El testamento y su publicación sacramental en la Cataluña altomedieval: una oportunidad para la lexicografía

Abstract

[eng] This article focuses on the opportunities afforded the lexicographerby a particular case of double tradition of early medieval documents:wills and their sacramental publications. The existence of this doubletradition for the same legal act, fostered by the stipulations of theVisigothic law in force in the Catalan counties, is fortunate forearly medieval Latin lexicography in Catalonia, as it generatesevidence not available in other regions and provideslexicographers with a wealth of research opportunities. In thispaper, three wills and their respective sacramental publicationsare compared. The latter have in common the fact that they weredrawn up by the learned judge Ermengol, who practised in thediocese of Urgell in the second half of the eleventh century. In thepublications, Ermengol substitutes some terms in the original willwithout any apparent legal reason. These lexical pairs, whichfunction as glosses, supply the lexicographer with valuablematerial that enables them to identify variants, connect aRomance term with a Latin one, and confirm or establish themeaning of various words. These cases of double traditionconstitute a rich resource for medieval Latin lexicography, sincethey offer solutions that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.