Biblioteca < Indietro C Vai a Indice Inizio Language and culture Alberto Varvaro Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Language in Italy c. 1000 The first signs of the appearance of a vernacular Italian are the well- known Riddle of Verona and some graffiti in the Catacombs of Comodilla in Rome, both around ad 800. After these, the vernacular was documented at Capua and Teano, today in the province of Caserta, in ad 960-3. These fragments only underline the overall lack of textual evidence, which is not sufficient to give even a vague idea of the linguistic situation over the entire peninsula around the year 1000. Accordingly, it is possible to infer that awareness of the difference between Latin and the vernacular was not particularly fierce at the time. As with other cultural aspects, the linguistic situation on the peninsula underlined an overall lack of political unity. There were two main opposing trends. The coastal areas, more in the south than the north, maintained a Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio Mediterranean orientation that went back to antiquity. Links with Constantinople, which continued to possess provinces in Italy until the Norman conquest, had reinforced the use of Creek, which for many centuries had been spoken along the southern Italian coast, particularly in the Salento area, Calabria, and eastern Sicily. Also influential was immigration from the east, particularly by Christians fleeing Muslim conquests. The Muslims themselves had occupied Sicily from the ninth century, and had then proceeded further up the peninsula, establishing long-lasting settlements. Entire parts of Sicily were Arabic-speaking, and the use of Arabic words spread north, particularly along trade routes. The situation to the north and inland was rather different. The kingdom of Italy looked towards the Holy Roman Empire and thus towards Europe beyond the Alps. The Longobard language was extinct or just about extinct in its last stronghold, Benevento, but Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio there were isolated examples of immigrants who continued to speak their own languages, such as the Bulgars.' Along the southern reaches of the Apennine mountains, in Basilicata, there were settlements where Greek was spoken, and others that used an archaic romance dialect, traces of which still exist today. South of the Tiber river, there had formed a linguistic type that might be labelled 'Sabine', characterized by the loss of the -mb- and -mi- sounds (for example, gamma for 'gamba' and monno for 'mondo') that subsequently spread to all of southern Italy. Various texts were produced in this area, particularly in the Benedictine monasteries between Farfa and Monte Cassino. The territory on the Adriatic side, from the Marches down to the Gulf of Taranto, had its own linguistic character, more open to influence from the north. In the Po valley the most important and populous centres were on the low plains, from Pavia and Milan to Treviso and Padua. The most linguistically conservative Inizio H Mostra Blocco Note areas, which for example kept the final V of Latin, were to be found in the high Alpine valleys and towards Friuli, which would preserve Ladin and Rhaeto- Romance ('Romansch'). The Apennine valleys were more easily penetrated, and innovations such as the lenition, or softening, of voiceless intervocalic consonants (ACU > ago) spread into central Italy either along the Via Francigena towards Lucca or to the east along the ancient Via Flaminia towards Umbria. Tuscan at this stage had neither an autonomous profile nor the prestige that it was to acquire three centuries later, hut during this period traders from Pisa started arriving in Corsica and Sardinia and their linguistic influence began to modify the very conservative character of the local spoken language. It is worth remembering that Sard is not a dialect of Italian but an autonomous variant within the neo- Latin languages, with its own vocalic system (the only Romance language to merge the Latin Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note pairs of short and long vowels), taking the article from ipse and conservating the Latin final V (sas rfomos for le case, 'the houses'), and so on. There is no proof that the inhabitants of the peninsula thought they all spoke the same language; if anything quite the reverse. Even if in the present it is difficult to decide exactly what 'Italy' means, the absence of the adjective 'Italian' cannot escape our notice. The first conscious affirmation of unity among spoken languages on the peninsula would have to wait for the definition by Dante of the 'lingua del si'. 66% Posizione 2476 di 3762 Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio Linguistic change up to 1300 There was much change between iooo and 1300. Above all Arabic fell into almost complete disuse. This was not an immediate consequence of the Norman invasions, since Count Roger I (1031-1101) and his successors had no particular linguistic policies, but the effect of the Norman presence was to revive the Romance elements in Sicilian speech. It was the civil wars of around 1200, the rebellion against Frederick II (1198-1250), and the Arabs' subsequent expulsion which effectively meant Arabic was only used on the island by the Jewish communities, until their own expulsion in 1492." In general, the Crusades resulted in a changed relationship with the Muslim world which effectively closed the road to lexical borrowing from Arabic. The use of Creek also went into an irreversible decline, although small pockets of Creek usage have survived in Calabria and the Salentino up to the present/ Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio