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CHAPTER 3
Early evidence and sources
B A R B A R A F R A N K -J O B
3.1 Introduction
The first texts documenting the Romance vernaculars date
from the eighth and ninth centuries AD. One of the earliest of
these texts is the Indovinello Veronese, a short riddle mixing
Romance and Latin sentences and scribbled between 730 and
750 AD by an Italian copyist on the front pages of a Visigothic
prayer book (Frank and Hartmann 1997:1091). Another fam-
ous example is provided in the Strasbourg Oaths, the citation
of oral oath formulas in a Latin chronicle written by Nithard,
a grandchild of Charlemagne, in the second half of the ninth
century and transmitted in a tenth-century manuscript
(Frank and Hartmann 1997:5016). Further references would
add a multitude of pragmatic contexts in which Romance
sentences or texts were written down. They show that the
very first Romance documents are not attached to a cultural
movement aiming at institutionalizing Romance vernaculars
as written languages, but to singular and varying circum-
stances in which writing in the vernacular was a preferable
exception to using Latin, which was the normal written
language (Selig 2006; 2008a).
To detail and strengthen this view, let us first look at the
quantitative data. Up to 1150, Romance documentation is
fragmentary and accidental. In northern France and Anglo-
Norman England, for instance, there are 21 Romance manu-
scripts dating from the period between 750 and 1150; other
Romance-speaking areas add another 132 manuscripts for
the same period (Iberian Peninsula, 7; Catalan and Occitan
areas, 88; Italian areas, 16; Sardinia, 19; Raeto-Romance
areas, 2). Though surely manuscripts have been lost, this is
an extremely small number of documents compared not
only to the Latin tradition but also to Old English and old
High German vernacular manuscripts (Lusignan 2011:15f.).
Only from 1150 onwards do we have a continually increas-
ing number of written Romance texts. Between 1150 and
1250, the Inventaire (Frank and Hartmann 1997) lists 1,225
manuscripts coming from Anglo-Norman England and
northern France and another 1,169 from other Romance-
speaking areas. In Anglo-Norman England and northern
France, this amounts to an increase to 58 times larger in
only a quarter of the time in comparison to the preceding
period: 750-1150: 21; 1150-1250: 1225. With the exception of
The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages. Adam Ledgeway and Martin Maiden (eds)
24 This chapter © Barbara Frank-Job and Maria Selig 2016. Published 2016 by Oxford University Press.
AND MARIA SELIG
the Iberian Peninsula, where a rich production of charters
and other legal texts documents the new functions of the
written vernaculars, the contrast for the other Romance-
speaking areas is not as dramatic, but still considerable:
Iberian Peninsula (without Catalonia) 750-1150: 7; 1150-
1250: 870 (805 charters and legal texts); Catalan and Occitan
areas 750-1150: 88; 1150-1250: 216; Italian areas 750-1150:
16; 1150-1250: 62; Sardinia 750-1150: 19; 1150-1250: 20;
Raeto-Romance areas 750-1150: 2; 1150-1250: 1.
The quantitative data are in accord with the sociocultural
development of the Romance-speaking world of late
antiquity and the early and high Middle Ages. The decline
in literacy from the seventh century onwards (e.g. the
abandonment of lay schooling and the retreat of literacy
to clerical institutions) is reflected in a widening gap separ-
ating written clerical and oral lay culture (Riché 1962;
Banniard 1992). It is important to point out that this gap
was not only cultural but also linguistic. Latin was, after the
codification undertaken by, for instance, Quintilian in the
second century AD and Donatus in the fourth, a standard
language that integrated only some of the linguistic devel-
opments characteristic of the spoken, diglossically low ver-
naculars (Cuzzolin and Haverling 2009). The extent to which
Latin in late antiquity became a diglossic high variety that
was ‘learned largely by formal education and [ . . . ] used for
most written and formal spoken purposes but [ . . . ] not used
by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation’
(Ferguson 1959:336) is the subject of lively debate among
Latin and Romance scholars (Banniard 1992; Wright 2002;
2012; Varvaro 2013b; see also Ch. 2 and §36.3). Suffice it to
say that the Romance vernaculars developed in contexts
complementary to formal and written communication, and
that in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages the standard
written language ceased to follow the changes characteris-
tic of the informal and non-elitist varieties. It should be
clear that this was not the end of Latin nor the end of Latin
communication between clerics and the laity (what
Banniard 1992 calls ‘vertical communication’). There was
no communicative breakdown, necessitating the ‘invention’
of Romance writing. Rather, we have a long period of oligo-
literacy (Goody and Watt 1968). During this situation, where
literacy was restricted to a very small educated elite, two

