Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/892

Rh 868 imposed by general consensus, or that it rests upon any very firm historical basis. In the southern part of Gaul, Romanic developed itself, so to say, in the natural state of language. Contrary to what took place in other Romanic countries, no local variety here raised itself to the rank of the literary idiom par excellence. While in Italy the Florentine, in France the French dialect proper (that is to say, the dialect of the lie de France), succeeded little by little in monopolizing literary use, to the exclusion of the other dialects, we do not find that either the Mar- seillais or the Toulousain idiom was ever spoken or written outside of Marseilles or Toulouse. In consequence of this circumstance, no name originally designating the language of a town or of a small district came to be employed to designate the language of the whole of southern France ; and on the other hand the geographical region described above, having never had any special name, was not able to give one to the idiom. In the Middle Ages the idiom was spoken of under various appellations : Romans or lenga Romana w T as that most generally used. It is notably that employed by the authors of the Leys d Amors, a treatise on grammar, poetry, and rhetoric, composed at Toulouse in the 14th century. But this term, which is capable of being applied, and which, in fact, has been applied, to each of the Romanic languages individually, is too general to be retained. It is, however, that which was revived in the beginning of the present century by Raynouard, the author of the Lexique roman. It is now abandoned. In the 13th century a poet born in Catalonia, on the southern slope of the Pyrenees, Raimon Vidal of Besalii, introduced the name of Limousin language, probably on account of the great reputation of some Limousin troubadours, but he took care to define the expression, which he extended beyond its original meaning, by saying that in speaking of Limousin he must be understood to include Saintonge, Quercy, Auvergne, ic. (Rasos de trobar, ed. Stengel, p. 70). This expression found favour in Spain, and especially in Catalonia, where the little treatise of Raimon Vidal w r as extensively read. The most ancient lyric poetry of the Catalans (13th and 14th centuries), composed on the model of the poetry of the troubadours, was often styled in Spain poesifi lemosina, and in the same country lengua lemosina long designated at once the Provencal and the old literary Catalan. The name Provengal as applied to language is hardly raet with in the Middle Ages, except in the restricted sense of the language of Provence proper, i.e., of the region lying south of Dauphine&quot; on the eastern side of the Rhone. Raimon Feraut, who composed, about 1300, a versified life of St Honorat, uses it, but he was himself a native of Provence. We can also cite the title of a grammar, the Dfmatz Proensals, by Hugh Faidit (about 1250) ; but this work was composed in north Italy, and we may con ceive that the Italians living next to Provence employed the name Provencal somewhat vaguely without inquiring into the geographical limits of the idiom so called. In fact the name Provencal became traditional in Italy, and in the beginning of the IGth century Bembo could write, &quot;Era per tutto il Ponente la favella Provenzale, ne tempi ne quali ella fiori, in prezzo et in istima molta, et tra tutti gli altri idiomi di quelle parti, di gran lunga primiera. Conciosiacosa che ciascuno, o Francese, o Fiamingo, o Guascone,, o Borgognone, o altramente di quelle nationi che egli si fosse, il quale bene scrivere e specialmente verseggiar volesse, quantunque egli Provenzale non fosse, lo faceva Provenzalmente&quot; (Prose, ed. 1529, fol. viii.). 1 The Provengal speech in the times in which it flourished was prized and held in great esteem all over the West, and among all the othi-r idioms of that region was 1-y far the foremost : so that every one, [LANGUAGE. This passage, in which the primacy of the Provencal tongue is manifestly exaggerated, is interesting as showing the name Prove^al employed, though, with little pre cision, in the sense in which we now apply it. Another designation, which is supported by the great authority of Dante, is that of langued oc. In his treatise De Vulgari Eloquio (bk i. chaps, viii. andix.), the Floren tine poet divides the languages of Latin origin into three idioms, which he characterizes by the affirmative par ticles used in each, oc, oil, si ; &quot; nam alii oc, alii oil, alii si affirmando loquuntur, ut puta Hispani, Franci, et Latini.&quot; As is seen, he attributes the affirmation oc to the Spaniards, which is of course erroneous, but there is no doubt that to the Spaniards he joined more correctly the inhabitants of southern France, for in the Vita nuova, chap, xxv., he speaks of the lingua d oc as having been long celebrated for its poets, which can apply only to the lan guage of the troubadours. The name langue d oc occurs also as early as the end of the 13th century, in public acts, but with a different sense, that of the province of Languedoc, as constituted after the union of the county of Toulouse to the French king s dominion in 1271. In the royal acts of the end of the 13th and of the 14th century paries linguse occitanx or pays de langue d oc designates the union of the five seneschalates of Perigueux, Carcassone, Beaucaire, Toulouse, and Rhodez, that is to say, the province of Languedoc, such as it existed till 1790. Some scholars, following the example of Dante, still actually use the term langue d oc in opposition to langue d oui, but these names have the inconvenience that they take such a secondary fact as the form of the affirmative particle as an essential character. Moreover it can hardly help to dis tinguish the other Romanic languages, as langue de si would cause a confusion between Italian and Spanish. Provencal, without being entirely satisfactory, since in principle it applies solely to the language of Provence, is, notwithstanding, the least objectionable name that can be adopted. In addition to its being in some sort conse crated by the use made of it by the Italians, who were the first after the Renaissance to study the works of the troubadours, it must not be forgotten that, just as the Roman Provincia, in which the name originated, extended across the south of Gaul from the Alps to Toulouse and the Pyrenees, so still in the Middle Ages Provincia, Provinciales, were understood in a very wide sense to designate not only Provence strictly so called, i.e., the present departments of Alpes Maritimes, Basses Alpcs, Var, Bouches du Rhone, but also a very considerable part of Languedoc and the adjacent countries. Thus in the 12th century the chronicler Albert of Aix-la-Chapelle (Albertus Aquensis) places the town of Puy (Haute Loire) in Provincia. 2. General Characters of the Language in its Ancient State. The Provenqal language, within the limits above indicated, cannot be said to have any general characters really peculiar to it. Such of its characters as are found in all the varieties of the language are met with also in neighbouring idioms ; such as are not found elsewhere arc not general characters, that is to say, are manifested only in certain varieties of Provencal. In reality &quot; Provencal language&quot; does not designate, properly speaking, a linguistic unity; it is merely a geographical expression. Tonic or Accented Vowels. Latin a is preserved in an open syllable a mare, amar, am fit urn, amat, as well as in a closed syllable carnern, earn. This character is common also to the Koinanic of Spain ami Italy; but it is one of the best distinguish ing marks between Provencal and French, for, to the north, this a, when in an open syllable, does not pass beyond a line which whether Frenchman Fleming, Gascon, Burgundian, or of what nation soever, who wished to write and versify well, although he was not a Provengal, did it in the Provengal language.&quot;