19
Anna D. Havinga  DOI: 10.4312/linguistica.63.1-2.19-39
University of Bristol
Anna.Havinga@bristol.ac.uk
VERNACULARISATION OF DOCUMENTARY LEGAL  
TEXTS IN NORTHERN EUROPE: 
A COMPARISON OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCOTS AND 
LOW GERMAN IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY*
1 INTRODUCTION
Research on vernacularisation, defined as “the movement of vernacular languages into 
domains of written language that were formerly the exclusive preserve of Latin” by 
Voigts (1996: 813), allows us to address some fundamental questions of historical (so-
cio)linguistics: how and why does language use change over time? To what extent 
is language choice shaped by social contexts? Analysing vernacularisation through a 
comparative approach can contribute answers to these broad questions. As a Europe-
wide development, vernacularisation is a particularly suitable phenomenon to study 
cross-linguistically. The study presented in this article offers such a first, comparative 
account of vernacularisation processes in two documentary legal texts: the Aberdeen 
Council Registers (1398–1511) and the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch (1430–1451). While 
limited in scope, the focus on specific sources allows us to situate language choice in 
particular social contexts and evaluate their impact on language use.
In contrast to previous research on vernacularisation, which has largely focussed 
on English, this article explores languages that have attracted less scholarly attention 
when it comes to the replacement of Latin, namely Scots (like English, a descendant 
of the Anglian dialect of Old English)1 and Low German (which is closely related to 
Dutch and High German).2 Both of these Germanic languages can be described as what 
Smith (2012: 8, original italicisation), in reference to Scots, calls “elaborated language, 
i.e. a variety that could be used in more than one register, including writing as well as 
speech” in the period under investigation here (1398–1511). Von Polenz (2021: 291) 
* I would like to thank the Law in the Aberdeen Council Registers team, particularly Dr Edda Frankot, the 
employees at the Archiv der Hansestadt Lübeck, especially Dr Dominik Kuhn, as well as Prof. Harm von 
Seggern for their helpful advice and support. I am also very grateful to the two anonymous reviewers, Dr Oliver 
Currie, and my colleague Prof. Ad Putter for their suggestions for improvement.
1 As Smith (2012: 8) notes, Scots was not viewed as distinct from English before the late fifteenth century. Until 
then, the term Inglis was used to refer to Scots while Scottis referred to Gaelic (Smith 2012: 8). Today, linguists 
consider Scots to be a language distinct from English.
2 Note, however, that the histories of both languages have been studied extensively by linguists (for Scots, see, 
for example, The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language, edited by Jones (1997); for Low German, see the 
bibliography of the Verein für niederdeutsche Sprachforschung [Society for Low German Studies], which is 
regularly updated and available here: http://www.vnds.de/de/niederdeutsche-bibliographie.html.
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explains that Low German had developed into a “vollgültige Schriftsprache” [‘fully 
valid written language’] in the thirteenth century, with prestige extending to medieval 
Scandinavian society, according to Mähl (2008: 26). From the sixteenth century on-
wards, however, both languages were replaced by other vernaculars in written contexts 
(Scots by English and Low German by High German).3 Rather than focussing on these 
languages’ decline in usage, this article examines their rise in status to languages that 
could compete with Latin, the lingua franca across much of Europe at the time. The 
purpose of this study is to show when, how, and why this rise in status happened in 
documentary legal texts. Analyses of vernacularisation processes in Scots and Low 
German sources and their comparisons to existing research on English will allow us to 
ascertain to what extent previous findings can be generalised beyond specific language 
contexts. At the same time, such analyses reveal the riches of textual materials in Scots 
and Low German, along with aspects of medieval culture and heritage.
The following section outlines previous research on vernacularisation; the research 
questions are presented in Section 1.2. Section 2 deals with the sources and their con-
texts, before the analytical approach is described in the methods section (Section 3). The 
findings are presented in Section 4. The discussion and conclusion in Section 5 relate 
these findings back to the research questions and chart directions for future analyses.
1.1 Research on vernacularisation
Vernacularisation has recently become a more popular research topic. While, as 
Schendl (2002: 51) notes, earlier studies had focused on monolingual texts to inves-
tigate changes in the role, function and status of different languages, more emphasis 
has been placed on multilingual or “mixed-language texts, i.e. […] texts which show 
alternation and mixing of languages in various forms” (Schendl 2002: 51) since the 
1990s.4 This more recent work has shown that code-mixing is a common phenomenon 
in the later Middle Ages and that languages are not necessarily separable or distinct 
(cf. Voigts (1996), Wright (1998, 2000), Schendl (2002), Peersman (2014), Kopac-
zyk (2018), amongst others). While many of these studies have focused on Britain, 
vernacularisation “characterizes all of late-medieval Europe”, as Voigts (1996: 113) 
puts it. One recent volume on the rise of vernacular languages in the Middle Ages that 
goes beyond Britain and even Europe is Kössinger et al.’s (2018) edited volume Origin 
Stories: The rise of Vernacular Literacy in a Comparative Perspective. However, the 
inclusion of a variety of languages and the contributors’ diverse approaches to the topic 
make comparisons between them rather difficult, as the editors themselves admit: 
Looking back on the contributions, a central observation seems to be the im-
pression of heterogeneity as a connecting element: Languages and their litera-
tures are not easily comparable due to their very different frames of reference 
3 See, for instance, Corbett et al. (2003: 9–15) for a concise account of the replacement of Scots by English, and 
Sodmann (2000) for a description of the replacement of Low German by High German in writing and printing.
4 See, for example, the contributions in the volume on Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain edited by Trotter 
(2000).
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and conditions. The results pertaining to a certain area of study cannot be trans-
ferred to others without further considerations. Even in their approaches, the 
individual contributions differ in part substantially from each other. (Kössinger 
et al. 2018: 7–8)
Irrespective of this comparability issue in the volume as a whole, the contri-
butions are, of course, valuable in themselves as each chapter provides informa-
tion about vernacular literacy in certain contexts; so are many other studies that 
have focused on specific languages, text types, and/or domains. One domain that 
has received a fair amount of attention is science and medicine, which comprises a 
variety of text types, including recipes.5 In the introduction to her edited volume on 
Manuscript Sources of Medieval Medicine, Schleissner (1995: ix) raises questions 
about “the function and importance of vernacularization” in medieval medical texts. 
