Philology and Toponymy. Commons, Place Names and Collective Memories in the Rural Landscape of Emilia

Contents Volume 2 / 2016 Vol. Articles 2 FRANCESCO BENOZZO Origins of Human Language: 2016 Deductive Evidence for Speaking Australopithecus LOUIS-JACQUES DORAIS Wendat Ethnophilology: How a Canadian Indigenous Nation is Reviving its Language Philology JOHANNES STOBBE Written Aesthetic Experience. Philology as Recognition An International Journal MAHMOUD SALEM ELSHEIKH on the Evolution of Languages, Cultures and Texts The Arabic Sources of Rāzī’s Al-Manṣūrī fī ’ṭ-ṭibb

MAURIZIO ASCARI Philology of Conceptualization: Geometry and the Secularization of the Early Modern Imagination

KALEIGH JOY BANGOR Philological Investigations: Hannah Arendt’s Berichte on Eichmann in Jerusalem

MIGUEL CASAS GÓMEZ From Philology to Linguistics: The Influence of Saussure in the Development of Semantics

CARMEN VARO VARO Beyond the Opposites: Philological and Cognitive Aspects of Linguistic Polarization

LORENZO MANTOVANI Philology and Toponymy. Commons, Place Names and Collective Memories in the Rural Landscape of Emilia

Discussions

ROMAIN JALABERT – FEDERICO TARRAGONI Philology Philologie et révolution Crossings SUMAN GUPTA Philology of the Contemporary World: On Storying the Financial Crisis Review Article EPHRAIM NISSAN Lexical Remarks Prompted by A Smyrneika Lexicon, a Trove for Contact Linguistics Reviews SUMAN GUPTA Philology and Global English Studies: Retracings (Maurizio Ascari) ALBERT DEROLEZ The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript (Ephraim Nissan) MARC MICHAEL EPSTEIN (ED.) Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts (Ephraim Nissan) Peter Lang Vol. 2/2016 CONSTANCE CLASSEN The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (Ephraim Nissan) Contents Volume 2 / 2016 Vol. Articles 2 FRANCESCO BENOZZO Origins of Human Language: 2016 Deductive Evidence for Speaking Australopithecus LOUIS-JACQUES DORAIS Wendat Ethnophilology: How a Canadian Indigenous Nation is Reviving its Language Philology JOHANNES STOBBE Written Aesthetic Experience. Philology as Recognition An International Journal MAHMOUD SALEM ELSHEIKH on the Evolution of Languages, Cultures and Texts The Arabic Sources of Rāzī’s Al-Manṣūrī fī ’ṭ-ṭibb

MAURIZIO ASCARI Philology of Conceptualization: Geometry and the Secularization of the Early Modern Imagination

KALEIGH JOY BANGOR Philological Investigations: Hannah Arendt’s Berichte on Eichmann in Jerusalem

MIGUEL CASAS GÓMEZ From Philology to Linguistics: The Influence of Saussure in the Development of Semantics

CARMEN VARO VARO Beyond the Opposites: Philological and Cognitive Aspects of Linguistic Polarization

LORENZO MANTOVANI Philology and Toponymy. Commons, Place Names and Collective Memories in the Rural Landscape of Emilia

Discussions

Editorial Board: Rossend Arques (Lexicography, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain) Xaverio Ballester (Classical Philology, Universitat de Valéncia, Spain) Francesco Benozzo (Ethnophilology, Università di Bologna, Italy) Vladimir Biti (Slavic Philology, Universität Wien, Austria) Daniela Boccassini (French and Italian Philology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada) Salwa Castelo-Branco (Ethnomusicology, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal) Mattia Cavagna (Romance Philology, Université de Louvain, Belgium) Louis-Jacques Dorais (Arctic Philology, Emeritus, Université Laval, Québec) Markus Eberl (Pre-Columbian Philology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA) Matthias Egeler (Scandinavian Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany) Keir Douglas Elam (English Literature, Università di Bologna, Italy) Andrea Fassò (Romance Philology, Emeritus, Università di Bologna, Italy) Inés Fernández-Ordóñez (Spanish Philology and Linguistics, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain) Fabio Foresti (Sociolinguistics, Università di Bologna, Italy) Roslyn Frank (Ethnolinguistics, Emeritus, University of Iowa, USA) Beatrice Gründler (Arabic Philology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) Mihály Hoppál (Ethnology, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, Budapest, Hungary) Martin Kern (East Asian Philology, Princeton University, USA) John Koch (Celtic Philology, Canolfan Uwchefrydiau Cymreig a Cheltaidd, Aberystwyth, UK) Albert Lloret (Digital Philology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA) Anna Maranini (Classical Philology, Università di Bologna, Italy) Matteo Meschiari (Cultural Anthropology, Università di Palermo, Italy) Alberto Montaner Frutos (Spanish and Semitic Philology, Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain) Gonzalo Navaza (Toponimy, Universidade de Vigo, Spain) Ephraim Nissan (Historical and Computational Linguistics, Goldsmith College, London, UK) Stephen Oppenheimer (Genetics, Oxford University, UK) Marcel Otte (Prehistoric Studies, Université de Liège, Belgium) Michael Papio (Italian Philology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA) José Manuel Pedrosa Bartolomé (Oral Philology, Universidad de Alcalá, Spain) Andrea Piras (Iranian Philology, Università di Bologna, Italy) Stefano Rapisarda (Romance Philology, Università di Catania, Italy) Uta Reuster-Jahn (African Philology, Universität Hamburg, Germany) Dario Seglie (Archaeology, Politecnico di Torino, Italy) Bora Cem Sevencan (Archaeology, Oulun Yliopistoo, Finland) Wayne Storey (Textual Philology, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA) Marco Veglia (Italian Literature, Università di Bologna, Italy) Philology An International Journal on the Evolution of Languages, Cultures and Texts

