Romance reaches Rome through language, not through a definition of Christianity
For the very word "romance" has in it the mystery and ancient meaning of Rome.
The connection to Rome has a real linguistic basis, but it does not historically define romance as Christian homecoming. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the English word through French forms meaning the vernacular French language, then a narrative composed in that language, especially adventures of chivalric heroes. Behind these forms lies Latin romanice, ultimately from Romanicus, Roman. The dictionary also distinguishes the broader imaginative quality of wonder and adventure from the later, now prominent senses involving romantic love. OED entry reproduced by the University of British Columbia, etymology and senses A.1, A.5–7.
Chesterton moves beyond that lexical history. He takes a word associated with extraordinary adventures and gives it the particular task of joining strangeness to belonging. The appeal to Rome makes that newly specified ideal sound like a recovery of inherited civilization. It is an interpretive use of etymology, not evidence that the word originally meant this double spiritual need. Nor does the word's ancestry by itself decide whether Rome here evokes classical civilization, Christian history, or a particular church.
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