In her contribution to the volume and in her subsequent work, Voigts (1995, 1996) 
responds to these questions, noting that “the process of vernacularization [in texts 
of science and medicine from England] can be traced from about 1375 and can be 
described as largely complete by 1475” (Voigts 1996: 814). Voigts (1996: 814) also 
states that code-mixing of Latin and English was “a widely exploited and often ef-
fective discourse strategy”, providing several examples that support this statement. 
Taavitsainen and Pahta’s (2004) volume on Medical and Scientific Writing in Late 
Medieval English also includes references to vernacularisation. In her contribution 
to the volume, Carroll (2004), for example, found that Middle English recipes were 
vernacularised in the fourteenth century.
Another domain that has been explored in some detail is administration. Burke 
(2004: 10) notes that “Latin was replaced by some vernaculars in the early fifteenth 
century […], in the fourteenth century, or even, in the case of the chancery of Castile, 
in the thirteenth century” in the domain of administration. Stenroos (2020) offers a 
more detailed analysis of the vernacularisation process in local administrative writing 
in England by investigating records from A Corpus of Middle English Local Docu-
ments (MELD), a corpus of administrative texts and letters spanning the years 1399–
1525. She focusses on administrative texts produced “outside the central government 
offices: the records of cities, churches, manors, local courts and private transactions” 
(Stenroos 2020: 39) in order to uncover when and to what extent Latin and French were 
replaced by English.6 Based on the collection of systematic data of the “main language” 
5 Vernacularity and multilingualism have also been investigated in the religious domain; see, for instance, Lutton 
(2011) and Hume (2013), amongst others. The scope of this article does not allow for further elaboration on this 
domain.
6 Stenroos (2020: 43) defines administrative texts as being “written for a specific, practical purpose, such as 
requesting an action or conveying information”. This links to the definition of documentary texts used in 
MELD, i.e. texts relating “to a specific situation at a specific point of time, involving specific people, whether 
or not all of these are explicitly stated” and having “a pragmatic function – transferring values, recording a 
decision, communicating information or whatever – not an aesthetic or scholarly or didactic function” (Stenroos 
2020: 43). This definition distinguishes documentary texts clearly from literary, scientific, and religious sources 
and can be applied to the texts under investigation in this article.
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(Stenroos 2020: 48) of texts in archival collections that were considered for the MELD 
corpus and an exploration into the functions of these three languages, Stenroos (2020: 
47–55) draws several important conclusions. Firstly, Latin remains dominant and Eng-
lish “a minority language” (Stenroos 2020: 67) in local administrative texts from 1399 
to 1525. Secondly, texts in French are rare and can mostly be encountered between 
1400 and 1420. This is due to English taking “the functional slots that had been oc-
cupied by French: the text types which required an understanding of the contents by 
lay people, and that were not predictable” (Stenroos 2020: 55).7 Highly formulaic texts 
with predictable content, on the other hand, continued to be written in Latin, some of 
them (such as quitclaims and bonds) even until an Act of Parliament decreed the use 
of English “for all official information in the law courts” in 1731 (Stenroos 2020: 55). 
Because most texts in the domain of administration were highly formulaic, it is to be 
expected that Latin remained dominant (Stenroos 2020: 67). In summary, while there 
was a trend of English becoming more frequent, this was neither a sudden shift nor a 
unidirectional process (Stenroos 2020: 50). Stenroos’ research highlights the impor-
tance of distinguishing between processes of vernacularisation, i.e. the replacement 
of Latin by a vernacular, and language shift from one vernacular to another. In the 
archival collections analysed by Stenroos, vernacularisation is a slow, gradual process, 
whereas the language shift from French to English is completed over a shorter period of 
time (Stenroos 2020: 55). A similar observation was made by Dodd (2011, 2019), who, 
in contrast to Stenroos, focuses on branches of central government. Dodd (2019: 26) 
explains that English replaced French in chancery bills and parliamentary petitions be-
tween 1420 and 1450 and adds that this shift “may […] have increased the accessibility 
of this type of legal process to participants” (Dodd 2019: 27). Latin, on the other hand, 
remained the foremost “language of the legal written record […] throughout the Middle 
Ages” and was only replaced by English in 1731, according to Dodd (2019: 17).
Schipor (2018), too, analysed administrative texts from England, more specifically 
municipal, manorial, and episcopal documentary texts from the Hampshire Record Of-
fice dated between 1400 and 1525. She observes that the shift to English was not driven 
by language policies from above but instead resulted from the language practices of 
members of the rising middle class, who increasingly needed literacy skills for daily 
tasks. This conclusion is based on the finding that code selection correlates with do-
main and text type, with texts in mixed code only occurring in the Winchester City 
Archives collection and English texts being “proportionally more frequent in manorial 
texts than in either municipal or episcopal texts” (Schipor 2018: 251). This use of Eng-
lish for daily business was seen in various locations, indicating that it was not restricted 
to specific places or communities of practice (Schipor 2018: 251). Episcopal texts, on 
7 Stenroos (2020: 45) explains that French had become a learnt (rather than native) language and that only English 
can be viewed as the language “used by all parts of the population” in late medieval England. While French 
may have ceased to be acquired as a native language, it “continued to thrive as a second vernacular” in medieval 
England and replaced Latin in certain functions, such as letter writing, record keeping, and the law, according to 
Putter (2016: 135). Putter (2016: 135) further states that “knowledge of French remained a necessity for anyone 
going to court”, even after the Statute of Pleading (1362) “permitted English to be the spoken language in royal 
and baronial law courts”.
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the other hand, were almost exclusively written in Latin, which also dominated in the 
municipal domain (Schipor 2018: 251).
This section provided a mere overview of some of the research on vernacularisation 
and, more broadly, historical multilingualism. The wide range of studies suggests that 
these are fruitful topics for further investigation. The analyses presented here will add 
a new comparative dimension to this field, addressing the research questions listed in 
the following section.
