ABSTRACT
Translation into the vernacular (tenth to fifteenth centuries ) The earliest written document in an Italian vernacular is in fact a translation from the Latin model of sworn deposition required by the Longobard bureaucracy for estate owner ship records: a judge of Capua, in AD 960, wrote down the formula in words other than those of standard Latin for the benefit of witnesses that evidently could no longer under stand it. This type of translation continued for a long time and stopped only when administra tive practices had been completely taken over by the rising middle class. Day-to-day legal activities presumably required a massive use of interpreting in order to convey to the people the complex content of laws written in Latin and often already translated into that language from statutes originally written in the multi tude of languages used by conquering armies and foreign rulers. The first systematic recourse to written translations in the vernacu lar appeared in fact towards the middle of the thirteenth century in the Law Schools in Bologna and Florence, where it was felt that the application of Classical Rhetorics to a vernacular context required a close patterning of the style on Latin models (Maggini 1952). Thus CICERO's works (see LATIN TRADIDON) were among the earliest examples of Classical Latin texts translated into regional dialects with the obvious intent of raising the quality of the vernacular through a kind of mirror effect. This habit became very popular and generated numerous translations of rhetorics and philoso phy texts.
