turies. We
have compositions of that time, intended for the people, in grammatical
language. A song is still extant in rhyme and loose accentual measure,
written upon a victory of Clotaire II. over the Saxons in 622, and
obviously intended for circulation among the people.[495] Fortunatus
says, in his Life of St. Aubin of Angers, that he should take care not
to use any expression unintelligible to the people.[496] Baudemind, in
the middle of the seventh century, declares, in his Life of St. Amand,
that he writes in a rustic and vulgar style, that the reader may be
excited to imitation.[497] Not that these legends were actually perused
by the populace, for the very art of reading was confined to a few. But
they were read publicly in the churches, and probably with a
pronunciation accommodated to the corruptions of ordinary language.
Still the Latin syntax must have been tolerably understood; and we may
therefore say that Latin had not ceased to be a living language, in Gaul
at least, before the latter part of the seventh century. Faults indeed
against the rules of grammar, as well as unusual idioms, perpetually
occur in the best writers of the Merovingian period, such as Gregory of
Tours; while charters drawn up by less expert scholars deviate much
further from purity.[498]

The corrupt provincial idiom became gradually more and more dissimilar
to grammatical Latin; and the lingua Romana rustica, as the vulgar
_patois_ (to borrow a word that I cannot well translate) had been
called, acquired a distinct character as a new language in the eighth
century.[499] Latin orthography, which had been hitherto pretty well
maintained in books, though not always in charters, gave way to a new
spelling, conformably to the current pronunciation. Thus we find lui,
for illius, in the Formularies of Marculfus; and Tu lo juva in a liturgy
of Charlemagne's age, for Tu illum juva. When this barrier was once
broken down, such a deluge of innovation poured in that all the
characteristics of Latin were effaced in writing as well as speaking,
and the existence of a new language became undeniable. In a council held
at Tours in 813 the bishops are ordered to have certain homilies of the
fathers translated into the rustic Roman, as well as the German
tongue.[500] After this it is unnecessary to multiply proofs of the
change which Latin had undergone.

[Sidenote: Its corruption in Italy.]

In Italy the progressive corruptions of the Latin languag