General editor: Francesco Benozzo

Volume 2 / 2016

PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien Editorial Address: Francesco Benozzo Università di Bologna Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature e Culture Moderne Via Cartoleria 5 I-40124 Bologna, Italy [email protected]

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Printed in Switzerland Contents Volume II / 2016

Articles

Francesco Benozzo Origins of Human Language: Deductive Evidence for Speaking Australopithecus ��7

Louis-Jacques Dorais Wendat Ethnophilology: How a Canadian Indigenous Nation is Reviving its Language ��25

Johannes Stobbe Written Aesthetic Experience. Philology as Recognition ��47

Mahmoud Salem Elsheikh The Arabic Sources of Rāzī’s Al-Man¡ūrī fī ’¥-¥ibb ��73

Maurizio Ascari Philology of Conceptualization: Geometry and the Secularization of the Early Modern Imagination ��121

Kaleigh Joy Bangor Philological Investigations: Hannah Arendt’s Berichte on Eichmann in Jerusalem ��141

Miguel Casas Gómez From Philology to Linguistics: The Influence of Saussure in the Development of Semantics ��165

Carmen Varo Varo Beyond the Opposites: Philological and Cognitive Aspects of Linguistic Polarization ��217

Lorenzo Mantovani Philology and Toponymy. Commons, Place Names and Collective Memories in the Rural Landscape of Emilia ��237

Discussions

Romain Jalabert – Federico Tarragoni Philologie et Revolution ��255

Crossings

Suman Gupta Philology of the Contemporary World: On Storying the Financial Crisis ��275

Review Article

Ephraim Nissan Lexical Remarks Prompted by A Smyrneika Lexicon, a Trove for Contact Linguistics ��297

Reviews

Suman Gupta Philology and Global English Studies: Retracings (Maurizio Ascari) ��335

Albert Derolez The Making and Meaning of the Liber Floridus: A Study of the Original Manuscript (Ephraim Nissan) ��339

Marc Michael Epstein (ed.) Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts (Ephraim Nissan) ��358

Constance Classen The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch (Ephraim Nissan) ��395

Philology and Toponymy. Commons, Place Names and Collective Memories in the Rural Landscape of Emilia

Lorenzo Mantovani Università di Bologna

Abstract This article historically and ethnographically examines the ways in which landscapes and memories are tied to people’s identity processes. The area taken into account covers part of the rural landscape of Emilia, in Northeast Italy around Bologna, where several commons have contributed to a radical transformation of the environment. Comparing the local toponyms with other sources, the author shows how the landscape becomes a mnemonic device where the physical elements of the past are still used to recall a shared history and identity.

Keywords commons, toponymy, rural landscape, anthropology, memory

The world was so recent that many things lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point.

Gabriel García Márquez

Today Emilia is part of Emilia-Romagna, a region in Northeast Italy; its capital city is Bologna. Nearly half of the region (48%) consists of plains, while the rest is hilly and mountainous, with the Apennines sep- arating it from Liguria and Tuscany. Today it is a wealthy, highly popu- lated region, with the third highest GDP per capita in Italy. Such results have been achieved by developing a balanced economy that comprises one of Italy’s biggest agricultural sector, as well as a long tradition in mechanics manufacturing. But if we look at the history of its landscape, and in particular at the flat area between the Apennines and the Adriatic Sea, we get a completely different picture of the region. Emilia’s plain was formed by the gradual retreat of the sea from the Po river basin and by the detritus deposited by the rivers. In ancient times it was almost entirely a marshland, and only from the second half of the 20th century