1.2 Research questions
The research findings outlined in the previous section show that the process of vernacu-
larisation happened at different times and/or a different pace depending on the domain, 
text type, and region. Consequently, comparisons between different domains, text types, 
and regions or language contexts are problematic, particularly when research approaches 
differ. To overcome this issue, this article restricts itself to one domain (law) and one text 
type (documentary legal texts), using the same quantitative method to investigate the same 
time period (mainly the fifteenth century). By focussing on two distinct urban centres (Ab-
erdeen and Lübeck), regional sociocultural and socioeconomic conditions can be consid-
ered. While my analyses are limited in scope, they offer a first detailed comparison across 
languages in their local contexts and allow us to address the following research questions: 
1. When, how, and why was Latin replaced by vernaculars in the Aber-
deen Council Registers (1398–1511) and the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch 
(1430–1451)?
2. What similarities and differences in this vernacularisation process can be 
observed in the two sources?
3. Was the expansion of vernacular languages in these sources initiated by 
bottom-up language practices (by scribes) or prescribed from above (e.g. by 
the city council)?
The answers to these questions will provide insights into the development of ver-
nacular languages at the very beginning of the early modern period and expand our 
understanding of the reciprocal impacts between language and society.
2 SOURCES AND THEIR CONTEXT
This article is based on analyses of two sources: the first eight volumes of the Aber-
deen Council Registers (1398–1511) and one volume of the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch 
(1430–1451). Both sources are multilingual documentary legal texts, recording various 
local matters in bound volumes of individual entries.8
The Aberdeen Council Registers (ACR), “essentially, the records of the burgh’s ju-
diciary and government” (Blanchard et al. 2002: 137), are the oldest and most complete 
8 See footnote 7 for a definition of the term “documentary”. Both sources belong to the “administrative” 
domain of urban centres. More specifically, however, they are principally legal records, which is why the term 
“documentary legal texts” is used here.
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run of Scottish civic records. Due to their significance, the first eight volumes (covering 
the years 1398 to 1511) were inscribed on the UNESCO UK Memory of the World 
Register and transcribed as well as annotated as part of the Law in the Aberdeen Coun-
cil Registers (LACR) project.9 These first eight volumes contain almost 30,000 entries, 
which provide records of the town council, the head, guild and bailie courts,10 docu-
menting, for example, disputes between citizens, property transfers, rentals of burgh 
lands, elections of office bearers, cargoes of foreign vessels, and tax rolls. The majority 
of entries are either written in Latin or Scots, or a combination of the two (mostly in the 
form of intersentential and intrasentential code-switches). Further details on language 
use in the ACR are provided in Section 4.
Aberdeen was an important centre for trading in the Middle Ages. It had a 
unique position in Scotland: relatively “insulated” due to its geographical location 
in the north-east, but controlling a vast hinterland, with few towns of comparable 
size that could have been competitors (Dennison et al. 2002: xxv). Due to its loca-
tion, its port on the North Sea, and its trading links across northern Europe, it was 
considered “one of the ‘four great towns of Scotland’” by the fourteenth century, 
despite its relatively small population (Dennison et al. 2002: xxvi).11 Despite its 
local significance in Scotland, Aberdeen was certainly less influential than Lübeck 
in medieval times.
Jahnke (2019: 1) describes medieval Lübeck as “the largest city in Northern Ger-
many and the Baltic Sea region, if not the whole of Northeastern Europe”. Dollinger 
(2012: 26–27) explains that Lübeck quickly rose to the most active, most populated,12 
and one of the most significant towns in northern Europe in the thirteenth century, 
trading across the Baltic and North Seas with Russia, Scandinavia, and England. Its 
history is closely linked to that of the Hanseatic League – an association of north 
German merchants and towns, which reached the height of its prominence around 
the mid-fourteenth century before declining in significance from the fifteenth century 
onwards (Dollinger 2012: 76, 103). Indeed, Dollinger (2012: 587) starts his outline 
of the history of the Hansa with the foundation of Lübeck in 1143 and notes that no 
9 Further details on the project can be found on the project website: https://aberdeenregisters.org/project/ 
(Armstrong 2016). The transcriptions can be accessed alongside scans of the original documents via https://sar.
abdn.ac.uk/ (Frankot et al. 2019).
10 In the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, the term bailie (or baillie, amongst other spelling variants) is 
defined as “[a] town magistrate corresponding to an alderman in England” (https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/
baillie_n_1) and a bailie court is described as “[a] local court held by a bailie” (https://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/
baillie_court).
11 Dennison et al. (2002: xxvi) provide the following population estimates for Aberdeen, noting that the slow 
increase is due to outbreaks of plague and that the population was probably higher in 1300 than in the following 
century: 1400: c. 3,000; 1570s: c. 5,500; 1640s: c. 8,300 (comparison to Edinburgh: 1400: c. 4,000; 1570s: 
c. 13,500; 1640s: c. 20,000).
12 Dollinger (2012: 150–151) provides the following population statistics for Lübeck, making it the biggest town 
of the northern German area after Cologne: 1300: c. 15,000; 1400s: c. 25,000 (comparison to Hamburg: 1300: 
c. 5,000; 1400s: c. 16,000). Dollinger (2012: 150–151) notes that Lübeck’s prominent status was due to its 
location (between Rhenish and Prussian towns and with direct access to the Baltic and North Seas) and its 
relation to Hamburg, which complemented Lübeck’s economy.
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other town (apart from Cologne) had such a significant place in the Hanseatic League 
(Dollinger 2012: 159). “As the permanent secretariat and later as the head of the 
Hanseatic League”, Lübeck was also a central hub for the exchange of information 
(Jahnke 2019: 1). Insights into everyday life of this important town can be gained 
from the Lübecker Stadtbücher.
Stadtbücher (lit. ʻtown books’) or libri civitatum are town records kept by the mu-
nicipal council that record legal transactions, in which the town, the council or house-
holds were directly involved (von Seggern 2016: 60).13 They also record transactions 
between two people, which were settled before the council for legal certainty (what 
is known as “voluntary jurisdiction” today) (von Seggern 2016: 60). Stadtbücher are, 
therefore, comparable to council registers. In Lübeck, a general Stadtbuch was first 
created in 1226, but this book of ‘mixed contents’ was divided into an Oberstadtbuch 
and a Niederstadtbuch at the end of the thirteenth century (von Seggern 2016: 65). 
