Alba Guibert, known as Alba de Vic, was the first woman to be a professional notary in what we now call Catalonia. She lived in the 11th century and belonged to an educated family, with a father, the grammarian Guibert, who could be considered very modern for her time. He is modern, because he taught her three sons and the three daughters he had with Guilla to read and write.
From a wealthy family, Alba Guibert married Jobert and also had six descendants, three daughters (Guilla, Adaleds and Magenburg) and three sons (Guillem, Ramon and Artall), and lived in the parish of Santa Eulàlia de Riuprimer. According to what is read in the will of her husband, where her properties are recorded, they all gave her their own name, just like the animals that appear.
Thus, today we know that there was “a land called Coma Erma, a house called Rosta, a shell called Claramalla, a horse named Giscafred, a mare called Gaçola and even an alsberg named Omnia bona”. An alsberg is a tunic made of mesh or scales to protect the body.
We read all that in the chapter that Jesús Alturo and Tània Alaix dedicate to the cultural level of proto-Catalonia in the book Lletres que parlen, which has just been published by La Magrana. The professors and palaeographers of the Autonomous University of Barcelona explain in this wide-ranging study a lot of details of late Latin, proto-Catalan and Catalan writing at the end, such as the first document written entirely in Catalan, dated between 1060 and 1080, which is a copy of the Book of Judges, made by a scribe from Organyà. Here the diglossia between speaking Catalan and writing in Latin begins to be broken.
A few years earlier, Alba de Vic had not yet written in Catalan, because at that time the documents were written in Latin. That is to say, to be able to read and write it was not enough to know how to put the letters together; you also had to know Latin.
In fact, "literacy was very low, and even more so among women," says Alaix, who mentions the concept of semi-literacy, which is people who had learned to read, but not to write: "There were two stages of learning. Semi-literate people were able to read a document, but when signing it, they did not sign it autograph, but rather heterograph, putting a dot under their name, which someone else had written”, explains the researcher.
“We have a document from 989 from the community of Sant Pere de les Puel·les in which only the abbess Adaleds signs her autograph. The others do it heterographically, but stating that they knew how to read”.
The figure of Alba de Vic is relevant because she is the first woman on record to write a legally valid document. It is dated April 16, 1044 and it is known with such precision because it is a deed of a purchase that she and her husband made.
She wanted to state that she had written it in her own handwriting, "in perfect Carolingian script and signed with splendid book-type capital letters," details Alaix, who estimates that Alba must have been about 30 years old at the time: "She was a woman fully literate and of a superior culture.”
The document has added value because, in the middle of Latin, Alba de Vic uses some Catalan words when she needs them. This is the case of coma (depression in a mountain terrain), era, casals and puio (mountain), with which he names the places where the purchase is located.
“It should not be considered as proof of ignorance, because at the time the formulaic parts were written in Latin, but the substantial parts, to make it clear what was being referred to, began to be written in Catalan”, Alaix adds. .
But where does this knowledge come from to Alba de Vic? “At the end of the 10th century, a young grammarian apparently came to the diocese of Osona from Liège”. From Belgian Liège to Catalan Vic, Guibert must have been doing well, so he married Guilla and founded a large family.
"Guibert exercised effective teaching in the diocesan school of Vic, together with Canon Ermenir Quintilà, an excellent master of the art of calligraphy and teacher of new and very good calligraphers", explain the paleographers.
Of the six children, two stood out. On the one hand, Berill, who was his successor in the direction of the grammar school of Vic Cathedral, where he was a canon. And the other is Alba. Unlike her brother, for whom there is numerous handwritten documentation and codices, only the aforementioned document is preserved.
A document of sufficient value to be able to meet this Catalan woman who was fortunate to learn to read and write Latin with beautiful calligraphy. Alba de Vic is the first and only female professional Catalan scribe of the 11th century.
Catalan version, here
