Languages, communication and power in Ottonian Europe

Much has been written on the evidence for elite multilingualism in the Carolingian Empire, yet there has been surprisingly little work done on language and communication in the century following the empire’s break-up. This paper examines evidence for language-use and linguistic consciousness in the Ottonian world. It focuses on a series of narrative anecdotes pertaining to Otto I (936-73) and Otto II (973-83), exploring what roles Latin and vernacular languages played in political communication. The paper argues that elite multilingualism persisted in the tenth century, and that the mutual comprehensibility of Germanic vernaculars in this period was more significant than has often been thought. However, Ottonian political developments impeded the use of the Germanic vernaculars in writing, reaffirming the status of Latin as the ideological language of religion and empire in Europe.