cultures—a clerical written, Latin culture and the oral
Romance culture of the laity—coexisted. Only in the twelfth
century do we find clear evidence for the massive appro-
priation of literacy outside the clerical elite (Martin
1988:121-77). By then, the overwhelming domination of
Latin in written communication began to be weakened by
the increasing use of Romance varieties in writing. This was
the starting point of a centuries-long standardization pro-
cess in the course of which the Romance vernaculars gained
a new shape as they developed into diasystems with written
vernacular varieties dominating them.
This brief survey of the sociolinguistic and sociocultural
evolution shows that we need to make an internal differen-
tiation of the written evidence. We propose to distinguish a
first period which starts with the appearance of entire texts
or parts of texts written in Romance, not in Latin (for prior
and indirect documentation of Romance developments in
Latin texts, see Ch. 1). These texts give direct access to the
vernacular, and document a new awareness of the linguistic
differences between normal written Latin and varieties used
outside this functional domain. By choosing non-Latin
forms as a means of written communication, the scribe/
author documents the new status of formerly solely spoken
Romance varieties. Yet it is not easy to decide whether
these varieties are still part of a diasystem including and
dominated by Latin or whether they should be analysed as
autonomous languages. We will opt for the first solution,
prolonging the diglossic situation up to the moment when
the increasing use of Romance in writing initiates its full
emancipation from Latin and the emergence of vernacular
varieties firmly attached to communicative distance and writ-
ten usage. This bipartite division of early Romance evidence
will be reflected in the following sections. First, we will talk
about the early fragmentary and sporadic use of Romance
forms in writing, showing the communicative contexts which
are more prone to abandon Latin in favour of Romance
varieties (§3.2). The analysis of the early documentation
will be followed by some reflections on later developments
attached to the institutionalization of Romance-language lit-
eracy, such as the development of local scribal traditions
(scriptae) and tendencies to koineization (§3.3). Finally, we
will conclude these reflections about the early Romance evi-
dence and sources with some remarks on the consequences
for editorial work and linguistic data analysis (§3.4).
3.2 Early Romance texts: ‘pathways’
to vernacular writing traditions
The appearance of written evidence of the Romance lan-
guages took place in a sociohistorical situation shaped by
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EARLY EVIDENCE AND SOURCES
the coexistence of two cultures: on the one hand, the highly
literate Latin culture of the clergy and, on the other, the
oral culture of laypeople. These two cultures were inter-
woven, and there was no clear-cut border between tradi-
tions attached to Latin and developing Romance literacy
(Selig 2006; 2011). The latter drew largely on the culture
of the centuries-long written tradition of Latin as an
elaborated and codified standard language, known in
medieval times as grammatica. This included references
to linguistic practices developed in Latin written trad-
ition, but also the adoption of the textual practices devel-
oped in the traditional domains of Latin writing and in its
well-defined range of discourse traditions (i.e. genres or
text types; cf. Koch 1997a). These Latin discourse tradi-
tions constituted an integral part of the medieval Lebens-
welt functioning within the communicative needs and
aims of their practitioners.
Latin and its discourse traditions were, however, not the
only source of early Romance written evidence. The second
sociocultural framework for the beginning of Romance writ-
ing is provided by vernacular orality, be it the ceremonial
(diglossically high) communications of the laity (‘elaborated
orality’; cf. Koch and Oesterreicher 2001; 2012; cf. also
Assmann and Czaplicka 1995:126) or discourse traditions
rooted in the oral practices of everyday communication in
pragmatic or informal contexts. These oral discourse prac-
tices are only indirectly accessible nowadays through the
medium of written texts. Yet their oral origins are still
detectable due to some of their formal and semantic fea-
tures. Their written transmission is, however, overlaid with
typical features of the written tradition.
Looking at the appearance of the vernaculars in the written
media from the angle of discourse traditions and their prag-
matic anchoring in formal or informal communicative
conditions (‘communicative distance/communicative immedi-
acy’; cf. Koch 1997a; Koch and Oesterreicher 2001; 2012;
Oesterreicher 1997) allows us to gain an overview of the
medieval Romance-speaking world, which goes beyond their
many local particularities and helps us to detect the ‘path-
ways’ leading to early Romance written texts. In fact, we can
observe in all the Romance regions the emergence of the same
types of written texts, which can be divided into three groups.
First of all, there are short geographically and tempor-
ally scattered stretches of limited communicative impact
belonging to the everyday practices of communicative
immediacy (Koch and Oesterreicher 2001; 2012) as well as
texts or parts of texts which were not intended for
repeated reception, written outside the usual text field
of a manuscript and often accompanying or inserted in
Latin texts. Their transmission was exclusively due to the
Latin texts and manuscripts they were added to. With
Oesterreicher (1993) we can call this type of Romance texts
25
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BARBARA FRANK-JOB AND MARIA SELIG
‘in-scripturations’.1 Very often, these texts are bilingual,
Latin–Romance, attesting to the typical diglossic situation
of the Romance-speaking societies of the early Middle Ages
(Selig 1993) with Latin representing the high variety,
Romance the low (cf. §3.2.1).
A second context is provided by all sorts of ‘pragmatic’
texts which facilitate the professional work of its authors,
such as administrative or juridical texts, but also lists of
accounts, taxes, debtors, or goods (cf. §3.2.2). Finally, we
have to mention all those Romance texts which, as literary
texts, contribute to the cultural memory of the society and
therefore account for their authors’ and scribes’ metalin-
guistic awareness of the vernaculars as languages in their
own right, side by side with Latin (cf. §3.2.3). These texts are
the very first and almost premature vestiges of discourse
traditions which belonged to the collective memory of the
secular society and whose unfolding and expansion first
started after 1150. Only these last two types of discourse
traditions contributed to the collective memory of the
Romance-speaking communities and can therefore attest
to ‘in-scripturalization’ (Oesterreicher 1993; Tristram
1998), the process that eventually resulted in the conven-
tionalization of supraregional writing norms and text tra-
ditions, and, in the end, in the standardization of the
Romance languages.
3.2.1 In-scripturation: inserting Romance
utterances in Latin texts
Accompanying the presentation of documents in Tables 3.1–
3.3, we give an overview of the documents stemming from
before the middle of the twelfth century, commenting on
some of them in more detail.2 Due to limitations of space, the
lists contain only the most important Romance texts
attested before 1150. The written documentation of spon-
taneous utterances is attested in nearly all regions of the
Romance-speaking world, and in most cases, these attest-
ations represent the very first documentation of the respect-
ive vernaculars: examples include the Probatio pennae (‘pen
trials’) in Raeto-Romance (Frank and Hartmann 1997:1092),
the Italo-Romance Postilla amiatina (Frank and Hartmann
1
The terms ‘in-scripturation’ and ‘in-scripturalization’ (Tristram
1998:12) translate the corresponding German distinction between Verschrif-
tung and Verschriftlichung (Oesterreicher 1993). The former refers to a more
or less word-for-word transfer from the spoken to the written medium,
while the latter implies the presence of such specific conventions of written
texts as textual coherence, structural completeness, and lexical precision.
2
Our overview will not include the Romanian area, which shows a
considerable delay with respect to the appearance of the first vernacular
documents (Windisch 1993; §8.1).
26
1997:1093), and the oldest inscriptions in volgare (‘vernacular’)
from the Italian area (Frank and Hartmann 1997:1001-4).
These documents were the continuation of a long-standing
tradition of late Latin scribes who played with the linguistic
contrast between the high and the low varieties (e.g. Classical
vs vulgar Latin) for humoristic or ideological purposes (Selig
1993). For the scribes of these vernacular texts or passages
within texts, there was a smooth transition from the contrast
between vulgar Latin and Classical Latin to that between
Romance vernaculars and Latin.
The marginal and somewhat contingent character of
these short and often fragmentarily recorded texts in
Romance shows that writing them down was not perceived
by medieval scribes as the start of a new tradition or even as
the launching of writing conventions for the vernaculars.
On the contrary, the Romance texts or passages function as
a stylistic contrast within the Latin context, and in this
sense represent the continuation of written vulgar Latin.
This is the case of the volgare (‘vernacular’) inscriptions
representing the utterances of ordinary people in mural
paintings and mosaics of northern Italy (examples are listed
in Frank and Hartmann 1997:1001-32), where the Italo-
Romance parts were meant to contrast with the Latin pas-
sages within the text with a comic effect or an ideological
purpose (Koch 1999). In the mural paintings representing
the story of St Clement in Rome (Frank and Hartmann
1997:1003), for example, the evil pagans speak in the vulgar
vernacular whereas the saint speaks in Latin. For most of
the scribes using Romance in their probationes pennae,
namely their scribblings in the margins of Latin manu-
scripts, these utterances were clearly meant to represent
spontaneous and expressive speech, be it vulgar Latin or
Romance. This is the case in the oldest evidence for Raeto-
Romance, a probatio pennae added to the front page of a Latin
manuscript at the monastery of St Gallen in Switzerland
(Frank and Hartmann 1997:1092). Here the scribe starts with
a biblical citation in Latin and continues with the spontan-
eous expression of his emotions:
Hoc est deus meus. (Latin:) This is my God.
deus meus, ut quid dereli- my God, why hast Thou forsaken
quisti me j Diderros me j (Raeto-Romance:) Diderros
nehabe should
diegemuscha j earn a fly from it[ . . . ]
[...] [...]
In principio erat uerbum3 (Latin:) In the beginning was
the Word
3
Liver (2010:84). Our translation follows the interpretation of Sabatini
(1963:153) cited by Liver (2010:84f.) and the reading of diege as a verbal form
following Liver (2002), who gives the corresponding Latin translation of the
utterance as: ‘Diderros inde habere debeat muscam’.
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EARLY EVIDENCE AND SOURCES

