ABSTRACT
Latin was the commanding father tongue of the Renaissance, presiding over the vernacular mother tongues with the austere voice of distant authority. It had been the language of the Roman Empire, the older unity out of whose provinces and dialects the nations and languages of Western Europe had developed separately during the Middle Ages. Against this diversification, the church had preserved a sense of Europe’s corporate identity, and had continued to do its business in Latin as the natural medium of such an identity. Much of the effort of Renaissance humanism was devoted to reaffirming that identity by strengthening that medium: restoring Latin to its classical norms, reasserting its associations with Roman civilization, and broadening its use by placing it at the center of an international program of educational reform.