The Oberstadtbücher recorded payment obligations related to real estate and prop-
erties (von Seggern 2016: 78); all other obligations were listed in the Niederstadt-
bücher, which can be considered the most significant of all Stadtbücher from the 
late Middle Ages in Germany, according to von Seggern (2016: 53).14 The analysis 
presented here focuses on one of the 348 volumes of the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch 
(LNB), covering the period 1430 to 1451, which shows the transition of record keep-
ing from Latin to Low German.
3 METHODS 
To trace vernacularisation processes in both sources, quantitative analyses of the main 
language of entries, i.e. the dominant language in an entry, were carried out. Following 
Schipor (2018) and Stenroos (2020), the term ‘main language’ is used here to highlight 
the fact that the entries under consideration are not necessarily monolingual. This term 
thus captures both monolingual entries and entries with short intrasentential or intersen-
tential code-switches (e.g. place names in the vernacular within a Latin entry or Latin 
headings in a vernacular entry). Entries were classified into three categories: 1) entries 
with Latin as the main language, 2) entries with a vernacular (Scots or Low German) as 
the main language, 3) entries in multiple languages. If there were clearly more words in 
Latin, the entry was categorised into group (1); if a clear majority of words in an entry 
were Scots or Low German, the entry was assigned to category (2). The third category 
was only used when it was not possible to determine the main language of an entry, 
i.e. when the entry contained about the same number of words from both languages. 
13 Von Seggern (2016: 58) notes that Stadtbuch is a modern term but does not mention what terms were used for 
the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch in the Middle Ages. It is, however, clear that various terms were employed for 
different Stadtbücher, depending on the time period, language, individual towns, and their purpose or content. 
On the title page of the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch of 1608, for example, the expression Liber inferior civitatis 
Lubencensis is used (while the volume analysed here does not contain a title page). Further research would be 
necessary to draw up a list of terms that refer to the Niederstadtbuch.
14 Interestingly, a similar split happened in Aberdeen in 1484, when a so-called Sasine Register, which mainly but 
not exclusively dealt with property, was introduced to separate these matters from others recorded in the ACR 
(see Havinga (2021: 90–91) for further details).
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This approach of categorising entries based on the language of individual words is not 
unproblematic, given that abbreviations and loan words do not always allow for a clear 
division between languages (cf. Wright 2000). Typically, however, the dominant lan-
guage of entries is clear, as the following examples from volume 7 of the ACR show.
(1)  Category 1: entry with Latin as the main language
 Andreas andirsone recipitur in liberum burgensem et fratrem gilde prestito 
solito Juramento et soluet xxxti s’ (ARO-7-0039-05)15
This entry in Latin documents Andreas Andirsone’s admission as a burgess and brother 
of the guild by swearing the usual oath and in exchange for payment.
(2)  Category 2: entry with Scots as the main language
 statutum farine  the samyn day it was ordanit be the aldirman and  
   consaile that nay landman sale gif straik of meile  
   in tyme to Cum And’ the tollar’ sale haue euere  
   Reddy firlot pek and demi pek (ARO-7-00012-02)16
In this entry, the note in the margin summarises the content of the entry (a statute about 
flour) in Latin. The rest of the entry is written in Scots, which justifies the classification 
of this entry as “Scots”.
(3)  Category 3: entry in multiple languages
 Consilium
 Alexander chamer de murchill Dauid menyeis
 Alexander menyeis  Dauid mathesone
 Robertus blinsell  Androw murray eldar
 Alexander Rede  James Colisone
 Johannes Cullane  Robert crag
 Johannes Colisone  Alexander gray
 Thomas prat   Williame blinsele
 Johannes Wormet  Williame futhes
 Alexander chamer filius
 gilbertus menyes
 (ARO-7-0759-03)17
Lists of council members like the one presented in example (3) are often annotated 
as entries in multiple languages. Due to the fact that some first names are latinized 
whereas others are not (cf. Robertus blinsell versus Robert crag) and there are addi-
tions in both Latin and Scots (cf. filius and eldar), this entry was annotated as an entry 
in multiple languages.
15 Go to https://sar.abdn.ac.uk/doc/show?p=39&v=7 to view the original manuscript for this entry.
16 Go to https://sar.abdn.ac.uk/doc/show?p=12&v=7 to view the original manuscript for this entry.
17 Go to https://sar.abdn.ac.uk/doc/show?p=759&v=7 to view the original manuscript for this entry.
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The ACR are transcribed in a machine-readable format and annotated using XML, 
including tags that identify the language of individual entries, which allows for quick 
quantitative analysis using XQuery (a language for querying XML documents) via 
the “Search Aberdeen Registers” platform (Frankot et al. (2019); see Havinga (2021) 
for further details). The LNB, on the other hand, has not been transcribed and was, 
therefore, analysed manually, i.e. the dominant language of each entry in the rubrics 
for the years 1430, 1435, 1440, 1445, and 1450 was determined while reading the 
manuscript in the archives, following the same approach of language annotation as 
the one used for the ACR. The findings of these quantitative analyses are presented 
in the following section.
4 FINDINGS
In both sources, an increase in the use of the vernacular (Scots in the ACR; Low Ger-
man in the LNB) can be observed in the period under investigation. It is important 
to note that the results presented here do not capture multilingualism in the form of 
intersentential and/or intrasentential code-switching within individual entries (unless 
they are categorised as entries in multiple languages).18 Instead, the results show the 
increase of the vernacular as the main language of individual entries over time. The 
quantitative analyses presented here thus have limitations in that they do not fully 
reflect the multilingualism found in individual entries. Detailed qualitative analy-
ses of multilingual practices and their functions (as exemplified by Havinga 2021, 
Schipor 2022, and Wright 2000, amongst others) can counter these limitations and 
complement the findings presented here. The quantitative methods employed in this 
paper are, however, sufficient to address the research questions posed in Section 1.2. 
In the following sections, the findings of the ACR are discussed first (Section 4.1), 
then results of the analysis of the LNB are presented (Section 4.2), before comparing 
vernacularisation processes in the two sources and offering conclusions in Section 5.