Table 3.1 In-scripturation: Romance utterances in Latin texts

DATE OF NAME , INVENTORY NO . COMMUNICATIVE CONTEXT LANGUAGE ( S )
DOCUMENT

8th c. Indovinello veronese probatio pennae; bilingual riddle added Latin–Italo-Romance

IS 1091 to the front pages of a prayer book
1st half of 9th Graffitto di Commodilla Mural inscription; graffito Italo-Romance
IS 1001
c.960–963 Placiti Cassinesi Citations of testimonies in Latin court Latin–Italo-Romance
documents (Campanian)
1087 Postilla amiatina Short commentary added to a Latin Italo-Romance added to a
IS 1093 charter Latin text
c.1000 Probatio Pennae of Würzburg Added to the first page of a Latin Latin–Raeto-Romance
IS 1092 manuscript
11th c., end Iscrizione di San Clemente Mural inscription; utterances of persons Latin–Italo-Romance
IS 1003 illustrated in a fresco (Roman)
10th–11th c. Nithardi Historiarum Libri IV, Romance oath formulas in a Latin Latin citations of spoken
containing the oaths of historiographic text oaths in French and German
Strasbourg
IS 5016
11th c. Deux griffonnages français Marginal notes in the Latin Vita French added to a Latin text
IS 1094 Sancti Cilliani
11th c. Didascalia sopra una figura di Legend accompanying the picture Greek–Italo-Romance
leone of a lion added on the last flyleaf
IS 1024 of a Byzantine codex
11th c. Glosas Emilianenses Glosses in a Latin manuscript Spanish (Navarro-
IS 1050 Aragonese) and Basque
added to Latin texts
11th c. Glosas Silenses Glosses translating a Latin penitential Spanish translation added to
IS 1051 a Latin text
c.1148 Mosaico dei duellanti di Vercelli Italo-Romance inscriptions in a mosaic Italo-Romance utterances of
IS 1002 originating from the cathedral persons illustrated in the
of Vercelli mosaic
IS = Inventaire systématique in Frank and Hartmann (1997). The statistics are based on the overview in the same work.

Nearly the same case can be seen in a short marginal note
scrawled in a Latin collection of saints’ lives in which the
scribe expresses his emotions in Romance words, but
changes to Latin for the conventional text of the prayer
(all other scribblings in the margins of this manuscript are
in Latin):
[ . . . ] en noster segneur [ . . . ] ie croi ke uos ames par amos
nostre segnor
[ . . . ] in our Lord [ . . . ] I think that you love with love our
Lord
bin est raison | car il uos puet bin rendere aue Maria gracia
plena Dominus
[this] is well done for he will render it to you. Ave Maria
gratia plena Dominus4
The palaeographic and linguistic analysis of these very
short texts shows that each scribe had to overcome the
problems of recording a not yet codified language, and
had to devise his own system for rendering spoken utter-
ances using a graphic system designed for Latin. As can
4
Frank and Hartmann 1997:1094: Douai, Bibliothèque municipale,
ms. 857, f. 110v, the manuscript and scribbled note both date from the
11th c. Text following Gysseling (1949:210, Appendice, no. 1).

