessed any literary documents of those ancient German races, we should find them all dialects again, some with the peculiarities of High, others with those of Low, German. Nor is this mere conjecture: for it so happens that, by some fortunate accident, the dialect of one [pg 181] at least of those ancient German races has been preserved to us in the Gothic translation of the Bible by Bishop Ulfilas.

I must say a few words on this remarkable man. The accounts of ecclesiastical historians with regard to the date and the principal events in the life of Ulfilas are very contradictory. This is partly owing to the fact that Ulfilas was an Arian bishop, and that the accounts which we possess of him come from two opposite sides, from Arian and Athanasian writers. Although in forming an estimate of his character it would be necessary to sift this contradictory evidence, it is but fair to suppose that, when dates and simple facts in the life of the Bishop have to be settled, his own friends had better means of information than the orthodox historians. It is, therefore, from the writings of his own co-religionists that the chronology and the historical outline of the Bishop's life should be determined.

The principal writers to be consulted are Philostorgius, as preserved by Photius, and Auxentius, as preserved by Maximinus in a MS. lately discovered by Professor Waitz[169] in the Library at Paris. (Supplement. Latin. No. 594.) This MS. contains some writings of Hilarius, the two first books of Ambrosius De fide, and the acts of the Council of Aquileja (381). On the margin of this MS. Maximinus repeated the beginning of the acts of the Council of Aquileja, adding remarks of his own in order to show how unfairly Palladius had been treated in that council by Ambrose. He jotted down his own views on the Arian [pg 182] controversy, and on fol. 282, seq., he copied an account of Ulfilas written by Auxentius, the bishop of Dorostorum (Silistria on the Danube), a pupil of Ulfilas. This is followed again by some dissertations of Maximinus, and on foll. 314-327, a treatise addressed to Ambrose by a Semi-arian, a follower of Eusebius, possibly by Prudentius himself, was copied and slightly abbreviated for his own purposes by Maximinus.

It is from Auxentius, as copied by Maximinus, that we learn that Ulfilas died at Constantinople, where he had been invited by the emperor to a disputation. This could not have been later than the year 381, because, according to the same Auxentius, Ulfilas had been bishop for forty years, and, according to Philostorgius, he had been consecrated by Eusebius. Now Eusebius of Nicomedia died 341, and as Philostorgius says that Ulfilas was consecrated by “Eusebius and the bishops who were with him,” the consecration has been referred with great plausibility to the beginning of the year 341, when Eusebius presided at the Synod of Antioch. As Ulfilas was thirty years old at the time of his consecration, he must have been born in 311, and as he was seventy years of age when he died at Constantinople, his death must have taken place in 381.

Professor Waitz fixed the death of Ulfilas in 388, because it is stated by Auxentius that other Arian bishops had come with Ulfilas on his last journey to Constantinople, and had actually obtained the promise of a new council from the emperors, but that the heretical party, i.e., the Athanasians, succeeded in getting a law published, prohibiting all disputation on [pg 183] the faith, whether in public or private. Maximinus, to whom we owe this notice, has added two laws from the Codex Theodosianus, which he supposed to have reference to this controversy, dated respectively 388 and 386. This shows that Maximinus himself was doubtful as to the exact date. Neither of these laws, however, is applicable to the case, as has been fully shown by Dr. Bessell. They are quotations from the Codex Theodosianus made by Maximinus at his own risk, and made in error. If the death of Ulfilas were fixed in 388, the important notice of Philostorgius, that Ulfilas was consecrated by Eusebius, would have to be surrendered, and we should have to suppose that as late as 388 Theodosius had been in treaty with the Arians, whereas after the year 383, when the last attempt at a reconciliation bad been made by Theodosius, and had failed, no mercy was any longer shown to the party of Ulfilas and his friends.

If, on the contrary, Ulfilas died at Constantinople in 381, he might well have been called there by the Emperor Theodosius, not to a council, but to a disputation (ad disputationem), as Dr. Bessell ingeniously maintains, against the Psathyropolistæ,[170] a new sect of Arians at Constantinople. About the same time, in 380, Sozomen[171] refers to efforts made by the Arians to gain influence with Theodosius. He mentions, like Auxentius, that these efforts were defeated, and a law published to forbid disputations on the nature of God. This law exists in the Codex Theodosianus, and is dated January 10, 381. But what is most important is, that this law actually revokes a rescript that had [pg 184] been obtained fraudulently by the Arian heretics, thus confirming the statement of Auxentius that the emperor had held out to him and his party a promise of a new council.

We now return to Ulfilas. He was born in 311. His parents, as Philostorgius tells us, were of Cappadocian origin, and had been carried away by the Goths as captives from a place called Sadagolthina, near the town of Parnassus. It was under Valerian and Gallienus (about 267) that the Goths made this raid from Europe to Asia, Galatia, and Cappadocia, and the Christian captives whom they carried back to the Danube were the first to spread the light of the Gospel among the Goths. Philostorgius was himself a Cappadocian, and there is no reason to doubt this statement of his on the parentage of Ulfilas. Ulfilas was born among the Goths; Gothic was his native language, though he was able in after-life to speak and write both in Latin and Greek. Philostorgius, after speaking of the death of Crispus (326), and before proceeding to the last years of Constantine, says, that “about that time” Ulfilas led his Goths from beyond the Danube into the Roman empire. They had to leave their country, being persecuted on account of their Christianity. Ulfilas was the leader of the faithful flock, and came to Constantine, (not Constantius,) as ambassador. This must have been before 337, the year of Constantine's death. It may have been in 328, when Constantine had gained a victory over the Goths; and though Ulfilas was then only seventeen years of age, this would be no reason for rejecting the testimony of Philostorgius, who says that Constantine treated Ulfilas with great respect, and called him the [pg 185] Moses of his time. Having led his faithful flock across the Danube into Mœsia, he might well have been compared by the emperor to Moses leading the Israelites from Egypt through the Red Sea. It is true that Auxentius institutes the same comparison between Ulfilas and Moses, after stating that Ulfilas had been received with great honors by Constantius. But this refers to what took place after Ulfilas had been for seven years bishop among the Goths, in 348, and does not invalidate the statement of Philostorgius as to the earlier intercourse between Ulfilas and Constantine. Sozomen (H. E. vi. 3, 7) clearly distinguishes between the first crossing of the Danube by the Goths, with Ulfilas as their ambassador, and the later attacks of Athanarich on Fridigern or Fritiger, which led to the settlement of the Goths in the Roman empire. We must suppose that after having crossed the Danube, Ulfilas remained for some time with his Goths, or at Constantinople. Auxentius says that he officiated as Lector, and it was only when he had reached the requisite age of thirty, that he was made bishop by Eusebius in 341. He passed the first seven years of his episcopate among the Goths, and the remaining thirty-three of his life “in solo Romaniæ,” where he had migrated together with Fritiger and the Thervingi. There is some confusion as to the exact date of the Gothic Exodus, but it is not at all unlikely that Ulfilas acted as their leader on more than one occasion.