 
4.1 Vernacularisation in the Aberdeen Council Registers
For the ACR, the main language of each entry was determined during the transcrip-
tion process of the manuscript and the subsequent editing of the transcription, follow-
ing the approach outlined in Section 3. In addition to entries in Latin/Scots/multiple 
languages, two entries in Dutch can be found in the ACR (one in 1446 and one in 
1481).19 Once the languages of each entry were annotated, XQuery was used to quan-
18 See Havinga (2021) for an analysis of code-switches within individual entries, including a qualitative analysis 
of code-switches in volume 5.2 of the ACR. With regard to the LNB, von Seggern (2016: 86) notes that the 
Low German legal language contains Latin phrases, emphasising that Latin influences on the legal vernacular 
language of the Niederstadtbuch make it markedly different from everyday Low German language use of the 
time: “[…] hinter dem Mittelniederdeutsch des Niederstadtbuchs verbirgt sich ein Latein. Dieses ist ein weiteres 
Indiz dafür, dass es sich nicht um eine Alltagssprache handelt, sondern um eine juristische Fachsprache”. 
Furthermore, Low German names and place names occur frequently in Latin entries in the volume under 
investigation here.
19 See Havinga (2020) for further information on these entries and language contact between Middle Dutch and 
Scots in late medieval Aberdeen more generally. Putter (2021: 101–102) analysed one of these entries in more 
28
tify the number of entries with Latin/Scots/Dutch as the main language as well as 
entries in multiple languages.20
Figure 1 illustrates the results of these queries. In Volumes 1 and 2 (1398–1414) 
the vast majority of entries are in Latin, with only seven and nine entries in Scots 
respectively (equating to under 1 % of the entries). In 29 entries, the dominant lan-
guage could not be determined. These entries (15 in Volume 1 and 14 in Volume 2) 
were, therefore, categorised as entries in multiple languages. Such entries in multiple 
languages remain rare in the ACR: five in Volume 4, thirteen in Volume 5, one in 
Volume 6, three in Volume 7, and one in Volume 8. Volume 3 is missing and can, 
therefore, not be included here. From Volume 4 (1433–1448) onwards, a gradual and 
relatively slow increase in the use of Scots can be observed, with the 205 Scots entries 
accounting for 5.7 % of entries in Volume 4. In Volume 5 (1441–1471), this percent-
age increases to almost 10 % (542 entries). In contrast to previous volumes, Volume 
5 was split into two volumes, with Volume 5.2 (1441–1471) dealing with guild court 
business while all other burgh business was recorded in Volume 5.1 (1448–1468).21 
While Latin clearly remains the dominant language in both Volume 5.1 and 5.2, it is 
interesting to note that a considerably higher percentage of entries are written in Scots 
in Volume 5.2 (21.7 %) than in Volume 5.1 (7.1 %). This suggests that the content of 
the entries was, at least to some extent, a factor in the scribes’ language choice, with 
Scots being used more frequently for guild court business. More specifically, Gemmill 
(2005), who provides an edition of the Aberdeen Guild Court records (1437–1468), 
notes that Latin was the preferred language for “the more routine business, such as the 
admission of new guild members and burgesses and the prosecution of forestallers” 
(Gemmill 2005: 4–5), while Scots tended to be used to record one-off decisions by the 
council, e.g. about trade and privileges (Gemmill 2005: 5). This further indicates that 
the content of the entries was one factor influencing the scribes’ choice of language. 
Volume 6 (1466–1486) sees another increase in the use of Scots, with 2,033 entries 
(33.4 %) being predominantly written in the vernacular. The first volume in which 
entries in Scots outnumber those in Latin is Volume 7 (1487–1501), with 2,726 entries 
in the vernacular (54.4 %) and 2,280 in Latin. Another increase in the use of Scots can 
be observed in Volume 8 (3,320 entries) but Latin remains the main language of 36 % 
of the entries between 1501 and 1511.
detail. There could also be Dutch entries in the LNB, though none are mentioned by von Seggern (2016), who 
provides the most comprehensive analysis of the LNB to date (although only a short section is dedicated to the 
language of the LNB and the more detailed analysis focusses on the period 1478–1495).
20 The following XQuery was used (replacing the language and specific entry IDs for each volume accordingly): 
for $i in //ns:div[@xml:lang=”sco”] [@xml:id >”ARO-1-0001-00”] [@xml:id <”ARO-1-0328-02”] return $i.
21 Volume 5 is presented as one volume on the Search Aberdeen Registers platform (Vol. 5.1 ends on p. 644 and 
Vol. 5.2 starts on p. 645). To ensure transparency and verifiability of the results, Volume 5 is presented as one 
volume in Figure 1.
29
Figure 1. Main language of entries in the ACR (1398–1511)22
Overall, it is in the late fifteenth century that Scots becomes the variety more fre-
quently used as the main language in the ACR. The move from Latin to Scots takes 
over 100 years and is not completed by the end of the period under investigation. Even 
in the sixteenth century, over a third of the entries in the ACR were written in Latin, 
many of which were formulaic in nature (e.g. the admission of the burgesses continued 
to be recorded in Latin). This suggests that Latin remained an important language to 
record certain burgh business, even if the vernacular gained traction. In comparison to 
the LNB, the vernacular process in the ACR can be described as slow and gradual, as 
the following section will illustrate.
4.2 Vernacularisation in the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch
Since the LNB has not been transcribed and is not available in machine-readable for-
mat, the quantitative analysis was carried out manually in the archives in Lübeck, 
22 Note that the raw numbers for entries in multiple languages are provided above each bar. The results presented 
here are based on analyses carried out on and prior to 22 April 2022. They, therefore, differ slightly from the 
results presented in Havinga (2021), which were based on analyses that were completed before the editorial 
process of the transcriptions was finished. Differences are mainly due to the grouping of entries rather than 
categorising them into different languages. The biggest differences can be seen in volume 6, where the total 
number of entries was reduced from 9,047 to 6,084 in the editing process. However, the proportion of Scots 
to Latin entries remained similar (32.70 % of Scots entries pre editing versus 33.42 % post editing). The 
proportional differences were even smaller for the other volumes (with a maximum difference of 0.14 % for 
Scots entries in volume 4). On the whole, these differences can be considered insignificant.
