The marginal glosses in ms. Saraval of David Qimḥi’s Sefer ha-shorashim

The excellent ms. Saraval of David Qimḥi’s Sefer Ha-Shorashim (Wrocław F 46886 (4), copied in 1301, is particularly interesting because of its marginal glosses that refer either to a Hebrew word within the text or to an Occitan gloss embedded in Radaq’s original text. Those glosses aimed at explaining a Hebrew word and the superglosses glossing an Occitan gloss are accurately vocalized. This makes them precise enough for a linguistic identification. On the base of the phonetic features they display I propose to consider them specimens of an Abruzzese dialect. Although the repartition and shape of Italo-Romance dialects underwent a lot of changes during the time span that elapsed  from the Middle Ages till our days, this dialectal localization is confirmed by the concomitance of dialectal features typical for this specific sub-area on the linguistic map of Italo-Romance dialects. In the present note I would like to focus on a selection of few glosses whose phonetic shape could help identify their origin.

Turning back to the history of the manuscript itself, the fact that it was recopied in 1301 and became later the personal property of Gersonides (1288-1344) suggest considering that the text was recopied in Languedoc or Provence and that it reached Italy at a later stage. The Languedocian or Provençal origin of the copy is confirmed by the use of the spelling טִידוֹניֵיר tisonier [tizo´njεr] (s.r. אוד) with the typically Provençal Jewish way of representing the intervocalic voiced sibilant [z] by a non-etymological דֿ>> (daleth rafeh).¹ Only after the manuscript reached Italy, the marginal glosses written in a language that is obviously an Italo-Romance dialect (we will see later which one) were added by the new owner of the manuscript.

In the present study I do not intend to deal with each and every marginal gloss of the manuscript. I would like to limit my scope to the glosses that could help identifying the geographical origin of the dialect used in the paratext.

Some glosses of Hebrew words

fol. 3r s.r. אבס

אֵבוּס “manger” (Isaiah 1:3) = לַמַניְידורַה = la manjadora/la mangiadora

This form seems to be a dialectal equivalent of the Tuscan forms mangiatoia/mangiatoria “manger”. My identification is confirmed by the following gloss where the same word is used to translate the lemma מַאֲבֻסֶיהָ (Jeremiah 50:26), a term etymologically related to אֵבוּס with a slightly different meaning: not manger from animals but rather “storehouses” (KJV version). The contextual translation is intended to gloss the whole tevah מַאֲבֻסֶיהָ with its suffixed pronoun is לִימַניְידורִי סוְיִי, that is li mangiadori suoi/li manjadori soi with a change in the gender of the noun: not mangiadora anymore but rather mangiadori. Apparently, the voicing of the intervocalic dental stop [t] in the reflex of the Latin suffix –tore(m) seems to correspond to a Northern feature. However it is not unknown in Tuscan as shown by the use of the form mangiadore “eater” instead of mangiatore, a litteral  translation of Petrus Comestor’s nickname in the Divine Comedy, Paradise, XII, 123. It is usual to ascribe the occasional voicing of intervocalic stops to the influence of Northern Italo-Romance dialects on medieval Tuscan. As a matter of fact, the occasional voicing of intervocalic stops in Tuscan is not only the result of a northern influence. It also reveals that the famous linguistic frontier between Northern Italo-Romance and Centro-Meridional dialects is not so absolute, at least as far as consonant voicing is concerned.² Moreover, another dimension could be at stake here: not the voicing of intervocalic stops stricto sensu but rather the lenition, an evolution that is well attested in Central and Meridional Italo-Romance dialects and that could also be represented by the spelling מַניְידורִי mangiadori. The intermediate stage of the stop after the Central Italian lenition — still unvoiced but nevertheless pronounced softly like a voiced stop — could be reflected by the use of daleth.

fol. 4v s.r. אהב

אָהַב “to love” = אַמַרֵי = amare

The form amare (rather than amar) helps restrict the span of identification of the dialect represented by the glosses. In the preceding item I mentioned that the voicing of the [t] of the Latin suffix –tore(m) is a common share of both Northern Italo-Romance dialects and Tuscan and that the use of Hebrew letters in order to write Italo-Romance dialect does not allow to distinguish this voicing from the lenition characterizing Central Italo-Romance. Here, however, the preservation of the infinitive ending –are as –are clearly allows to exclude both a Northern origin and an extreme Southern origin. It excludes a Northern origin because of the complete dropping of final –e in the Northern Italo-Romance dialects. It does not fit a Southern origin either since in many dialects of Southern Italy (except for the extreme South), the last vowel of paroxytones and proparoxytones to [-ə].³ Now the use of a final –י preceded by a ṣere in אַמַרֵי is a clear indication that the final vowel of this infinitive was a fully-fledged [-e]. This allows to consider that it represents a Central Italo-Romance dialect rather than a Southern one.

