The Homilies d'Organyà () constitute one of the oldest known literary documents (longer than a mere fragment) in the
Catalan language
Catalan (; autonym: , ), known in the Valencian Community and Carche as ''Valencian'' (autonym: ), is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra, and an official language of three autonomous communities in eastern ...
. It is known for the antiquity of its language, between
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 ...
and Catalan. Older texts in Catalan include a fragment of the ''
Forum iudicum
The ''Visigothic Code'' ( la, Forum Iudicum, Liber Iudiciorum; es, Fuero Juzgo, ''Book of the Judgements''), also called ''Lex Visigothorum'' (English: ''Law of the Visigoths''), is a set of laws first promulgated by king Chindasuinth (642–653 ...
'', the feudal oath of 1098, and the ''Greuges de Guitard Isarn'' of 1080–1091, also of Organyà origin,
Josep Moran, J.A. Rabella. ''Els primers textos en català: textos anteriors a les Homilies d'Organyà''.
/ref> as well as Catalan glosses in Latin documents dated to as far back as 1034.
The Homilies d'Organyà were discovered in the vicarage of Organyà in 1904 by Dr. Joaquim Miret i Sans, a historian and lawyer. It is dated to the end of the 12th century[Lluís Gimeno, ]
Aproximació lingüística als inicis de la llengua catalana: segles VIII al XIII
', Universitat Jaume I, 2005, pág. 90. and is composed of six sermons that include commentaries on various gospels and epistles.
The original is kept in the National Library of Catalonia
The Library of Catalonia ( ca, Biblioteca de Catalunya, ) is the Catalan national library, located in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The primary mission of the Library of Catalonia is to collect, preserve, and spread Catalan bibliographic producti ...
, and a reproduction is also displayed in Organyà.
Origin
The homilies discovered in Organyà are related to others that were found in Tortosa
Tortosa (; ) is the capital of the '' comarca'' of Baix Ebre, in Catalonia, Spain.
Tortosa is located at above sea level, by the Ebro river, protected on its northern side by the mountains of the Cardó Massif, of which Buinaca, one of the hig ...
at the end of the 19th century by Antoine Thomas. Both have a common homily—that of Ash Wednesday—which has linked them to collections of homilies of Provençal origin, which were in frequent use in that era. While the Tortosa homilies copy the Provençal text and have a popular tone, those of Organyà are translations into Catalan and have a more cultivated tone.
Level of linguistic development
The homilies are distinctive for the archaic level of development of the Catalan used in them, such as (to please, oblige), (peace), (cross), ''fed'' ("make", imperative plural), etc., as well as the retention of the final ''s'' in the first person plural of verbs like ("we are", modern Catalan ) or (subjunctive "we love" or "we like"; in modern Catalan, ). Interference from Provençal is seen in orthographic, phonetic and morphological archaisms, owing to the close political, economic and cultural relations between the Occitan Occitan may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain.
* Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France.
* Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...
territories and the Catalan counties.
See also
*Old Catalan
Old Catalan is the modern denomination for Romance varieties that during the Middle Ages were spoken in territories that spanned roughly the territories of the Principality of Catalonia, the Kingdom of Valencia, the Balearic Islands, and the isl ...
References
External links
Consulta de la digitalización de las homilías de Organyà
{{DEFAULTSORT:Homilies d'Organya
12th-century Christian texts
Medieval Catalan literature
Christian sermons