Aliscans, Gui de Nanteuil, Bues d’Aigremont, Foulque de Candie, and Doon de Mayence.
Romance works include Le roman de Troie, La Folie Lancelot, Florimont, Jugement
d’amour, and Prophécies de Merlin. Brunetto Latini’s Li livres dou tresor and Marco
Polo’s Devisement du monde are likewise classified as Franco-Italian.
The process by which these texts were introduced to northern Italy can be described
according to the degree of distance between a “parent” text and its Franco-Italian
counterpart. One can hypothesize that French jongleurs traveling to Italy diffused, orally
and/or in manuscript form, epic and romance material in the latter 13th and early 14th
centuries; scribes and artists then transcribed and illuminated manuscripts in the Veneto-
Lombard regions and in Bologna. Belonging to this initial phase are Aliscans and the V4
Roland. Subsequently, Italian authors began to alter originally French texts to varying
degrees in form and content, introducing their own material and dialectal usage; within
this group of remaniements are Macaire and the Roman de Hector et Hercule. Finally,
scholars agree that such works as the Entrée d’Espagne and Prise de Pampelune were
conceived in Franco-Italian and composed in Italy by Italian writers and can be
considered autonomous to the extent that no single model text can be identified.
The prestige of French in northern Italy, particularly among the aristocracy and
prosperous mercantile bourgeoisie, is expressed by Brunetto Latini, Florentine mentor of
Dante. Justifying his choice of language, he writes in Book 1 of the Trésor (1. 7): “Et se
aucuns demandoit por quoi cist livres est escriz en romanz selonc le langage des
François, puisque nos somes Ytaliens, je diroie que ce est por .ii. raisons; l’une car nos
somes en France, et l’autre por ce que la parleüre de France est plus delitable et plus
commune a toutes gens.” (“And if anyone were to ask why this book is written in
Romance according to the language of the French, since we are Italian, I would say that it
is for two reasons: one, because we are in France, and the other because the French
language is more pleasant and more common among all peoples.”) In the De vulgari
eloquentia (1.10.2), Dante, too, extols the French language, because it is easier and more
pleasant than the other two Romance idioms, Provençal and Italian. Plurilingualism was a
fundamental ingredient in the evolution of the Romance languages and is present to some
degree in many documents of the period, as extant multilanguage texts incorporating oc,
oïl, and different Italian dialects bear witness.
From a linguistic point of view, Franco-Italian, also called Franco-Venetan and
Franco-Lombard according to the regional origin of its Italian infrastructure, remains a
source of unresolved questions. Some earlier scholars claimed that it was a spoken, living
language arising within specific geographical, cultural, and chronological parameters. As
evidence, they cited the Venetian chronicler Martin da Canal: “Et porce que lengue
franceise cort parmi le monde et est la plus delitable a lire et a oïr que nule autre, me sui
je entremis de translater l’anciene estoire des Veneciens de latin en franceis....” (“And
because the French language travels throughout the world and is more pleasant to read
and to hear than any other, I have undertaken the translation of the ancient history of the
Venetians from Latin into French....”) Most scholars now agree that it was a purely
literary, artificial language fashioned in an area of northern Italy particularly receptive to
French letters and language and that it flourished for about a hundred to 150 years. It then
disappeared completely, eclipsed by the proliferating Italian dialects, including Tuscan,
later adopted as the national language.
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 700