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 238 Lorenzo Mantovani the wetlands have disappeared – with few relevant exceptions of lagoons and saline areas. Here I claim the necessity to adopt a long-term perspective that merg- es history and anthropology, if we seek to understand in which way several physical elements of the rural landscape of Emilia generated or were connected to collective memories and identities. Moreover, such a perspective is useful to show how these elements can still be meaningful to the local communities, even when they are no longer present. A focus on the longue durée might enable us to move beyond the Western ontology that stresses a Nature/Culture divide, that is “the sterile opposition between the natu- ralistic view of the landscape as a neutral, external backdrop to human activities, and the culturalistic view that every landscape is a particular cognitive or symbolic ordering of space” (Ingold, 2000, p. 189). This para- digm shift has been advocated by an increasing number of anthropologists and other scholars in the social sciences and the humanities (Descola – Palsson, 1996; Ingold – Palsson, 2013; Descola, 2013) and it is also setting the ground for fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations with the so-called ‘hard sciences’. By highlighting the «temporality of the landscape», that is its processual character (Ingold, 2000]), we can understand much better the ways in which humans and non-humans are interwoven, and not divided, in their ongoing process of being in the world and making it meaningful.

Commons

The management of the environment has always required collective efforts, and Emilia has a long tradition in cooperation, being still, together with Trentino-Alto Adige, a region with a high number of successful cooperative experiences in Italy. The interest in reconstructing the history of the rural landscape of Emilia is thus motivated by the peculiar presence in this region, since the late Middle Ages, of one of the few forms of rural commons still present in Italy.1 Rural commons – together with other

1 On the definition of the term ‘commons’, see Ostrom, 1990, p. 30–32; for a historical perspective on the commons see De Moor – Shaw-Taylor – Warde, 2002 and De Moor, 2015.

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 Philology and Toponymy 239 institutions for collective action, such as guilds or beguinages – have for centuries played an important, but often unrecognised role in the history of Europe, by managing resources that couldn’t be easily controlled by in- dividuals nor privatised. The rise of the commons could be dated – at least for Europe – in the context of the demographic and economic growth that started in the 11th century, both in urban and rural areas. As historian Tine De Moor claims, the commons generated from agreements that “should be read as settlements of conflicts that arose between the lords and the village inhabitants on the usage of some of the resources that officially fell under the local lord’s power. […] these agreements can be considered forms of risk avoidance as well as a way to benefit from advantages of scale in the management of natural resources” (De Moor, 2015, p. 26). Partially overcoming the difficult transition that was the so-called Industrial Revolution, some of these institutions have proved to be solid and resilient enough to stand ecologic, demographic, economic, social and political changes and are now active in many European countries. The historical commons have considerably changed over time, adapting to new conditions and assuming new functions. All the while, they have shaped human communities, their identities and memories, as well as their envi- ronments – in particular pastures, forests, wastelands, farmlands, fisheries etc. (De Moor – Shaw-Taylor – Warde, 2002; Alfani – Rao, 2011). The commons of Emilia taken into account in this paper, called Parte- cipanze,2 generated between the 12th and the 14th century from ecclesiastic leases, whose purpose was the improvement of marginal and uncultivat- ed areas where wetlands and woods were wide spread.3 Six of that commons are still present in the low lands not far from the cities of Bologna, Modena and Ferrara, under the municipalities of Nonantola, Sant’Agata Bolognese, San Giovanni in Persiceto, Cento, Pieve di Cento, and Vil- la Fontana (Medicina). In the past there were at least three more, under the municipalities of Crevalcore, Budrio and Medicina. Besides the local landowner aristocracy and clergy, the members of these commons have for

2 With the exception of the Partecipanza dei Boschi di Trino Vercellese, rural commons in Piedmont (Alfani – Rao, 2011, p. 141–156). The term Partecipanze (singular: Partecipanza) comes from Latin pars capere, ‘to take part’. 3 The original leases were probably made by the abbot of Nonantola (Modena) and the bishop of Bologna. On the Partecipanze see Fregni, 1992 and Arioti – Fregni – Tor- resani, 1990.

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 240 Lorenzo Mantovani centuries concentrated their efforts on land drainage, a better control of the rivers and the improvement of agriculture. In addition, they also had – and still have – an obligation of permanent residence within the boundaries of the Partecipanze in order to take part in the common management of the land.4 Since they have been established, the main characteristic of these commons was the periodical division of the common land in many parts, depending on the number of the members – or the households – present each time. The division was made by drawing lots, so every user or family could benefit from a different part of the common land after each division. Choosing this form of cooperative solution, as I have mentioned, had two main advantages: sharing the costs of the uncertain and risky management of natural resources, especially in a marginal and less fertile environment, and an advantage of scale for investments – such as land drainage – achievable at a lower price, compared to private property (see De Moor, 2015). Thus while on the one hand these commons have been among the protagonists of the past management of forests and wetlands, on the other hand they have been important actors of environmental change. Since the early 19th century all the Partecipanze have faced several attempts to be removed, from Napoleon’s conquest of Emilia in 1796 to the Fascist period. Their resilience, however, can be attributed only in part to economic reasons. The Partecipanze have certainly proved to be capa- ble of sustainable management of their common-pool resources, but also social and political motivations must be taken into account. Moreover, an increasing number of ethnographic and experimental studies have shown that culture has a strong influence on reciprocity, cooperation or antisocial behaviour (Mauss, 2002; Aime – Cossetta, 2010; Gächter – Herrmann, 2009), and this is why we should not forget the cultural impact of the commons on this region. Thus I will now proceed to show how the cultural background and the strong connections between the collective identity of the commoners and their environment have supported the resilience of their institutions.

