English and Galician in the Middle Ages - Publicaciones ...

Revista Estudios Ingleses 17 (2004)
After the Black Death many illiterate people with scarce knowledge
of Latin or French joined religious orders which caused
the gradual disuse of French in ordinary conversation. In this
sense, some letters and less formal documents showed a
mixture of English and French, which also accounts for the
lack of fl uency in the foreign tongue. Simultaneously, some
monastic chroniclers like Ranulph Hidgen, campaigned on
behalf of their native tongue in spite of the fact that the Church
in general was a conservative force for which language shift
meant loss of power or social position.
The linguistic situation of England at the time oscillated between
the two languages in confl ict. Although English was
more generally used in ordinary conversation, French was the
language of most writings and the proliferation of documents
in English would not begin until a century later.
In short, the evolution of language in other spheres of society
can also be seen to hold for the Church. Their linguistic development
was directed towards English monolingualism, especially
in the lower ranks. The higher prelates’ insistence on
the adoption of French and Latin for written purposes would
be hard to overcome, but the progressive ignorance of French
and the pressure exerted by Wycliffe and his followers would
be a turning point in the defence of the vernacular.
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