Documents in Italian Language from the 15th Century in the First Volume of the Collectanea Bartoliana

A manuscript collection of copied documents dating from the 13th to 19th century, usually called the Collectanea Bartoliana (Bartolife() zbornik in Croatian) in the specialist literature since the documents were collected and copied by Fra Felice Maria Bartoli, is stored in the monastery of Glagolitic tertiary Franciscans in Krk. It consists of two volumes numbering altogether over 400 pages of paper written on both sides. The first volume contains documents in Latin and Italian language, whereas the second onc has also some writtcn in the Croatian language and Glagolitic script (description in GALOVIC 2009). The present paper gives a description of the documents from the 15th century written in Italian language giving indications of their content and pointing out some of their language features. The oldest document of the Collection is a privilege,Conte Zuanne de Frangipanibus- from 1445 (fol. 56(r)). It is followed by a fragment of a will by the count's wife Elizabeth who made it in 1484 in Venice. The last in chronological order is a summary of a Latin document from 1478 on the altar of Saint Bernard. Given the long domination of the Venetian Republic and the considerable linguistic influence, in many texts from the Croatian coast dating from past centuries, despite being written in the Tuscan type of the Italo-Romance there are several Venetian linguistic elements. The Venetian was normally (often next to Croatian) a language of everyday communication for many inhabitants of the arca in question, and thus for the people who composed the documents that are examined here. As one might expect, there are different Venetian elements in the analyzed texts. Some linguistic phenomena arc for example occlusive intervocalic sounds (bonificade,fradelli, tenudi), alveolar instead of palatal affricates (zorno, descazar, azonzer), drop of the final vowels (magnificar, dar, azonzer, appar, condition, dichiaration), verb forms (havemo, debbia veminara, confermemo), the characteristic forms of personal names (Zorzi, Zuanne).