Living Latin at the Vatican.

The Vatican's new 728-page Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis has attracted predictable scorn from snotty academics. Anthony Barrett of UBC opines (National Post, 15 May 2003): "It's an interesting intellectual exercise, but I would say it is no practical value," while Toronto's Jack Chambers, asked if this dictionary would spark a Latin renaissance, sniffed "Not a hope in hell."

In Hell, perhaps not. As to Heaven, well, Epicutus was sure his gods spoke Greek. Anglican divine Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855) confidently proclaimed in a Christmas sermon "The study of Greek literature not only elevates above the vulgar herd, but can lead to positions of considerable emolument, not only in this world, but the next."

I doubt God will judge a person on classical attainments. Typically, though, the adapt and expand, or go under. As Syme, exponent of Newspeak in Orwell's 1984, rebukes Winston Smith: "In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak with all its vagueness and useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Newspeak is the only language whose vocabulary gets smaller every year."

Academics do tend to make fools of themselves. A few years ago, the English soccer team Sunderland inaugurated its new stadium with the Latin motto "Consectatio Excellentiae"--"Pursuit of Excellence" (a shame they have just been relegated). A local classics don promtly ridiculed their Latinity, but as I showed, both phraseology and vocabulary are authentically Ciceronian.

Cicero recalls having to memorise as a schoolboy the centuries old Twelve Tables of laws, in a Latin so archaic that he and classmates could barely understand it. It is a textbook cliche that Cicero himself invented a new Latin philosophical vocabulary in order to translate and expound Greek texts. Around the same time, the militantly anti-religious Epicurean poet Lucretius (Tennyson' poem on him is worth reading) was complaining apropos the same task, of "Patrii Sermonis Egestas"--"The Poverty of Our Native Language."

St Jerome, having survived God's reproachful "Are you a Christian or a Ciceronian?," was attacked by the Barretts and Chambers' of his day for his new Latin Bible, the Vulgate--Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!

Thirty-some years ago, an earlier Vatican attempt (long on-going through its magazine Latinitas) to keep Latin up-to-date met a similarly scathing reaction. Its suggestion for Motor Bike, "Birota ignifero latice propulsa", encountered especial derision. Well, a bit florid perhaps ("A two-wheeler propelled by fire-producing liquid"), but it passes the clarity test. Anyway, how would YOU put Motor Bike into Latin? and the adjective "ignifer" is a neat bow towards Roman poetry, where it chiefly occurs. Such nuances precisely illuminate Syme's Oldspeak worries. As my colleague Haijo Westra has recently been in the news Jesuit Latin accounts--how topical can the subject get?--helps to point up the often-hidden attitudes of these explorers towards the native peoples.

Some of the oddest and rarest Latin occurs in the comic novel "Satyricon" by Nero's courtier Petronius, played in the movie version of Quo Vadis? by Canada's own Leo Genn. Many of these words were coined to describe the fantasticated foods served up by the vulgarian mega-rich host.

When emperor Hadrian devised a new dish, a 4-flavour kedgeree, he had to come up with a new word for it, "Tetrapharmacum". You won't find it in the Oxford Latin Dictionary which, by stopping at AD 200, signals another radical change in the language's resources, in which Christian writers play an increasing role.

Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis is simply the latest and logical lap of this linguistic journey. It's not perfect; e.g. in "liber maxime divenditus", the proposed rendering of "Best-Seller", the verb actually implies the latter. But, as Samuel Johnson observed in anticipation of instant rival attacks on his Dictionary, "When it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed."

Far from being without hope or interest , this Lexicon is a welcome addition to our still Latin-tinged world books, Winnie The Pooh, even a Peanuts Snoopy collection, "Felicitas est Canis Parvulus Caldus" (Happiness is a Warm Puppy"). These classicist critics should get off their high horses. After all, "classicus" in Latin properly means "to do with the fleet"--it wasn't used in the modern literary sense until the 2nd Century AD scholar Aulus Gellius, contemporary of Hadrian. But then, to reverse that famous Mandy Rice Davis-ism, they WOULDN'T say that, would they? From where I'm sitting, the Vatican's Latin team gets "tres acclamationes"--"Three Cheers!"

Professor Barry Baldwin has lectured and published on early Christian history over the last 40 years. He is Emeritus professor of Classics & Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.