The term
New Latin or
Neo-Latin is used to describe a form the
Latin language used between the end of the
Medieval Latin period (c. 1500) to c. 1900, and in a very limited fashion, down to the present day. With a series of reforms in usage, it gave rise to the
contemporary Latin of the 20th century.
New Latin was, at least in its early days, an international language used throughout Catholic and Protestant Europe, as well as in the colonies of the major European powers. This area included all of Western Europe, including Scandinavia; its southern border was the Mediterranean Sea, while in Eastern Europe it had little use in regions with majority Orthodox or Muslim populations, with the division more or less corresponding to the modern eastern borders of Finland, the Baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Croatia. The acquisition of Kiev in the later 17th century introduced the study of New Latin to Russia.
New Latin was inaugurated by the triumph of the humanist reform of Latin education, led by such writers as Erasmus, More, and Colet. Medieval Latin had been the practical working language of the Roman Catholic Church, taught throughout Europe to aspiring clerics and refined in the medieval universities. It was a flexible and living language, full of neologisms and often composed without reference to the grammar or style of classical (usually pre-Christian) authors. While accepting many of the strengths of Medieval Latin, the humanist reformers sought both to purify Latin grammar and style, and to make Latin applicable to concerns beyond the ecclesiastical, creating a body of Latin literature outside the bounds of the Church. Attempts at reforming Latin usage would occur sporadically throughout the period, becoming most successful in the mid-to-late 19th century.
The Protestant Reformation (1520-1580), though it removed Latin from the liturgies of the churches of Northern Europe, may have advanced the cause of the new secular Latin. The period during and after the Reformation, coinciding with the growth of printed literature, saw the growth of an immense body of New Latin literature, on all kinds of secular as well as religious subjects.