fol. 7r s.r. אח

האח =

לַפוֹקַרַה = la focara

This noun constitutes a clearly Southern feature. It appears in the Divine Comedy (Inferno, XXVIII 89) but in the context of the poem it has probably the value of a toponym related to a place near Pesaro that was known for the pyres local people used to ascend on the shore. The presence of the Meridionalism la focara as a default choice way for translating the Hebrew lemma האח confirms the centro-meridional origin of the dialect used in the margin of the manuscript (central rather than genuinely meridional as shown by the afore-mentioned preservation of the final vowel in paroxytones and proparoxytones).

Superglosses, that is, Italo-Romance glosses explaining the meaning of Occitan glosses

fol. 5r s.r. אוד

אוּד “firebrand” = טִיצוֹני = tizzone (Isaiah 7:4).

The same remark made about the form amare applies to the form tizzone: the final -e corroborates the assumption that the dialect represented by the marginal glosses is not a Northern one since in the Northern dialects the suffix –one would have dropped the final vowel: –on/-un.

The gloss of אוּד “firebrand” by טִיצוֹני  tizzone, same meaning, is a clear correction of the Occitan gloss טיצוניר tizonier [titso´jεr]/tiso´jεr] “poker” (in the printed edition of Biesenthal and Lebrecht)⁴ or more specifically טִידוֹניֵיר tisonier [tizo´njεr] in ms. Saraval with the afore-mentioned Provençal Jewish way of representing the intervocalic voiced sibilant [z] by a non-etymological דֿ>> (daleth rafeh). This nomen agentis tizonier/tisonier normally refers to the poker, that is, the instrument that allows to move the firebrands in order to reactivate the fire whereas the Italo-Romance word tizzone is a designation of the firebrand itself. Thus the supergloss טִיצוֹני = tizzone is a way to correct Qimḥi’s erroneous equivalence between the Hebrew lemma אוּד “firebrand” and the Occitan gloss טיצוניר tizonier/ טִידוֹניֵיר tisonier.

fol. 4v s.r. אדר

אַדֶּרֶת שֵׂעָר (Genesis 25 :25)

Qimḥi has glossed this phrase by the Occitan word אֶשְקָלְוִינָה escalvina “cape” and this Occitan gloss (originally esclavina rather than the corrupted form escalvina) was translated as סְקַלַוְינַה scalavina in the margin of the manuscript (instead of schiavina, the expected Italo-Romance equivalent for esclavina). The non-palatalization of [l] after consonant at the beginning of this word is quite rare in the Italo-Romance dialects. The same phonetic characteristic is also attested on fol. 5r (s.r. אוב) with the gloss פלסקי flaschi instead of fiaschi “flasks” in order to gloss אֹבֹת “goatskins” (Job 32:19) and on fol. 6r (s.r. אור)  with the gloss פלוייַה ploggia instead of pioggia in order to gloss מטר “rain”. Since this conservative feature regarding the treatment of [l] initial consonant is very circumscribed on the dialectological map of Italo-Romance, its recurrence among the forms of the marginal glosses may greatly help to identify with precision the dialect that is represented in this paratextual corpus: apparently it corresponds to Abruzzese although the non-palatalization of [l] after consonant is also attested in the medieval attestations of some Northern dialects. However the epenthesis of a svarabhakti vowel in sclavina is a clear dialectal shibboleth that allows to identify the marginal glosses and superglosses as Abruzzese.⁵

fol. 5v s.r. אוח

lemmata אֹחים

נְמייה

Qimḥi glosses these lemmata אֹחים “owls” in Isaiah 13:21 and נִמייה “mongoose” in Rabbinical Hebrew by מרטורו martoro “marten” (Biesenthal and Lebrecht). The form martoro provided by Biesenthal and Lebrecht probably corresponds to an Italo-Romance form.⁶ It appears as the correct Occitan form מרטרי martre in ms. Saraval. The supergloss מַרְטְרִי is almost identical with the form מרטרי that appears in the body of the text, the only difference being that the supergloss is vocalized whereas the form in the body of the text is not. Thus it is not the Italo-Romance form martora that would have been expected in an Italian supergloss but rather an explicitation of the superglossed gloss.

