• Walter POHL – Nina MIRNIG (Eds.) – Annamaria PAZIENZA – Irene BAVUSO (Guest Eds.)

medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025

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A truly sensational find is presented in volume 23 of Medieval Worlds: a newly discovered Christian world chronicle in Arabic, which Adrian C. Pirtea examines in a preliminary case study. We furthermore open a new series on Multilingualism in Premodern Societies, which investigates patterns of communication, mobility and power in connection with language use in a Eurasian context. This first instalment focuses on Urban Administrative Spaces (guest editor: Katalin Szende), in which two captivating articles make use of pragmatic literacy and investigate chancery documents of the 14th-17th centuries: Lena Sadovski uses them to draw out skilfully the multilingual environment of Venetian Dalmatia. Marijana Mišević highlights in her study the potential of this hitherto underused source for studying the communication between Ragusans and Ottomans. Our cluster on Moving Jobs: Occupational Identity and Motility in the Middle Ages (guest editors: Annamaria Pazienza and Irene Bavuso) is continued from volume 20 (2024) with three contributions investigating how mobility could have meaningful impact on social advancement and identity formation: Joe Glynias presents a new view on the renowned 11th-century Baghdadi physician Ibn Buṭlān and his career as Christian Arabic author. The movement of peasants in 10th-century Spain as reconstructed from charters serves for Robert Portass as model to develop ideas on the mobility of local communities. Irene Bavuso combines theories of mobility and sedentism to offer new perspectives on artisans in early medieval England. A rare source on papermaking in 13th-century Baghdad was transcribed and partially translated by Shiva Mihan for a further addition to our volume on Mongols’ Baghdad. Knowledge Transmission through Manuscript Cultures before and after the Conquest (guest editors: Bruno de Nicola and Nadine Löhr).

medieval worlds is open to submissions of broadly comparative studies and matters of global interest, whether in single articles, companion papers, smaller clusters, or special issues on a subject of global/comparative history. We particularly invite studies of wide-ranging connectivity or comparison between different world regions.

Apart from research articles, medieval worlds publishes ongoing debates and project and conference reports on comparative medieval research.

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medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025

ISSN 2412-3196
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ISBN 978-3-7001-5131-9
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Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
Austrian Academy of Sciences Press
A-1011 Wien, Dr. Ignaz Seipel-Platz 2,
Tel. +43-1-515 81/DW 3420, Fax +43-1-515 81/DW 3400
https://verlag.oeaw.ac.at, e-mail: bestellung.verlag@oeaw.ac.at
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Names in Translation: Multilingual Administration and Name Adaptation in Venetian Dalmatia (Fifteenth-Sixteenth Century)

    Lena Sadovski

medieval worlds • no. 23 • 2025, pp. 14-40, 2025/11/27

doi: 10.1553/medievalworlds_no23_2025s14


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doi:10.1553/medievalworlds_no23_2025s14

Abstract

This article examines the multilingual dynamics of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Dalmatia, with a focus on the city of Spalato (modern Split). It argues that the region’s linguistic landscape was defined not by strict language hierarchies or rigid ethnic divisions but by a pragmatic and adaptive multilingualism. Latin and Italian dominated the spheres of formal administration, law, and commerce, functioning as the official languages of record. However, Slavic – spoken by the majority population – remained the principal medium of everyday communication and played a persistent, though often informal, role in public and administrative life. While Slavic was seldom used in official written documents, Latin and Italian records reflect Slavic input through references to translations, lexical borrowings, and direct quotations. Venetian authorities pragmatically accommodated the linguistic realities of their subjects by relying on translators, accepting bilingual communication, and tolerating unofficial scribes proficient in Slavic.
The article first discusses the social distribution of language skills and multilingual spaces within the city, before giving an overview of the use of Slavic as an administrative language in the communication between town and hinterland. Slavic lexical borrowings and the incorporation of direct quotations into Latin and Italian texts are addressed next. The focus then switches to the flexible use of both Slavic and Romance personal names as well as the challenges involved in recording Slavic place names. All this points to a society in which language use was driven by functionality rather than ethnicity. This »Slavo-Romance symbiosis « challenges binary models of identity and instead suggests a deeply integrated urban culture. Attempts to classify Dalmatian populations strictly by linguistic or onomastic markers are shown to be inadequate in capturing the region’s social complexity.

Keywords: Spalato/Split, Venice, multilingualism, urban history, administration, onomastics, Slavic, Croatian, Italian, Latin