Bilingualism in Medieval Italian Preaching

This article examines the language of an important collection of sermons by Angelo da Porta Sole, predicator generalis of the Dominican Order and Bishop of Grosseto, who preached in Tuscany in the early fourteenth century. It is a very early case of the macaronic sermon, in the wider sense of the term (not to be confused with a very particular kind of late fifteenth-century Italian preaching). Adopting the scheme proposed by Siegfried Wenzel for English macaronic sermons, this article examines three ways in which Latin and the Umbrian vernacular are combined in Angelo da Porta Soleâ s sermons, namely: the insertion of a vernacular word in a Latin sentence; the presence of vernacular glosses of Latin words and etymological doublets; extended and frequent switching from Latin to the vernacular and vice versa. The last typology, which constitutes the fully macaronic mode, is frequently employed in dramatic or narrative contexts, particularly in sermons on Good Friday and at Easter

Art · Literature · Narrative · Old English · Vernacular · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Linguistic research and analysis · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy

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