The Use of the Vernacular: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century Italy

The present paper argues that in fourteenth-century Italy the vernacularisation of Latin municipal constitutions was purposely sought out by the ruling elite as an ideological and political mechanism to build consensus and achieve support in municipal and regional states. By analysing the statutes of some of the most important communal cities as well as the fundamental laws of the Papal State and the judicate of Arborea, I shall attempt to bring to light the workings and driving forces behind the translation of legal texts into the vernacular. The thesis here proposed challenges scholarly views claiming, on the basis of evidence found in rhetorical declarations of the time, that the vernacularisation of law aimed to address common people who could not understand Latin