The 12th century
Although this century brings widespread prosperity to the peninsula, with the blooming banks of Pisa and Florence (and how remarkable that two of the most important documents in Italian must be fragments from two accounting books, one from Florence, the other from Pisa).
The Carta savonese
Migliorini et. al. also point us to similar records, such as a Carta savonese, the inventory of a Genoese widow's properties (1182).
Carta pistoiese
Among other documents from this period is a Post-scriptum to a Carta Pistoiese incorporating the words of a Gradalone, a usurer who promises to refund his victims (1195).
List of goods from the Parish of Fondi
A list of the properties and credits from the Parish of Fondi (late 12th century) is another text most quoted in the annals of the Italian language. Unfortunately it is dificult to make out its exact meaning since father Antonio, son of Niccolò di fondi has no better grasp of its dialect than its latin, and the text appears to be a mish-mash of both:
Item vinale unu posto alla veterina a llatu Antoni de Trometa et a sancto Antoni a la via a longu la macera.
Item Pastena deve dare pro olo sanctu at pro cridima tometa de granum novem rase.
The first accounting books from a Florentine bank
This is the first text from a Florentine bank (called banco at the time from the desk on which transactions were made), and in spite of its rather prosaic content it is considered of the greatest importance since it helped scholars to understand the evolution of 12th century Florentine. Luckily, the text is remarkably long and from the way it is written and ordered it is believed there may well have been earlier much earlier books of this kind. It dates to 1211. It was used as the binding for a 14th century document, as happened for many other manuscripts:
MCCXII. Aldobrandino Petri e Buonessegna Falkoni no diono dare katuno in tuto libre lii per livre diciotto d'imperiali mezani, a rrascione di trenta e cinque meno terza, ke demmo loro tredici dì anzi kalende luglio, e diono pagare tredici dì anzi kalende luglio: se più stanno, a iiii denari libra il mese, quanto fosse nostra volontade. Testi Alberto Baldovini e Quitieri Alberti di Ponte del Duomo.
Carta di Montieri
The list of legal proceedings includes the Chart granted to the Men from Montieri (1219), in the Maremma Toscana, but its importance is not so much literary as historical, a this is pehaps the first document we have so far marking the final emancipation of communal societies (or cities states) from their feudal tutelage. Although we know some documents must have started to emerge in the early eleventh century, the most important charts usually date to much later than this period. It is also intriguing in that it still contains a number of corrections under the influence of the parties who were not satified with the fist draft and imposed several changes.
The Pergamena volterrana
There are also more court proceedigs resultig from the occasional lawsuits over the real estate ownership. Perhaps the most interesting is that contained in the Pergamena Volterrana (The Parchment of Volterra, 1158), about the settling of a territorial dispute in Travale between two brothers, the former being Count Ranieri Pannachieschi, the latter Galgano, bishop of Volterra.
A number of men are heard by judge Balduino, and one one of the most striking depositions is that of a guard, excused from his service after cracking a joke to protest the scarcity of his ration:
"Guaita, guaita male, non mangiai ma' mezo pane".
It is often quoted for being one of the oldest Italian proverbs or popular phrases of our language, quite precious since it belongs to colloquial speech and not to some legal or ritual formula.
It is now that emerge the first political tracts resulting from the independence the newly-born city states: the first bulletins of war with accounts of the battles, though not devoid of that propaganda and municipal pride, and party-bashing. If today the keywords are left and right, once it was all pope and empire, and from the allegiance of a city to one party or the other might depend the life of thousands. Sometimes the feuds pushed deep inside the city, with families being pitted against one another by neighboring cities.
Ritmo bellunese
One of the earliest 'bulletins' consists of a fragment of four verses on the battle of Belluno against the fortress of Casteldardo, a quote in Italian from a knight who took part in the fight and later inserted by an historian (who also report another such quote about a battle between a group of Lucchese against rivals from their neighboring towns, 1213) in his Latin chronicle. (Tarvisio is an old variant of Treviso):
De Casteldard avì li nostri bon part
i lo getà tutto intra lo flumo d'Ard
e sex cavalier de Tarvis li plui fer
con se duse li nostri cavaler.
transl.
Over Castel d'Ardo ours had the upper hand
they threw them into the river Ardo
and the six most valiant knights from Treviso
led our knights to victory.
To early literature belongs some poetry either written for a special occasion (as to entertain a prince or a bishop), comic pieces, allegorical verse or agiographies, such as The Ritmo Laurenziano, the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio, the Ritmo Cassinese and a Jewish Elegy.
The Ritmo laurenziano
The first has even been hailed as the oldest piece of Italian poetry: it is a long cry from being a work that could stand up to its Occitan counterparts, but its linguistic and documental importance cannot be neglected, and it also tells us something important about the life of Italian trobadours and jokers.
This short piece dates to about the late 12th c. - early 13th c and consists of twenty couplets of eight syllables each, which the joker recites before the bishop of Pisa (Villano, according to Mazzoni et. al.) when he accompanies the verse by miming.
After a captatio benevolentiae in which he praises the bishop's virtues, he asks him for a gift horse, promising to show it to the bishop of Volterra if he obtans it (he later reminds his host that he once received a similar present from another generous bishop, Grimald(esc)o.:
Se mi dà caval balçano, mosteroll'al bon G(algano),
a lo vescovo volterrano, cui benedicente bascio mano.
transl.
