Les marchands toscans face au latin vers 1400. Indices de contacts linguistiques dans l'Archivio Datini

Jérôme Hayez (1)

1 LAMOP - Laboratoire de Médiévistique Occidentale de Paris

This contribution first provides a typological categorization of the Latin texts preserved in the largest European collection of mercantile documents, the Archivio Datini in Prato, in order to understand how "illitterate" merchants could have access to Latin documents kept at home for various purposes. Latin is not used in the ledgers written in Tuscany, and hardly ever in the technical, religious, and literary writings collected by ordinary people. However, Tuscan merchants mainly receive Latin letters from their colleagues from Liguria and Piedmont, as well as from churchmen and scholars, often living abroad. Among the legal texts, notarial records and court procedures are generally written in Latin. While the language used in mercantile communication is negotiated case by case between merchants with different backgrounds, using various forms of bilingualism, notaries are practically the only interpreters used to translate the language of law.

Mots clés: Latin; Vernacular Languages; Translation Studies; Pragmatic Writings; Merchants and Culture

Domaines: Histoire

Jérôme Hayez. Les marchands toscans face au latin vers 1400. Indices de contacts linguistiques dans l'Archivio Datini. Sara Bischetti, Michele Lodone, Cristiano Lorenzi, Antonio Montefusco. Toscana bilingue (1260 ca.-1430 ca.). Per una storia sociale del tradurre medievale, a cura di Sara Bischetti, Michele Lodone, Cristiano Lorenzi, Antonio Montefusco, 3, De Gruyter, 2021, Toscana biblingue, 978-3-11-070203-3. ⟨halshs-03095641⟩