27
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BARBARA FRANK-JOB AND MARIA SELIG
easily be seen, most of the texts cited from this group are
written without using the system of abbreviations
employed in Latin writing. Furthermore, where spaces
were used between words, the amalgamation of preposi-
tions and articles with the lexemes they are associated with
shows a Latin-based conception of morphology (Frank
1994:42-60). However, these sporadic experiments with the
vernacular could not lead to a tradition. They did not cor-
respond to the needs of formal written communication.
Thus there was, for the scribes, no need for continuity in
these writing practices.
3.2.2 In-scripturalization I: pragmatic
texts in professional contexts
The texts of this second group all turn out to be the (some-
times premature) forerunners of pragmatic discourse tradi-
tions which were to take over the functions of former Latin
practices in monasteries, chanceries, or the administrative
offices of courts and towns. Latin traditions provided a large
repertoire of formulas and textual models for the vernacu-
lars that were first sporadically and later regularly inserted
into the respective Latin text formulas.
Scribes of Latin charters frequently inserted citations of
vernacular testimonies or oaths (originating from older
German oral law) into the framework of Latin charters, as
can be seen in the feudal oaths from southern France and
Catalonia, which stood at the beginning of a broad medieval
tradition of private charters in the vernaculars (Frank 1996;
Kosto 2007).
The linguistic form of these texts is rather simple—many
of them are mere lists (Koch 1990)—and many, such as the
feudal oaths, show a highly formulaic style. The scribes
inserted the vernacular into the Latin context without
highlighting the language switch in the layout of the docu-
ments; or they added the vernacular in the blank spaces of
Latin charters or manuscripts. Thus, the Nodicia de kesos, the
oldest extant pragmatic text from Spain, was added in the
blank verso (reverse side) of a Latin charter dating from the
tenth century. The text contains a short list which indicates
occasions of the donation of cheeses (for the work of the
monks of the abbey) followed by the respective number of
cheeses:5
No di cia de/kesos que/espisit f(rate)r /
Note about cheeses that Brother
se meno Inlab[ore]/def(rat)r(e)s Inilo ba
Semeno donated for the work of the brothers. In the
5
Our transcription follows the layout of the original text.
28
cela re/decir ka s(an)c(t)e Ius/te kesos .U.
vineyard around [the monastery of] San Justo five cheeses.
Inilo/alio de apa te/II kesos en que
In the other of the abbot’s, two cheeses.—In which
pu seron ogano/kesos : IIII Inilo
they planted this year, four. In the one
de ka strelo :I:
of Castrillo, one,
Inila uinia maIore/:II: [ . . . ]
in the big vineyard, two [ . . . ].6
For this kind of writing, the information-storage capaci-
ties of the graphic medium are decisive. Texts of this type
(In-scripturalization I) contain data of all kinds: information
about merchandise, estates, or properties as well as fees,
taxes, and lists of debtors among other things. With the
Conto navale pisano (end of the eleventh or beginning of the
twelfth century), the enumeration of payments made by the
city of Pisa for its merchant marine, the very beginnings of
north Italian municipal administration in the vernacular is
represented. The survival of this early representation is
due to the fact that the parchment containing it was used
to protect the cover of a Latin codex. As a result, we can
conclude that these types of Romance writing were not
intended for longer-lasting transmission. Yet as premature
examples of an emerging writing practice, these early prag-
matic texts show that Romance had become an ordinary
part of communicative life in monasteries, chanceries, and
urban offices.
3.2.3 In-scripturalization II: discourse
traditions and cultural memory
The texts belonging to this group clearly rank among the
most famous early medieval texts of the Romance lan-
guages. The scribes/authors of these texts willingly estab-
lished new discourse traditions and contributed to the
emergence of Romance conventions for texts belonging to
the cultural memory of the lay community. Of course, the
emergence of diglossically high ceremonial texts in the
vernaculars was directly affected by Latin writing tradi-
tions, taking its point of departure from these. This was
6
Nodicia de kesos, León, Archivo de la Catedral, ms. 852, 1st part (end of
the 10th c.). For a complete reproduction of this selection see <http://
cembranos.org/fotos/Nodicia%20de%20Kesos.JPG> (last download 27 May
2013); for a detailed analysis with the complete transcription and Spanish
translation, see Morala Rodríguez (2008). See Frank (1994:55-7) for an
analysis of the graphic conventions of the scribe.
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EARLY EVIDENCE AND SOURCES

Table 3.2 In-scripturalization I: pragmatic texts

DATE OF NAME , INVENTORY NO . COMMUNICATIVE CONTEXT LANGUAGE ( S )
DOCUMENT

1st quarter of Glossario di Monza Fragment of an Italo-Romance– Italo-Romance (Lombard)–Greek