4 The rule, called incolato, according to which all the commoners must have «open house and smoking chimney» – meaning that they should live in a specific place in order to be part of the commons – can be found in many other European commons. The commons’ boundaries still follow the traditional division of parishes.

Maps and Place Names

The first step for a better understanding of how this rural landscape looked like in the past, before the spread of industrialisation, mechanisation of agriculture and capitalism, and, at the same time, of the resilience of the Partecipanze, is a comparison of different maps of Emilia dated from the 16th to the 20th century.5 We all know very well that maps are representations of the landscape, not the landscape itself. Because of this, they become interesting cultural and political devices that can show us the perceptions of their makers and of the communities that lived in that environment. Their function is very closely related to the formation of collective memories and identities: by drawing on a map objects, names and places we know how we are supposed to see, to think and to remember the world. As anthropol- ogist Angèle Smith pointed out: “what is marked on the map exists; what is not marked does not. What is named is considered significant; what goes unnamed is not. How names are recorded (in what language, in what type of script they appear on the map) is also a process of choice and selection” (Smith, 2003: 73). A famous example is Danti’s map of Emilia, one of the forty maps frescoed on the walls of the so-called Gallery of Maps, now part of the Vatican Museums. It represents Emilia’s low plains at the time of pope Gregory XIII – a pope who was born in Bologna – and it was painted in 1580–81 basing on drawings by Egnazio Danti, the papal cartographer who came from the University of Bologna (Gambi – Milanesi – Pinelli, 1996). In this map the most important pictorial elements are clearly the rivers and the wetlands. The reason is simple: at that time, and at least until the 19th century, rivers and canals were the principal communication and trade routes that linked Bologna to Ferrara, Ravenna, Venice and the sea.6

5 The maps used for this study are the following: Danti [1580–81], Magini [1595], Orlan- di [1597], Magini [1599], De Rossi [1709], Casati [1726], anonymous for Charles VI [1733], Chiesa [1742], Baruffaldi [1752], Baruffaldi [Jan. 1758], Baruffaldi [Jul. 1758], anonymous [1759], Boerio [1802], Barbantini [1816], Barbantini [1825] and the maps of the IGM (Military Geographical Institute) [1892, 1896, 1911, 1956]. All the maps were consulted at the Department of History and Cultures of the University of Bologna, except Danti and Chiesa (see Gambi – Milanesi – Pinelli, 1996 and Chiesa,1992). 6 The main road of the region was the Via Æmilia, completed by the Romans in 187 BC to connect Piacenza to Rimini.

Water was essential for the production of silk, which was the principal economic sector in Bologna until the 17th century. Through the canals and the wetlands, the silk could reach Venice and the international market in France, the Flanders, Germany, England and the Othman Empire (Poni, 2009). But at the same time water could also be perceived by the local rural communities as a threat: rivers and wetlands – which were widespread in the area of the Partecipanze, where the main activities have been for centuries hunting, fishing and husbandry – created quite often dangerous floods and became the perfect setting for the spreading of malaria and other diseases, which kept a high rate of infant mortality until the 1918 flu pandemic. By comparing the various maps of the following centuries, we can see that the wetlands and the forests almost entirely disappeared, leav- ing space, by the half of the 20th century, to the agricultural landscape of Emilia that we know today – as it is even clearer by looking at the detailed maps of the Military Geographical Institute. Now I would like to draw your attention to a second type of useful information: toponyms, or place names. The importance of place names lies in their ability to give an identity to a place and to define its borders. Place names are also mnemonic codes for local stories, activities and traditions. Thus they become important for two reasons: first, they can tell us some- thing about physical elements of a landscape from centuries ago – thousands of years ago, in some cases. Second, they give us an idea of the perceptions and memories of the local communities, even when those physical elements are no longer present. The area taken into account for this research – the low plains between the cities of Bologna, Modena and Ferrara – is characterized by the presence of many place names related to specific physical features of the landscape, and to human activities connected to them. I collected all these place names and I divided them into two macro semantic fields, the first one linked to the subject of wood and the second one to water. These elements are even more relevant because all the Partecipanze were formed to manage forests and wetlands.7

7 A similar approach was used to detect the sites of pre-industrial commons in central Sweden “for enquiring into the extent to which commons have been associated with certain properties in the landscape” (Lindholm – Sandström – Ekman, 2013, p. 7).