Conclusion

The few glosses analyzed in this note were sufficient to identify with a growing precision the language and even the dialect in which the marginal glosses of ms. Saraval of Sefer Ha-Shorashim were written. On the base of a set of dialectal shibboleths it is possible to state that the Italo-Romance exemplified by those glosses and superglosses do not belong either to the northern nor to the southern edges of the Italo-Romance dialectal continuum. Within the frame of the Italo-Romance dialects, it could correspond to one of the dialects of Abbruzo. The identification with Abruzzese has been made possible thank to the exceptional feature that consists in avoiding the palatalization of [l] after the initial consonant and to use occasionally an epenthetic vowel in order to avoid an accumulation of three consonants. More precisely, it could belongs to the Sabine dialect of Abruzzo or more precisely to the dialect of L’Aquila (the southmost central dialect of Italo-Romance) inasmuch as the glosses and superglosses display some central features. Let us remind that Abruzzo is dialectally divided between the dialect of Sabina and L’Aquila, which belong to the central dialects of Italo-Romance, and the remaining dialects of Abruzzo that already belong to the northern edge of the meridional dialects.

It would be interesting to corroborate this dialectological conclusion with what is known about the Jewish presence in the Abbruzo in Late Middle Ages. Once again one thinks of L’Aquila and its region. In this area there are many traces of a former Jewish presence in the late Middle Ages.⁷ From an onomastic point of view, let us mention that Tagliacozzo was a Jewish center in the past, as shown by the fact that Tagliacozzo is a typical second name in contemporaneous Jewish Rome. In the same area of the province of L’Aquila Civitaretenga had once a Jewish quarter that persisted till the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Naples in 1541.

The mention of the various purchasers of the manuscript (no less than three between 1491 or perhaps 1494, and 1495) show that it was eventually brought to Ancona in the Papal States even before the final expulsion of the Jews from Southern Italy. The reason for this transfer to Ancona at the very end of the fifteenth century could have been the French invasion of the Kingdom of Naples in 1494-1495. If this assumption is true, Binyamin ben Binyamin could have sold the manuscript to Yosef ben Shemuel in 1494 short after his arrival in Ancona that was out of the reach of the French invaders and of the troubles resulting from the weakening of the Aragonese authority in the Kingdom of Naples. The fact that this transaction was concluded on the day of the 10 of Teveth 5255 (16th December 1494) is interesting because this period of the late fall-early winter 1494 witnessed the fulgurant advance of the French troops in Central Italy on their way to the Kingdom of Naples to which Abruzzo belonged. The alarming notices about the excesses of the French conquerors could have terrorized populations of Abruzzo in the Aragonese-controlled Kingdom of Naples threatened by the French blitzkrieg. This situation might have motivated the immigration of Abbruzzese Jews in Ancona where the manuscript passed from hand to hand. Admittedly, the population of L’Aquila surrendered with enthusiasm to the French in January 1495, as mentioned by the chronicler of Charles VIII’s Italian war, Philippe de Commynes.⁸ However, it is quite understandable that the Abruzzese Jews perceived the ephemerous French conquest of the Kingdom of Naples as an event able to challenge the precarious status quo that the Jews had painfully achieved in the frame of the Aragonese rule in Southern Italy.⁹

References

Aslanov C. (1996) “Quelques remarques sur les gloses romanes du Livre des Racines de David Qimḥi,” Cahiers d’Études Romanes, 8: 1-25.

Aslanov C. (2003) “Le déchiffrement des gloses judéo-romanes: essai de retrospective,” Helmantica: Revista de filología clásica y hebrea. Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, LIV, núm 163: 9-42.

Aslanov C. (2021) “Judeo-Provençal,” in Lutz Edzard and Ofra Tirosh-Becker (eds.), Jewish Languages: Text specimens, grammatical, lexical and cultural sketches, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2021, 614-626.