The disappearance of Arabic and the decline of Greek coincided with heavy immigration from the rest of the peninsula, particularly from Tuscany and the north, towards southern Italy and Sicily. The newcomers, who were referred to collectively as 'Lombards', dispersed in large numbers over a wide area, although in some localities their population density created linguistically distinct islands, some of which have survived into the present. These areas are to be found in Basilicata between Potenza and Tito down to Rivello and Trecchina, and also in Sicily, from San Fratello and Novara di Sicilia to Piazza Armerina and Aidone. The migration process is not well documented, but the linguistic characteristics of these colonies indicate the provenance of the migrants from southern Piedmont and western Liguria. The complete Romanization of language in Sicily was not due to the demographic increase of those who spoke Romance languages before the conquest, but rather their mingling with Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a immigrants, whether from the Italian peninsula or France, and also with speakers of Greek whose language had changed. The result was a language that contained various linguistic features. The area's characteristic vocalic system, which has only five phonemes {a, e, i, o, u), where the Latin short and long (i) and the long (e) give rise to the same i sound and the Latin short and long (u) and the long (o) give rise to the same u sound (so that the word nivi has the same vowel sounds as vivu and cruci sounds like mum), seem to he the result of close contact with the vocalic system of varieties of Greek. The same system is also found in southern Calahria and the Salento area. At the time of Frederick II (1198-1250) a poetic language hased on Sicilian was estah-lished, even though the emperor's court only spent a short time on the island (Frederick had passed his youth there, however). After the kingdom had passed to Charles I of Anjou and even more so after the revolt of the Sicilian Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Vespers (1282), Naples became the centre of the kingdom: the language of Sicily lost its importance, particularly as the island passed into the Catalan political orbit. In effect Naples would crush many of the linguistic features of other parts of the kingdom, but this phenomenon was only evident after about two centuries. Meanwhile the southern linguistic varieties were defined as 'Longobard' (as opposed to Lombard), or as 'Apulian', an indication of the prevalence of Apennine and Pugliese influence. It should be noted that Rome did not have a particular linguistic influence at the time. Its language type was still very southern, and would remain so until at least the second half of the fifteenth century, when Tuscan influence helped to create the modern Roman dialect. Tuscany assumed an increasingly important linguistic role from around 1200. Initially this was a polycentric phenomenon, with linguistic varieties in Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, Florence, Siena, Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a and Arezzo. Later, Florence became increasingly dominant. Usually this is explained through the great prestige of Florentine fourteenth-century literature, but the process is in fact older and less monocausal. In the 1200s Tuscany witnessed an extraordinary economic, political, and cultural development, with a concomitant diffusion of writings. The flow of linguistic features from the north was halted, and the Tuscan language began to radiate northwards itself, particularly towards Bologna and the Veneto. By 1300 the written language of the Emilian city was different from that of Florence only because it was less idiomatic. It has been mentioned already that the spoken languages of the Po valley are termed Lombard. This denomination includes the great variety of distinct linguistic types extending from Piedmontese to Veneto and Romagnolo (the city of Venice for the time being remained a case apart). A dense network of intersecting linguistic boundaries covering the Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio entire plain is now well documented, although no single linguistic type dominated. These differences were maintained by the fragmentation of political power, competing economic interests, and cultural differences. The periphery of the Italian linguistic area included the Alps and the Alpine foothills: Occitan and Franco-Provencal to the west, Rhaeto-Romance, Ladin, and Friulian to the north and east. Also peripheral are Istrian in Istria and Dalmatian in Veglia and isolated places along the coast to Ragusa (now Dubrovnik). In Corsica by this time the dialects retained few remnants of antiquity, by sharp contrast with Sardinia, except for the northern areas around Sassari. Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Cultural centres, schools, and libraries Throughout the period from 1000 to 1300 the language of Italian high culture remained Latin, though in some cases Greek and Arahic were used. Latin was the language of the Roman Church/ hut the Church Reform Movement, the most important cultural phenomenon of the period, had Italy as its point of reference. Italy was not, however, the Reform Movement's driving force: apart from personalities like Peter Damian, it is in France—first at Cluny and then at Clairvaux—that we need to search. Later still, the Church was governed from Rome, but its intellectual centre was Paris—it was not mere chance that prompted Thomas Aquinas to move from southern Italy to France. Thomas Aquinas brings us to the question of universities. In Italy, universities were established in Bologna (by the end of the twelfth century), Padua (1222), and Naples (1224). They excelled Inizio H Mostra Blocco Note in the lield of law, particularly Roman law, and turned out administrators for government and the Church, ('anon law, on the other hand, had its capital in Paris. The medical school at Salerno was famous, having been founded before 1000 and flourishing in the eleventh century under Constantine the African; yet the school remained outside the true university structure, giving instruction in practical skills. The schools of the mendicant orders in the 1200s are particularly interesting, but here again primacy goes to Paris. We know little about grammar schools, which were certainly more common. There is nothing to suggest that levels of literacy were higher than elsewhere, though there were enormous differences from one part of the peninsula to another. Merchants had to be able to write, and it is no surprise that the largest number of texts in the vernacular emanated from Tuscany, where economic activity was most intense. They included accounts, business appointment books, lists of creditors Inizio H Mostra Blocco Note and debtors, payments, taxes, and the like. Less striking is the literary production of the period in Latin, which is not comparable to the volume of work produced in France and the Rhine valley. Formerly, the slow development of Italian literature relative to German and French was justified by reference to the fact that educated Italians retained solid ties to Latin, which they felt to be their mother tongue, but this does not seem to be the case. The areas which witnessed the greatest growth in the production of literature in Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were substanti ally the same as those where literature in the vernacular also flourished. Until 1300 Italy was peripheral for both types.5 This suggests that both characteristics were related to analogous external conditions: the potential reading public, the schools, and libraries. The golden age of Italian libraries had been earlier in the Middle Ages, the period of Monte Cassino, Verona, Bobbio, and Vercelli, Inizio H Mostra Blocco Note but during the period under consideration dust covered their treasures thickly and it would only be removed in the second half of the fourteenth century by indignant humanists. Between 1000 and 1300 the great monastic centres seem to have been in decline, and noble families did not have sufficient continuity to acquire books and establish cultural traditions. We do know that at least Frederick II was interested in books, but it is not possible to say how many he had or whether they were organized into a stable and permanent library.6 Even the papal collections were begun after the period under consideration. We have already mentioned the idea that primary education was reasonably widespread (though mainly in urban areas), and this was obviously connected with the needs of the Church and the legal profession. The beginnings of commerce and finance had also provided reasons for the young to learn how to read, write, and do arithmetic, but only in Tuscany Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio and certain restricted areas.7 In effect merchants had already been writing frequently since the early 1200s, but this does not mean that literacy was common outside the Church and the legal profession. Notaries in particular were often writers as well. Giacomo da Lentini was a notary, and between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries notaries in Bologna used to fill the blanks in their registers with transcriptions of poetry. The Italian clergy, on the other hand, with the exception of the texts produced at Monte Cassino, played a less important role in the development of literature than their French brethren, possibly because the Italian clergy seemed to be more administrative than intellectual. Notable exceptions were provided by the likes of St Francis of Assisi, who recognized the importance of poetry and was the author of the Laiuies creaturarwn (1224-6). Also noteworthy was the production of religious poetry known as laiuli (Modi1 or 'praises'), which reached their highest point 68% Posizione 2531 di 3762 Inizio H Mostra Blocco Note with the Stabat mater of jacopone di Todi. The secular clergy remained at the periphery of literary production, as did the aristocracy, which elsewhere provided essential patronage. ► Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio The first documents in the vernacular and para-literary traditions The number of documents written in the vernacular and dating prior to about 1211, details of which were collected some years ago by Livio Petrucci, amounted to no more than about twenty for the entire Italian peninsula (excluding Sardinia; Sicily counted none). Also interesting is their geographical distribution. Apart from the Riddle of Verona and the Cdossary of Monza, which in a strict sense do not count as vernacular, from the north there is only an inscription from Casale Monferrato (dating from before 1106), the Venetian Recordacione of P. Corner (c.1150-75), the Declaration of Paxia (Savona, 1182-93), the Ritmo bellunese (Belluno-Feltre, c.1200, but extant only in much later copies), the Subalpine Sermons (c.1200), and the Ricordi Veronesi (c.1205). Of these, only the Sermons present a text of any length, and it is still a matter of debate whether 68% Posizione 2537 di 3762 Biblioteca < Indietro O Vai a Mostra Blocco Note Inizio they are in (iallo-Romance or Italian. Writings from the south are even rarer. After the Placiti campani of 960-3 there was nothing until the Ritmo cassinese, the three verses of the Cassinese Pianto