Neologisms in the Latin of Gregory of Tours

Abstract

I will begin with some introductory remarks on the educational and linguistic background of Gregory of Tours, as this may throw some light on the type of neologisms we find in his work. Gregorius (or Georgius) Florentinus was bom into an upper class, senatorial family in Clermont in the Auvergne in 538 AD. In these circles one can be almost certain that his mother tongue would have been Latin ; nevertheless, he would have lived in a linguistically heteroge­ neous society in which the lower classes would still be Celtic speakers and Germanic would be the language of the new Frankish kings and their courts. Although Gregory would have received a basic grammatical and literary educa­ tion, which would have included some of the classics of pagan literature such as Virgil, his main reading would have been Christian Latin, including most prominently Jerome and the earlier Latin Bible translations. He was living at a time when grammatical training in Latin was in decline and in the preface to his History o f the Franks, as often elsewhere, he admits to his own incompe­ tence in matters of orthography (in litteris), morphology (in syllabis) and syntax (grammaticam artem) :