Note 456 — APPENDIX.

Vida de S. Domingo de Silos, St. 2.

Roman paladino means the “plain Romance language,” paladino being derived, as I think, with Sanchez, from palam, though Sarmiento (in his manuscript on “Amadis de Gaula,” referred to, Vol. I. p. 322, note) says, when noticing this line: “Paladino es de palatino y este es de palacio.” The otro latino is, of course, the elder Latin, however corrupted. Cervantes uses the word ladino to mean Spanish, (Don Quixote, Parte I. c. 41, and the note of Clemencin,) and Dante (Par., III. 63) uses it once to mean plain, easy; both curious instances of an indirect meaning, forced, as it were, upon a word. Prosa means, I suppose, story. Biagioli (Ad Purgatorio, XXVI. 118) says: “Prosa nell’ Italiano e nel Provenzale del secolo xiii. significa precisamente istoria o narrazione in versi.” It may be doubted whether he is right in applying this remark to the passage in Dante, but it is no doubt applicable to the passage before us in Berceo, the meaning of which both Bouterwek and his Spanish translators have mistaken. (Bouterwek, Trad. Cortina, etc., 8vo, Madrid, 1829, Tom. I. pp. 60 and 119.) Ferdinand Wolf (in his very learned work, “Über die Lais, Sequenzen und Leiche,” Heidelberg, 1841, 8vo, pp. 92 and 304) thinks the use of the word prosa, here and elsewhere in early Spanish poetry, had some reference to the well-known use of the same word in the offices of the Church. (Du Cange, Glossarium, ad verb.) But I think the early Spanish rhymers took it from the Provençal, and not from the ecclesiastical Latin.