The Medieval Salento. Linda Safran

Other imperial or royal titles included in Salento inscriptions are used mainly as indicators of date and tell us little about the individual commemorated or credited in the inscription.⁵ A series of titles occurs only in Latin texts, most ostentatiously at Santa Maria del Casale in 1335 when Nicholas de Marra is identified as royal knight, royal lord of two villages, councillor, familiar, captain general, and justiciar [28.W].⁶ Of civic titles, most occur only once in the corpus of painted or carved texts: chamberlain [48], nobleman (nobilis vir) [141], royal baron [144], leader (praeses) [78.C], preceptor [28.T], village captain (kephalikos) [30], spatharios (a minor title originally applied to a bodyguard) [32.J], soldier (stratiotes) [43.A]. One Hebrew gravestone in Bari bears the title strategos even though the Justinianic law code barred Jews from the army and the title of “general” was patently impossible [10.B].⁷ The only civic titles used more than once are “count” [48, 58.A–B] and “judge” (iudex, iustitiarius) [28.W, 79.A]. The more generically respectful “lord” (dominus, kyrievontos) is employed several times [1.A, 28.T, W, 38, 48, 86.E, 144] and “lady” (domina) twice [1.A, 81.B], once for a Jewish woman. A rabbi who was also the son of a rabbi boasts this largely honorific title [18] and another has a double titulature, “rabbi” and “master” [149].⁸ This last is a vague title, but it recurs in Hebrew [150] and magister/μαΐστωρ precedes names in Latin and Greek [31, 51.A, 109.A]. One of these may contain the further specification magister muratoribus [39],⁹ and another two men are identified as sons of a magister [36, 87.A]. It is difficult to know whether and to what degree a particular title or profession conveyed status in the Middle Ages, but I have assumed that if it was worth recording in an inscription it probably was noteworthy in the broader social context.

      A wide range of medieval occupations is attested in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin written documents, far more than are attested in public texts and images.¹⁰ Excavations provide further evidence for occupations not recorded in texts (the faith of these workers is unknown): Supersano had linen workers, Otranto had vintners, Apigliano and Quattro Macine had metalsmiths, and several communities produced ceramics used in the region and beyond.¹¹ If it actually had four mills, as its name implies, Quattro Macine must have had quite a few inhabitants involved in grain production. Yet none of these professionals left a secure visual or verbal record of their presence.

      The professions of some individuals can nevertheless be deduced from a variety of nontextual evidence. We can extrapolate that professional stonecarvers were available from the high quality of some of the incised tombstones in all three languages. The example from Oria manifests the comfort of the carver with Hebrew and his relative unfamiliarity with Latin [81]. Many Latin funerary and dedicatory texts, such as those at San Paolo in Brindisi [26.C] and Santa Maria del Galeso [144], betray all the hallmarks of professional carving, with ruled guidelines, word divisions, regular lettering, and careful inlay. The first carver of the Andrano hospital dedication shows a distinctively angular style and a profusion of Greek ligatures [4.A]; he was more of a professional than the second carver [4.B].¹² That professional carvers were not always employed even for highly visible projects seems clear in the case of Taphouros, the ciborium carver at Cerrate; André Jacob argues that he barely knew his Greek [114.C–D].¹³

      A partial roster of occupations is visible in the Last Judgment at Santo Stefano in Soleto (ca. 1440) [113.B]. While the artist has essentially followed Byzantine artistic conventions and much of the scene is formulaic (if no less affecting for that), these particular professions would have been rendered in the Greek of the models, not the local volgare, if they were irrelevant to fifteenth-century life in the region.¹⁴ Hence we find, among the damned, a builder (with ax) and woodworker, a butcher, tailor (with scissors), innkeeper (with jug), and shoemaker (with oversized tool), all of whom share space with the more obviously moralizing usurer, thief, rich man, and greedy man. Several of the labels that accompany the sinners have clearly been repainted and it is not certain that these were the original occupations, but the roster of professional malfeasance deserves to be included even if it takes us slightly beyond my chronological boundaries. The two other Last Judgment scenes in the Salento, at Santa Maria del Casale near Brindisi [28.A] and San Giovanni Evangelista at San Cesario di Lecce [108.sc], are within our time frame but much less informative: there are the usual clergy, monks, and nuns, but only the innkeeper at Brindisi is labeled and has two jugs around her(?) neck.¹⁵

      In surviving works there is a preponderance of religious titles. One of several possible words used for “priest” is by far the most common title employed in Salentine inscriptions: there is one πρωτόπαπας [46] and one κληρικός [33.G], but a dozen men are titled either ἱερεύς, παπᾶς, or πρεσβυτέρος and two the more poetic θύτης [49] and θυηπόλος [114.B]. Roman-rite priests similarly outnumber all other professionals: one archpriest, one chlericus, five sacerdos or sacerdotis, and nine extant presbyters. Higher and lower clergy are also represented in public texts: seven bishops or archbishops and four deacons, including one arch- and one subdeacon.

      Four men are termed monks in Greek, including one hieromonk [114.A], and a group of monks from Otranto added a collective graffito to a dedicatory text at Vaste [154.B]. We do not find in the Salento the written record of nuns characteristic of church dedications in such areas as southern Greece, and few if any nuns are depicted.¹⁶ I do not assume that such adjectives as “humble,” ταπεινός, necessarily identify a monk [143.A]; others with that adjective are priests. Monastic profession was no obstacle to textual recording, as Roman-rite abbots, a prior [22.F], and Orthodox abbots are all associated with inscriptions. One of the Orthodox abbots [109.A] and one bishop [49] have the additional designation “lord” (κύρ), thus supplementing their religious titulature with a secular one. Finally, there is an ὀβφέρτος (oblate) of Saint Stephen at Vaste, either the tonsured, kneeling priest George or his father [157.G]. Because all of these texts were visible to others, albeit in varying degrees, the titles used should be accurate; it is doubtful that anyone could style himself iudex or even σπαθάριος in public unless he had been awarded such a title or had that profession, although it is possible that the more vague magister/μαΐστωρ or even dominus/domina/κύρ were used without much standardization.¹⁷

      Even when an individual patron or supplicant is untitled, his status could be communicated by proximity to those who are. Thus when George Longo invites four bishops to attend the consecration of his new hospital at Andrano, their presence announces George’s social standing at that moment; only one of the bishops, Donadeus of Castro, was required for the consecration [4.B]. Whether the coterie of regional bishops might have visited George on other occasions cannot be determined, but on this socially significant occasion they were all there, their presence recorded proudly and in perpetuity. George lacks a title, but status accrues to him through the ranks of his guests.

      An act of the Latin archbishop of Taranto in 1028 was signed in Latin by ten priests, two deacons, and one subdeacon and in Greek by one protospatharios, one spatharocandidate, and two tourmarchs.¹⁸ Public texts never include so many names and titles, and neither do they address a comparably wide range of topics. Yet even the more limited public titulature confirms the overwhelming presence of Christian priests and other religious titleholders in the local built environment and in the verbal communication of local status. As discussed in Chapter 2, the fact or appearance of literacy was a source of social and cultural power.

      One of the most interesting professions, because it is so rarely attested