beginning in 990,9 and two funerary stelae in the Salento record Armenian names, but the language of both is Greek [111, 159]. The use of these other tongues was very restricted, and we can seriously discuss the local population’s languages and literacy only in terms of Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and their associated vernaculars, alone and in combination.
The official imposition of a Tuscan variety of Italian since the nineteenth century has not erased traces of earlier languages and dialects in the Salento. The region’s linguistic picture seems always to have been complicated by the interaction of alloglot tongues with one or more majority languages. In general, the dialects called “Salentine” by linguists have many analogies with those in Sicily and southern Calabria, although they display greater lexical archaism and a significant admixture of Greek is apparent in semantics, phonology, and syntax. In the north, such sites as Taranto and Massafra have an Apulian dialect, with pronunciations different from those farther south and a linguistic system more akin to that of Naples.10 Except for this northern fringe, the linguistic map corresponds well to the entity I defined in the Introduction as “the Salento.”
Hebrew
Medieval Jews, or at least the Jewish intellectuals who led them, believed that the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet were identical with the Torah and with the name of God himself: God had used these letters, rotated and in combination, to create the entire world.11 For Jewish mystics, the Hebrew language “was not regarded as a means or a tool, but as the subject and ultimate purpose of speculation.”12 As noted in Chapter 1, Hebrew names were mandatory for Jews because Hebrew was the language spoken by God and his angels; even some Christian sources agreed.13 As was the case with keeping their names, maintaining the Hebrew language was one of the criteria for the Jews’ liberation from Egypt and its identity as a chosen people.14
Jewish prayers were almost all in the holy tongue, the lashon ha-kodesh, although a few prayers persisted in Greek for many centuries.15 A medieval Italian source permitted certain intercessory prayers to be recited in Aramaic, particularly those directed to the angels “appointed [as supervisors] over the gates of prayer” although not to those who serve as one’s “guardian angels” or constant spiritual companions.16 The same text indicates that it is a mitzvah—a positive commandment—to translate Torah readings into the vernacular, although whether this translation is to be done ad hoc or from a prepared translation is not clear. Although this vernacular proviso was already noted in the Talmud, its relevance to thirteenth-century Italy is evident from the author’s personal statement: “My opinion is that of my brother, Rabbi Judah, who says the principle behind the translation is to comment on the words of Torah for women and the ignorant who do not understand the holy language.”17 This halakhic (legal) text, Shibolei ha-Leqet (“Gleaned Ears”), was written in Rome in the mid-thirteenth century by Zidkiyahu ben Abraham ha-Rofe (“the doctor”), a member of the learned Anav family, which traced its origins in Italy to forced exile from Israel under the Roman rulers Pompey and Titus. The work is an invaluable source of information on many aspects of medieval Italian Jewish life and is cited often in this book.18
While Jews lived, worshipped, and died in southern Italy until the sixteenth century, material evidence for their presence consists mainly of funerary inscriptions that do not postdate the tenth century. Late antique epitaphs in the region consistently combined a Hebrew text with one in Greek,19 but in the seventh and eighth centuries Latin became a more frequent adjunct [81, 122–127, 131–133, 135]. All but one of these bilingual examples come from Taranto, where the overall epigraphic record is dominated by Latin even though Greek-speaking Jews and Christians also are attested there.20 The latest funerary texts, which are usually assigned to the ninth or perhaps tenth century, use only Hebrew [10–14, 16–18, 121, 128–130, 134, 149–150],21 and in one case Aramaic [136]. It is risky to draw broad conclusions from such a small set of data, but I agree with Cesare Colafemmina that communication solely in Hebrew reflects an emerging sense of Jewish identity vested in language and manifested simultaneously in a flourishing of Hebrew literature that included the first historiographic work (Sefer Josippon), the first family chronicle (Megillat Ahima‘az), and astrological, philosophical, mystical, and medical treatises in addition to liturgical poetry (piyyutim).22 Perhaps this literary production had a trickle-down effect, resulting in a wider Jewish (male) literacy and more Hebrew epitaphs. The religious texts and poetry produced in Apulia were known outside the region: several piyyutim became part of the Ashkenazic prayer book, and a scholar in twelfth-century France remarked that “from Bari comes forth the Law, and the word of God from Otranto.”23 The preponderance of Hebrew-only tombstones may also indicate that Jewish graves became less visible to non-Hebrew readers as the centuries progressed. The Christian and Jewish cemeteries at Taranto were contiguous,24 but later Jewish burials may simply have been farther from the neighboring Christian ones and so had a more limited and homogeneous audience. It seems likely that the bulk of Jewish tombstones at Taranto were used to rebuild the city walls after the tenth-century Arab raids [139],25 but the fate of later Jewish epitaphs there and elsewhere is unknown.26 Were Salentine Jews not permitted such public displays? Did they lose the epigraphic habit for other reasons? Or were all of their tombstones after the ninth or tenth century simply repurposed by Christians for either practical or ideological reasons? Unfortunately, we lack answers to all these questions.
Among the formulas used to commemorate the Jewish dead are the Hebrew po schichvat (here lies), po yanuach (here rests), and mishkav (tomb of). In the Latin parts of the Jewish epitaphs, Hic requiescit (here rests) predominates.27 The deceased is sometimes remembered positively as bene memorius, in Hebrew b’zikaron tov.28 An invocation for shalom al minuchato, “peace upon the resting place,” echoing Isaiah 57:2, is very common; it is equivalent to the Latin Sit pax in requie eius or, in one case, Sit pax super dormitorium eorum [123.B]. “Amen” often concludes a short Hebrew funerary text. Often the deceased is noted as a righteous man whose memory merits a blessing, zecher tzaddik livrachah, from Proverbs 10:7 [12.D, 14, 124.B, 126.B, 128.B]. This is the most common biblical citation or paraphrase, although a few epitaphs quote from Psalms, Job, or Isaiah [18, 124.B].29 Overreliance on phrases drawn from the ancient funerary ritual of the land of Israel led the composer or the carver of Leah’s epitaph in Brindisi [16] to conclude that text with a line from Song of Songs in which the male gender of the original has not been amended for a female commemoration.30 Similar errors of gender are not uncommon, as in a funerary inscription at Taranto [121], where the verb “rests” is masculine even though the commemoration is for an unnamed wife.31
All-Hebrew epitaphs tend to multiply scriptural and liturgical references, and two examples in Trani abbreviate the common prayer “May his soul be bound in the bond of life” (1 Sam. 25:29) [149, 150], echoing the earlier abbreviation in Brindisi of “The holy one, blessed be he” [16]. Such complex textual referencing and abbreviations are indications of Hebrew literacy that serve to advertise and solidify Jewish identity through language. Some epitaphs are notable for their relationship to contemporary Hebrew liturgical poetry [18.A], and there are rhyming lines as well as acrostics that yield the name of the text’s author.32 This is the case at Oria [81], where “Samuel” may have composed the commemoration for his mother, Hannah, if indeed this eighth-century pair deliberately echoes the well-known biblical mother and son of 1 Samuel 1–2.33 Not only was the Oria inscription composed by and for a Jewish patron, but it seems to have been carved by a native Hebrew speaker as well. He mistakenly began the Latin text at the right rather than the left and had to correct himself; the letter N is consistently rendered with a backward diagonal;34 and ES at the beginning of line 3 is a meaningless repetition of the letters immediately above [81.B].35
