EOPLE ARE SURPRISED upon learning that John Henry Cardinal Newman initially spoke Latin with ‘traditional English’ pronunciation, but we really shouldn’t be. After all, it wasn’t until the reign of Pope Saint Pius X that Catholics were asked to adopt the Italian pronunciation of Latin. The following pamphlet—which is utterly fascinating—makes it clear that Father Adrian Fortescue (who had no great love for the Italians) forced his congregation and choir to use the ‘classical’ pronunciation, which allegedly reconstructs the ancient pronunciation based on three sources: [1] grammar books of the time; [2] rules of Latin poetry; [3] vandalism.1 Specifically, the pamphlet says:
“Dr. Fortescue wrote—and had printed and distributed among the parishioners—a leaflet on the classical pronunciation of Latin. This was one of his whims. Newcomers to the choir who sang ch instead of k in caeli, or v instead of w in ave, were scourged with whips, and he was so particular about the separate enunciation of each vowel in words like saecula that a strange priest coming to the church was heard innocently to regret that the choir sang in Cockney accents.”
* PDF Download • DR. FORTESCUE: Priest & Musician
—Edith Cowell’s description of Father Adrian Fortescue (d. 1923), published the year he died.
Brief excerpt from the pamphlet:
“His congregation was (as Dr. Vance said in his funeral oration) the best educated in Europe. He took endless pains to make every person in the parish understand his religion, and appreciate the liturgy. He gave up two hours every Saturday evening to writing, in his exquisite hand, the notice-sheet for the week. During the war, when numbers of Belgians came to Mass, he wrote every notice in three languages—French and Flemish, as well as English. (In the same way, in those days, on great feasts, he would preach three sermons, one after the other, in English, French and Flemish, at every Mass.)”
1 Vandals were uneducated; therefore, they spelled according to “how words sounded.” That gives us a clue (allegedly) vis-à-vis how words may have been pronounced in the ancient centuries.