I. Wood8

I.1. Wood. In the first semantic field we find place names which mean ‘wood’. Examples of this first group are toponyms like Selva, Selva Mal- vezzi, Palazzo della Selva, Chiesa della Selva (all coming from Latin silva), Boschi, Madonna dei/di Boschi, S. Giovanni del Bosco, Molino del Bo- schetto, Chiesa del Bosco, S. Maria de Boschi, San Bartolomeo in Bosco, Boschi di Bagnarola, Bosco Mesola (from Medieval Latin buscus, loanword from West Germanic *busk-; or from posticum ‘back door, space at the back of the house’: Benozzo, 2015, p. 257; 2016, p. 503).

I.2. Tree. We can also find toponyms which mean ‘tree’, like Fossadalbero, Albersano, Alberlungo, Alberino and Alberone (from Latin albus, ‘white’), or specific species of trees, such as elm, durmast, hazel and birch. It is the case of place names like L’Olmo, Chiesa dell’Olmo, Olmi Secchi (from Latin ulmus, ‘elm’ [Ulmus campestris]), Madonna della Rovere, Rovereto (from Latin robur, ‘sessile oak’ or ‘durmast’ [Quercus petraea]), Valle della Corla, Corlo (from Latin corulus, ‘hazel’ [Corylus avellana]), Dugliolo (from Latin betula, loanword from Celtic *bidw-, ‘birch’ [Betula alba]), and Prunaro (from Latin prunus, ‘plum tree’ [Prunus domestica]).

I.3. Timber. Finally in the same field we find place names which mean ‘timber’, like Marrara (from Latin materies, ‘timber’).

Such place names are important because they provide us useful information for the reconstruction of the past landscape of Emilia. We can learn, for in- stance, that woods and forests were widespread in areas where now we can only find rural towns and arable fields. We can also learn about the typical plant species of this plain region – like elm, durmast or hazel – or about other species that have become rarer. Moreover, we can notice that many toponyms connected to the subject of wood denote sacred places: churches, sanctuaries, shrines that link Mary or a Catholic saint to a specific element of the landscape, usually a tree. Sacred trees, places of hierophanies and apparitions of gods, spirits, the Virgin or saints near trees are well recorded

8 For the etymology of all the place names cited, see also Pellegrini, 1990 and Benozzo, 2015.

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 244 Lorenzo Mantovani for the European rural landscape: Fatima in Portugal and Loreto in Italy are just the most famous examples of a widespread religious phenomenon. In particular the so-called Madonne arboree, sacred trees or wooden icons usually linked to a miracle or an apparition of Mary, are widely present in Italy.9 Several Madonne arboree are scattered across Emilia, mainly in the marginal areas of the Apennines and the low wetlands of the past. It is possible to assume that some of these Catholic sacred places have arisen on ancient pre-Christian shrines – sacred woods or temples – as we know that every culture has attributed sacred meanings to the vegetation, water, the weather and agriculture. Place names like Minerbio (from Latin Minervium, temple of the Roman goddess Minerva) witness the presence of Roman shrines in the low plain of Bologna. However, coming from pre-Christian cults or from ‘folk religion’, all these sacred places have made the landscape meaningful for the local communities, and in many situations these sacred trees have become a centre of the local peoples’ social life. Moreover, some of these sanctuaries of Madonne arboree arose next to the Partecipanze – it is the case of the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Olmo (‘Madonna of the elm’), nearby the disappeared forest of the Partecipanza di Budrio – or other commons of Emilia – like Madonna dell’Acero (‘Ma- donna of the maple’) or Madonna del Faggio (‘Madonna of the beech’), popular places of pilgrimage in the Apennines, nearby the common forests property of the Consorzio degli utilisti di Vidiciatico and the Consorzio degli utilisti di Pianaccio. The tight link between the commons and these sacred places has always been strong and deeply rooted in the memories of the commoners, as witnessed today by the agrarian cults (rogazioni) that are still performed in this rural area.

II. Water

II.1. Swamp and wetland. The second semantic field is much richer and it underlines the importance and the ambivalence of water for this territory.

9 On the concept of ‘arboreal hierophanies’, see Eliade, 1958. On the Madonne arboree of Italy, and in particular of Tuscany and Abruzzo, see Dini, 1980, Seppilli, 1989, and Salvator, 2002.

Given the abundant presence of marshlands in the region, the first and the largest group is composed of toponyms which mean ‘swamp’ or ‘wetland’, often with a negative connotation. It is the case of several place names that contain the term Valle (from Latin valles or vallis), which is used in this region in a peculiar way, with the meaning of ‘wetland’ instead of the more frequent ‘valley’. Examples of this group are Valli di Argenta, Valli di Medicina, Valle della Corla, Valli di Dugliolo, Valli di Buonacquisto, Valli della Pegola (‘wetlands of mud’) e del Tedo, Valli del Poggio e di Malalbergo, Valli della Barigella, La Valletta, Miravalle, Vallazza, Valle Durazzo, Valle Santa. Other toponyms with the same meaning are Mar Morto (from Latin mare mortuus, ‘dead sea’), which has later become Marmorta; Chiesa della Palude (from Latin palus, ‘swamp’), Lagosanto and Ponte Lagoscuro (from Latin lacus obscurus, ‘dark swamp’).