 
2694 1463 3383 4894
4049
2280
1872
7 9 205 542
2033
2726
3320
15 14 5 13 1 3 1
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
% entries in Latin % entries in Scots
% entries in Dutch % entries in Multiple Languages
30
taking the same approach as the one used for the ACR (see Section 3).23 Due to this 
time-consuming process, only entries ordered in five yearly rubrics (1430, 1435, 1440, 
1445, and 1450) were analysed. Despite not offering a full account of vernacularisa-
tion processes in every year covered by this volume of the LNB, this snapshot provides 
interesting insights into the shift from Latin to Low German.
Particularly striking is the fact that the vernacularisation process was completed with-
in approximately 30 years in the LNB if the first entry in Low German (dated 1418) is 
taken into account. As Figure 2 shows, only five entries in the year 1430 had Low Ger-
man as the main language (1.8 %), compared to 269 entries in Latin (98.2 %). In 1435, 
the number of entries with Low German as the main language had increased to 25 entries 
(7 %). In these two years, there were no entries for which the main language could not 
be determined (see raw numbers above each bar in Figure 2). In the year 1440, two such 
entries in multiple languages can be found, but Latin remains the dominant language, 
with 309 entries (71.5 %) categorised as entries in Latin, compared to 121 entries in Low 
German. Another increase in Low German entries can be observed in 1445. While the 
raw frequency only increased by two in comparison to 1440, the frequency of Low Ger-
man entries in relation to entries in Latin (n=190) and multiple languages (n=1) increased 
from 28 % in 1440 to 39 % in 1445. Between 1446 and 1450, vernacularisation seems 
to have proceeded rapidly, resulting in no Latin entries in 1450. This, however, does not 
mean that Latin disappeared completely from the LNB – dates in headings continued to 
be written in Latin and code-switches into Latin occur within Low German entries in 
1450. In fact, the volume closes with a short statement in Latin in 1451 (see footnote 23).
Figure 2. Main language of entries in the LNB (1430, 1435, 1440, 1445, 1450)
23 The Referenzkorpus Mittelniederdeutsch/Niederrheinisch (1200–1650) contains the first Low German entry of 
the Lübecker Niederstadtbuch (from 1418; 982 tokens of which 790 are in Low German). Additionally, von 
Seggern (2016) has transcribed and published a number of entries in print, but only one of them is from the 
volume covering the years 1430–1451. This entry closes the volume in Latin: Illos libros continuavit postea 
socius meus magister Johannes Bracht, anno 51 Petri ab vincula [1. Aug. 1451]. Johannes Hertze manu propria 
(von Seggern 2016: 118). There is, however, no full transcription of the LNB covering the years 1430 to 1451.
 
269
329
309
190
5 25
121
123
300
0 0 2 1 0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1430 1435 1440 1445 1450
% entries in Latin % entries in Low German % entries in Multiple Languages
31
Another interesting observation is that the entries in Low German are not distri-
buted evenly across the year 1440, as Figure 3 illustrates. This graph shows the raw 
frequency of entries with Low German and Latin as the main language on the y axis 
and the pages on the x axis (the two entries in multiple languages – one on p. 668 and 
one on p. 704 – are shown in pattern print). The majority of entries in Low German 
appear from p. 671 to p. 685. In fact, there is not a single entry with Latin as the main 
language on and between these pages. One explanation for the change in the main lan-
guage may be a change in scribe. However, while a change in hand can be observed 
between p. 670 and p. 671 as well as between p. 685 and p. 687 (p. 686 is empty), the 
Low German entries between these pages were not written by one scribe alone. Several 
different hands can be identified on those pages, revealing that it was certainly not just 
one scribe choosing to write the entries in Low German. There also does not seem to 
be a change in the person who checked the entries’ contents, with von Seggern (2016: 
118) listing Hermen vame Hagen as the secretary responsible for the Niederstadtbuch 
from 1434 to 1449 and noting that it was deputies of the secretaries who wrote the en-
tries from 22 July 1434 onward. Another explanation could be that the content of the 
entries determined the scribes’ language choice. However, the most common type of 
entry – what von Seggern (2016: 142–143) calls “persönliche Bekenntnisse”, i.e. quite 
formulaic entries that record the personal statements of people who step in front of the 
book and acknowledge some sort of commitment, e.g. to pay someone a certain amount 
of money – appears in both Latin and Low German in the year 1440. Nevertheless, this 
explanation deserves further attention through a comprehensive qualitative analysis, 
which will be carried out in the next stage of the project.
Figure 3. Distribution of Low German/Latin entries on pages 642–723, LNB (1440)
 
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
entries in Latin entries in Low German entries in Multiple Languages
32
In summary, the vernacularisation process in the LNB happens relatively quickly. 
Within approximately 30 years, Latin is almost completely replaced by Low German. 
Furthermore, more temporary shifts to Low German can be observed between 1430 and 
1450, as the analysis of the year 1440 has shown. While further research is needed to 
provide explanations for these shifts, the results presented here offer valuable insights 
into vernacularisation processes in documentary legal texts. The following section 
compares these results to those of the ACR and offers some initial conclusions.
