Words and Meanings

Abstract

When Francis lived, Italy was far from being a single political unit. The word ‘Italy’ denoted the peninsula and its adjacent islands, not a single nation-state, which did not come into being until 1861. The language of the church and the universities throughout Europe was Latin, which was regarded as the gateway to all knowledge. The rise of the merchant classes and the development of trade were giving rise in Italy not to a standard national language, but to a series of dialects, which were considered inferior to Latin since they lacked the formality, regularity, and dignity felt to be necessary in a written language (Migliorini 1984, 58). Francis would have grown up speaking Umbrian at home and learning Latin at school, with the Psalter as his textbook. He also learnt French, although not at school, and it is not clear how well or to what extent. Some scholars assert that he “sang songs in broken French” (Trexler 1989, 11), whereas Anonymous of Perugia describes him as reveling “in a very loud voice, singing out in French” (II, 40). If his mother, Pica, was indeed French, as one tradition believes, he could have been brought up to be bilingual.