“Noster Pater, coelo in ens” – The Impact of Classical Tupí on Latin in Anselm Eckart’s SJ Specimen Linguae Brasilicae Vulgaris (1778)

In his essay Specimen Linguae Brasilicae Vulgaris (1778), the Jesuit missionary Anselm Eckart (1721–1809) provides a number of examples from ‘Classical’ Tupí, which was, at colonial times, one of the most important languages of South America. In contrast to the missionary grammars compiled by the Jesuits José de Anchieta (1595) and Luis Figueira (1621), the essay is not written in Portuguese, but in Latin. In translating Tupí, however, Eckart did not use the common Latin language, but a sort of ‘epilinguistic’ Latin that follows the structure of Tupí very closely. This way, he was able to demonstrate not only grammatical features of Tupí, but also cultural peculiarities of the Amerindians mirrored by language. It becomes clear that Eckart’s Specimen is not only an important addition to the grammars of Anchieta and Figueira and to our knowledge of Classical Tupí, but also a document of the flexibility and of the manifold applications of Latin in modern times.