II.2. Spring and bath. To this field belongs a second group of toponyms that show a more ‘positive’ aspect of water, that of ‘spring’ or ‘bath’. Here we find place names like Villa Fontana – which is also the name of one of the Partecipanze – Fontana and Fontane (from Latin fons, ‘spring’); it is also present the alternative form Sorgente (from Latin surgere, ‘to rise’ or ‘to spring up’). Other toponyms of this group are Bagnarola, Bagno, Bagnolo and Bagneto (all coming from Latin balneum, ‘bath’).

II.3. River. The massive presence of water in the form of rivers and canals is witnessed by place names that mean ‘river’ or that were named with the nearby rivers’ names. Examples of this group are San Pietro Capofiume, Santa Maria Co’ di Fiume (from Latin caput + flumen, ‘end of the river’); Volta (from Latin volvo, ‘to turn’, in this case with the meaning of ‘turn of the river’); Idice, Quaderna, Sant’Antonio della Bassa Quaderna, San Lazzaro di Savena, Ponte Samoggia, Casalecchio di Reno, Poggio Renatico, Calderara di Reno, Trebbo di Reno, San Vitale di Reno, Corpo Reno, Renazzo, Lavino di Sopra, Lavino di Sotto, Lavino di Mezzo, San Martino in Soverzano (sovra Zeno), San Felice sul Panaro – towns and villages that took the name of the rivers that crossed them.

II.4. Port, ferry, riverbank, gutter, and watermill. A more heterogeneous group connected to the subject of ‘water’ consists of place names related to the human presence on the landscape, with the existence of buildings or activities that revolve around the concept of water. The importance of rivers

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 246 Lorenzo Mantovani and canals as communication and trade routes is confirmed by several toponyms with the meaning of ‘port’ or ‘ferry’. It is the case of Porto, Capo del Porto, Porto Maggiore, Portoverrara, Portorotta, Portonovo, Porto Vecchio, Buonporto (all coming from Latin portus, ‘port’) and Traghetto (from Latin traiectus, ‘ferry’). The constant threat of flooding was countered by building dams and riverbanks, or by digging gutters and ditches, and for this reason we find place names like S. Martino in Argine or Argiolo, Argine del Lupo (from Latin agger, ‘riverbank’), Fossatone, Chiesuol del Fosso, Fossanova, Torre della Fossa, Fossalta (from Latin fossa, ‘gutter’ or ‘ditch’)10 – Le Budrie and Budrio, the last one being also one of the Parte- cipanze, may have a similar etymology. The abundance, in the past centuries, of watermills not only in Bologna (Poni [2009]) but also scattered in its rural territory, is witnessed by toponyms like Molinella, Molinazzo and Molini (from Latin molo, ‘to mill’).

II.5. Snow. Probably a unique case in this area is the sanctuary of Santa Maria della Neve (from Latin nix, ‘snow’: see Monari, 1996), situated in the countryside of Medicina and also known as Madonna del Piano (‘Madonna of the plain’). It was built in the 17th century, but the origin of its name is uncertain – due to a sudden and unusually abundant snowfall or more likely because it was dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows, worshipped in the Ba- silica of St. Mary Major in Rome. The icon of Mary preserved inside the shrine is still carried in procession during the rogazioni, the agrarian rituals celebrated every year in May.

Far from being exhaustive, this list of toponyms should be sufficient to show that the landscape is not just a mute ‘nature’ that lies beneath and separated from the dominion of ‘culture’, but it is deeply interwoven with human as well as non-human practices and social life. As I have already shown for what concerns woods and trees, also water can be perceived in very different ways and can assume several meanings for the local communities. Far from being just H²O, water is the centre of social relations, not only as a symbol, but due to its own materiality (Breda, 2005; Mangiame- li, 2010; Van Aken, 2012; Favole, 2013). Water is the source of life itself, it flows, washes, and irrigates the fields. But it can also be a dangerous

10 On the importance of gutters and ditches for agriculture in these low lands, and on the perceptions, meanings and techniques connected to them, see Poni, 1982.

