First banking statements and war-bulletins

A list of the assets and liabilities from the Parish of Fondi (late 12th century) makes up another text most quoted in the annals of the Italian language. Unfortunately it is difficult to make out its exact meaning since father Antonio, son of Niccolò di fondi has no better grasp of its dialect than its latin, and the text appears to be a mish-mash of both:

Item vinale unu posto alla veterina a llatu Antoni de Trometa et a sancto Antoni a la via a longu la macera.

Item Pastena deve dare pro olo sanctu at pro cridima tometa de granum novem rase.

The first accounting books from a Florentine bank

This is the first text from a Florentine bank (called banco at the time, from the wooden desk on which transactions were first made), and in spite of its rather prosaic content it is considered of the greatest importance since it helped scholars understand the evolution of 12th century Florentine.

Luckily, the text is remarkably long, its spelling shows a certain linguistic maturity though many believe there may be more texts of the kind still awaiting discovery. The transaction dates to 1211, and was later used for binding a 14th century book, as happened with many more manuscripts called palimpsests (the lack of available parchment led writers to recycle, sometimes erasing valuable work).

MCCXII. Aldobrandino Petri e Buonessegna Falkoni no diono dare katuno in tuto libre lii per livre diciotto d'imperiali mezani, a rrascione di trenta e cinque meno terza, ke demmo loro tredici dì anzi kalende luglio, e diono pagare tredici dì anzi kalende luglio: se più stanno, a iiii denari libra il mese, quanto fosse nostra volontade. Testi Alberto Baldovini e Quitieri Alberti di Ponte del Duomo.

Carta di Montieri

The list of carte we spoke about in the last two posts include the Chart granted to the Men of Montieri (1219), in the Maremma Toscana, but its importance is more historical than literary, as this is pehaps the first document we have so far marking the emancipation of communal society (or city states) from feudal tutelage.

Although we know some documents must have first emerged in the early eleventh century, the most important charts usually date to much later than this period. The Carta di Montieri is also intriguing in that it contains a number of corrections by the parties who could not come to a quick settlement of the dispute.

The Pergamena volterrana

There are more court proceedigs resulting from occasional lawsuits over the property of a number of lands. Perhaps the most interesting is that contained in the Pergamena Volterrana ("The Parchment of Volterra, 1158"), and concerns the settling of a territorial dispute in Travale in the mid twelfth century, following a litigation between two brothers, Count Ranieri Pannachieschi and Galgano, bishop of Volterra. Ranieri claims that some properties (as houses) held by his brother belong to Travale, and are not under the bishop's jurisdiction, which his brother obviously denies.

At the audience, a number of witnesses are heard by judge Balduino, one of the most striking depositions being that of a guard, who was excused from his service in Travale after cracking a joke against the scarcity of his ration:

"Guaita, guaita male, non mangiai ma' mezo pane".

This is one of the oldest Italian proverbs ever recorded. To this time date the first political tracts describing how communes acquired their independence: that includes bulletins of war written in Italian for the first time, full of cavalier remarks on enemies conduct - the result of feuds between cities and the first war propaganda in the new language - in a few years energies will find their way into satiric poetry, in the genre of "sirventese", with Tuscan troubadour poets modeling their work on the French sirventois.

If today we talk of left and right, once it was all about pope and empire, guelf and ghibellin, with bloody feuds that reached deep inside the city with families, their members pitted against one another by one faction or another, with the pope supporting the French against the group of cities backed by the emperor. Even without the gulfs and the ghibelins these rivalries escalate in the Renaissance - when the strife between regional states leads to numerous plots to assassinate eminent politicians.

The ambition for political unity, unchecked by political wisdom and a strong national leader - which Machiavell noted in his Prince - will divide rather than unify the peninsula, putting it at the mercy of foreign powers like France, by then grown into modern European nations and capable of manipulating Italian politics.

