Birth of a language

The 10th century: early Italian

The closeness of Italian to Latin helped scholars enrich the newly-born language with many Latin terms with relative ease. Earlier, we remarked that similarities between these languages can be explained with the late emergence of the Italian language. The Placito Capuano, probably the first document extant in the Italian language bears witness to that, dating as it does to the second half of the 10th century. Similar documents had appeared in other romance languages around the 9th century.

The Placito Capuano

The Placito Capuano or Placito di Capua is the first in a number of acts, also known as Placiti Cassinesi. They were written in early Italian between 960 and 963 A.D. : court proceedings allowing the Benedectines from four abbacies to reclaim their lands from squatters that had occupied them after a Saracen attack had dispersed the local chapter.

Two such proceedings come from Teano and one from Sessa Aurunca (two small towns near Caserta), from three local chapters of the Monastery of Montecassino. They contain legal formulas similar to the Placito.

The discovery of the Placiti is relatively recent: the Carta Capuana (960 A.D.) was found by abbot Gattola in the archives of the Monastery of Montecassino in 1734. All the texts show linguistic features typical of the area of Capua, many of their traits are still in today's southern dialects:

Sao ko kelle terre, per kelle fini que ki contene,
trenta anni le possette parte sancti Benedicti.

("I know that those lands, within the borders that enclose them, were owned for thirty years by the party of St. Benedict's") (Capua, March 960 - Placito Capuano)

Sao cco kelle terre, per kelle fini que tebe monstrai,
Pergoaldi foro, que ki contene, et trenta anni le possette.

(I know that those lands, within the borders that I showed to you, were owned for thirty years by the party of Pergoaldus.) (Sessa Aurunca, March 963)

Kella terra, per kelle fini que bobe mostrai,
sancte Marie è, et trenta anni la posset parte sancte Marie.

(The land within the borders that I showed to you belong to Santa Maria, and thirty years was owned by the party of Saint Mary's) (Teano, July 963)

Sao cco kelle terre, per kelle fini que tebe mostrai, trenta anni le possette parte sancte Marie.

(I know that those lands within the borders that I showed to you, were owned for for thirty years by the party of Saint Mary's) (Teano, October 963)

These are the first phrases in our possession written in Italian, although a only few decades later the frequence of such deeds increases up to the time when the use of Italian becomes common and widespread throughout the peninsula.


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