In February 2016 Professor Dame Jinty Nelson (London) delivered a lecture in Vitoria on ‘Language-use in Charlemagne’s Empire’. Professor Nelson selected three ‘postcards’ from the Frankish empire under Charlemagne, each of which illustrates how vernacular language could be harnessed and deployed to great effect – a royal diploma enacting a new political relationship between Charlemagne and the quasi-independent Rhaetian bishopric of Chur through its use of the Frankish term mundoburdum (broadly, ‘protection’); a Freising charter containing a Bavarian count’s assertion of his identity and local standing through a vernacular statement of the boundaries of his land, which had earlier been seized by Charlemagne’s men; and a letter from a formulary collection preserving a woman’s plea to Charlemagne to protect her, in which she used a rare vernacularized verb, munburire, at root of which was the same sense of royal protection in the diploma for the bishop of Chur. Professor Nelson stressed that in each case, language choice was not accidental – the actors in these documents made their statements and appeals through conscious use of Germanic (or Franconian) words and phrases. The textualization of the vernacular thus conveyed meanings and identities which even the most ‘correct’ Latin could not impart.

Watch a video of the talk here.