Ritmo bellunese

One of the earliest 'bulletins' of war in Italian consists of a fragment of four verses on the battle of Belluno (a city in northern Veneto) against the fortress of Casteldardo. The story contains a quote in Italian from a knight who took part in the fight written by the an historian who is also the author another quote on a battle between a faction from Lucca and rivals from the neighboring towns, 1213) in his Latin chronicle. (N.B. "Tarvisio" is an old variant of Treviso):

De Casteldard avì li nostri bon part

i lo getà tutto intra lo flumo d'Ard

e sex cavalier de Tarvis li plui fer

con se duse li nostri cavaler.

transl.:

Over Castel d'Ardo our men had the upper hand

They threw them all (=the enemy) into the river Ardo

And the six most valiant knights from Treviso

Led our knights to victory.

minor edits on typos - Oct. 27 2008

The Carta Fabrianese (1186)

Three of these carte come from the region of Marche, in central Italy: the Carta osimana (1151), the Carta fabrianese (1186), and the Carta picena (1193) which Breschi ("Le Marche" in: L'Italiano nelle regioni ed. F. Bruni vol.1, UTET, 1997, p.466) rates as the most remarkable in that the separation between Latin and Italian is clearly perceived by the writer. Further, the definitive transition to Italian was accelerated by the scarce command of Latin by Marche notaries - that is why central Italy is a trove of early Italian documents and paves the way to the literary fervor that will pervade it in the following century.

The first two documents are related to the activity of the abbeys of Santa Maria di Chiaravalle (Fiastra), San Vittore delle Chiuse (Fabriano), the third is a confirmation of a prior settlement between Blandineo di Arduvino and Giovanni Ofridi about some properties near Ascoli - the agreement is penned by one Firmus (it. Fermo?), the notary.

Fabriano's carta is partly printed in Migliorini's History - as such I report it below - and is a financial transaction between the party of count Attolino and Berta, wife of Ruggeri, and the prior of San Vittore delle Chiuse and Rolando di Bernardo. Significantly, it opens in Latin, but a very bad one at that, and as count Attolino continues to dictate to the notary, at some point he can no longer keep up with him and switches to the Italian in which he is more fluent, passing from the noi ("we") to the less formal io (I)- the count's own words are then jotted down verbatim - in his own vernacular:

de la quale consortia nui avemo plu de vui, nui partimo e vui tollete, et o advemo de paradegu, de paradegu parterimu...

et set ce fosse impedementu varcante, lu 'mpedementu sia complitu et pignu vet mecto per X livere de inforzati...

I will attempt to translate that proximately as:

"of such properties where we have more than you, we shall divide and you shall take and where we possess in equal parts, in equal parts we shall divide"

"and should we encounter obstacles in this matter, may such obstacles be overcome with my pledge of 10 pounds' inforzati [inforzato, pl. -i is a currency then used in nothern Italy]..."

Fabriano has probably one of the finest paper mills in Italy, its foundation dating to about 1230 - it will be widely known all over Italy when Aldus Manutius chooses its paper for his books in the Renaissance.

The 12th century

The cathedral of San Zeno, in Verona (1178)

Although this century brings widespread prosperity to the peninsula, and sees the coming of age of the commune (city-state) with the flourishing banking industry of Pisa and Florence, intellectual effort is focused on the crafts rather than the arts - the bourgeoisie is busy building palazzi and basiliche (churches in the romasesque style modeled on Roman basilicas) to make room for the blooming political and religious institutions of the new republics. The Vatican consolidates its political influence in the center and in the North, where the Guelf party defeats Emperor Frederick I in Legnano (Milan, 1176) . Meanwhile the South is unified by the Normans under the Crown of Sicily, later inherited by the Hohenstaufen (Frederick II is named King of Sicily in 1198). In this turnmoil so little time is left to literature and the fine arts that even writers of Latin literature hush for a hundrerd years. The previous century had seen a number of works in this language, if not yet in Italian.

Energies are no longer put into painting or poetry - and when we look at the sobriety romanesque architecture we see how these massive white stone buildings catch the eye without appealing to our sense of beauty - the first cathedrals and their huge bell towers rather point to the economic prosperity and power of their patrons, not to renenewed artistic sensibility.

Such sobriety impresses us with the craftmanship of those who strove to built these basiliche but not with their art when we compare them to the maturity diplayed in the age of Dante and Giotto. The mysticism of romanesque is accounts for its simplicity, not unlike the one of the paupers and mystics that anticipate St. Francis - decoration is minimal, space in paintings two-dimentional, human bodies and faces gazing at us from from arches and spires without really detaching from the white body of the cathedral.

