The Veronese Riddle ( it, Indovinello veronese) is a

riddle A riddle is a statement, question or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that requ ...

written in late

Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpa ...

, or early

Romance Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to: Common meanings * Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings * Romance languages, ...

, on the

Verona Orational The Verona Orational, also known as the ''Libellus Orationum'' (Verona, Cathedral, Biblioteca Capit. Cod. LXXXIX), is a late 7th or early 8th century Visigothic prayer book. It is the only liturgical book that was written before the Moorish invasi ...

, probably in the 8th or early 9th century, by a Christian

monk A monk (, from el, μοναχός, ''monachos'', "single, solitary" via Latin ) is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedica ...

from

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city municipality in the region and the second largest in nor ...

, in northern

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. It is an example of a writing-riddle, a popular genre in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

and still in circulation in recent times. Discovered by Luigi Schiaparelli in 1924, it may be the earliest extant example of Romance writing in Italy.

Text

The text, with a literal translation, runs:

Explanation

The subject of the riddle is the writer himself: the oxen are his fingers which draw a feather (the white plow) across the page (the white field), leaving a trail of ink (the black seed).

Origins of the ''Indovinello''

The Riddle was written on codex LXXXIX (89) of the '' Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona''. The parchment, discovered by Schiapparelli in 1924, is a

Mozarabic Mozarabic, also called Andalusi Romance, refers to the medieval Romance varieties spoken in the Iberian Peninsula in territories controlled by the Islamic Emirate of Córdoba and its successors. They were the common tongue for the majority of ...

oration by the

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

Christian Church, probably written in Toledo. From there it was brought to Cagliari and then to Pisa before reaching the Chapter of Verona.

Text analysis and comments

Though initially hailed as the earliest document in an Italian vernacular in the first years following Schiapparelli's discovery, today the record has been disputed by many scholars from Bruno Migliorini to Cesare Segre and Francesco Bruni, who have placed it at the latest stage of

, though this very term is far from being clear-cut, and Migliorini himself considers it dilapidated. At present, however, the '' Placito Capuano'' (960 AD; the first in a series of four documents dated 960-963 AD issued by a Capuan court) is considered to be the oldest ''undisputed'' example of Romance writing in Italy. Some words do adhere to the rules of Latin grammar (''boves'' with ''-es'' for the

accusative The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...

masculine plural, ''alba'' with ''-a'' suffix for the neuter plural). Yet more are distinctly vernacular, with no cases and producing the typical ending of Romance verbs: ''pareba'' (It. ''pareva''), ''araba'' (It. ''arava''), ''teneba'' (It. ''teneva''), ''seminaba'' (It. ''seminava'') instead of Latin imperfect tense parebat, arabat, tenebat, seminabat. ''Albo versorio'' and ''negro semen'' have been written for the Latin ''album versorium'' and ''nigrum semen''. ''Versorio'' is still the word for " plough" in today's Veronese dialect (and other varieties of the

Venetian language Venetian, wider Venetian or Venetan ( or ) is a Romance language spoken natively in the northeast of Italy,Ethnologue mostly in the Veneto region, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and of ...

), just as the verb ''parar'' is still the word for 'push on', 'drive', 'lead' (Italian, by contrast, has'' spingere,'' ''guidare''). Michele A. Cortelazzo and Ivano Paccagnella say that the plural ''-es'' of ''boves'' may well be considered Ladin and therefore a genuine Romance plural rather than a latinism. ''Albo'' 'white' is found in Old Italian, in competition with the Germanic ''bianco'' which eventually ousted it from its place in everyday speech.

References

;Notes * Bruno Migliorini, ''Storia della lingua italiana''. Firenze, Sansoni, 1987. * Aldo Giudice, Giovanni Bruni, ''Problemi e scrittori della lingua italiana''. Torino, Paravia 1973, vols. * AA.VV. ''Il libro Garzanti della lingua italiana''. Milano, Garzanti, 1969. * Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, ''La filologia''. Roma,

Editori Riuniti Editori Riuniti is an Italian publishing house based in Rome that publishes books and magazines on the history of socialism, socialist thought, physics and mathematics theory, and the history of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Histor ...

, 1984.

External links