Neo-Latin

Neo-Latin (also known as New Latin and Modern Latin) is the style of written Latin used in original literary, scholarly, and scientific works, first in Italy during the Italian Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and then across northern Europe after about 1500, as a key feature of the humanist movement. Through comparison with Latin of the Classical period, scholars from Petrarch onwards promoted a standard of Latin closer to that of the ancient Romans, especially in grammar, style, and spelling. The term Neo-Latin was however coined much later, probably in Germany in the late eighteenth century, as Neulatein, spreading to French and other languages in the nineteenth century. Medieval Latin had diverged quite substantially from the classical standard and saw notable regional variation and influence from vernacular languages. Neo-Latin attempts to return to the ideal of Golden Latinity in line with the Humanist slogan ad fontes.

The new style of Latin was adopted throughout Europe, first through the spread of urban education in Italy, and then the rise of the printing press and of early modern schooling. Latin was learnt as a spoken language as well as written, as the vehicle of schooling and University education, while vernacular languages were still infrequently used in such settings. As such, Latin dominated early publishing, and made up a significant portion of printed works until the early nineteenth century.

In Neo-Latin's most productive phase, it dominated science, philosophy, law, and theology, and it was important for history, literature, plays, and poetry. Classical styles of writing, including approaches to rhetoric, poetical metres, and theatrical structures, were revived and applied to contemporary subject matter.