Les marchands toscans face au latin vers 1400. Indices de contacts linguistiques dans l'Archivio Datini

Résumé En

This contribution first provides a typological categorization of the Latin texts preserved in the largest European collection of mercantile documents, the Archivio Datini in Prato, in order to understand how "illitterate" merchants could have access to Latin documents kept at home for various purposes. Latin is not used in the ledgers written in Tuscany, and hardly ever in the technical, religious, and literary writings collected by ordinary people. However, Tuscan merchants mainly receive Latin letters from their colleagues from Liguria and Piedmont, as well as from churchmen and scholars, often living abroad. Among the legal texts, notarial records and court procedures are generally written in Latin. While the language used in mercantile communication is negotiated case by case between merchants with different backgrounds, using various forms of bilingualism, notaries are practically the only interpreters used to translate the language of law.