Paleographic work is a bottomless well. At least, this is what emerges from the studies carried out by Jesús Alturo and Tània Alaix. The two palaeographers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona published in February of this year the book Lletres que parlen, subtitled "Voyage to the origins of Catalan". In this very well-documented work, Alturo and Alaix describe the rhythms of written Catalan from the first moment they put their noses in it.
The first heartbeat is found in a text by Saint Pacià, who was bishop of Barcelona in the 4th century. Although it is written in perfect classical Latin, the Latin learned by the few who knew how to write, Pacià misses some words that already point to the existence of a language far removed from academicism. What the Barcelona bishop does is Latinize them, so he writes in them if you please but in pseudo-Latin forms that betray him.
Of the entire book, the most relevant conclusion, which is also the one that had the most academic and media impact, is the new dating of the copy of a Catalan translation of the Liber iudicum, which they placed between 1060 and 1080. This Book of Judges dethroned Organyà's Homilies, which are dated a century and a half later, from the top of the list of the first documents written in Catalan.
On Saturday afternoon, in La Setmana del Llibre en Català, Alturo and Alaix talked about their studies with the enthusiasm that characterizes them. And towards the end of the talk, on stage number 1 of the Moll de la Fusta, full of people, the news broke.
I said at the beginning that paleographic work is a bottomless pit. Well, the two researchers, who have not stopped working with these ancient documents, announced that they could reveal a new finding. Where you least expected, therefore, an exclusive appeared, which the teachers explained with all kinds of details and with their eyes lit up, typical of the findings that feed the spirit of research.
The fact is that Alturo and Alaix have come to the conclusion that Organyà's Homilies were not properly a homily, "because it was not a codex, but a kind of notebook or perhaps they were unbound sheets". Compared to other documents, they consider that it is a working document that the canons of Organyà used to train novices in the office of preaching.
So, new light on the first texts written in Catalan, in this case one from the 13th century. And Alturo and Alaix promise that there will be more finds.
