Judeo-Occitan (Judeo-Provençal)
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chapter 16 Judeo-Occitan (Judeo-Provençal) Adam Strich with George Jochnowitz 1 Introduction 518 1.1 The Occitan Language 518 1.2 Historical Introduction 519 2 Judeo-Occitan Texts and Sources 519 2.1 Old Judeo-Occitan Texts and Sources 520 2.2 Modern Judeo-Occitan Texts and Sources 523 3 History of Scholarship on Judeo-Occitan 531 4 Linguistic Profile of Judeo-Occitan 534 4.1 Phonology 534 4.2 Morphology 534 4.3 Lexicon 535 5 Further Study 536 6 Bibliography 536 1 Introduction 1.1 The Occitan Language Occitan is the preferred term for the cluster of closely related and largely mutually intelligible Romance varieties native to southern France and some bordering territory of Italy and Spain. There is no single standard variety of Occitan, and it has no official status in France; it is an endangered language. The language had its heyday in the late Middle Ages (12th–14th centuries), when Old Occitan (also called Old Provençal) was used by the troubadors. In this chapter, Judeo-Occitan refers to the varieties of Occitan spoken by Jews in all periods, and written by Jews in either the Hebrew or Roman script. The name Judeo-Provençal is here avoided, since Provençal is nowadays more commonly used by linguists to refer to one dialect of Occitan, though it has often been used to refer to the whole of Occitan. It is used (in parentheses) in the title of this chapter for the benefit of those readers already familiar with the term. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/9789004359543_018 judeo-occitan (judeo-provençal) 519 1.2 Historical Introduction Jewish communities existed in the Midi (roughtly the southern third of con- tiental France), in what would become Occitan-speaking territory, as early as Late Antiquity, but they became especially numerous during the general post- Carolingian population boom (Toch 2013: 258). After flourishing for a few cen- turies, their situation began to deteriorate with the Albigensian Crusade of 1209 to 1229, which led to the expansion of French control into Languedoc and the establishment there of the Inquisition. Jews were ordered to be expelled from neighboring Gascony, then under Plantagenet rule, in 1289, 1292, 1310, 1313, and 1316, though these edicts were either not vigorously enforced or quickly rescinded. In 1306, Philip IV (‘The Fair’) expelled the Jews from France. They were recalled in 1315 by his successor, Louis X, only to suffer persecutions dur- ing the second Shepherds’ Crusade five years later. Just three years after that, they were expelled once more, this time until 1359. A final expulsion came in 1395. Though it saw its own share of anti-Jewish ordinances and disturbances, none of these edicts applied to Provence, which was still independent of the French crown; consequently, the center of Jewish life in the Midi shifted east- ward over the course of the 14th century. In 1481, however, the Kingdom of France absorbed Provence; twenty years later, its Jews were expelled as well. When, after another four years, Jews were ordered expelled from the Princi- pality of Orange, there were only two areas left in Occitania where they could reside legally: the County of Nice and the adjacent Occitan-speaking valleys of Piedmont, on the one hand; and the papal enclave of Avignon and the Com- tat Venaissin, on the other. The Jews of the latter were further confined in 1624: thenceforth, they could only live within the ghettos of Avignon, Carpentras, Cavaillon, and L’Isle(-sur-la-Sorgue), or, as they would come to be known, the four holy communities. In 1791, a plebiscite was held and the enclave voted to join revolutionary France. Its Jews were emancipated; most left for the larger cities and quickly shed their distinctive customs, liturgy, pronunciation tradi- tion, and dialectal peculiarities. 2 Judeo-Occitan Texts and Sources The extant Judeo-Occitan texts neatly divide into two groups: the earlier sources date from before the final expulsion from France in 1395 and reflect the stage of the language known as Old Occitan, while the later sources date from the period of confinement in the Comtat and are recognizably Modern Occitan..