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 Philology and Toponymy 247 threat: rivers and canals, in fact, formed in these low lands large marshes of backwater; in addition, the irregular path of the rivers created – as it still happens today – quite often dangerous floods, making it risky or almost impossible to cultivate large areas of land. The aforementioned toponyms witness that water and woods can’t be reduced to the concepts of ‘goods’ or ‘resources’ that should just be used and exploited: they have meant a lot more than that for the communities that engaged with them. These elements of the landscape have always been multidimensional, being at the core of the local communities’ social life, in a territory where the majority of people have been involved with agriculture until a few decades ago. Moreover, forests and trees are not the only elements of the landscape that have been connected to sacred places and charged with religious meanings. Here is another example linked to the commons. The boundaries of the Partecipanza di Villa Fontana are delimited by four parishes, according to the limits of the old municipality that disappeared in 1796, after the French conquest of Emilia. The importance of the wetlands and the rivers for the commoners of Villa Fontana is quite evident just by looking at these parishes’ names. Two of them – Santa Maria del Garda and Sant’Antonio della Bassa Quaderna – were dedicated to the rivers that crossed those villages, standing as a protection against their floods. The third parish was dedicated to San Donnino, whose cult was usually associated with water and who was invoked against the rabies (Dini, 1980). The fourth one was dedicated to the Holy Trinity, and it preserves an icon of Mary called the Virgin of the Graces – also known as Madonna del Voto – painted and remembered for having saved the commoners from an epidemic during the 17th century. If we look at this landscape in a long-term perspective, then we could say that after all the Western and Modern ontology that draws a clear division between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ has never been completely achieved, not even in our own rural environment. It would not be so wrong to add this Italian rural area to Philippe Descola’s list of «regions of the Planet [where] humans and nonhumans are not conceived as developing in incom- municable worlds or according to quite separate principles», because also in Emilia historically “the environment is not regarded objectively as an autonomous sphere. Plants and animals, rivers and rocks […] do not exist all together in an ontological niche defined by the absence of human beings. And this seems to hold true whatever may be the local ecological characteristics, political regimes and economic systems, and the accessible resources and the techniques employed to exploit them.” (Descola, 2013, p. 27).

A focus on the place names enables us to understand much better that the landscape is always multidimensional and relational, and that what we use to call ‘nature’ shapes the ways in which humans relate to each other, but at the same time it is built on those relations (Ligi, 2011). But this approach also shows some limits. The main problem is that on the maps that I have mentioned we can only find ‘official’ names, that sometimes are given by the local communities without any doubt, but that in other cases come from state authorities. If that is the case, how can we know that these toponyms really reflect the local perceptions on the landscape? This is where an ethnographic approach becomes relevant. Thanks to a period of field research – particularly in the Eastern low plains of Bologna, in the area of the municipalities of Medicina and Budrio – and to participant observation, in fact, a lot of oral and ‘informal’ place names suddenly appeared. Not only it is true that the lands, the rivers, the trees have names, but very often they can have more than one. These names, that belong to a long oral tradition that we can’t find on maps, at least until recent times, are particularly connected not only to familiar jargon, but also to the commons present in this area. All the common estates of the Partecipanze have names that usually denote their original characteristics. Examples of these oral toponyms are Vallona, Portonovo, Boscosa, Malaffitto and Morafosca, and they refer to the two semantic fields already mentioned or, more in general, to the uncertain conditions of the common lands. The wetlands and the woods were indeed at the centre of the economic and the social life of the commoners, as well as their struggle to drain the common lands, making them fertile and arable fields. Nevertheless, even today the commoners usually refer to these estates using such names, even if the landscape has now almost completely changed. It is true that “anything ‘wild’ in Romance languages (sauvage, sel vaje, selvaggio, and so on) comes from the silva, the great European forest that Roman colonization was gradually to erode” (Descola, 2013, p. 35) – and the rural landscape of Emilia is a classic example of this erosion – as opposed to the domain of the ‘domesticated’ or ‘civilised’. But the historical commons also witness that the silva and the wetlands have always been a social space, that can’t be assimilated to the concept of Romantic ‘wilderness’ characterised by a pristine Nature where the human presence is totally absent, but at most a place that “is simply lacking in attraction

A changing Landscape

The historical rural landscape of Emilia that I have tried to picture in these pages has undergone substantial changes, especially since the second half of the 19th century. The slow but constant process of land drainage in these low plains was at least as old as the commons, but it speeded up after the Italian unification also thanks to the mechanization of agriculture, to reach its conclusion during the Fascist agrarian policy, which propaganda also led to the last state attack against the commons.11 The ‘traditional’ landscape, of which we find traces in the toponyms, has given way to the agricultural landscape of our days, characterized by intensive agriculture even in the common lands. The quick changes in the landscape of this period – as well as in its perceptions – can be recorded and compared by looking at a heterogeneous mass of sources that include paintings, journey reports and photographs. I hereby provide a few examples. Since the word ‘landscape’ itself has been introduced into the Eng- lish language as a technical term used by painters (Hirsch – O’Hanlon, 1995, p. 2), I started looking for local painters. Luigi Bertelli, one the most important painters from Bologna of the late 19th and early 20th century, devoted much of his artistic career painting these wetlands (Stivani, 1982; Montanari – Bettini, 1984). The wetlands and the woods return as recurrent elements in many of Bertelli’s works, like Swamp with boat (1850–1860), Aurora in the low plain of Bologna (1863) or Landscape with swamp (1903). As historian Peter Burke pointed out: “If the physical landscape is an image that can be read, then the painted landscape is an image of an image” (Burke, 2001, p. 42). Once again we are dealing with a representation: these ‘images of images’ are interesting because they

11 In the Po Valley more than the 60% of the land drainage projects took place between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, while in South Italy most of them were accomplished between 1948 and 1968. See Bevilac- qua – Rossi-Doria, 1984; Cazzola, 1896; Cavallo, 2011.

