930 ronnie ferguson
Venetian civilization to factor language into their arguments or to write
with authority on what was the universal oral medium of the Republic of
Venice and, in part, its written medium.5
this relative neglect is, superficially, surprising. an appreciation of the
nature and origins of venexian,6 and of its evolution, longevity, and influ-
ence, are self-evidently of vital interest to historians and students of Ven-
ice, whatever their specialty. this applies most obviously at the practical
level. the riches of the Venetian archives, from the archivio di Stato at
the Frari to the Marciana Library and the Museo Correr, are only par-
tially exploitable without expertise in the textual tradition of Venetian
going back 800 years. Fundamental published and unpublished resources
for medieval, Renaissance, or early modern specialists are, in part, out of
bounds without it. this applies to wills, inventories, and property declara-
tions in the vernacular drafted not only in Venice but also in its overseas
possessions such as Cyprus, Crete, and Ragusa.7 it applies to the statutes
of Venice (statuti de Ven(i)exia) issued continuously from the 14th to the
18th centuries, to vernacular legislative texts from the state chancery up
to the Cinquecento, to the Venetian trade-guild statutes (mariegole < Lat.
on Venetian, past and present, have also been disseminated in Manlio Cortelazzo, ed.,
Guida ai dialetti veneti, 15 vols (Padua, 1979–93); and in Zamboni, “Venezien/Veneto,”
as well as through a series of high-quality syntheses published in italy, notably: alberto
Zamboni, Veneto (Pisa, 1980); Cortelazzo and Paccagnella, “il Veneto”; edward tuttle,
“La varietà nel veneto premoderno. Paradigmi periferici, scelte morfostilistiche e macroa-
ree,” in anna Marinetti, Maria teresa Vigolo, and alberto Zamboni, eds., Varietà e continu-
ità nella storia linguistica del Veneto (Rome, 1997), pp. 101–57; Carla Marcato, “il Veneto,” in
Manlio Cortelazzo et al., eds., I dialetti italiani. Storia, struttura, uso (turin, 2002), pp. 296–
328; Paola Benincà, “il veneto medievale,” in Manlio Cortelazzo, ed., Manuale di cultura
veneta. Geografia, storia, lingua e arte (Venice, 2004), pp. 113–24; and Benincà, “il veneto
moderno,” in Cortelazzo, ed., Manuale di cultura veneta, pp. 139–50.
5 this absence is not, it should be emphasized, confined to Venetian studies. a rare
exception to the divorce of language from history is found in the work of historians of
anglo-Saxon england. this is almost certainly because scholars in the field come to it hav-
ing trained, first, in anglo-Saxon itself. a good example, employing etymology, phonology,
and lexical borrowing to establish settlement and contact patterns, is Paul Bibire, “north
Sea Language Contacts in the early Middle ages,” in thomas Liszka and e. M. Walker, eds.,
The North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Portland, 2001), pp. 88–107.
6 Venexian (italian, veneziano) is historically the most common native spelling of
Venetian, with the historic variants venezian and venes(s)ian. it is currently pronounced
[vene'sjaŋ] in the international Phonetics association (iPa) transcription. the city has
called itself Venexia (with early Venetian (eV) minority variants Veniexia and Ven(i)esia)
since the later medieval period, the current pronunciation being [ve'nεsja]. Venexia is a
presumed reflex of the Latin Venetia.
7 See Daniele Baglioni, La “scripta” italoromanza del regno di Cipro (Rome, 2006); Sally
McKee, ed., Wills from Late Medieval Venetian Crete 1312–1420 (Washington, 1998); and
Diego Dotto, ed., “Scriptae” venezianeggianti a Ragusa nel XIV secolo (Rome, 2008).