the 10th IS 1078 Greek glossary for a travelling (Byzantine)
century clerk (the glossary contains a
vocabulary of everyday use)
c.980 Nodicia de kesos List written by a monk of the Spanish (Leonese) mixed with
IS 9059 abbey of San Justo y Pastor some Latin words
c.1034 Serment de fidélité prêté par Roger Oath of fealty sworn by the count Latin–Occitan (only parts of the
Ier, comte de Foix, à son oncle Peire, of Foix to the archbishop of oaths are in Romance)
évêque de Gérone Gérone
IS 72153
Middle to end Conjurations romanes dans le Conjuration formulae for the Latin–Occitan
of 10th c. Breviarium Alarici healing of injuries, added on in
IS 3076 the margins of a Latin
manuscript in the possession of
the cathedral of Clermont-
Ferrand
c.1050 Convention Convention with a feudal oath Latin–Catalan (only parts of the
IS 75002 between private individuals oaths are in Romance; the rest of
the charter and parts of the
oaths are in Latin)
1035–1055 Jurament feudal de Ramon Oath of fealty Latin–Catalan (only parts of the
IS 75001 oaths are in Romance)
c.1053 Serment de fidélité prété par Guillem Oath of fealty sworn by the count Latin–Occitan (only parts of the
II de Besalu of Besalu to the archbishop of oaths are in Romance)
IS 72150 Narbonne
c.1078 Serment de fidélité prêté par la Oath of fealty sworn by the Latin–Occitan (only parts of the
vicomtesse de Narbonne viscountess of Narbonne to the oaths are in Romance)
IS 72151 archbishop of Narbonne
Discourse tradition of feudal oaths in south France and Catalonia
1089 Carta cagliaritana Charter, confirmation of a Sardinian (written in the Greek
IS 74017 donation alphabet)
Discourse tradition of Sardinian charters in the Greek alphabet
c.1090 Partición de Huesca Note regarding the partition of Latin–Spanish
IS 9060 goods
End of 11th or Conto navale pisano List of expenses concerning the Italian (Tuscan)
beginning of IS 9061 equipping of ships by the city of
12th c. Pisa
c.1120 Premier et second cartulaire de Cartulary of the monastery of Latin–Occitan
l’aumônerie de Saint-Martial Saint-Martial de Limoges
contenant des notices de donations containing notes on donations
IS 9121–9212, 9123–9125
Before 1150 Cartulaire des vicomtes de Millau Cartulary of the viscounts of Occitan – Latin (only few parts
contenant le Censier de la vicomté Millau containing the Zinsbuch are relevant)
IS 9017 (Book of Tithes) of the county
Discourse traditions: charters and administrative texts of monasteries in Occitan
c.1150 Nota en català coŀloquial Short commentary added to a Catalan added to a Latin text
IS 1095 Latin charter
IS = Inventaire systématique in Frank and Hartmann (1997). The statistics are based on the overview in the same work.

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only possible because, at least in the beginning, this was in
accordance with the interests of the clergy. In fact, nearly
all the early texts we find in this group seem to stand in
close relation to the instructional programme of the Caro-
lingian Reform (see §2.9), and in particular to conform to
the wish of the Church to open to the laity the most
important parts of the Christian faith—whose practice had
until then been exclusively in Latin.
Starting in northern France shortly after the Carolingian
reforms, these discourse traditions, which contributed to
the participation of the laity in Church ceremonies (e.g.
para-liturgical songs, prayers and plays, sermons, and the
religious instructions of the laity), seemed to blaze trails for
the future use of writing in the Romance vernaculars. Most
of these texts are bilingual, leaving the official (liturgical)
part in Latin and employing the Romance languages in the
more emotional and imaginative parts.
The oldest of these texts, the Laudes de Soissons, added to
the Latin Litany of the Saints a formula of benediction in the
vernacular which addressed the Carolingian princes. Even if
the Romance parts of the text are short (commonly only the
name(s) of the prince(s) followed by a collective To lo(s) iuva
‘May Thou bless him/them’), their repetitive and collective
use must, for the people who until then were not used to
participating in church ceremonies at all, have made a great
impression on lay churchgoers, and certainly had an impact
on the collective identity of Carolingian congregants. Start-
ing from these subtle beginnings, the discourse traditions of
para-liturgical songs, prayers, plays, and dances began their
triumphant advance first in northern and southern France,
but from the twelfth century onwards in Italy and Spain
as well.7
Within the context of the reforms of Cluny and, some-
what later for the Spanish regions, the reform of Burgos, the
translation of the most important sacred texts was part of
the instructional programme for laypeople. In the textual
transition to Romance this textual practice starts with
interlinear and marginal translations of the Bible or texts
for the catechism (e.g. the Formula di confessione umbra,
Frank and Hartmann 1997:2176, or the famous Eadwine Psal-
ter containing interlinear translations in English and
(Anglo-Norman) French, Frank and Hartmann 1997:2044).
The very first instances show that the work of translation
from Latin to a completely un-normed language of everyday
use was complex and arduous. The Raeto-Romance transla-
tion of the beginning of a Latin sermon (interlinear trans-
lation from Einsiedeln, Frank and Hartmann 1997:2135)
shows the major difficulties the scribes had in rendering
the complex style of the Latin text in a vernacular which
7
See Frank and Hartmann (1997:213-41) with more examples from
northern and southern France, Italy, Castile, and Catalonia.
30
had not yet been elaborated for this purpose. After a few
lines full of omissions and intricate phrases, the scribe gave
up (Liver 2010:85).
With the success of this type of Romance text production,
the vernacular took on its role in the cultural domains
hitherto reserved for the Latin of the Church. For the first
time in the Middle Ages, lay people participated in the
cultural memory of literacy, and this had a strong impact
on the evolution of Romance written traditions. From the
mid-twelfth century onwards we see, particularly in north-
ern and southern France, an explosion of written vernacular
texts—sermons, para-liturgical songs and plays, and hagio-
graphic narratives, but also examples of older oral narrative
and lyrical forms which were, from then on, committed to
writing: the chansons de geste, the poems of troubadours and
trouvères, courtly romances, and short narratives. Together
with these novel written text traditions, a new courtly and
urban Romance-language reading public was emerging.
3.3 Writing without focused norms:
scriptae and koinés
From the mid-twelfth century, the increasing use of writing
by the laity and the emergence of a lay public for written
vernacular literature changed the sociolinguistic conditions
of vernacular literacy. In the diglossic situation in which
Latin was the uncontested high written variety and
Romance only sporadically surfaced in written texts, we
cannot expect what modern sociolinguistics (in standard-
ization research) has described as the processes attached to
the increasing use of written language (external/internal
elaboration, selection/acceptance, codification; cf. Haugen
1983; see also Ch. 37). But when chansons de geste or other
literary genres became firmly associated with reading and
writing and when not only clerics but also lay people began
to use the written medium for demanding linguistic tasks
(external elaboration), the linguistic situation changed: pro-
cesses such as the creation of complex structures capable of
fulfilling the tasks typical of communicative distance
(internal elaboration) as well as tendencies to develop
supra-local norms, the so-called scriptae (selection/accept-
ance), accompanied the institutionalization of vernacular
writing and prepared the ground for standardization.
These processes varied in intensity from region to region,
but throughout the Romance-speaking areas and continuing
until at least the sixteenth century, the linguistic situation
was marked by the absence of codified standard written
languages which were dominant within a stable vernacular
diasystem with low local or regional dialects. Thus, the
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EARLY EVIDENCE AND SOURCES

