The Medieval Salento. Linda Safran

ends in the genitive -u.⁴¹ In one Taranto inscription [123.A], Silanus ends with a vav (hence Silano or Silanu), probably reflecting that the final -s was disappearing in pronunciation at this time, a feature typical of southern Italian dialects.⁴² Iotacisms that reflect current speech are common in all of the languages used for Jewish as well as Christian texts.

      In a manuscript of the Mishnah produced in Otranto circa 1072 and now in Parma, glosses written in the vernacular language but with Hebrew characters clarify which plants cited in Mishnaic Hebrew could not be grown alongside others.⁴³ This vernacular would not reappear in local texts until the late fourteenth century. Shabbetai Donnolo’s pharmaceutical terms provide tenth-century evidence for a distinctive Salento dialect, but because Donnolo’s scientific terms are very similar in Greek, Latin, and proto-Italian it is difficult to know which language they represent (the absence of many final consonants supports the vernacular).⁴⁴ A sampling from the Otranto Mishnah reveals the unambiguous Greek sources of many terms, including klivanidt, from Greek κλιβανίτης, a kind of bread, and savani, from Greek σάβανον, a linen cloth.⁴⁵ Robert Bonfil’s investigation of two South Italian Hebrew chronicles, Megillat Ahima‘az and Sefer Josippon (written outside the Salento), concluded that their authors were actually thinking in Latin or the Romance vernacular even when writing in Hebrew; because they were used to speaking those other tongues, it infiltrated their texts.⁴⁶

      By the medieval period, the use of Greek in Jewish liturgy had largely been replaced by Hebrew.⁴⁷ That Hebrew was used for praying and writing facilitated interaction with faraway Jewish communities and was an important marker of Jewish difference from Christianity. Yet as a sacred language, and one known only to men, it could not be used generally for speaking. Romaniote (Byzantine) Jews, including those in the Salento, spoke a hybridized Greek, not Hebrew.⁴⁸ In the ninth century, the Jews of Venosa (in Basilicata) needed a translator when a scholar visiting from Baghdad delivered a Sabbath sermon in an unfamiliar language that was probably Hebrew.⁴⁹ However, in the public disputation circa 1220 between the Jews of Otranto and Nicholas-Nektarios, abbot of the Orthodox monastery at Casole, the abbot records that the Jews conferred among themselves in Hebrew.⁵⁰ Nicholas-Nektarios knew the language—on occasion he even wrote Hebrew in Greek characters⁵¹—so he probably was correct about what he heard. Perhaps the simplest explanation is that the most learned local Jews could converse in Hebrew, or at least quote from written sources, but this was not a widespread phenomenon; medieval Hebrew was for writing and worship, not for speech. In later chapters I suggest that the most learned Jews also dressed differently from their coreligionists and engaged in certain ritual practices that “regular” Jews did not. They were, in effect, equivalent to such Christian role models as abbots and bishops, whose standards of behavior and learning were different from those of most Christians.

      Latin

      Latin was used in the Salento for a large number of dedicatory inscriptions, a few epitaphs, and two kinds of public expression unattested in Hebrew: painted or incised devotional inscriptions and hortatory texts.⁵² Except for the Latin faces of ten bilingual Hebrew epitaphs from Taranto and early dedicatory or didactic inscriptions from Oria [83, 84] and Brindisi [20, 25], the Latin texts can be dated between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. As with Hebrew, Latin public texts are far outnumbered by surviving examples in Greek.

