were and are only a small percentage of all Apulian place names.130 Particular devotion might also inspire a parent to name a child after a saint, and while we might think this was desirable—an extra layer of infant protection—it was not done consistently. Chrysolea [32.A] and Aprilios [32.D, F] at Carpignano are two of the earliest medieval Greek names that demonstrate how parental preferences and other traditions might favor other types of names. Similarly, Jewish anthroponymy demonstrates a willingness by some to invent novel monikers even if most parents adhered to familiar scriptural names.
Supernatural Names
Among the distinctive features of male Jewish names in the Salento was their frequent ending in -el, a reference to God; local Christian equivalents included Theodosius, Theophylact, and Theodore. According to Sefer Yetzirah, on which Oria’s Shabbetai Donnolo wrote an important commentary, God created the world by manipulating the letters in his own divine name.131 In fact, the Lord was believed to have many names, including the Tetragrammaton—so awesome that it was never to be pronounced explicitly—and others composed of seventy-two or forty-two letters or syllables.132 All of these names were enormously powerful, capable of effecting miracles if properly invoked by knowledgeable practitioners.133 Moses, Jesus, and Simon Magus knew the names, and they were available to later epigones in the corpora of esoteric texts that included the Jewish Hekhalot and Merkavah literature and the (probably) Christian Testament of Solomon.134 The Chronicle of Ahima‘az identifies the Book of Righteousness (Sefer ha-Yashar), parts of which survive in the Cairo Genizah, as containing magical instructions for employing the divine name.135
Ahima‘az’s ancestor Hananel temporarily restored his brother Papoleon to life by inserting a parchment with the name of God under his tongue; “the Name resurrected him” until the parchment was removed.136 God’s name also was required for successful exorcisms. When Shephatiah, another ancestor, cured the daughter of the Byzantine emperor Basil I in Constantinople, he adjured the demon who afflicted her “in the Name of ‘He who dwells high aloft,’ and in the Name of ‘He who created the earth with His wisdom,’ in the name of ‘He who created the mountains and the sea,’ and in the Name of ‘He who suspends earth upon emptiness’ … come out in the Name of God.”137 The repetition of biblical phrases underscores how frequently the concept of the holy name appears in Scripture: the name of God is God.
Christians used the name of God in countless liturgies, hymns, and rituals, and in the sixth century Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite produced an influential treatise on divine names.138 Two local exorcisms that guard against devastating hail begin with “the great name of (all-powerful) God),
In the late antique Testament of Solomon, well known in the Middle Ages, a demon refuses to give its name to the king because that knowledge will permit Solomon to bind not only that malefactor but others as well; nevertheless, wise Solomon prevails and becomes a model for later practitioners. An exorcist needed to know all of a demon’s names in order to counter them with powerful angelic names.140 The omission of the demons’ names from the Last Judgment scene at Santo Stefano in Soleto renders them unavailable for control by their nameless victims, identified by their sins, as well as by their viewers [113.B].141 The dangerously powerful names of God and of demons are not found in public art.
Names and Identity
Let us conclude with the late fourteenth-century apse inscription from Santi Stefani in Vaste [157.A]. The personal names recorded there—Antony, Doulitzia, Maria, and Ioanna (Jeanne)—reveal both continuity in onomastic fashion (Maria) and novelty (Antony, Ioanna). Long after the end of Byzantine domination, only one name in this Greek inscription is unambiguously Greek (Doulitzia). No surname is indicated despite the late date, which suggests the family’s nonelite social status. The fact that names of all members of the family are included makes this text unique among medieval Salentine visual sources. The toponym Nuci (Nociglia) and the location of the church speak to the agricultural roots of many local place names and the ancient Messapian origins of a few. The supplication situates the apse figures in a family and community context at a specific moment in time, the Byzantine year 6888. It underscores that names and kinship are among the core elements of medieval identity, which involved both persons and places. What, then, should we make of Kalia, Margaret, Stephen, and Donna, who are identified by name but not by kinship [157.C, I, K, M; Plate 18]? Perhaps they are related to George, son of Lawrence [157.G], and to Antony and his family in the apse [157.A], and this is a single-family cult site. The single women may all be independent widows, although this seems unlikely. In subsequent chapters I shall have more to say about these figures’ appearance, their status, and their painted expressions of piety.
Perhaps the most important aspect of names was the belief, shared by Jews and Christians alike, that names held power. Receiving an individual name at baptism afforded protection, and only named, baptized children could hope to enter heaven.142 Names could affect one’s future, and changing a name might fool demons or the angel of death, who summoned a person by name.143 Orthodox individuals entering a new life in a monastery or convent often received a new name. Foremost among the powerful names were the divine ones, only some of which were accessible to regular Christians and Jews.
Anthroponymy is informative, but it has its limits. What does it mean to say someone has a “Greek” or “Latin” or, for that matter, a “Jewish” name? Someone named [M]araldus is remembered in a Greek supplication in a poorly preserved apse at Taranto [142.A], but was Maraldus a Lombard, a Norman, a Swabian, or an Angevin? In fact, he was not necessarily a “Latin” at all; people could change their names in order to fit better into society, and ambitious men adopted Latin-sounding names in the late eleventh century in order to rise in the new Norman political hierarchy.144 A name alone reveals little about the origin or cultural background of its bearer: after all, who would have supposed that Cristio Maumet of Lecce was a Jew? His name had to be supplemented by ebreo, an ethnic signifier, as well as by his place of habitation, Lecce.145 Some onomastic patterns are socially or culturally circumscribed, but names are only distorting mirrors of the cultural background of their possessors. Similarly, place names tell us about the foundation of a site but not about subsequent changes. Quattro Macine may not always have had four mills, and a hagiotoponym like San Pietro in Galatina does not indicate that in the later Middle Ages the town came to be associated with a different saint, Paul.
When toponyms are used as a shorthand for a place’s inhabitants, it is easy for outsiders to believe that all of them share certain characteristics. Names, in such cases, are not specific to individuals, but elide unique qualities and become generalized but potentially powerful labels. The early modern inhabitants of Alessano and Carpignano were called by outsiders Sciuteì or Sçiudèu, Jews, with all the pejorative implications this term had in sixteenth-century southern Italy.146 In many ways, names were (and are) the essence of group identity: they are usually assigned by others; they assume greater and lesser importance in different situations; and they can be altered if necessary. Giving someone a name, a nickname, or another label signifies power over that individual’s place in a family or community,147 or even an attempt to create certain outcomes beyond the terrestrial world. Even if onomastics cannot provide all the reliable information we would like, their study tells us more than we would otherwise know about the medieval Salento. We can now look beyond names to their contexts, beginning with the languages in which names and much other information are communicated.
CHAPTER 2
Languages