Table 3.3 In-scripturalization II: cultural memory

DATE OF DOCUMENT NAME , INVENTORY NO . COMMUNICATIVE CONTEXT LANGUAGE ( S )

End of 8th c. Laudes de Soissons Formula of benediction in Latin–French

IS 2054 the Latin Litany of the Saints
End of 9th c. Séquence en l’honneur de Sequence about the life of a French
sainte Eulalie saint
IS 2055
1st half of 10th c. Sermon anonyme sur Jonas Outline of a bilingual sermon Latin–French
IS 2134
Last third of 10th c. Chanson de la Passion, Para-liturgical song about French
fragment from Augsburg the passion of Christ (Berschin and Berschin 2011)
IS 2056
Late 11th c. Interlinear translation Partial translation of a Latin Latin–Raeto-Romance
from Einsiedeln sermon added to a pseudo-
IS 2135 Augustinian sermon
End of 11th c. Formula di confessione umbra Confessional formula Italo-Romance (Umbrian)–Latin
IS 2176 inserted into a collection of (the texts to be spoken by the penitent
liturgical and para-liturgical and by the priest are in Umbrian; the
texts formula for the absolution is in Latin)
11th c. Boëci Hagiographic song about a Occitan
IS 2093 saint’s life
c.1000 Passion du Christ (1) et Saint Para-liturgical song about (1) French with evidence of influence
Léger (2) the passion of Christ (1) from Occitan–Latin
IS 2057 Para-liturgical song about (2) French
the life of a saint (2)
c.1000 Alba bilingue Para-liturgical song in Latin Latin–Occitan
IS 2058 and Occitan (a matins hymn)
c.1100 Chanson de Sainte Foy d’Agen Para-liturgical song about a Occitan
IS 2059 saint’s life
c.1100 Para-liturgical songs from Collection of para-liturgical Latin–Occitan (4 Occitan songs in a
Saint-Martial de Limoges songs related to Mary collection of Latin songs)
IS 2060
Beginning of 12th c. Cérémonial d’une épreuve Instructions for a trial by Latin–French (most of the text is in
judiciare ordeal Latin; the scribe performs
IS 2169 intrasentential code-switching
between French and Latin )
Beginning of 12th c. Sermons limousins First part of a collection of Occitan–Latin
IS 2136 sermons
1st part of 12th c. Epître farcie de saint Etienne Para-liturgical song about a Latin–French (region of Tours)
IS 2063 saint’s life inserted in a Latin
missal (missale turonense)
c.1150 Quant li solleiz Para-liturgical hymn about (Norman) French
IS 2061 the Song of Solomon
c.1150 Hilarii ludi Collection of para-liturgical Latin–French (2 of 15 plays are in
IS 2064 plays with French refrains French)
Middle of 12th c. Eadwine Psalter containing Interlinear translation of Latin–(Anglo-Norman) French–English
interlinear translations liturgical texts: the Latin text
IS 2044 with both an English and a
French translation
IS = Inventaire systématique in Frank and Hartmann (1997). The statistics are based on the overview in the same work.