If you give me a white-patched horse, i will show it to good G[algano],
bishop of Volterra, whose hand I bless with a kiss.
In spite of its trivial subject the poem sticks to the literary canons of the best medieval poetry: salutatio (greeting), captatio benevolentiae (making yourself appreciated by paying some compliment), petitio (the request, here asking the bishop for the gift horse), exemplum (saying that Grimalde(sc)o had already given him a horse). The hints to Latin and Occitan literature in the style also tell us that the joker, if not original as a poet, must have been well-read in classical and French literature.
The Ritmo di Sant'Alessio
The Ritmo di San'Alessio (late 12th-early 13th c.) must be set in a similar environment, the court, though its purpose was also to edify: it is based on St. Alexis's life but its sophistication goes well beyond that of the Ritmo Laurenziano.
The Ritmo di Montecassino
The Ritmo di Montecassino dates to the same period and is also addressed to a cultivated audience, but is ia piece of fiction, its allegorical character being soon revealed in the first lines. The story tells of the Mystic (representing the orient, a contemplative person) who meets the Mundane, or (a pragmatic, action-oriented man, embodying modern western values).
As a result, a conversation ensues in which both philosophies are examined in light of Christian values.
The bestiario amoroso
A long prose book is the Bestiario amoroso, the Italian version of the Bestiaire amoureux by Rimbalt de Vaqueiras. Unfortunately the Italian is neither a good remake nor a decent translation, for the anonymous who translated it even misses the meaning of many stock metaphors which are the very repertoire of courtly love. The author of the Bestiaire, a French trobadour was quite known and admired in his age, and fluent in Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, and a number of Italian dialects.
The Italian laguage in the South
Sicily and a good part of Southern Italy, which by 1059 had become a Norman state probably enjoy more linguistic uniformity but we have fewer Sicilian documents from this period compared to the number of Sardinian records. Unfortnately Sardinia had practically no bearing on Italian given its geograhic isolation.
We will have to wait from for Frederick II to see the first Italian literature able to rival its French counterparts, while Northern literature would continue to be indebted to French and Latin models until Dante, when the great Florentines start to inspire new generations of writers.
Proverbi de femene
From Lombardy, in Northern Italy comes a misogynous work from the early 13th century on the mischievous character of women with advice to guard against their deceitful nature, on the tone of later mystic poets as Bonvesin de la Riva. As the weaker sex, and after the example of Eve, women were considered much more inclined to sinning and it is not difficult to hear a stern preacher's warnings in the verse. The metre consists of 189 quartains of double heptameters:
E como son falsiseme plene de felonia
Et unqa mai no dotano far caosa qe rea sia.
Or dirai qualqe caosa de la lor malvasia.
ond se varde li omini de la soa triçaria
Such early poems would pave the way to the moralizing literature from Veneto introduced by Bonvesin de la Riva in the next century, when the need for reformation pushed people like St. Francis to bring about a true renewal of Christianism throughout the peninsula, one that would emancipate early Italian literature from didacticism while spreading a genuine religious fervor among Italians.
As in the Piedmont document, the French influence on the spelling and the vocabulary is massive, as is the contamination with Latin which makes up for a rather irregular text but not cetainly one written on impulse or by some uneducated person.
Such fervor will lay the foundations of religious drama based on accounts of the Passion of Christ. Early attempts used only dialogues in Latin, and were read in church for Easter Friday, although no staging was involved. Later, such dialogues were translated into early Italian, and played by friars, on a parvis (it. sagrato) in front of the church (In the 14th c. Jacopone da Todi will be the first dramatic author in this sense), from where modern theater takes its first timid steps that will lead him to Renaissance drama in the 16th c.
The Lamento di Maria
The Lamento di Maria (late 12th century) is peraphs the first move in this direction: three lines at the end of a Passion in Latin written in colloquial, southern Italian, where Mary struggles with grief at the sight of her dying son:
...te portai nillu meo ventre
Quando te beio moro presente
Nillu teu regnu agime a mente.
transl.
...I carried you in my bosom
[And] when i see you (like that I) feel like dying
Remember me when you are in your kingdom.
The Elegia giudaica
We could not end the 12th century without mentioning the Elegia Giudaica ("Jewish Elegy"), an important document on the life of Italy's early Jewish communities, the more important since it is written in Italian, probably from the same period as the Lamento. It is impossible to tell what town or city it is from: all we know is that its linguistic traits place it in an area comprised between Umbria and Marche.
It is also interesting to note contaminations from leitmotifs in vogue in joker's tales, possibly some influence from the Ritmo di Sant'Alessio. The Elegia Giudaica is the tale of two Jewish brothers separated at a very young age and sold to an innkeper and a prostitute, their late agnition and death. Their sad story represent the diaspora of the Jews: the tale was written to be read in the sinagogue.
We will have to wait until the 1230s to see a literature that is capable of producing poetry that may be regarded as a model for the entire peninsula and even capable of crossing the boundaries of city states to be copied, reproduced and widely imitated, one whose language can be understood by all Italians, as St. Francis' mystic verse, the Sicilian poetry under Frederick and then the Dolce Stil Novo in Florence.