>To assume that "biserica" did the trick
>right away is just not credible.
Why not? Also preserved by two smaller Romance
groups. On top of that, the Dalmatians and
Rheto-Romans were much closer to (so to speak)
Rome (i.e. their ties to the rest of "Romania" were
never severed to the extent in the case of Proto-
Romanians and later Romanians).
Romanians could have well replaced "biserica"
with other terms, e.g. "templu", "locaS/lãcas"
(this under Hungarian influence: Romanian "loc"
(place) reinforced by Hungarian "lakáS" (dwelling),
even by "casã", again under Hungarian influence:
"egyház" (verbatim "one house") is the Hungarian
term for church and Church ("templom" is colloquial).
For the figurative way of speaking, there was
"turma" for "flock;" otherwise, they had "adunare,"
and the Slavic loanword "sobor" (so that there is
the pleonastic wording "soborniceasca adunare" :-).
So, one can see that "ecclesia" and "synod" weren't
at all terms of the sine-qua-non kind.
>The only way to
>explain all of this on the basis of my hypothesis 1 is
>to imagine that the PR lived in very remote locations,
>and were not Christianized in any solid sense, but did
>pick up some of the words common to their Christian
>neighbours.
I know it is tempting. But it would have been too
superficial and subject to complete oblivion (after
the tremendous influence by the Slavic liturgic
terminology). This phenomenon happens everywhere
always as soon as individuals and a populace don't
any longer maintain a certain level of the language
(when higher institutions disappear: clergy, schooling,
& the "upper crust"). Such people don't have... linguists
among them to show them "Keep this, discard this, don't
pick up this!" ;-)
>Is it anything like the Latin "missa", French "messe"
>etc. ? Or is it something else entirely?******
The commonest word for that is a big Slavic one,
"slujbã" [sluZb&]. Then "liturghie." (The terms
"serviciu divin/religios" (re)entered the language
later on.)
>******GK: I can't in good conscience accept the
>analogy. There was an underground Church, there were
>contacts with clerics.
There where contacts were possible. And there were
hidden books. And the period of time was short though.
But what something like that lasts for 150-200 years
in which Constantinople and/or Rome has (had) the
occasion to send missionaries thither and thither only
1-2 or 3 times? And not being able to attend vast areas.
>There was no loss of ecclesiastical vocabulary.
In the 20th century! With... Radio Vatican and other
broadcasters. Along with smuggled Bibles & al. papers.
But what of pastoral-rural people living among
pagan shamanic Turks and Slavs? BTW, Romanian
folklore don't contain too much "shamanistic" & al.
pagan elements, as one would expect from a populace
with late baptization (9th-10th c.). Moreover, the
Romanian onomastics completely lack the ancient
Roman, Thracian, Dacian, Illyrian, Scythian elements.
Only the Slavs made the performance to influence it,
along with the Christian (Jewish-Greek) onomastics.
Unlike the cases of Germanic and Slavic people, that
have had lots of pre-Christian onomastics.
George