ABSTRACT
We have focused so far mainly on Protestant and German expositions of the relationship between language and national identity. The importance of the Reformation to any history of nation and word has necessarily placed German thought in the foreground. In western Europe in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual transformation and secularization of Reformation themes (freedom of conscience, the 'priesthood of all believers', the separation of an inner, spiritual Christianity from the outer authority of the State, the distinction between matters of faith and matters of reason) produced philosophical justifications of, on the one hand, a kind of linguistic chauvinism and, on the other, a genuine desire for cultural development through a national literature. The intellectual and cultural influence of the Reformation with its emphasis on the vernacular had spread throughout the whole of Europe. Herder's insistence on Luther's role in the creation of the genius of German language and therefore of German nationhood contributed to this: Luther was among those who had introduced the idioms which 'are the elegances woven into the spirit of the language, and this spirit is destroyed if they are taken out.' (1877-1913,1. 162). 'Take the idiomatic out of a language', wrote Herder, 'and you take its spirit and power' (II. 46). He suggested that 'the idioms of the time of the Meistersanger, of Opitz and Logau, of Luther, etc., should be collected' (1.165).63 The Reformation, then, had provided much of the impetus for the development of national languages and literature. In eastern Europe, however, at least until the mid-nineteenth century, Latin was replaced by French or German rather than by the vernacular among the educated elite. In seventeenth century Poland, for example, it was French and German rather than the vernacular which first challenged the dominance of Latin (Coleman, 1934, 160). However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Polish language had become 'the supreme instrument of the conscious rebirth of Poland and the symbol of Polish awakening' (ibid., 162).The French (allied with the Scottish) Enlightenment had been the dominant
intellectual force in eighteenth century Europe; but by the early nineteenth century this dominance was beginning to shift, at least in terms of philosophical, historical and theological inquiry, to Germany. Again, it is in those nations where Protestant influence was widespread that theories of linguistic identity were given most attention. This should not be taken to mean that elsewhere (for example, in Catholic Poland) less importance was given to a nation's mother-tongue; however, as Gerhard Kaiser has pointed out, *'Kulturnationalismus'* was especially strong in Germany because it was broken up into small states. National culture based on national language became the most important bond of the nation (Kaiser, 1961, 180). Josep Llobera has argued that Mn modern times the first mover of nationalism was the intelligentsia' (1994,220); and it is the idee force - here that of the association of nation with a pure and ancient linguistic root which lends persuasive authority to the reality of a national identity, even if this must be recreated.
