Names and Identity
Let us conclude with the late fourteenth-century apse inscription from Santi Stefani in Vaste [157.A]. The personal names recorded there—Antony, Doulitzia, Maria, and Ioanna (Jeanne)—reveal both continuity in onomastic fashion (Maria) and novelty (Antony, Ioanna). Long after the end of Byzantine domination, only one name in this Greek inscription is unambiguously Greek (Doulitzia). No surname is indicated despite the late date, which suggests the family’s nonelite social status. The fact that names of all members of the family are included makes this text unique among medieval Salentine visual sources. The toponym Nuci (Nociglia) and the location of the church speak to the agricultural roots of many local place names and the ancient Messapian origins of a few. The supplication situates the apse figures in a family and community context at a specific moment in time, the Byzantine year 6888. It underscores that names and kinship are among the core elements of medieval identity, which involved both persons and places. What, then, should we make of Kalia, Margaret, Stephen, and Donna, who are identified by name but not by kinship [157.C, I, K, M; Plate 18]? Perhaps they are related to George, son of Lawrence [157.G], and to Antony and his family in the apse [157.A], and this is a single-family cult site. The single women may all be independent widows, although this seems unlikely. In subsequent chapters I shall have more to say about these figures’ appearance, their status, and their painted expressions of piety.
Perhaps the most important aspect of names was the belief, shared by Jews and Christians alike, that names held power. Receiving an individual name at baptism afforded protection, and only named, baptized children could hope to enter heaven.142 Names could affect one’s future, and changing a name might fool demons or the angel of death, who summoned a person by name.143 Orthodox individuals entering a new life in a monastery or convent often received a new name. Foremost among the powerful names were the divine ones, only some of which were accessible to regular Christians and Jews.
Anthroponymy is informative, but it has its limits. What does it mean to say someone has a “Greek” or “Latin” or, for that matter, a “Jewish” name? Someone named [M]araldus is remembered in a Greek supplication in a poorly preserved apse at Taranto [142.A], but was Maraldus a Lombard, a Norman, a Swabian, or an Angevin? In fact, he was not necessarily a “Latin” at all; people could change their names in order to fit better into society, and ambitious men adopted Latin-sounding names in the late eleventh century in order to rise in the new Norman political hierarchy.144 A name alone reveals little about the origin or cultural background of its bearer: after all, who would have supposed that Cristio Maumet of Lecce was a Jew? His name had to be supplemented by ebreo, an ethnic signifier, as well as by his place of habitation, Lecce.145 Some onomastic patterns are socially or culturally circumscribed, but names are only distorting mirrors of the cultural background of their possessors. Similarly, place names tell us about the foundation of a site but not about subsequent changes. Quattro Macine may not always have had four mills, and a hagiotoponym like San Pietro in Galatina does not indicate that in the later Middle Ages the town came to be associated with a different saint, Paul.
When toponyms are used as a shorthand for a place’s inhabitants, it is easy for outsiders to believe that all of them share certain characteristics. Names, in such cases, are not specific to individuals, but elide unique qualities and become generalized but potentially powerful labels. The early modern inhabitants of Alessano and Carpignano were called by outsiders Sciuteì or Sçiudèu, Jews, with all the pejorative implications this term had in sixteenth-century southern Italy.146 In many ways, names were (and are) the essence of group identity: they are usually assigned by others; they assume greater and lesser importance in different situations; and they can be altered if necessary. Giving someone a name, a nickname, or another label signifies power over that individual’s place in a family or community,147 or even an attempt to create certain outcomes beyond the terrestrial world. Even if onomastics cannot provide all the reliable information we would like, their study tells us more than we would otherwise know about the medieval Salento. We can now look beyond names to their contexts, beginning with the languages in which names and much other information are communicated.
CHAPTER 2
Languages
One of the most important lessons to be learned from examining linguistic choices is that language, like names, is not a secure indicator of cultural or ethnic background. Speaking, reading, writing, and commissioning texts are learned behaviors whose use is socially determined. As numerous sociolinguistic studies have shown, different languages might be appropriate in different situations, and a person might have many reasons to commission or execute a text that was not in his or her ancestral tongue. In the medieval Salento, the relevant languages of inscription were Greek, Latin, and Hebrew; Aramaic, Old French, and pseudo-Kufic script also make an appearance. Griko, the local dialect of Greek, and Romanzo, the Romance vernacular that became modern Italian, were spoken languages that, before the end of the fourteenth century, very rarely intrude into written texts. The contemporaneous use, juxtaposition, and combination of these languages are among the features that gave (and continue to give) the Salento a unique regional character. While Jews and Christians could look back to a golden age of linguistic unity before the Tower of Babel was built (Gen. 11:1), postbiblical languages had long since become an index of diversity, a criterion for belonging to or being excluded from certain groups. In what follows, I argue that texts in the public domain were visible social statements that contributed in meaningful ways to the construction and communication of individual and communal identity.
Information about languages comes from a variety of public texts, some carefully planned and formally carved or painted, others informally incised or painted ad hoc. For Hebrew, this material evidence is supplemented by manuscript data. I discuss each language group in turn and consider linguistic patterns found in different types of texts. By “types of text” I refer not to medium but to the primary function of the inscription or graffito: hortatory, dedicatory, didactic, devotional, or funerary. Certainly there is overlap between these categories, but if a devotional text also asks readers to pray for the author, I consider it hortatory. Dedicatory and devotional texts can be very similar; in assigning an inscription to the former group, I look for verbs that stake a personal claim to such notable action as building or rebuilding a church or paving an entire floor. I include fieri fecit texts (so-and-so “had made”) in this group only if they demonstrate extensive patronage and include additional information. Simpler claims of patronage, artist’s signatures, deictic texts that designate or identify something, labels or captions that instruct, inform, or merely indicate the writer’s presence are all considered under the rubric of didactic texts. Devotional texts, or supplications, either request divine help or ask that the person named be remembered by God or, less commonly, by the Virgin or a saint. These are usually termed “votive” texts, but I want to remove the implication that a vow has been promised or fulfilled because of a complete lack of evidence that this was the case: “vow” is nowhere used in public texts in the Salento in any language.1
Language Distribution
Although the types of medieval public texts are more or less the same everywhere, the linguistic map of the Salento is very different from that of the rest of Italy (it most closely resembles Calabria). The majority of the peninsula did not have ancient Greek colonies, two centuries of Byzantine rule, and an influx of medieval Greek speakers. Other regions of Italy do not contain a microregion of towns in which a Greek dialect is still spoken.2 No other Italian province can claim so many medieval public texts in Greek.