31
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BARBARA FRANK-JOB AND MARIA SELIG
process not only of elaboration and codification, but also of
selection and acceptance were far from being completed in
the period we are looking at.
Traditional approaches to the early phases of Romance
writing traditions have generally ignored the standardizing
dynamics. The idea was that in the early phases, scribes and
authors started by using their local dialects, and that the
emergence of supra-local standards was accomplished by
taking over the most prestigious among the existing written
dialects. This idea is much too simple to do justice to the
emergence of the new standard languages, nor does it do
justice to the earliest texts. For, after all, the future standard
varieties would not turn out to be identical to any single
regional dialect, but would be the result of a mixing of
heterogeneous linguistic features. Furthermore, the early
scribes did not reproduce their local dialect faithfully when
undertaking the task of writing a vernacular text. A local
dialect, which is an ensemble of linguistic forms anchored in
everyday conversation, is not readily adaptable to written
vernacular communication aimed at a supra-local public. In
situations of communicative distance, the medieval authors
could not yet switch to a supra-local variety, because only
Latin was suitable for this role. But they could ‘delocalize’
their language by integrating Latinisms, by taking over the
linguistic features of prestigious discourse traditions such
as Occitan or Sicilian courtly lyric poetry, or by choosing
forms common to more than one regional speech commu-
nity. In doing that, they created linguistically hybrid texts,
but the linguistic form of their texts was, consequently, now
clearly distant from everyday conversation (Selig 2008b).
The idea of linguistic hybridization in early Romance
texts contrasts with traditional concepts, but is more suited
to an explanation of why we rarely, if ever, find dialectally
homogeneous texts among the early written Romance
sources. One of the most widely debated problems, the
localization of the Strasbourg Oaths, is much less puzzling
in view of a conception of the feudal oath as something used
throughout the entire Carolingian realm and leading to a
mixing of southern and northern dialect forms (and Latin
forms as well). Such a solution obviates the need to search
for a place where all the isoglosses evoked by the text
coincide. Even if written in Poitiers, as Castellani (1969)
proposes, the Strasbourg Oaths were not Poitevin, but Caro-
lingian. The same argument is applicable when examining
vernacular texts with an extended manuscript tradition.
Traditional philology has persistently tried to reconstruct
a lost original in order to obtain a dialectally homogeneous
text. One of the most famous examples of such a reconstruc-
tion is Contini’s (1960) edition of Bonvesin da la Riva, a
Milanese cleric writing religious instruction for the laity.
Contini claims that Bonvesin originally wrote in his Milan-
ese dialect, and therefore ‘expurgates’ even the earliest
32
manuscripts by removing all non-Milanese elements. Cer-
tainly, the copyists did change the language of the texts by
adapting it to the public they were writing for. But the
Milanese version Contini creates is an ahistorical hypoth-
esis by a modern scholar and is certainly far from the
language of a medieval cleric who knew and practised
Latin as well as the vernacular, and who was writing not
for his urban compatriots but for a Christian discourse
community with no precise local restrictions (Wilhelm
2009).
Many other editors besides Contini have tried to extrapo-
late an ‘original’ on the basis of the differing manuscript
versions of medieval texts. The work of the copyists was
nearly always seen as a source of contamination, distorting
what was originally meant to be a locally homogeneous
linguistic artefact. It is essential to emphasize that the
knowledge about what was, dialectically speaking, the cor-
rect form relied heavily on nineteenth-century data,
because dialects, and especially dialect borders, were
assumed to be stable and not subject to divergence over
time (cf. Dees 1980; 1987; Lodge 2004:53-102). Those inter-
ested in securing medieval evidence for dialectal variation
therefore suggested dismissing literary texts and concen-
trating on charters handed down in only one copy, which
could be localized and dated by using external evidence.
This, in turn, would permit scholars to localize the linguistic
features used in the text. But even in this case, the trad-
itional idea of homogeneity turned out to be insufficient.
Remacle (1948), who analysed one of the earliest Wallon
charters, discovered that even the language of charters was
not local, but integrated elements belonging to other dialect
areas. He therefore introduced the notion of scripta into
medieval philology, by which he meant a written variety
used regularly by medieval scribes and containing local as
well as supra-local features. Remacle insisted on the dis-
tance separating this variety from the medieval dialects. In
his opinion, even the charters could not reflect local dialects
because it was not one of the intentions of the scribes to
document the spoken everyday language. On the other
hand, he emphasized the regional nature of the scriptae,
each scripta having a limited regional spread because unify-
ing factors such as central administrations or centralizing
literary traditions were still too weak.
One of the major problems, then, is to explain why and
how supra-local practices developed and how they spread.
Remacle himself suggested that the scribe of the Wallon
charter he analysed tried to imitate central Parisian lan-
guage, thus sticking to the idea that, from a very early date,
vernacular literacy in northern France was oriented
towards the prestigious variety of the Île-de-France. As
there are practically no vernacular documents from the
Île-de-France before the middle of the thirteenth century