      The dedicatory inscriptions vary widely in scale and include commemoration of whole churches or monasteries [1, 21.A–B, 57, 58, 144], roof beams [78.B], an altar [38], pavements [86.A–G, 140.C–E], and individual wall paintings [78.C], in addition to partial renovations of or additions to existing buildings [35]. A Byzantine claim to have rebuilt the entire city of Brindisi from its foundations stands out for its hubris [20]. Over 60 percent of these inscriptions give the year of the dedication with Anno Domini or Anno Dominice, year of the Lord, or Anno ab Incarnatione, year since the Incarnation. The date is usually supplemented by additional elements and highlighted by its placement in the first or last line. In two-thirds of the dated inscriptions there is a reference to the current king and/or the local lord, complete with titles; in several cases the month or day is noted, and even more often the indiction [1, 28.W, 38, 79.A, 86.E, 117.A, 144]. This imprecise but widespread system of dating according to fifteen-year cycles was much more common in Greek public texts. Its use in Latin probably indicates awareness of the Byzantine indiction, which began on September 1, but may also indicate familiarity with other kinds of cyclical reckoning, with different starting dates, used irregularly by the papacy, notaries, and others. This method of dating was falling rapidly out of fashion in Europe by the fourteenth century, but it endured much later in the Salento with its strong Byzantine ties [79.A].⁵³

      Patrons inscribed dedications in Latin for many reasons. They rarely cite as motives the remission of their sins [1.A] or eternal life [58.A]; more often the dedication is simply to honor Christ, the Virgin, and various saints [1, 38, 57, 67.B, 78.C, 144]. The phrase ad (or in) honore Dei [144] is an echo of the liturgy.⁵⁴ Sometimes no reason is given; perhaps generic piety was motive enough. On the column base at Brindisi, the dedication seems to be in honor of the “magnificent and benign emperors”; unfortunately, the text is incomplete [20]. Pious donations of goods (bonorum, donis) and serfs (colonis) were publicly recorded at Castro [35] and Lecce [58.A]. Of the Latin dedicatory texts that preserve information about their patrons, a clear majority were high-ranking ecclesiastics or priests, alone or in combination with lay donors, followed by feudal lords, then architects or artists.⁵⁵ Two of these texts were in Leonine hexameters, the metrical form underscoring the episcopal patronage [57, 78.C].

      In contrast with the dedications, devotional and hortatory texts in Latin rarely preserve a date of any kind. An exception is at Statte in 1416, where Nicholas Bertini, a traveler from northern Italy, left his name and the date of his visit to nearby Taranto [117.B].⁵⁶ This kind of specificity fits the late date of this graffito, incised at a time when ideas about individualism were taking hold in northern Italy. In the Salento, too, dates are included in many postmedieval graffiti not included in my Database. Medieval visitors, by contrast, wanted to transcend the specifics of their recorded presence and solicit eternal favor or remembrance.

      With the notable exception of incised graffiti, devotional invocations almost invariably begin with an abbreviation of the vocative Memento Domine, “Remember, Lord.” This is followed by “your servant,” either famuli tui, the correct genitive case, or the dative famulo tuo, which by the Middle Ages is a much rarer form. The dative is used disproportionately in Salentine Latin texts, however, either because of a contamination from the Greek or an attraction to the case of the patron’s name in the vernacular. In any case, the meaning of the inscription would have been, and remains, clear. The priest Sarulus who dedicated images of Saint Nicholas and Saint Margaret in two different crypt churches at Mottola must have been unperturbed when artists wrote famulo in one and famuli in the other [75.A, 76.C].

      Latin devotional graffiti occur in large numbers at only two sites, San Marco in Massafra and Santa Lucia in Palagianello [66, 94]. These differ from more formal texts in several ways: they are incised irregularly, rather than painted or carefully carved; they are often much shorter and may be superimposed; some are in minuscule, or in a combination of capital, uncial, and minuscule letters; and they very rarely use the formal Memento Domine formula. Instead, most Latin graffiti begin with Ego, “I am,” followed by a name or names. These two sites, along with a third [116.A] that is also in the province of Taranto, contain the only Latin hortatory injunctions in the Salento. The overt request that readers of these texts pray for the person named therein was directed to Latin readers such as the monks, priests, and other clergy who identify themselves by profession in didactic Latin graffiti at the same sites.

      In Santa Lucia (the former Trinità) at Brindisi, a painted text combines