The Medieval Salento. Linda Safran
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Men are often identified as the son of a named father, and one identifies himself in relation to his grandfather [94.K]. The male line is by far the best-documented kinship category. One named man shares a tomb with a widow, but their relationship to each other and to the author of the inscription is not specified [107]. A wife is often cited but not usually named (in [1.A], her name is now lost). In connection with a husband/father, one unnamed wife and son merit collective mention [24.B], a wife and unspecified child(ren) three [43.A, 44, 143.B], and motherless children once [33.A]. The only time a wife and children are fully identified by relationship and name is in the 1379/80 apse at Vaste, where the figures’ proportions also reinforce the family relationships [157.A].97 The depiction of family groups is very rare, but the Greek-language patrons or the artist at Vaste may have been inspired to depict the whole family based on precedents in large Roman-rite churches, such as Santa Maria del Casale outside Brindisi, where numerous couples and family groups are shown adoring the Virgin and Child [28.D, G, I, Q, R, U; Plates 4, 5]. Another man and woman, presumably a married couple, kneel and stand to the left of an unusual scene, in Massafra, of Christ being led to school by his mother98 [63.A; Plate 12]. At the crypt church of the archangel Michael at Li Monaci, an embracing couple depicted on the ceiling [43.C; Plate 9] has been identified as the “soldier Souré and his wife” named in the apse dedicatory inscription [43.A], but this is very unlikely: the couple is far from the dedicatory text and cannot be seen by someone reading it; there are no precedents for depicting patrons in anything but a devotional or supplicating posture; and patronal images are seldom found on church ceilings.99 The paucity of visual examples underscores that it was mainly through words, not images, that familial and emotional relationships could best be expressed.
Visualizing Names
Names often have a visual aspect that draws the reader’s attention. Names in all kinds of texts are often divided so that they occupy more visual space, usually two lines; examples include Leon/tos (Leo) and his wife Chryso/lea in the 959 inscription at Carpignano [32.A], Domin/icus de Juliano at Ceglie [39], and Ni/cholas son of Vitalius Fe/rriaci at Vaste [156]. In Hebrew texts, the “son of” or “daughter of” that is almost always part of the name marks the line division. In all three local languages, a name may also be emphasized by its placement at the beginning or end of a line of text (Souré [43.A], Nicholas de Marra [28.W]). In Leah’s epitaph, her father’s name is emphasized this way while hers is centered, a visually less prominent position [16.A]. Nicholas of Sternatia’s name occupies both the end and the beginning of lines in his dedicatory inscription [108.A]. Multiple ligatures also draw the eye to those words in a block of text: in the dedicatory inscription at San Vito dei Normanni, the principal patron’s and painters’ names are condensed with triple ligatures—double ligatures are far more common—and thus seem darker and more prominent against the white background than do the other names [109.A]. John of Ugento, who built a church at Acquarica del Capo, has his name perfectly centered, both vertically and horizontally, in the dedicatory inscription at the center of the west wall [1]; Antony in the Vaste apse is centered horizontally [157.A], and the surname Moraville appears on Roger’s column in the exact center, the fourth line of a seven-line text [82]. Anna is centralized in the Latin epitaph at Oria but Hannah is not in the Hebrew one [81].
Finally, it is very common to inscribe a name so that it abuts a sacred figure. This is the case for both Leon/tos and Chryso/lea at Carpignano, where half of each name nearly touches the throne of Christ [32.A]. At the other end of the same crypt, the dead Stratigoules’s name comes close to the right arm of Saint Christine, a proximity not vouchsafed his father’s name in a different quadrant of the inscription [32.J]; perhaps the proximity of names and saints was understood to benefit of the deceased. This text also emphasizes certain lines by means of a change in color of both background and script. Spotlighted in white letters are “with Nicholas the wise,” plus six more lines on the viewer’s left; to the right of the standing Saint Christine is “saints seen here, the all-” (“-immaculate Lady Theotokos and Nicholas of Myra” are on the next line). The striking color change draws the viewer’s attention to Nicholas and the Virgin, who are also painted in the soffit of the arcosolium and therefore present both visually and verbally at the tomb of Stratigoules. While such coloristic emphasis is atypical, it is clear that naming was not exclusively a verbal phenomenon; identities also could be announced and reinforced by visual means.100
Place Names
Jewish names have left no traces in local toponymics apart from references to streets or neighborhoods in which Jews formerly lived.101 These often date to the fifteenth century or later, when Jews were required to live in special enclaves at the edges of towns rather than throughout the habitat, as was generally the case in the Middle Ages.102 Therefore, the vast majority of information about medieval Jewish onomastics concerns personal names. For Christians, however, personal names and place names overlapped because both toponyms and given names were often the names of saints. Given the importance of names in general, the tenacity of toponyms, and the potential for places to forge communal identity, it is worth considering the entire region and not only sites in the Database.
The Italic inhabitants of what would become the Salento—Messapians, Bruttians, Sallentines—gave descriptive or evocative names to such specific sites as Brindisi (from the Indo-European for “horn,” the shape of the city’s harbor), Diso (“fort”), Rudiae (“red earth”), Manduria (“horse”), Vaste, and possibly Lecce, Ugento, Taranto, Oria, and Otranto.103 From the ancient Greek colonies in Magna Graecia come such geonyms as Gallipoli (“beautiful city”) and Leuca (“white soil”), and more sites were named after the Byzantine reconquest (Calimera, “good day”; Alliste, “the beautiful”). Others took their names from individual ancestors (Alessano, from Alexios) or families, including the Zurlo of Zollino and the Galati who settled Galátone and San Pietro in Galatina.104 Many Greek toponyms are identifiable by their oxytonic accent, including Castrì (from κάστρο), Seclì (“pile of stones”), and Strudà (uncertain origin).
By the third century BCE the Latins had conquered all of southern Italy, and a large number of Salentine toponyms derive from the personal names or surnames of early Roman landholders. Most of these end today in -ano, from the original Latin -anum: Carpignano (from Carpinius, Calpinius, or Calpurnius), Corigliano (Corelius), Martano (Martus). Crispiano derives from Crispius, Miggiano probably from a landowner named Aemilius or Midius.105 Further Latinisms include Grottaglie (“grotto”), Ortelle (“garden”), and Mottola (“elevation”). Others are phytotoponyms, such as Faggiano (from “beech”) and Nociglia (“walnut”).106 Specchia della Mendolea, the possible home of a priest [79.C] and the place where a Hebrew medical manuscript was copied and illuminated in 1415, was an elevation notable for its almonds.107 Casole, south of Otranto, site of the great Orthodox monastery of San Nicola founded by the Normans in 1099, derives from the ancient Latin “hut.” Quattro Macine, excavated in recent years by the University of Salento [98–103], appears to have been named for its industrial specialization (“four mills”).108 Despite a sustained Lombard presence, the region has few Germanic toponyms. A possible reminiscence of Muslim raids is Racale (Arabic “village”),109 but it was more likely named for Herakleia, in Pontos (Asia Minor), from which colonists were brought to settle the area near Gallipoli after the Arabs deported the population of nearby Ugento to Africa in 876.110 A memory of a Slavic presence is preserved in San Vito degli Schiavoni,111 known since the nineteenth century as San Vito (or Santovitu) dei Normanni.
Hagiotoponyms
In addition to these largely anthroponymic and nature-based toponyms, many places in the Salento are named for the saint around whose church or monastic complex the settlement grew. Such hagiotoponyms are evidence of the dispersed nature of the medieval habitation, where a cult site might serve a number of isolated rural