Translatio studii and the Emergence of French as a Language of Letters in the Middle Ages

The polysemy of the word translatio, which means both spatial displacement and transfer from one language to the other, was exploited by medieval scholars to articulate their thought about the relationship between their own culture and its Greco-Latin and Christian heritage. The term translatio studii was first used to justify the exclusive right of the University of Paris to the diffusion of knowledge. Inspired by the example of the Bible which was transmitted through three sacred languages, Hebrew, Greek and Latin, medieval scholars also borrowed the translatio studii to extend to the vernacular language Saint Jerome’s thinking about translation. Thus they justified the claim that French be considered a language of lettered culture like Latin, that is, a language for conveying knowledge.