Berardi, M. R. (1996) “Per la storia della presenza ebraica in Abruzzo e nel Molise tra medioevo e prima età moderna,” in: C. D. Fonseca et al. (eds.), L’ebraismo dell’Italia meridionale peninsulare dalle origini al 1541. Società, economia, cultura (Atti del IX Congresso internazionale dell’Associazione italiana per lo studio del giudaismo: Potenza-Venosa, 20-24 settembre 1992), Galatina, Congedo, 267-294.

Canalis S. (2013) “L’esito di -p-, -t-, -c- in toscano antico: un nuovo argomento a favore della presenza di sonorizzazione intervocalica,” in: E. Casanova and C. Calvo (eds.), Actas del XXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románicas. Valencia 2010, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter, vol. 1, 521-532

Fournel, J. L. (2012) “Les violences de guerre dans les ‘Mémoires’ de Commynes : contribution à une histoire de la violence pré-moderne,” in: J. Blanchard (ed.), 1511-2011, Philippe de Commynes, droit, écriture: deux piliers de la souveraineté, Geneva, Droz, 105-125.

Rohlfs G. (1949) Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten (Band I: Lautlehre), Bern, A. Francke.

Tekavčić P. (1972) Grammatica storica dell’italiano (volume I: Fonematica), Bologna, Il Mulino.

Zeldes, N. (2019) “The Mass Conversion of 1495 in South Italy and Its Precedents: a Comparative Approach,” Medieval Encounters 25: 227-262.

1. Aslanov C. “Judeo-Provençal,” in: Lutz Edzard and Ofra Tirosh-Becker (eds.), Jewish Languages: Text specimens, grammatical, lexical and cultural sketches, Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz Verlag, 2021, 617. [↩]
2. Canalis S. “L’esito di -p-, -t-, -c- in toscano antico: un nuovo argomento a favore della presenza di sonorizzazione intervocalica” in: E. Casanova and C. Calvo (eds.), Actas del XXVI Congreso Internacional de Lingüística y Filología Románicas. Valencia 2010, Berlin-Boston, De Gruyter, 2013, vol. 1, 521-532. [↩]
3. Rohlfs G. Historische Grammatik der italienischen Sprache und ihrer Mundarten (Band I: Lautlehre), Bern, A. Francke, 1949, 240. [↩]
4. On this form see Aslanov C. “Quelques remarques sur les gloses romanes du Livre des Racines David Qimhi”, Cahiers d’études romanes, 8 (décembre 1996): 15-17. [↩]
5. Tekavčić P. Grammatica storica dell’italiano (volume I: Fonematica), Bologna, Il Mulino, 283. [↩]
6. Wartburg, W. v. Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Basle, Zbinden, 2002, XVI, 537b. On the tendency of Biesenthal and Lebrecht to use outdated Provençal dictionaries in order to identify the Occitan glosses of Sefer Ha-Shorashim, see Aslanov C., “Le déchiffrement des gloses judéo-romanes: essai de retrospective,” Helmantica: Revista de filología clásica y hebrea. Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, LIV, núm 163 (January-April 2003): 11-12. [↩]
7. Berardi, M.R. “Per la storia della presenza ebraica in Abruzzo e nel Molise tra medioevo e prima età moderna,” in: C. D. Fonseca et al. (eds.), L’ebraismo dell’Italia meridionale peninsulare dalle origini al 1541. Società, economia, cultura (Atti del IX Congresso internazionale dell’Associazione italiana per lo studio del giudaismo: Potenza-Venosa, 20-24 settembre 1992), Galatina, Congedo, 1996, 267-294. [↩]
8. Philippe de Commynes, Mémoires, livre VII, ch. 13. On the turning point constituted by the brutalization of war on the occasion of the 1494-1495 French campaign in Italy, see Fournel, J.L. “Les violences de guerre dans les ‘Mémoires’ de Commynes : contribution à une histoire de la violence pré-moderne,” in: J. Blanchard (ed.), 1511-2011, Philippe de Commynes, droit, écriture: deux piliers de la souveraineté, Geneva, Droz, 2012, 105-125. [↩]
9. On the fragilization of the status of the Jews in the Kingdom of Naples since the beginning of the French invasion into the Kingdom, see Zeldes, N. “The Mass Conversion of 1495 in South Italy and Its Precedents: a Comparative Approach,” Medieval Encounters 25 (2019): 240-252. [↩]

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