Civil Tongues: Language, Law and Reformation

Abstract

There is a passage in the opening pages of Cicero’s De inventione — a standard sixteenth-century textbook — where he describes the origins of civilized societies, the development of which he attributes entirely to the role of language.² According to Cicero, it is ‘through reason and eloquence’ [‘rationem atque orationem’] that men are ‘transformed from wild savages into a kind and gentle folk’ [‘ex feris et immanibus mites reddidit et mansuetos’].³ This essay examines the inheritance of this Ciceronian link between language, reason and civil living by sixteenth-century writers, arguing that there is a recurrent link between disorderly, disobedient or ‘deviant’ behaviour and incomprehensible or redundant speech.

Al thinges waxed savage, the earth untilled, societye neglected, Goddes will not knowen, man againste manne, one agaynste another, and all agaynste order. Some lived by spoyle: some like brute beastes grased upon the ground: some went naked: some roomed like Woodoses: none did any thing by reason, but most did what they could by manhood. None almost considered the everliving GOD, but all lived most commonly after their owne lust. […] None remembred the true observation of wedlocke, none tendered the education of their children: Lawes were not regarded: true dealing was not once used. For vertue, vice bar place: for right and equitie, might used authoritie. […] Therefore even nowe when man was thus paste all hope of amendmente, God still tendering his owne workemanship, stirred up his faythfull and elect, to perswade with reason, all men to societye. And gave his appoynted ministers knowledge bothe to see the natures of men, and also graunted them the gift of utteraunce, that they myghte wyth ease wynne folke at their will, and frame theim by reason to all good order.¹