Veronese Riddle

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Veronese Riddle

Original text

Full title Indovinello Veronese (Italian)

Language Early Italian/late Vulgar Latin

Date 8th or early 9th century

Provenance Verona, Italy

Genre Riddle

This article is part of the series on the

Italian language
  Italo-Dalmatian languages
 Tuscan (Florentine)
 Regional Italian
 Accademia della Crusca
 Enciclopedia Treccani

History

 Veronese Riddle
 Placiti Cassinesi
 Sicilian School
 Dolce Stil Novo
 The Divine Comedy
 Accademia degli Arcadi
 Italian Purism
 The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis
 The Betrothed

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 Literature
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Grammar

 Verb conjugation

Alphabet

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Phonology

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The Veronese Riddle (Italian: Indovinello veronese) is a riddle written in

late Vulgar Latin on the margin of a parchment, on the Verona Orational, probably
 in the 8th or early 9th century, by a Christian monk from Verona, in northern Italy. It
is an example of the internationally widespread writing-riddle, very popular in
the Middle Ages and still in circulation in recent times. Discovered by Luigi
Schiaparelli in 1924, it is considered the oldest existing document in the Italian
language along with the Placiti Cassinesi.[1]

Contents

 1Text
 2Explanation
 3Origins of the Indovinello
 4Text analysis and comments
 5See also
 6References
 7External links

Text[edit]
The text, with a literal translation, runs:

Se pareba boves In front of him (he) led oxen

alba pratalia araba White fields (he) plowed
albo versorio teneba A white plow (he) held
negro semen seminaba A black seed (he) sowed.

Explanation[edit]
The lines of this riddle tell us of a somebody with oxen (boves) who used to plow
white fields (alba pratalia) with a white plow (albo versorio), sowing a black seed
(negro semen). This person is the writer himself, the monk whose business is to
copy old manuscripts. The oxen are his fingers which draw a white feather (the
white plow) across the page (the white fields), leaving black ink marks (black
seed).

Origins of the Indovinello[edit]

This document dates to the late 10th-early 11th century, and the above text was
followed by a small thanksgiving prayer in Latin: gratias tibi agimus omnip(oten)s
sempiterne d(eu)s ("we thank you almighty everlasting God"). These lines were
written on codex LXXXIX (89) of the Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona. The
parchment, discovered by Schiapparelli in 1924, is a Mozarabic oration by
the Spanish Christian Church, i.e. a document in a Romance language first written
in Spain in an area influenced by the Moorish culture, probably around Toledo. It
was then brought to Cagliari and then to Pisa before reaching the Chapter of
Verona.
Text analysis and comments[edit]
Many more European documents seem to confirm that the distinctive traits
of Romance languages occurred all around the same time (e.g. France's Serments
de Strasburg). Though initially hailed as the earliest document in Italian in the first
years following Schiapparelli's discovery, today the record has been disputed by
many scholars from Bruno Migliorini to Cesare Segre and Francesco Bruni, who
have placed it at the latest stage of Vulgar Latin, though this very term is far from
being clear-cut, and Migliorini himself considers it dilapidated. At present, however,
the Placito Capuano (960 AD; the first in a series of four documents dated 960-963
AD issued by a Capuan court) is considered to be the first document ever written in
Italian, although Migliorini concedes that since the Placito was put on record as an
official court proceeding (and signed by a notary), Italian must have been widely
spoken for at least one century.
Some words do stick to the rules of Latin grammar (boves with -es for
the accusative masculine plural, alba with -a suffix for the neuter plural). Yet more
are distinctly Italian, with no cases and producing the typical ending of Italian
verbs: pareba (It. pareva), araba (It. arava), teneba (It. teneva), seminaba (It. semi
nava) instead of Latin imperfect tense parebat, arabat, tenebat, seminabat. Albo
versorio and negro semen have replaced Latin album versorium and nigrum
semen (accusative). Versorio is still the word for "plow" in today's Veronese
dialect (and the other varieties of Venetian language) as the verb parar is still the
word for 'push on', 'drive', 'lead' (in Italian spingere, guidare). Michele A. Cortelazzo
and Ivano Paccagnella say that the plural -es of boves may well be
considered Ladin and therefore not Latin, but Romance too. Albo is early Italian,
especially since Germanic blank entered Italian usage later, leading to current
Italian bianco ("white").