The term vulgar originally meant "of the common people", from the Latin vulgus. The term is now commonly used to describe things that are, from the viewpoint of the person using the word, in bad taste, indecent, or profane.
In Medieval times, it was used to refer to texts written in the vernacular of the writer's country instead of standard language of literature, science, and theology, Latin. During the later days of Greco-Roman cultural supremacy "vulgar latin" was used to refer to the vernacular dialects that sprung from Latin across the Roman Empire - the predecessors of the modern Romance languages. One of the earliest pieces of great European literature written in vulgar was Geoffry Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The major step in the liberation of acdemia from Latin was the Protestant Reformation which advocated giving Mass (liturgy) and reading from the Bible in vulgar languages. Following in the footsteps of the Reformation, some proponents of the Scientific Revolution began to establish the precedent for writing in vulgar.
See also:
