Search results for "Medieval multiculturalism"

Legal Language and Practice in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Messina: The Evidence from Greek Private Documents

2018

This paper concerns twelfth- and thirteenth-century deeds drawn up in Greek in an area where the hellenophone presence was deeply rooted. The Church and Greek monastic institutions continued to exert widespread influence, and the Byzantine cultural tradition was even more persistent. Document analysis supports two interpretive paths from which multilingual phenomena can be singled out and studied. (1) Social interactions. Through these legal transactions social interaction are represented through writing in one of the three official languages of the kingdom, Greek, Latin or Arabic. (2) The language of the documents. Written deeds translate legal procedure into a special language. Laws, form…