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 250 Lorenzo Mantovani show a particular perception of this landscape – a ‘pastoral landscape’ and an idealized vision of rural life – that recalls very closely the memories evoked by the place names, even if it was drawn in the same years when the process of land drainage and agricultural innovation was at work. Nev- ertheless, the idealized vision painted by Bertelli survived in the collective memories of these rural communities until the present days. On the contrary, a quite different perception of this landscape was pro- vided by the journey reports of the famous foreign travellers who crossed Italy for the so-called Grand Tour. Among them, Goethe crossed these commons’ lands in 1786. He spent one day in Cento, one of the Parteci- panze and the hometown of painter Guercino. This is how he described the landscape: “An hospitable well-built little town […] flourishing, full of life, cleanly, and situated in a well cultivated plain, which stretches farther than the eye can reach. […] A sea of poplars, between which, and near at hand, one caught glimpses of little country-houses, each surrounded by its fields. A rich soil and a beautiful climate.” (Goethe, 1885, p. 89). This was probably another idealized vision, but it may also show the ‘improvements’ and the changes in the landscape already mentioned while speaking of the commons. Moving to the 20th century, many photographs provide us with images of rural activities linked to the massive presence of water in this area. Here I just briefly mention two of them: hemp and rice cultivation. From the 15th century, hemp cultivation was one of the pillars of the agricultural sector of this region and it reached its peak during the 19th century. It was used locally for the production of ropes, fishing nets, bags and clothes, but most of the production was sold to the Arsenal of Venice and to other shipyards in Northwest Europe. Water was essential especially during the retting, or maceration, of the hemp. Likewise, rice cultivation became an important sector in these low plains since the late 18th century and, since it required a very high amount of manual labour, many daily workers were involved in this field, especially women. Given the massive presence of water and flooded fields, rice was the perfect cultivation for such a landscape, and also the Partecipanze have chosen to adopt it for more than a century. By the end of World War II, the process of land drainage and agricultural mechanisation and innovation was almost completely done. Wetlands were drained and flooding rivers became easier to control thanks to the formation of land drainage consortia. Even the commons’ lands became fertile and arable lands. Was it the end of the wetlands? Not really. During

© Peter Lang AG Philology, vol. 2/2016, pp. 237–254 Philology and Toponymy 251 the Nineties, favoured by the Common Agricultural Policy of the Europe- an Union, all the Partecipanze of Emilia started a process of ‘deactivation’ of parts of their estates, meaning the conversion of land use from agriculture to the reconstruction – but the term ‘reinvention’ would be more appropriate – of the past landscape (Van der Ploeg, 2008, p. 7). Small wetlands reappeared in all these commons’ lands, and in this process of ‘reinvention of the tradition’ all the collective memories and identities that I have mentioned have been of great importance. Far from being Nature itself, this landscape tried to represent a pastoral and idealized vision that is very similar to Bertelli’s paintings, but the functions and the context of the past wetlands as a social and embodied space have been replaced. These new wetlands, in fact, are conceived as environmental heritage or natural reserves: they are now protected areas whose main purpose is the conservation of biodiversity. The human presence, when allowed, is limit- ed to sport hunting or educational tours. The wetlands that we still can see in Emilia are the result of a process of remembrance, selection, and resignification of the environment. I ar- gued that a long-term perspective allows us to better grasp the processual character of the landscape, avoiding at the same time artificial oppositions between Nature and Culture. Christopher Tilley summarizes very well my point:

“rather than simply providing a backdrop for human action the natural landscape is a cognized form redolent with place names, associations and memories that serve to humanize and enculture landscape, linking together topographical features, trees, rocks, rivers, birds and animals with patterns of human intentionality. Significant locations become crystallized out of the environment through the production and recognition of meanings in particular places and through events that have taken place. Humanized places become fashioned out of the landscape through the recognition of significant qualities in that which has not in itself been culturally produced (rocks, rivers, trees, etc.) by association with current use, past social actions or actions of a mythological character” (Tilley, 1994, p. 24).

The commons of Emilia have played an important role in this process by producing a tight link between the local human population – at least a part of it – and the environment. The resilience of these institutions will be tested on their ability to keep themselves efficient and convenient for their members, as well as to keep their functions economically sustainable, and their landscapes meaningful even in a time of changing population and uncertain ecologic and economic conditions.

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