(Lusignan 2011:65-84), this is equivalent to postulating that
the central dialect must have been diffused orally, possibly
by means of an epic tradition (Hilty 1968). The major prob-
lem posed by this approach is that the first written ver-
nacular evidence from the Île-de-France has no clear
dialectal identity because it integrates numerous linguistic
features not originating in the region (Lodge 2004:80-102).
To explain this dialect mixing, Cerquiglini (1991) formulated
the hypothesis that the forerunner of the written central
documents went back to the Carolingian chancery, which
planned and consciously created a hybrid variety unifying
the different oïl-speaking areas. Another attempt to explain
this dialect mixing is offered by Lodge (2004), who follows the
models of modern dialectology explaining the formation of
immigrant koinés in modern urban settings (Trudgill 1986;
Kerswill 2002; Kerswill and Trudgill 2005; see also Grübl
2011). Lodge claims that the dialect mixing was the result of
an oral koineization process in medieval Paris. Immigrants,
coming to the new metropolitan centre and bringing with
them their autochthonous dialects, spontaneously created a
new vernacular that integrated the different dialect features
by accommodation processes in oral everyday conversation.
It has also been suggested that written Castilian is based on
the result of koineization processes, in this case centred
around the migrations during the Reconquista period
(Tuten 2003). Linguistic code-mixing, then, seems to be find-
ing more and more acceptance among Romance scholars:
oral koineization is suggested to have taken place before
the beginning of written documentation, as proposed by
Lodge or Tuten. Another approach sees hybridization as the
result of written language planning among the clerks of the
Carolingian chancery (Cerquiglini 1991).
However that may be, it is not necessary to restrict
accommodation processes to oral communication, nor to
restrict hybridization to a momentary effort at language
planning. The notion of scripta, introduced by Remacle and
consolidated by subsequent research, or the conception of
written and oral koiné formation, formulated in order to
explain the particularities of northern Italo-Romance writ-
ten vernacular (koiné padana; Sanga 1990), is sufficient to
grasp this peculiarity of written medieval vernaculars. The
language of medieval manuscripts is regional because it is
based on local dialects, the richest linguistic reality avail-
able to medieval authors and scribes. It is, however, not a
direct reflection of the spoken dialects, because authors and
scribes created hybrid linguistic forms adapted to the new
supra-local aims of their texts. If the intensity of written
production triggers institutionalizing processes, these
forms can develop into scriptae, that is, specific linguistic
practices of chanceries and centres of manuscript produc-
tion and/or associated with particular discourse traditions.
But these scriptae do not attain the status of fixed and
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EARLY EVIDENCE AND SOURCES
clearly dominant standard varieties. Consequently, there is
still considerable room for individual variation.
3.4 From medieval manuscripts
to linguistic data: pragmatic and
sociolinguistic recontextualization
The preceding sections have clearly shown that the early
period of transmission of the Romance languages (eighth to
twelfth centuries) constituted an exception to medieval
Latin writing practices, on which they remained strongly
dependent for centuries. This is true also for the contexts
and the forms of transmission of the oldest documents.
Particular codex forms and layouts for Romance texts only
developed in the second phase (from 1150 onwards), the
phase of tradition-building for the vernaculars. Before that,
the conservation of a written document in a Romance lan-
guage represented fortuitous exceptions in which Romance
documents written on a durable material survived, due in
all probability to their Latin context of transmission.
The profound influence of Latin writing traditions can be
seen in the graphic conventions of early Romance texts, in
which Latin words served as orientation for word-separation
practices (see §3.2.3) and in which layout patterns which
were typical of Latin text traditions were chosen. This
makes it indispensable that the editors of early Romance
texts respect these Latin contexts as carefully as possible.
The editor should furnish a detailed description of the asso-
ciated Latin texts and the composition of the codex which
contains the Romance text. Furthermore, the circumstances
of its genesis and use also need to be indicated (locality, date,
identities of its owners, scribes and readers, etc.; Frank and
Hartmann 1997, I:13-16).
Traditional editions usually dating back to the nine-
teenth or the first half of the twentieth century rarely
give a faithful representation of the medieval text. Hap-
pily, most of the time we have a rich fund of information
about the background of the manuscripts (and we should
make use of this contribution on the part of traditional
philological scholarship). Unfortunately, however, these
editions often distort the text of the manuscripts so much
that the original texts cannot—or can hardly—be recognized.
For a long time, indeed, it was common practice to remove
supposed inconsistencies or ‘faults’ whenever the editor
thought it necessary. Traditional editors also tried to minim-
ize the difference between medieval and modern layout
or (ortho)graphic conventions. Often, the editors did not
indicate when they were expanding the abbreviations so
frequently used in medieval manuscripts—a practice that
33
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BARBARA FRANK-JOB AND MARIA SELIG
makes morphological research difficult, if not impossible
(Schøsler 1984).
Editorial practices have changed, and we now have
numerous editions which try to come as close as possible
to the medieval situation. We can add that, with the possi-
bilities of modern digital editions, the wording chosen by
the editors can easily be supported with the help of digital
images of the manuscript(s).8 There is an increasingly clear
tendency to avoid an anachronistic imposition of concepts
originating in modern standard language situations, and to
accept the specific textual and linguistic conditions of medi-
eval vernacular texts. Zumthor (1987; 1990) showed that, in
medieval vernacular culture, there was no idea of a fixed
(written) text to be preserved by the copiers, but rather that
of a fluid, flexible model to be followed (mouvance of the
medieval text). The many varying versions of a medieval
text often make it impossible for modern editors to distin-
guish clearly between author and scribe and between ori-
ginal and copy. We can adopt this conception of a flexible
model even when talking about linguistic norms. In medi-
eval times, linguistic norms may have their sources in
everyday interaction, because these norms are grounded
in a dense social network and frequent and continuous
interaction. However, the use of vernacular varieties in
written communication entailed entering a communicative
domain in which linguistic models existed, but in which
there was still considerable space for creativity in the
search for solutions adapted to actual circumstances. One
of the most striking examples of the openness of medieval
linguistic norms is the hybrid language of some literary
adaptions (Occitan–French in the Girart de Roussillon or
French–Lombardian in north Italian epics; cf. Pfister 1970;
Holtus and Wunderli 2005). Even if we ignore these clear
8
See <http://ebeowulf.uky.edu/> (last downloaded 8 October 2015). For
more information about digital editions of medieval texts, see <www.digi-
talmedievalist.org>. For the early Romance texts mentioned here, most of
the digital editing work still remains to be done. There are, however, a few
remarkable initiatives, e.g. the Base de Français médiéval for old French from
Lyon University: <http://txm.bfm-corpus.org/> (last downloaded 8 October
2015), which gives information about the Strasbourg Oaths, the Eulalie, the
Passio Christi, and Saint Léger; for Spanish manuscripts see <http://admyte.
com/home.htm> (last downloaded 8 October 2015); for old Italo-Romance
texts, see http://www.silab.it/frox/200/ind_scu.htm (last downloaded on
8 October 2015) and http://www.ovi.cnr.it/ (last downloaded on 8 October
2015), a database for old Italo-Romance.
34
cases of language contact and code-mixing, we still meet
with flexible and instable norms. In northern France, a
charter written for a local bourgeois public contains more
local and regional forms than one directed to aristocratic or
royal institutions—even when the same scribe wrote both of
them (Völker 2003). Another source of variation between
texts according to their actual communicative background
is the degree of dependence on Latin. When translating—or
better, adapting—the Dialogi of Gregory the Great to old
French, the French author clearly devised new forms in
trying to imitate Latin structures (Frank and Hartmann
1997:2156).
3.5 Final reflections
The analysis of the early evidence and sources of the
Romance languages in the Middle Ages represents a field
of research in its own right that requires its own methods.
The most important principle of this research is to avoid
anachronistic concepts and perspectives in the description
and interpretation of the medieval data. Consequently, it is
necessary to abandon traditional conceptions of textual and
linguistic norms, traditional ideas about written language
use, and clear-cut distinctions between languages or even
varieties. On the other hand, it is necessary to adopt the
results of modern sociolinguistic approaches to language
contact, multilingual practices in the everyday life of diglos-
sic communities, standardization, and the identitary and
normative power of writing the vernacular. In this sense
old French, old Italian, and old Spanish are modern names
for a linguistic reality which is difficult to capture: during
the first centuries of our period, we are confronted with the
coexistence of individual solutions produced within one
text, perhaps never to be reproduced by a larger speech
community. Then, from 1150 onwards, we encounter a
multitude of scriptae, which were flexible regional norms
and which were far from representing codified standard var-
ieties. Consequently, medieval linguistic data should never
be decontextualized: because the Romance varieties have
such a low degree of codification, insights into the reasons
and the conditions governing this variation are more likely
if it is seen in the light of the particular circumstances of
its genesis.