5 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Using the same method to analyse the same types of texts belonging to the same domain 
allows us to draw comparisons across different language contexts, revealing similari-
ties as well as differences in the replacement of Latin. In both the ACR and the LNB, 
vernacularisation processes can be observed in the fifteenth century. However, the ver-
nacularisation process is considerably slower and more gradual in the ACR than in the 
LNB. In the former, we can find the first entry in Scots at the end of the fourteenth cen-
tury, but the vernacularisation process is far from complete by 1511, with over a third 
of the entries still being classified as Latin at the end of Volume 8. In contrast, the first 
entry in the vernacular in the LNB is from 1418 (see footnote 23) and the use of Low 
German remained sporadic in the years 1430 and 1435. After that, however, a rather 
rapid shift to the vernacular occurred and Latin was replaced as the main language of 
entries by 1450. Nevertheless, Latin remained visible in the LNB. Dates in rubric head-
ings continued to be written in Latin and code-switches into Latin within vernacular en-
tries remained fairly common in the LNB, as they did in the ACR. These code-switches 
highlight the multilingual nature of both sources and show that scribes could move 
comfortably between Latin and the vernacular, both within and between individual en-
tries. Yet, comparatively few entries have been classified as entries in multiple languag-
es, i.e. entries where it was not possible to determine one main language. This indicates 
that, in the majority of cases, one language provided the framework for an entry, even 
if the other language was then used for individual phrases or expressions, such as Scots 
street names within Latin entries. Interestingly, Schipor (2018: 150) found that texts 
with a clearly defined main language (Latin, English or French) outnumbered texts in a 
mixed code (equivalent to what has been called “entries in multiple languages” in this 
paper) in the fifteenth-century Hampshire Record Office material she analysed. This 
suggests that scribes of documentary texts distinguished between languages, used them 
for different functions, and generally avoided code-mixing.
Another similarity between the ACR and the LNB that links to Schipor’s (2018) 
findings (see Section 1.1) is that the increase in the use of the vernacular seems to be 
driven by bottom-up language practices, i.e. initiated by scribes and/or the people men-
tioned in particular entries, rather than top-down language policies. Decrees from the 
councils prescribing the use of either Latin or the vernacular were neither found for the 
ACR nor the LNB. However, such a decree does exist in the Lübecker Oberstadtbuch, 
i.e. the town book that contained payment obligations relating to properties and real 
estate (see Section 2). In 1455, i.e. at a time when the Niederstadtbuch was already kept 
33
in Low German, the Lübeck Council prescribed the use of Low German instead of Lat-
in in the Oberstadtbuch (Fol. 1r Oberstadtbuch 8a Jakobi, 1455–1480).24  While there 
were clear guidelines for the Oberstadtbuch that were also stringently implemented 
(Rehme 1895: 16–17, Kuhn 2019), no such decree seems to exist for the Niederstadt-
buch. Similarly, the gradual and rather slow increase of Scots in the ACR suggests that 
there was no prescription from above about language selection in the Scottish source. 
That language policies were not the driving force for vernacularisation and that the 
replacement of Latin happened gradually is also noted by von Polenz (2021: 288) with 
regard to German.
While the analyses presented here allow us to identify when and how Latin was re-
placed by vernaculars in these documentary legal texts, it is more difficult to determine 
reasons for this change. To establish why scribes shifted from Latin to vernaculars, the 
sources need to be considered in the context of a more general development towards 
vernaculars in the fifteenth century – a time when vernaculars were not just employed 
as spoken but also as written languages. Already in the thirteenth century, Low German 
was used for important legal texts, such as the Sachsenspiegel (c. 1224), the most im-
portant book of Saxon customary law, and the so-called Bardewiksche Codex (c. 1294), 
which codified Lübeck law. Furthermore, the Lübeck town charter was translated from 
Latin into Low German in the thirteenth century (Stedje 2007: 134) and from 1369, the 
outcomes of meetings between representatives of Hanse towns at the so-called Han-
setage were written in Low German (Dollinger 2012: 343). A similar, although later 
development can be observed in Scotland, where the Acts of Parliament of Scotland 
were recorded in Scots from 1390 and earlier Latin Acts were translated into Scots in 
1425 (Corbett et al. 2003: 8). These developments indicate changes in the status of and 
attitudes towards vernaculars in both contexts.25 Scots and Low German began to be 
placed on a par with Latin, which was not seen as the sole language of law and admin-
istration anymore, even if it retained important functions and continued to be used for 
specific purposes for years to come. The allocation of languages for specific functions 
suggests a high level of awareness of separate language varieties; as Burke (2004: 15) 
notes: “[t]he fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in particular, were a time of increasing 
linguistic awareness” across much of Europe. He believes that the expansion of vernac-
ulars “was an act, or succession of acts, of symbolic importance, signalling the rise of 
new communities or new conceptions of community” (Burke 2004: 75). Whether there 
were any specific sociocultural changes that led to these acts, the increase in linguistic 
awareness, and the positive attitudes towards vernaculars remains to be explored.
It is likely that pragmatic reasons played a role in the shift to vernaculars too. Us-
ing the vernacular would have broadened the accessibility of documentary legal texts 
to those unfamiliar with Latin. Schipor (2018: 254) notes that “the literacy skills or 
24 See Rehme (1895: 16–17) for a transcription of this 97-word paragraph prescribing the use of Latin.
25 Cf. Peersman (2014: 647, original italicisation), who states the following about the use of vernaculars vis-à-
vis Latin in the Middle Ages: “In order to oppose the auctoritas and prestige of the Latin tradition, it is clear 
that a change in language attitudes was required both towards literacy in general, as well as to the vernacular 
languages in particular.”
34
linguistic preferences of the persons involved in the production and receptions of the 
texts” may have influenced code selection in the documentary texts from England she 
analysed, while Peters (2000: 1411) argues that inadequate Latin skills of classes di-
rectly affected by an increasing use of written language drove the replacement of Latin 
by Low German:
Die Verschriftlichung weiter Lebensbereiche bewirkte den Schreibsprachen-
wechsel vom Lateinischen zur Volkssprache. Aus den Schreibbedürfnissen der 
von der Verschriftlichung betroffenen Schichten heraus, die nicht über ausrei-
chende Lateinkenntnisse verfügten – niederer Adel, Kaufleute, Handwerker –, 
entstand neben der lat. eine Schriftlichkeit in nd. Sprache. Das Lat. wurde lang-
sam in immer mehr Funktionsbereichen durch die Volkssprache zurückgedrängt. 
