
By Alastair Minnis
Vulgo – ablativus ponitur adverbialiter – .i. ubique partout .i. quemunement,publiquement vel in step with vulgum .i. inordinate, incondite, vulgariter.Vulgaris et hoc .gare – .i. popularis, publicus, communis, manifestus.i. publiques, quemuns. Vulgariter – adverbium – populairement,publiquement. Vulgaritas .tatis – .i. popularitas, communitas vel publicatio,manifestatio . . . Vulgo .gas .gatum – .i. publicare, manifestare.i. publier, manifester. Vulgatus .a .um – .i. publicatus, manifestatus.These definitions of phrases in relation to ‘vulgarity’ and the ‘vulgar’ are takenfrom the discovered Latin–French dictionary which Firmin Le Ver compiled atthe Carthusian residence of St Honor´e at Thuison, close to Abbeville, within the firsthalf of the 15th century. Public, well known, universal, happen . . . suchare the suggestions deemed the most important the following. Publicus might be understood asappertaining to humans in most cases (ad omnes generaliter), whereas popularishas the feel of ‘belonging to or healthy for the typical people’, ‘availableto, directed in the direction of the total group, public’. Publicatio has thepre-print tradition feel of the transmission of data into ‘a publicsphere of debate, debate, information, gossip, and hearsay, during which thingswere regularly spoken of and customarily known’. many of the methods inwhich those ideaswere negotiated in numerous medieval eu languages(in reputable, realized Latin and in demotic ‘vulgars’ or vernaculars) and inboth ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural events, are the topic of this publication. That isto say, ‘vernacular’ should be deployed in its fullest, richest experience, to encompassacts of cultural transmission and negotiation (in which translation fromone language to a different may possibly play an immense half, yet now not inevitably). Bysuch a technique i am hoping to entry a number of the ways that authority was‘translated’, appropriated, disposed, exploited, and certainly challenged byMiddle English literature. all the following chapters is an essay in thepolitics of translatio auctoritatis.