Hiberno-Latin

Hiberno-Latin, also called Hisperic Latin, was a learned style of literary Latin first used and subsequently spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century.

Hiberno-Latin was notable for its curiously learned vocabulary. While neither Hebrew nor Greek was widely known in Europe during this period, 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 Columba, St Columbanus, St Adamnan, and Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. St Gildas, the Welsh author of the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, is also credited with the Lorica, or Breastplate, an apotropaic charm against evil that is written in a curiously learned vocabulary; this too probably relates to an education in the Irish styles of Latin. John Scotus Eriugena was probably one of the last Irish authors to write Hiberno-Latin wordplay. St Hildegard of Bingen preserves an unusual Latin vocabulary that was in use in her convent, and which appears in a few of her poems; this invention may also be influenced by Hiberno-Latin.

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