Roman Church; the words Kirche and Pfaffe, Samstag and Pfinztag, we undoubtedly owe to Greek influence, through the medium of the Arian Goths; and probably the same may be said of Engel and Teufel, Biſchof and Pfingſten. The connection between the German tribes and the Goths, which we think can be recognised in other words expressive of religious ideas, such as Heide and taufen, lasted till the 7th century; the Alemannians were until the year 635 A.D. under the dominion of the Goths. Orthodox Christianity of the Middle Ages, which supplanted Arianism, was no longer in a position to reject entirely the naturalised terminology, and thus our mother-tongue has preserved down to the present day some expressions of Gothic-Arian Christianity.
All the words that Romish missionaries introduced into German also evidently bear the stamp of a later linguistic period. Not until the development of the peculiar system of sounds in High German — a new permutation of consonants divided from this point High German from Low German— does the influence of Romish Christianity begin to express itself in the language. From the end of the 8th century our mother-tongue remained for more than two hundred years in the service of religious literature. It is the period in our history in which literary records appear, and during that time High German was greatly influenced by Romish Christianity. A large number of Latin words was naturalised among us; for ecclesiastical offices and dignities, for ecclesiastical rites and appurtenances, we adapted the current terms consecrated by the official language of the Church, such as Prieſter, Probſt, Abt, Mönch, Nonne, Sigriſt, Küſter, Meßner, Meſſe, Feier, ſegnen, predigen, kaſteien, verdammen, Kreuz, Kelch, Orgel, Altar, &c. The unceasing pliancy of our language is attested by the fact that some German words were constructed on the model of the Latin, such as Beichte, from confessio, Gevatter, from compater, Gewissen, from conscientia. The Church brought learning with a new nomenclature in its train; contemporaneously with the ecclesiastical Latin words, Schule, ſchreiben, Tinte, Brief, received among us the rights of citizenship.
While the Old German vocabulary was enriched by such materials, there existed a store of words which is dying out in the literary language, and is prolonging to some extent its semi-conscious life in the old popular songs. At the same time the terminology of war receives a new impress; old words for ' combat,' such as gund, hilti, badu, hadu, disappear as independent words, and leave behind indistinct traces only in proper names, such as Günther and Hedwig. Words such as marh (see Mähre), and Ger, Rede, and Weigand have been brought down as archaic terms to the Middle High German period.
With the rise of chivalry the old German terms applied to war must, as may be imagined, have undergone transformation; as it was French in its essential character, it also introduced French loan-words among us. French influence, which first made itself felt in Germany about the year 1000 A.D. (the word fein is, perhaps, the earliest loan-word of genuine French origin), has never ceased to operate on our language. But it reached its zenith with the introduction of chivalry, as it did once again at the time of the Thirty Years' War. It is therefore not to be wondered at that words relating to war and the court, such as Lanze, Soldat, Palaſt, Kaſtell, Turnier, Abenteuer, have been borrowed from the French vocabulary in exchange, as it were, for the stock of Teutonic words connected with war which passed some centuries earlier into French (comp. French auberge, gonfalon, maréchal, héraut under Herberge, Fahne, Marſchall, and Herold). Moreover, courtly and fashionable words, such as koſten, liefern, prüfen, and preiſen have also passed into Germany.