(Peters 2000: 1411)
The textualization of large areas of life led to a change in the written language 
from Latin to the vernacular. The writing requirements of the classes affected by 
this textualization, who did not have sufficient proficiency in Latin – the lower 
nobility, merchants, craftsmen –, resulted in the development of a written ver-
nacular language alongside Latin. In an increasing number of functions, Latin 
was slowly replaced by the vernacular. (Peters 2000: 1411, translated by ADH)
While Peters’ assessment may oversimplify matters to some extent, pragmatic rea-
sons need to be taken into account when explaining vernacularisation processes. Peterʼs 
(2000: 1413) conclusion that Low German replaced Latin in the second half of the 
fourteenth century in the domains of law, administration, and trade needs to be reevalu-
ated too.26 While this may be a valid generalisation for many text types from a range of 
domains, the analysis of the Lübecker Stadtbücher has shown that Latin was still the 
dominant language in this particularly text until the mid-fifteenth century. It remains 
to be seen whether the Lübecker Stadtbücher constitute an outlier in their use of Latin 
in the Low German context. In the wider European realm, Latin seems to remain an 
important language in documentary texts from the fifteenth century and beyond, as the 
results from the Aberdeen Council Registers as well as those from Schipor’s (2018) and 
Stenroos’ (2020) analyses indicate.
The findings presented here can add to and, in some cases, refute previous state-
ments concerning vernacularisation, but further analyses are necessary to come to more 
definite conclusions. This research project will investigate the immediate context of 
the ACR and the LNB further to determine whether the vernacularisation processes 
in these documentary legal texts are in line with wider developments in their respec-
tive geographical areas. Furthermore, qualitative research on the contents of individual 
26 German quotation: „Erst in der zweiten Hälfte des 14. Jhs. hat sich in der Schriftlichkeit das Mnd. 
[Mittelniederdeutsche] ganz durchgesetzt“ (Peters 2000: 1413). Peters (2000: 1412–1413) provides a range 
of examples, such as the Stadtbücher of Wismar, Aken, and Halle (all written in Low German from the mid-
thirteenth century) and charters, in which this statement applies.
35
entries will be carried out to determine to what extent the subject matter influenced the 
scribes’ choice of language. The names mentioned in entries will be investigated too as 
their use may reveal whether these people had a say in the choice of language for re-
cording their legal matters. While many questions remain unanswered at this stage, this 
article will hopefully give further impetus to the study of vernacularisation in medieval 
and early modern Europe.
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Abstract
VERNACULARISATION OF DOCUMENTARY LEGAL TEXTS IN NORTHERN 
EUROPE: A COMPARISON OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF SCOTS AND LOW 
GERMAN IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
At the transition from medieval to early modern Europe, vernaculars became more 
commonly used in writing in various domain, including administration and law. In the 
late Middle Ages, vernaculars seem to gain status and start to be regarded as suitable 
languages for recording municipal matters. But how did this vernacularisation progress 
in such documentary legal texts? When and why was Latin replaced by vernaculars? To 
answer these questions, this article presents diachronic quantitative analyses of the lan-
guage choice in individual entries of two documentary legal sources: the first eight vol-
umes of the Aberdeen Council Registers (1398–1511) and one volume of the Lübecker 
Niederstadtbuch (1430–1451). The comparative approach to these multilingual texts 
allows us to trace vernacularisation processes across two language contexts, uncover-
ing similarities and differences between them. In the council registers from Aberdeen, 
39
Scots replaced Latin slowly and gradually – a process that took over a century and was 
far from finished by 1511. In the text from Lübeck, on the other hand, the shift from 
Latin to Low German was largely completed within about 30 years. In both cases, 
language practices of the scribes rather than top-down language policies seem to have 
driven this development. The scribes’ language choices will have been influenced by 
the use of vernaculars in other texts, including those in the domain of law, pragmatic 
considerations, and more general socioeconomic developments. By investigating ver-
nacularisation processes in two sources, this article offers a first comparative account 
that allows for generalisations beyond individual language contexts and serves as the 
basis for further research in this area.
Keywords: vernacularisation, language choice, historical multilingualism, documen-
tary legal texts, fifteenth century, Scots, Low German
Povzetek
VERNAKULARIZACIJA URADNIŠKH PRAVNIH BESEDIL V SEVERNI EV-
ROPI: PRIMERJAVA RAZVOJA ŠKOTŠČINE IN NIZKE NEMŠČINE V  
15. STOLETJU
V Evropi so se na prehodu iz srednjega v zgodnji novi vek ljudski jeziki vse splošneje 
uporabljali v pisnih besedilih z različnih področij, vključno z upravo in s pravom. V 
poznem srednjem veku so ljudski jeziki statusno napredovali in zdeli so se primerni 
za zapise v zvezi z lokalnimi zadevami. Toda kako se je vernakularizacija razvijala 
v tovrstnih uradniških pravnih besedilih? Kdaj in zakaj so ljudski jeziki nadomesti-
li latinščino? Da bi lahko odgovorili na ta vprašanja, predstavljamo diahrono kvan-
titativno analizo izbire jezika v virih z uradniškimi pravnimi besedili, in sicer prvih 
osem zvezkov zbirke Aberdeen Council Registers (1398–1511) in en zvezek Lübecker 
Niederstadtbuch (1430–1451). Primerjalni pristop k tem večjezičnim besedilom nam 
omogoča, da process vernakularizacije zasledujemo v dveh jezikovnih okoljih ter spoz-
navamo podobnosti in razlike med njima. V registrih aberdeenskega mestnega sveta je 
škotščina nadomestila latinščino počasi in postopno, process je trajal več kot stoletje in 
je bil do leta 1511 vse prej kot zaključen. Drugače pa je z besedilom iz Lübecka, kjer je 
bil prehod od latinščine k nemščini dokončan v približno tridesetih letih. V obeh prim-
erih je ta razvoj usmerjala predvsem jezikovna praksa pisarjev, ne pa ukepi nadredne 
jezikovne politike. Na jezikovne izbire pisarjev so verjetno vplivali raba ljudskih jezik-
ov v drugih besedilih, vključno s pravnimi, nato pragmatične okoliščine in splošnejši 
družbenoekonomski razvoj. Prispevek proučuje proces vernakularizacije v dveh virih 
in tako ponuja okvirno primerjalno razlago, s pomočjo katere je mogoče priti tudi do 
širše veljavnh generalizacij in ki služi kot osnova za nadaljnje raziskovanje.
Ključne besede: vernakularizacija, izbira jezika, zgodovinska večjezičnost, uradniška 
pravna besedila, 15. stoletje, škotščina, nizka nemščina