The oldest documents in the Sardinian language

The island's Middle Ages left behind a significant legacy of acts, documents and legal codes written in Sardinian. The quality and quantity of the production in the vulgar language is such as to give Sardinia a position of absolute advantage compared to other Neolatine European areas or regions. In fact, such a wide, dense and frequent use of the vulgar in the legal-administrative field was absolutely not normal for Europe at that time.

Some scholars have hypothesized in recent decades that the use of Sardinian was in some way a choice linked to a general ignorance of Latin, and therefore, an inevitable and far from free option. Recently, however, the most attentive island scholars have highlighted that there is scientific evidence that documents the circulation of texts in Latin in the Sardinian cities of that time, such that they can easily gain a very widespread and widespread knowledge of the Latin language.

The choice to use Sardinian was therefore political in nature and linked to two factors. The first is that Sardinia, however, came from a Greco-Byzantine-type domain, in which the use of Latin was not considered “universal” a priori and left room for local realities to a greater extent than in the domains of Western culture.

Secondly, the will of the Sardinian re-judges to assert their sovereignty and legal individuality also in the linguistic register in relation to the outside world. This is how the Sardinian vulgar is a candidate to be the language of condaghi, of notarial and administrative acts, of the Sassari Statutes and of the Carta de Logu.

Carta de logu, reproduction of the fifteenth-century edition preserved in the Cagliari University Library by A. Scanu. Sassari, TAS, 1991.

Update

25/9/2023 - 23:33