Latins

 ( Latin Language ) 

The term Latin has been used to describe several groups of people throughout history, first referring to the inhabitants of the ancient Latium region, then to Catholic Church of the Latin Church, and most recently to Romance-speaking peoples.

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Ancient Latins The Latins were an Italic peoples of the Latium region in central Italy ( Latium Vetus, "Old Latium"), in the 1st millennium BC. Although they lived in independent city-states, they spoke Latin as a common language, held common Roman mythology, and extended common rights of residence and trade to one another. Collectively, these Latin states were known as the Latin League.

A rupture between Roman Republic, one of the Latin states, and the rest of the Latin League emerged as a result of the former's territorial ambitions. The Latin League fought against Rome in the Latin War (340–338 BC), which ended in a Roman victory. Consequently, some of the Latin states were incorporated within the Roman state, and their inhabitants were given full Roman citizenship. Others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges. After the Social War (91–87 BC), when the rest of the Latins received full Roman citizenship, "Latin" ceased to be an ethnolinguistic term and became a purely juridical category, Latin rights ("Latin rights").

The Roman Empire would go on to dominate the Mediterranean region for the next several centuries, spreading the Latin language and Roman culture. The Latin-speaking Western Roman Empire ended in AD 476, while Byzantine Empire survived on until 1453.

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As a religious designation

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Middle Ages In the Eastern Roman Empire, and the broader Greek Orthodox world, Latins was a synonym for all people who followed the Roman CatholicismGeorge Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine State of Western Christianity, regardless of ethnicity. The term was related to the predominance of the Latin Church, which is the largest autonomous particular church within the broader Catholic Church, and took its name from its origins in the Latin-speaking world which had Rome as its center.

Latin was generally a negative characterization, especially after the East-West schism. The term is still used by the Orthodox church communities, but only in a theological context. Nonetheless, it did not share this negative connotation in the West, where many self-identified with the term, such as Petrarch, when he states " Sumus enim non greci, non barbari, sed itali et latini." ("We are not Greeks or barbarians; we are Italians and Latins.").

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Present day Latins are a constitutionally recognized minority in Cyprus. Hugh Foot, the last British governor of the island, revived the term in 1960 to distinguish them from the Maronite Cypriots, who are also Catholics. Other Catholics under the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem have also been referred to as Latins.

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Latin peoples and regions

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Europe and the Americas In the present day, Latin can be an ethnically-related designation that denotes a member of the Latin (Romance-speaking) peoples– including, and often specifically, Latin Americans.

The related term Latin Europe is sometimes used in reference to European countries and/or regions inhabited by Romance-speaking people.

(2026). 9780804766951, Stanford University Press. . ISBN 9780804766951

Within that framework, Latin peoples include Italians, French people, Spaniards, Catalans, Occitans, Romansh people, Portuguese, and Walloons in Western Europe,

Ioan Bolovan (1996). 9780880333450, East European Monographs. . ISBN 9780880333450

and Romanians in Eastern Europe. The Latin designation is also specifically present in the names of two Romance-speaking groups: the Ladins of northern Italy and the Ladino people of Central America.

Historian Ioan-Aurel Pop describes the origin of Latin European ethnic groups as resulting from a "double assimilation process" that began with the territorial expansion of the Ancient Rome. First, pre-Roman and indigenous peoples were Romanized, and later, Romanized populations incorporated "Migration Period" during late antiquity.

Ioan Aurel Pop (1996). 9789735770372, Centrul de Studii Transilvane, Fundația Cultrală Română. . ISBN 9789735770372

While the use of Latin to denote a non-ethnolinguistic Western Catholic identity predominated in the medieval period, in 1368 Petrarch referenced a "Latin nation" that included the Italians and the French in a letter to Pope Urban V. In 1458, Pope Pius II used the term genus Italicum () in his work De Europa () to group together Italians and Romanians.

AENEAS SILVIUS PICCOLOMINI (2013). 9780813221830, Catholic University of America Press. . ISBN 9780813221830

By the 19th century, Romance-speaking groups were being collectively classified as Latin peoples, a category that was considered one of the three major ethnolinguistic groupings of Europe, along with the Germanic peoples and Slavs.

Paul Robert Magocsi (2018). 9781487523312, University of Toronto Press. . ISBN 9781487523312

This period also gave rise to pan-Latinism, which advocates for the unification of, or solidarity among, Latin peoples. One variant of the ideology held the Imperialism idea that Latin peoples should rule over non-Latins,

(2026). 9781315007113, Routledge. ISBN 9781315007113

while another variant instead favored a democratic Latin confederation.

(2026). 9780199264889, Clarendon Press. ISBN 9780199264889

In 1927, The New York Times reported on "the incipient Pan-Latin movement" and defined "Latinity" as consisting of Latin populations from both Europe and the Americas, regardless of genetics.

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Africa

Many of the present-day independent states of Africa have main official languages that are Romance, as a result of colonization by Romance-speaking European countries in the 19th century. The French political theorist Gabriel Hanotaux claimed that the Latin peoples were as capable of practicing modern imperialism as other groups and had an important role to play in the colonization of Africa.

(2026). 9780313323416, Greenwood Press. ISBN 9780313323416

Barthélémy Boganda, a politician of the Central African Republic, proposed a "United States of Latin Africa" in 1957 that would serve as a federation of the Romance-speaking countries in Central Africa; this never came to fruition. African-American author Richard Wright, who criticized the proposal, said that "Latin Africa" correlated with "Catholic Africa" and would create an unnecessary religious division against the English-speaking "Protestantism Africa".R. Wright, « To French Readers », Mississippi Quarterly, 42, 4, 1989 (Automne) {1959}

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See also

• Latin Valley
• Greek East and Latin West
• Roman people
• Latin Church in the Middle East
• Latin Union

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Notes

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External links

• Distinguishing the terms: Latins and Romans

Categories: Latin Language, Italic Peoples, Romance Peoples, Catholicism

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