Until Florence becomes known for its poetry the economy's economic boom in the north is unmatched by any other achievement in the arts. When we see how much language draws on literature to evolve we understand Migliorini's disappointment. In this context it should not appear remarkable that the most important documents in the Italian language are fragments, not works, phrases, not pages and come as they do from accounting books and deeds by notaries and bankers.

We can roughly divide these documents into carte and scritte. Only the latter interest us linguistically since the scritte (en. "writings") are jotted down informally, often parenthetically to comment on or clarify what is being stated in Latin. While only Latin statements in the carte (en. "papers") have legal status, they stick to protocols and have little of the spoken language. Conversely, the informal tone of scritte frees them from the constraints of Latin formulas - because do not longer pretend to imitate the Latin spelling their Italian stands off more clearly.

However, the transition to Italian is not sudden and scritte steal themselves into the uncertain fabric of middle Latin in the course of two centuries eventually eroding it. At this point as more and more people get to speak the vernacular, even on official occasions, given the growing demand for financial transaction: merchants and bankers, the rising upper class that replaces nobility is no longer raised in convents but is trained in the shops and travels quite a bit around Europe, most often to France with whom Tuscany and Umbria have strong business relationships: the name "Francesco" ("Francis") was likely coined by Italian merchants and personalities like "Francesco" d'Assisi and Francesco Petrarch were the sons of merchants who had spent most of their lives beyond the Alps.

The influence of Latin on 11th-century writing had produced calques on early attempts at Italian, producing a latinised Italian mingled without much distinction to the italianised Latin. Until then it is not easy to draw the line between middle Latin and the first scribblings in Italian. In the 12th century, however, a line is drawn - at some point we can tell when one language begins and the other ends by just reading - writers now must have a clear perception of Italian as a language and do no longer see it as a "lower" form of Latin. We are going to see much the same thing in the Renaissance when vernacular, or regional literature takes on a life of its own as it separates from the italian language - and dialect can be really said to exist only when its perception among the people is consolidated. After that the standard Italian can rightly secede from regional languages.

Dialect and Latin in Rome

Migliorini, the famous scholar (Storia della lingua italiana, 84-85) remarks that having a Roman patrician like Sisinnius speak dialect adds fun to the scene especially since the saint lectures him in Latin after failing to tie him up. Setting the two characters apart: Sininnius evil is set off by his crude dialect while Latin is used to underline the saint's wisdom.

The contrast between Sisinnius and Saint Clement is even starker with the phrase 'fili de pute' put in Sisinius' mouth. Using Italian at holy functions was forbidden by the Church, but the doctrine enforced by Pope Gregory V in 999 A.D. allowed for exceptions with audiences unable to speak or read Latin.

That non-Latin speakers were the great majority at mass obviously tells us something important about the state of Italian in the 11th century, and the necessity to instruct audiences that are no longer faniliar with Latin.

St. Clement's Inscription in Rome

Iscrizione di San Clemente

Much more important is the Iscrizione di San Clemente (St Clemensts inscription, late 11th century), which can still be read in the Church with same name in Rome. It is a dialogue from the Passio Sancti Clementis (6th c. A.D.) added to a fresco in the old underground church and portrays a miracle performed by Saint Clement.

The pagan patrician Sisinnius, after his wife converts to Christianism accuses the saint of using sorcery on his wife. When he has him tied and laid on the floor he orders two of his servants to drag him with a rope, and a third to lift him from behind with a pole:

Fàlite dereto colo palo Carvoncelle ('Push him from behind with the pole, Carvoncelle')

Gosmari, Albertel, traite. ('Gosmari, Albertel, pull!')

Fili de le pute, traite. ('Pull, son of a b*****s!')

And a miracle happens : the saint is suddenly standing up in front of them, untied, while the servants are dragging a column in his stead. At this point the saint exclaims sternly:

Duritia[m] cordis vestri[s] saxa traere meruisti

('You deserved to drag stones because of your cold-heartness!')

Remarkably, this inscription is a dialogue in vernacular in a church - where the lines are a sort of caption to the painted figures much like a comic book. It stands in a public place of a certain importance where it can be easily read and by everyone - to be sure an Italian-speaking audience.

Southern Italy

Meantime the South pursues a different political course: the Normans found the Kingdom of Sicily (1059), paving the way for the linguistic koinè of Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor who will inherit the throne of Sicily (by his mother's side) two centuries later.

By the 11th century North and South have developed two economic systems - one largely based on commerce, the latter on agriculture, one run by the middle-class merchants, the other based on feudalism. The Guelfs (pro-pope) and Ghibelins (pro-emperors) divide Italy's city-states, but the Guelfs are particularly powerful in the North. Such cultural differencies will create a gap that will survive Italy's unification (1861) and that will only widen with the industrial revolution around Milan and Turin (ca 1900).

The only Italian documents dating to the 11th century are the Carta Amiatina (1087), a Tuscan will by one Miciarello (nicknamed "capocotto") who bequeaths his property to the Abbey of San Salvatore (Mount Amiata, Tuscany). The deed contains a footnote in dialect , one of the first documents in Tuscan:

Ista carta est de caput coctu ille adiuvet de illu rebottu qui mal consiliu li mise in corpu

"This paper belongs to "capocotto", may it help him against the evil one who ill-advised him"

Note the archaic traits (left, old Tuscan, center, present-day Italian, right, English :

Ista = questa = ("this", feminine)

Ille, illu = lo (the, masculine)

Mal consiliu = mal consiglio ("bad advice")

li =gli ("to him")

corpu=corpo ("body")

And - how different this is from Dante's Italian which is, conversely, quite free from Latinisms. However, it must also be noted that the notary applied a Latin spelling to Italian words, so some of the words look Latin, but in fact they do not sound like that.

For example, est sounded like modern Italian è (is), illu must be considered an early article and no longer a demonstrative (it will become 'lo' a couple of centuries later), "caput coctu" is an "elegant" rendering of capucottu, "qui" sounded 'ki', as Ital. chi ('who'). Mal consiliu = mal consiglio ("ill advice"), "li" = gli ('to him'), mise ('filled') is modern Italian as well, in corpu is also modern except for the -u ending for -o.

The 11th Century: the First City-States

For most of this century, the vernacular seems to have disappeared from documents, though it continues to evolve as a spoken language. It is still fragmented in different regional languages (dialects), none of these actually prevailing upon the others.

If some poet had devoted part of their effort to writing in his own dialect , the Italian language would be marching toward a unified, however primitive, standard. But in the eyes of the intellectuals the new language is seen as a corruption, or worse a degeneration of Latin, the offpring of the moral decay that had brought about the fall of the Roman Empire.

With the fear that dialect may eventually erode what is left of Latin, every subject is taught in the old language. Rhetoric, the cornerstone of medieval learning is taught after the examples of Cicero and Seneca, therefore in their language although few would use it outside their classroom.

Because Italian states do not provide public education, only a few well-off can hire a private tutor to raise their sons as they please. The only schools are ecclesiastical, and here the vernacular is not only discouraged - but considered morally reprehensible. Latin is after all the language of theology, the language of the Fathers of the Church such as St. Augustin and the St. Gerome, the translator (and patron saint of translators) who produced the Vulgate Bible (in Latin) from the Greek.

The 11th century also sees the birth of the communes (it. comuni) or city-states in the center-north such as Florence, Lucca, Pisa, Milan. Cities and towns, the "città" are still listed with that name today: Comune di Lucca, Comune di Padova.

Unfortunately, the communes are more focused on consolidating their economic and military power than in refining their language. It appears that more practical interests are going to prevail for the next two centuries: Genoa, Pisa, Amalfi and Venice ("repubbliche marinare") vie for supremacy in the Mediterranean and even found colonies outside Italy, while Florence develops the new art of banking.

Without a unified language, Italians would be dependent on French literary models for a long time (La Chanson de Roland and the Arthurian legends on the one hand, the courtly love of Occitan poetry on the other, including the Roman de la Rose and the Fabliaux which enjoy an enormous success). Jokers use a repertoire in corrupt French or Occitan to entertain their patrons.